this scholar of religion characterized the encounter with the holy as a numinous experience
Religious experience The numinous experience also has a personal quality to it, in that the person feels to be in communion with a holy other. Otto sees the numinous as the only possible religious experience. He states: "There is no religion in which it [the numinous] does not live as the real innermost core and without it no religion would be worthy of the name" (Otto: 1972). Otto does not take any other kind of religious experience such as ecstasy and enthusiasm seriously and is of the opinion that they belong to the 'vestibule of religion'.
Ietsism Ietsism (Dutch: ietsisme (pronounced [itsˈɪsmə]) – "somethingism") is an unspecified belief in an undetermined transcendent reality. It is a Dutch term for a range of beliefs held by people who, on the one hand, inwardly suspect – or indeed believe – that "there must be something undefined beyond the mundane and that which can be known or can be proven", but on the other hand do not necessarily accept or subscribe to the established belief system, dogma or view of the nature of a deity offered by any particular religion. Some of the English language related terms are agnostic theism (though very many ietsists do not believe in one or more gods and are thus atheists), eclecticism, deism and spiritual but not religious. Ietsists might call themselves Christian or followers of an other religion based on cultural identification with that religion, without believing in the dogmas of that particular religion.