Are religious experiences subjective or something else?

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WilliamWDelaney
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05 Dec 2011, 5:20 pm

I could probably teach you how to attain something similar.

Visualize the graph of an exponential function, and fix your concentration around it. Try to think of it as a sound, an image, and something you can touch. Observing that you can't grasp it entirely, just keep pumping mental resources into wrapping your mind around it anyway. If you're doing it right, you should develop a sense of a peculiar bright spot in your visual field. You might develop some auditory hallucinations or get a sense of vertigo. However, this is essentially on a level with kazoo as "religious experiences" go. Very primitive. Sloppy.

Some of Bach's better stuff touches on it with somewhat better class. When listening to Baroque church music, try dividing each distinctive melody mentally, and develop them into a good visual. It doesn't matter if you can't get a fully lucid image of it: it's not important to. Consider it in terms of your emotions, thoughts about human society, thoughts about the meaning of life, and anything else that comes to mind. Think of how people during various time periods have dreamed one day that the world at large would come together as one civilization and finally figure things out. The purpose of the symphony is to touch on all of these aspects of your emotions and compel you to think in a certain way, so try to think of all of the different ways in which it speaks to you.

To have a religious experience is to feel that you are plugged into something powerful and massive. The best kinds of religious experience leave you with a sense that this power is somehow the thing that the whole world has been looking for. It is something like a supercharged sense of realization. It is like the "aha!" moment you get when you come to some realization, but it's magnified. It is epiphany.

Yes, it's nice. Yes, I understand it. I just have an idea as to what it is. Knowing this doesn't diminish it for me anymore than knowing how a sunset works makes a sunset less beautiful, less poetic, or less worthwhile. Does realizing that a smile is nothing more than the contraction of facial muscles make it less heartwarming when someone you love smiles at you? You're not even thinking of that crap at the time.

Now, if you feel differently, I think that the most civilized way of handling it is usually to let bygones be bygones and try not to be too snide about our respective opinions. Sometimes I find someone of the religious bent I can discuss it with toe-to-toe, and you haven't seen hard-hitting philosophy until you've seen a highly educated skeptic and an equally highly educated theist duking it out in true gentlemanly fashion. If you are a skeptic and you think that you have everything figured out, I know a few religious-minded chaps who could dance circles around you if they were nasty enough to do so, and you could not keep up. On the other hand, I occasionally run into that annoying streak of holy roller who refuses to acknowledge even the possibility that an atheist or other skeptical-minded person might actually have a fairly apt comprehension of religion and what it's about, and you KNOW the kinds of people I'm talking about.

Ultimately, I think that what some people consider to be a "religious experience" is pretty neat, but I am fairly certain it's just something that happens in the brain.



snapcap
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05 Dec 2011, 9:01 pm

WilliamWDelaney wrote:
I could probably teach you how to attain something similar.

Visualize the graph of an exponential function, and fix your concentration around it. Try to think of it as a sound, an image, and something you can touch. Observing that you can't grasp it entirely, just keep pumping mental resources into wrapping your mind around it anyway. If you're doing it right, you should develop a sense of a peculiar bright spot in your visual field. You might develop some auditory hallucinations or get a sense of vertigo. However, this is essentially on a level with kazoo as "religious experiences" go. Very primitive. Sloppy.

Some of Bach's better stuff touches on it with somewhat better class. When listening to Baroque church music, try dividing each distinctive melody mentally, and develop them into a good visual. It doesn't matter if you can't get a fully lucid image of it: it's not important to. Consider it in terms of your emotions, thoughts about human society, thoughts about the meaning of life, and anything else that comes to mind. Think of how people during various time periods have dreamed one day that the world at large would come together as one civilization and finally figure things out. The purpose of the symphony is to touch on all of these aspects of your emotions and compel you to think in a certain way, so try to think of all of the different ways in which it speaks to you.

To have a religious experience is to feel that you are plugged into something powerful and massive. The best kinds of religious experience leave you with a sense that this power is somehow the thing that the whole world has been looking for. It is something like a supercharged sense of realization. It is like the "aha!" moment you get when you come to some realization, but it's magnified. It is epiphany.

Yes, it's nice. Yes, I understand it. I just have an idea as to what it is. Knowing this doesn't diminish it for me anymore than knowing how a sunset works makes a sunset less beautiful, less poetic, or less worthwhile. Does realizing that a smile is nothing more than the contraction of facial muscles make it less heartwarming when someone you love smiles at you? You're not even thinking of that crap at the time.

Now, if you feel differently, I think that the most civilized way of handling it is usually to let bygones be bygones and try not to be too snide about our respective opinions. Sometimes I find someone of the religious bent I can discuss it with toe-to-toe, and you haven't seen hard-hitting philosophy until you've seen a highly educated skeptic and an equally highly educated theist duking it out in true gentlemanly fashion. If you are a skeptic and you think that you have everything figured out, I know a few religious-minded chaps who could dance circles around you if they were nasty enough to do so, and you could not keep up. On the other hand, I occasionally run into that annoying streak of holy roller who refuses to acknowledge even the possibility that an atheist or other skeptical-minded person might actually have a fairly apt comprehension of religion and what it's about, and you KNOW the kinds of people I'm talking about.

Ultimately, I think that what some people consider to be a "religious experience" is pretty neat, but I am fairly certain it's just something that happens in the brain.


This is a free E-Book that guarantees you to have a Out of Body Experience within 3 days

http://research.obe4u.com/practical-guidebook/

I skimmed through the first few pages, I can see how there might be something to it. If you ever experienced that state between wakefulness where you might experience hypnagogic imagery and myoclonus, that's supposedly the window for the technique to work. I'm going to try it when I get the chance.



