What is an authentic religious experience?

When we speak of authenticity as far as religious experience is concerned, we come to speak of three things Consistency in relation to the inclination of the individual towards the flow of experience; Effectivity in relation to its holistic outcome in the person of the individual as ethico-spirituality dictates; and Maturity in relation to its scriptural basis. These three features of an authentic religious experience have its significant connection to each other. First, when we say that the inclination of the individual towards the flow of experience must be consistent; we mean to say that there must be no inclination on the part of the individual towards any misleading type of experience and then causing further the misleading of others. Second, Effectivity in relation to its holistic outcome in the person of the individual as ethico-spirituality dictates Prayer is a term in which novices find the whole way to God, from beginning to end, and in which their stations (maqamat) are revealed.1

McCall, William Alexander. The Book of Knowledge: Being a Translation, with Introduction and Notes of Al-Ghazzalis Book of the Ihya, Kitab Al-Ilm. Ph. D. Dissertation. Kennedy School of Missions, Hartford Seminary Foundation, May 1940, pp. 23-24
Donald Latumahina, 4 Reasons Why Curiosity is Important and How to Develop It, Stepcase Lifehack, available at http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/4-reasons-why-curiosity-is-important-and-how-to-develop-it.html, retrieved January 28, 2011

Ali B. Uthman Al-Jullabi Al Hujwiri. Kashf Al-Mahjub: The Oldest Persian Treatise on Sufism, trans. Reynold A. Nicholson (London: Messrs. Luzac and Company Ltd., 1976), p. 103