Is that like thinking about baseball to ward off orgasm? What if baseball really turns you on? Or, what if thinking about Jesus makes you think about the evil of Christianity (in someone who feels that way), and then it’s the dragons and demons all over again x1000?
To paraphrase Hume, ‘no testimony or evidence is sufficient to establish a religious experience, unless the testimony or evidence be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the religious experience which it endeavours to establish.’
I’ve had two experiences that I suppose could be described as “religious.” The first one definitely could. It involved seeing a religious figure, but not in the normal way that you usually see people. The closest I have been able to come in describing this figure is to say that the “person” looked like a human being made of lalique glass and held to the light. The room was dark except for this figure. There was a little bit of light coming from the hallway. There was a little bit of the quality of a photographic negative.
Could this have been an hallucination? Certainly. Still, I was a child and it has remained meaningful for well over half a century now. It is very clear in my mind. I’m certain that hallucinations can be just as clear.
The other experience I’ve posted about here before. There was no visual hallucination of what was before me. Everything that I “saw” was in my mind. But an optometrist will tell you that that’s where you “see” everything anyway.
I didn’t associate it with any one religion or even with “God” at all at the time and for a long time afterwards. But the feelings I had were very intense. I won’t describe the whole thing again. But I felt so incredibly centered and euphoric. It was perhaps “the Peace that passeth understanding.” I felt that I was “all of it” and finally aware, finally awake.
When you hear people describe these experiences last the last one, you will often hear them talk about feeling “at one” with everything. I hear it over and over again.
I think that some people on certain drugs experience similar feelings. Could this be a product solely of my brain? Yes. And it certainly felt more real than anything before or sense.
I don’t think it was an hallucination. May all of your brains gift you with such a glimpse – even if it is as temporary as mine. Maybe it was just a misfiring synapse or something similar. If a “mistake” by the brain can change perception of reality that much, who is to say that your average brain has the “correct” settings? It may be missing out on a lot.
You’ve probably already seen this video of Jill Taylor Amazing stuff.
I’m with you. Whatever the phenomenon was that had me so peaceful, forgiving and serene, not denying reality but at peace with it from a much better perspective, I’d like to know and experience more often. I’d like to know if it’s something we as humans can access since it was so beneficial to me. The similar stories I’ve heard and read {like yours} just convince me the quest is worthwhile.
Here’s a question, as someone who’s not had such an experience.
If they were more common, do you think it runs the risk of “cheapening” it somehow? I mean, to give a bad analogy, I enjoy chocolate, but if I ate a lot of it I think i’d probably get sick of it (not to mention sick).
It seems to me as though, especially in cases where something is all about interaction with the mind and self, it would be very difficult to not think about it if it happened too often. I mean, you might go from simply enjoying it to questioning and thinking about that enjoyment and the experience, which in itself would start downing you off a “unity” experience.
It’s not breaking new ground. For many of us, work IS death.
I’d be willing to risk it.
I think taste or sound or such sensory input is quite different from a state of mind or a feeling. If more common meant more peaceful, more accepting, more understanding, more often it hardly seems like a bad thing.
Cosmos, great video! I had not seen it before. I had bought her book as soon as I heard about it! Thanks!
Then I’m very glad I shared it. It’s interesting how she associates what some would call “spiritual experiences” with a certain part of the brain.
Perhaps there’s a parallel there, But you’re talking about hormones, which isn’t quite the same thing.
That can happen. I’ve seen a lot of imagery from the dark side of medieval culture. The obsession with battling Satan is as “satanic” as anyting else, and this is reflected in the ugliness of that particular theme (OTOH, imagery associated with cathedrals and stained-glass windows is quite uplifting).
Examine any culture while tripping and a lot of the imagery is an illustration of how that cultures fears manifested themselves. It’s interesting, but it’s one of the many detours on the path to Nirvana.
Sometimes the hallucination of Jesus has him bathed in light from above. He looks up and so you look up and that’s when you get the tunnel-of-light action. You have to be sincere about wanting to embrace God, though.
Weather or not any of this is real, I don’t know, but it sure is spectacular. Then again, it’s more religiously real than reading about it or talking about it or whispering in the darkness.
Really? You’d say that a dude nailed through his hands and feet to a piece of wood, dieing a brutal, painful, tortuous death – surely, the most prevalent image in cathedrals – is ‘uplifting’?
This isn’t intended as a slight against you; but I think it goes to show how much context – cultural or self-created – colours our perceptions. I don’t think anybody without the necessary background (like the whole redeeming-of-original-sin-thing) would find anything but suffering in the crucifix, and similarly, I don’t think Jesus ever appeared to anybody who had never heard of him. The coloured windows are pretty, though.
Nice post, but I have to complain about the mis-use of the word I highlighted. The word you’re looking for is “torturous.”
Sorry, but “tortuous” is such a nice descriptive word that I hate to see it misused.
I don’t know about that. From here we see definitions for “tortuous” that include:[ol]
[li]marked by repeated twists, bends, or turns : winding <a tortuous path>[/li][li]a : marked by devious or indirect tactics : crooked, tricky <a tortuous conspiracy> b : circuitous, involved <the tortuous jargon of legal forms>[/li][/ol]
While you could make a compelling case that, based on context, Half Man Half Wit meant to write “torturous”, I think such a case could also be made that the definition of “tortuous” most adequately describes Christian salvation theology and, by extension, the crucifixion. Particularly definition #2.