WilliamWDelaney
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05 Dec 2011, 9:48 pm

snapcap wrote:
This is a free E-Book that guarantees you to have a Out of Body Experience within 3 days

http://research.obe4u.com/practical-guidebook/

I skimmed through the first few pages, I can see how there might be something to it. If you ever experienced that state between wakefulness where you might experience hypnagogic imagery and myoclonus, that's supposedly the window for the technique to work. I'm going to try it when I get the chance.
Oh, auditory hypnogogia is also fun, and I find it comes more naturally to me.

You are most likely to get hypnogogia as you are falling to sleep. Use any background noise for it, such as a refrigerator or a ticking clock or climate control unit. As you wind down and get ready to sleep, imagine that you have control over the sound. Weave it, mentally, into the shape that you want. You might hear a sitcom you liked once, or perhaps you may hear classical. The trick to it is to think of yourself as being able to push and pull the sound and manipulate it into a desired shape.

If you do it right, you should get such a vivid auditory hallucination that you would swear that you actually hear music in the noise. Nice to fall asleep to, actually. However, one time I forgot what I was doing, and I called up the neighbors to ask them to turn down the music.

Now, as far as what some people consider to be "religious experiences," getting a good one is a fine art. Any low-rent holy roller can get a basic buzz, but it's all power and no finesse. The seizures some of them go into are probably doing damage to their brains, and I doubt it could be good for you. Once you have the basic concept of this or any other technique down, you want to refrain from trying to get a stronger charge out of it (an approach that always gets diminishing returns), and focus instead on polish. "Chasing the dragon" is for r-tards who don't have any idea what they're probably doing to their brains. You ultimately get better outcomes from a more structured, methodical approach, for the same reason that people who adhere to more structured, sober religions tend to have better mental health.



purchase
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05 Dec 2011, 10:15 pm

^ Are you saying that a person can deliberately induce the seizures that cause spiritual experiences in themselves? And that these can cause brain damage?

I've had non-deliberate spiritual experiences.



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05 Dec 2011, 10:15 pm

fraac wrote:
Everything is subjective, and reality is determined by power.

Every experience is subjective, and reality is absolute.



fraac
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05 Dec 2011, 10:17 pm

It's a useful assertion but we have no way to know that.



WilliamWDelaney
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05 Dec 2011, 10:43 pm

purchase wrote:
^ Are you saying that a person can deliberately induce the seizures that cause spiritual experiences in themselves? And that these can cause brain damage?
Personally, I doubt that a person who doesn't already have risk factors for epilepsy could induce seizures without chemical assistance, so I'm going to plea the fifth there. If someone reports being able to do it, I still plead the fifth. I wouldn't consider it to be wise to do it often if you found you could.

As far as brain damage, have you ever met a demented, dancing, frothing holy roller who was not at least half-retarded? There are plenty of people from non-charismatic sects who think they are asinine, and it's not unusual for mainstream Christians to think there really is such a thing as "too much religion." If it doesn't cause brain damage, enough of the adherents of those wacko sects are brain-damaged to begin with.

Quote:
I've had non-deliberate spiritual experiences.
I've had non-deliberate night-time auditory hallucinations. I don't think it's necessarily anything to feel alarmed over.



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05 Dec 2011, 10:54 pm

WilliamWDelaney wrote:
purchase wrote:
^ Are you saying that a person can deliberately induce the seizures that cause spiritual experiences in themselves? And that these can cause brain damage?
Personally, I doubt that a person who doesn't already have risk factors for epilepsy could induce seizures without chemical assistance, so I'm going to plea the fifth there. If someone reports being able to do it, I still plead the fifth. I wouldn't consider it to be wise to do it often if you found you could.

As far as brain damage, have you ever met a demented, dancing, frothing holy roller who was not at least half-retarded? There are plenty of people from non-charismatic sects who think they are asinine, and it's not unusual for mainstream Christians to think there really is such a thing as "too much religion." If it doesn't cause brain damage, enough of the adherents of those wacko sects are brain-damaged to begin with.

Quote:
I've had non-deliberate spiritual experiences.
I've had non-deliberate night-time auditory hallucinations. I don't think it's necessarily anything to feel alarmed over.


As a mainline Protestant, I say, Amen!

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer



Tadzio
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05 Dec 2011, 11:21 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:
WilliamWDelaney wrote:
purchase wrote:
^ Are you saying that a person can deliberately induce the seizures that cause spiritual experiences in themselves? And that these can cause brain damage?
Personally, I doubt that a person who doesn't already have risk factors for epilepsy could induce seizures without chemical assistance, so I'm going to plea the fifth there. If someone reports being able to do it, I still plead the fifth. I wouldn't consider it to be wise to do it often if you found you could.

As far as brain damage, have you ever met a demented, dancing, frothing holy roller who was not at least half-retarded? There are plenty of people from non-charismatic sects who think they are asinine, and it's not unusual for mainstream Christians to think there really is such a thing as "too much religion." If it doesn't cause brain damage, enough of the adherents of those wacko sects are brain-damaged to begin with.

Quote:
I've had non-deliberate spiritual experiences.
I've had non-deliberate night-time auditory hallucinations. I don't think it's necessarily anything to feel alarmed over.


As a mainline Protestant, I say, Amen!

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer


just play with a "god helmet". I take Keppra trying to stop such things of TLE going grand mal too frequent.
http://www.shaktitechnology.com/

Tadzio