Every spiritual practice in the world has developed methods for helping people to have these kinds of experiences. The most common are chanting, repetition of prayers or mantras, controlling the breath, rhythmic dancing, drumming, fasting, long periods of isolation, and the ritual use of psychedelic plants and substances. Ken Vincent has collected cases of Ancient Attempts at Inducing Spiritually Transformative Experiences.

Many studies now suggest that spiritually transformative experiences are so common as to be considered normal - and up to 40% of people have them at some time in their life. (Back and Bourque, 1970; Greeley, 1974, 1987; Hay and Morisy, 1978; Hood, 1974, 1975, 1977; Thomas and Cooper, 1980) Dr. Robert Crookall collected hundreds of accounts in his book The Interpretation of Cosmic and Mystical Experiences (1969).