God talks to lots of people... the mind talking to itself

Has God ever talked to you? Have you ever heard divine sounds, or seen divine visions? If so, you've got lots of company according to "Is That God Talking?" by T.M. Luhrmann, a professor of anthropology at Stanford.

A questionnaire posed to 375 college students found that 71 percent reported vocal hallucinations of some kind, according to a study published in 1984 (a finding consistent with my own research). A 2000 study found that 38.7 percent of the population reported visual, auditory or other hallucinations, including out-of-body experiences.

Interesting. 

Fairly frequently people post comments on this blog or send me emails about "inner" experiences that, to them, prove that they're right and I'm wrong: God certainly does exist, as do heavenly supernatural realms.

Well, by that logic we'd have to believe in the validity of countless Godly experiences, many of them decidedly contradictory with each other. 

Is God a person, a power, a universal presence? Is there one God or many Gods? Is God involved with the world, or does God sit back as a passive observer? Is there a single favored way to know God, or many ways?

People who have religious experiences come up with all kinds of answers to these sorts of questions. Christians almost always find the tenets of their faith confirmed; Hindus, the tenets of their faith. It's rare for someone who is a fervent believer in some religion to have a vision of the divine that leads them to proclaim, "I was wrong! Christianity isn't correct -- Buddhism is!" [or whatever}

Yet if God is objectively real, why don't people who hear or see God agree about what the divine nature is like?

Luhrmann suggests an obvious answer: what religious people fervently believe conceptually to be true, eventually becomes experientially true for them. The mind is a marvelous creator of subjective reality. It will deliver what is wanted, if the desire is strong enough.

I eventually discovered that these experiences were associated with intense prayer practice. They felt spontaneous, but people who liked to get absorbed in their imaginations were more likely to experience them. Those were the people who were more likely to love to pray, and the “prayer warriors” who prayed for long periods were likely to report even more of them.

The prayer warriors said that as they became immersed in prayer, their senses became more acute. Smells seemed richer, colors more vibrant. Their inner sensory worlds grew more vivid and more detailed, and their thoughts and images sometimes seemed as if they were external to the mind. Later, I was able to demonstrate experimentally that prayer practice did lead to more vivid inner images and more hallucination-like events.

Again, if descriptions of these inner sensory images --  sights, sounds, smells, and such -- were consistent across religions, this would be much stronger evidence that those who pray and meditate were coming into contact with an objectively true supernatural reality.

But this doesn't happen. Again, Christians have Christian'y experiences; Buddhists have Buddhist'y experiences; Hindus have Hindu'y experiences. 

What the mind dwells upon and expects, the mind delivers as inner experiences. Nothing supernatural involved. Just the mind doing its thing. Prayer and meditation are powerful tools that create "divine" experiences. So, of course, do psychedelic drugs like psilocybin. 

The more interesting lesson is what it tells us about the mind and prayer. If hearing a voice is associated with focused attention to the inner senses — hearing with the mind’s ear, seeing with the mind’s eye — it suggests that prayer (which today, the National Day of Prayer, celebrates) is a pretty powerful instrument.

We often imagine prayer as a practice that affects the content of what we think about — our moral aspirations, or our contrition. It’s probably more accurate to understand prayer as a skill that changes how we use our minds.

Comments

[Sandra]

First I want you to apologize the errors i am doing in English, because it's not my mother tongue (which is German) and I hope that I can make myself understood.
I am reading in your blog since two weeks or so and I am finding my opinions confirmed in nearly every post, especially regarding Sant Mat.
I have experienced San Mat attending a group (followers of Kirpal Singh, Thakar Singh and the contemporary "living master" Baljit Singh, for approximately 10 months or so. Although I was sceptic from the beginning, I wanted to make this experience for to see if something worked, I was simply curious, and was initiated in june 2012 after a so called "preparation time" of three months.
It would stretch the point if I tried now to state and demonstrate all the inadequacies and the thousands of questions which mostly remained unanswered by the santmat-disciples and representants of this special group, but I think everything is said on this blog. I am just happy to have checked all the lies out after a short time which gives me the possibility to continue my search of the "truth" without getting stuck in religious dogma.
Brian, I appreciate your blog which help(ed) me much in my opinion-forming about the sant mat religion and I feel confirmed by most of the ways of looking at things I am finding here. Thx

[Tom]

Brian, isn't it also worth asking what the 'divine' experience actually means, and whether it has any intrinsic value beyond the 'woo' factor we all find so silly? Is it really just an unreasonable feeling of being special?

