What makes people irrational thinkers?

[Simon Moon]

For example, people have different unmediated experiences. While most are common and trivial, on rare occasions some people do have numinous experience that are realer-than-real. As someone who has had enough such mystical experiences that I cannot deny them, I still recognize that they are properly basic to me alone.

This is interesting to me.

How does one go about differentiating between a 'real' numinous experience that are realer-than-real, mystical experience, and one that is caused by a real, but transitory alteration in mental state, that just seems like a 'real' numinous and mystical experience, but was completely natural?

I am sure that you believe, that some percentage of people, who sincerely claim they had a real numinous and mystical experience, were actually misinterpreting an altered mental brain state.

I am sure the vast majority of schizophrenics, who claim to have mystical experiences, sincerely believe they are real.

What about all the people that believe in different gods than you do, who sincerely claim to have had a 'real' numinous experience that are realer-than-real, and a mystical experience with their god? Are they all mistaking?

I have told this story previously on this forum, but I will tell it again.

I have a good friend (we grew up surfing together) that in his early 20's got hooked on meth and alcohol.

Of course his life fell apart, he was living on the street, doing petty crimes for drug money, etc. Then one day, he wandered into a Hindu temple near downtown LA, and claims to have had a mystical experience with a Hindu god, and instantaneously quit drugs and alcohol. He hasn't had anything since that day almost a decade ago.

He got his life together, started his own successful tile contracting business, got married, and has a kid. To this day, he is a Hindu.

So, my question is; did he have an actual real numinous and mystical experience, with the Hindu gods? If you don't think he did, how do you tell the difference between his 'not real' mystical experience, and a 'real' one? How is he supposed to tell the difference?