Just sayin… 
[quote=“recessiveMeme, post:193, topic:505389”]
I don’t know about that. From here we see definitions for “tortuous” that include:[LIST=1]
[li]marked by repeated twists, bends, or turns : winding <a tortuous path>[/li][/QUOTE]
Dude, it was a crucifix, not the rack.
Granqvist’s results were flawed, not Persinger’s. He simply didn’t set up his equipment properly. He failed to calibrate his hardware to his computer (faster than the ones for which the equipment was designed). Persinger has replied to Granqvist in peer-reviewed journals, but the accusation that Persinger was off-base got much more attention than his rebuttals. Persinger used double-blind protocols for many of his studies. Granqvist told his subjects there were participating in an experiment to study the effects of magnetic fields on ‘feeling states’ - hardly a ‘blind’ procedure. Persinger told his subjects that they were participating in an experiment on relaxation.
The ethical requirement demanding ‘informed consent’, which both researchers honored, seems to make true ‘double-blind’ studies impossible in these days. If you don’t inform your subjects of the nature of an experiment, you violate ‘informed consent’ ethics. If you DO inform your subjects, then your study isn’t ‘blind’. It looks like a ‘no-win’ situation for both Persinger and Granqvist.
Here is a link to a popular critique of Granqvist’s failed attempt to replicate Persinger’s procedure - The God Helmet is not debunked. Validated by a new study. Of course, such ‘pop’ science material isn’t as impressive as peer-reviewed publications, so here’s Persinger’s formal reply: Experimental facilitation of the sensed presence is predicted by the specific patterns of the applied magnetic fields, not by suggestibility: re-analyses of 19 experiments - PubMed In looking at this publication, I noticed that Persinger had done 19 experiments, which strongly offsets a small number of subjects.
I’ve seen a few TV documentaries where subjects talked about their experiences, showing that Persinger’s procedures work. And, although they may not have been formal subjects in specific experiments, I doubt they were faking. That means, as Granqvist mistakenly concluded, that Persinger’s effects were due to suggestibility, but there was also a study in which suggestibility was also affected by Persinger’s procedures, so that isn’t a good explanation.
I think Granqvist just got it wrong.
Yup, that sounds pretty well like what happened to me.
After much thought, I came to the following conclusions:
The experience is certainly real.
Lots of people experience it. It is much more common than people imagine.
Most people who experience it become somewhat reticent to talk about it, mainly because it is very difficult (well, impossible) to describe in a satisfactory manner to someone who hasn’t experienced it. You tend to end up sounding like a lunatic, a fraud or rabidly religious.
The experience is very similar across cultures, but gets interpreted in radically different ways - as each person tends to see it through their own cultural lens.
My personal opinion is that the explaination for it is entirely physical. I certainly hope so, because then presumably a way to reliably replicate it can be found, and as far as I’m concerned it is very positive and helpful to anyone who has experienced it. I certainly believe it was helpful to me.
Describing it as a “hallucination” would be a disservice to the truth. It would be like decribing the emotional state known as “love” as a hallucination. A hallucination implies seeing things that are not there.
I believe what you mean is “a disservice to the human ego”.
The comparison with love is obviously flawed. Love implies infusing a very real object with a special significance. The altered mental state in which people have “visions” can be called whatever its practitioners want, but “hallucination” is an accurate term for perceiving an object/person who does not exist, as opposed to a religious feeling (i.e. of reverence) which is arguably as “real” as any other feeling.
We aren’t talking necessarily about “…perceiving an object/person who does not exist”. At least in my case, I didn’t see any such thing. In Zoe’s case, he or she states that s/he saw a hallucination in association with experience one, as a child, and that s/he experienced this state a second time without such a vision as an adult. To my mind at least, the “visual hallucination” experienced by Zoe and presumably by others is relatively unimportant, compared with the revalatory experience, which is primarily an internal, emotional matter; at least, I have never experienced such a “hallucination” and yet I am in sympathy with Zoe’s experiences.
It was more akin to a “… religious feeling (i.e. of reverence) which is arguably as “real” as any other feeling”, though that rather understates the matter.
It can be both. The most significant part of my “hallucination” was the feeling that came with it. While reverence is accurate it is also an incredible understatement.
If I were going to have an ego about either of these experiences, it would have been about the vision I had as a child. Yet I will readily admit that that could have been an hallucination. It certainly sounds like it was. I wasn’t even Catholic. It just looked very real to me. Even after I screamed and walked half way across the room.
The feelings experienced in what occured when I was an adult are hard to argue with. I’m not talking about anthing visual or auditory except what I knew to be taking place in my mind. Colors were more intense, yes. But I knew that my brain was perceiving them differently. I felt infinite, but I knew I was confined to a body. And I felt bliss. I wanted for nothing. You don’t imagine your feelings.
Nor do I think I am in anyway special because of this experience so why would it be an “ego” thing for any of us? The feeling is the great equalizer. We are one. The ego disappears.
Malthus, everything that you added is also true for me. One of the things that has been interesting has been having others confide in me about their own experiences – especially if I haven’t told them about mine. When they get confirmation that this happens to someone else, they seem so relieved!
Cosmos, I am not at all surprised that the experience may have to do with the brain’s hemispheres. It makes sense to me! I hope that more and more scientists are able to tap into what the right hemisphere perceives. (And the left hemisphere on its own too!)