You mentioned psilocybin. Scientific observations of the psilocybin experience show that despite a hugely expanded sense of subjective being (the beneficial effects of which persist longterm), the brain activity during the experience is actually significantly reduced. It seems that in our every day conscious state, the brain acts as a valve that shuts things out rather than lets them in.

This fits in with other research on the default mode network, which suggests that we human beings put most of our mental energy into thinking about ourselves, most of which has become so habitual that we hardly notice it.

Could it be that this run-away absorption with the minutiae of our thought selves blocks a perception of greater significance and order? Could that blockage then feed back into personal disorder, producing disintegration and discontent, leading to failed attempts to escape reality, culminating in the doom of cynicism and the conflicts that the world seems plagued by?

Could it be that we really do need to take the so-called divine experience seriously and try to encourage its healthy practice as well as discouraging the dodgy ones?

Apologies if you've already posted on this subject - I've not been here that long.

[just me]

Brian - your words: "..."inner" experiences that, to them, prove that they're right and I'm wrong: God certainly does exist, as do heavenly supernatural realms."

What is right and what is wrong?

Some people attribute their inner experiences to God or heavenly supernatural realms.

Some believe it is only the brain and its functions.

These belief systems are too extreme. Too fixed. Be more open to the mysterious and see what happens.

"Return to Tao and a gap is created, an openness through the unknown. But first, for the unknown to be, the known, that which is, must not be. Return to the mode of not-knowing, not-doing. This permits the inner essence to emerge."

[Brian Hines]

Sandra, I appreciate your thanks. Congratulations on being able to tell the difference between religious truth and falsehood. Find your own way, or at least a spiritual way that makes sense to you.

Tom, I've got no problem with "divine experiences." After all, don't people often say after enjoying a great meal, or a bottle of wine, "that was divine!"

Transcendent or uplifting experiences are wonderful. Certainly they should be encouraged. My problem is when people take a subjective "divine" experience and try to draw sweeping conclusions about objective reality from it.

[Roger]

"Return to Tao and a gap is created, an openness through the unknown. But first, for the unknown to be, the known, that which is, must not be. Return to the mode of not-knowing, not-doing. This permits the inner essence to emerge."

--What exactly is an inner essence? How does it emerge?

[Roger]

"Be more open to the mysterious and see what happens."

--Nothing wrong with the mysterious. However, how does one engage in this seeing what happens? In addition, what is being opened to the mysterious? Does one open some sort of brain activity? If so, what part of the brain is opening and what part of the brain commands this opening? This is another fascinating topic.

[Tom]

Tom, I've got no problem with "divine experiences." After all, don't people often say after enjoying a great meal, or a bottle of wine, "that was divine!"

It strikes me it's so very easy to belittle the truly significant aspects of our lives.

Something has to be restored before all the dross can be cleared out.

Otherwise we have the spiritual equivalent of Iraq. Remember how the important thing was to get rid of Saddam? Supposedly, freedom from his regime would automatically stimulate order. But there was no freedom, just a mess of other problems lurking underneath.

[Sandra]

After my disenchanting time with the sant mat-group and the reading of the appropriate spiritual literature I only know now the way which doesn't lead to a divine experience.
The "transcendent and uplifting experiences" are all -as Brian says (and which is also my own opinion, so far)- subjective and caused by our own individual brains. So, this means that its all illusion and not an objective reality which works for everybody. If this doesn't work for everybody it can't be divine, because we are all humans and why should the higher beeing give preference only to some of us? sant mat-teaching says that some human beings have reached a higher development and are nearer to god than others. this is one of the traps santmat-followers are caught in: the guru makes their ego feel better, higher, elitist. At the same time they are told to leave the ego. thats a contradiction in itself. oh - if my english was better, i could give a hundred examples for contradiction in santmat-teaching!
ok, this was actually not want I wanted to tell.
The most interesting question is, if there is something like a higher "divine" being, an intelligent designer, a causal energy ...
and if and how it is possible to experience that during our lifetime here on this planet. It would be nice to have some essential suggestions.