 Some commentators have sought to distinguish between the component of a report of a religious experience that is a record of its phenomenology and the component that involves an interpretation of the experience according to some favoured doctrinal scheme (Stace 1961). As Pike notes, it is possible in principle that whole traditions of mystical experience have been more concerned to communicate the doctrinal implications of such experience rather than its phenomenological content (1992, p. 174), and that they have adopted a vocabulary for talking about the experiences that will suit this purpose. But in light of the language of “spiritual sensations” we may (with Pike) doubt that this is the right way to understand the Christian mystical tradition. At least some strands of this tradition seem to display a keen interest in recording the phenomenology of various experiences. (See Turner 1995 for a contrasting, non-experientialist reading of Christian mystical writing.)