Corgan Sow

I believed all of us have seen people walking over hot coals, jocks pricking sticks through their faces, or some loony meditating in some freezer for an hour. I think I could find an assumption, though not really scientifically, about all these miraculous stuff.

It came to me some a year ago when I was praying in church, and I experienced this so-called "Slain by the Holy Spirit" thingy. I just fell backwards voluntarily, and my head got knocked violently on a wall. Well, my friends forgot to "shield" me, but the miraculous part is, I felt no pain at all, even though I could tell it's some violent bump!

I thought it was the Holy Spirit protecting my head from harm, but now I'm actually sceptical about it. Then, I thought something in common about the unexplained stuff on TV, and that "miracle" I experienced.

It could be explained scientificly; what if our brain can focus our whole body into a "trance" state, that our nerves involuntarily stopped working for a while becuase of that "trance"? It is like having faith, and you can walk on water thing, by sheer 100% conviction that nothing harmful will befall you, or that hazardous side effect is non-existant? That could explain about a TV show I watch which some guy meditated for a while, then voluntered to be stuck in a freezer for an hour, then got out of the freezer as if he never went in there.

It could be even explained on miraculous healing effects in medicine that defies the logic of science, like when you're dying the next day because of too much white cells, and the next week, recovering, probably from my suggestion of the power of "trance" which the mind focuses, by faith, on speedy recovery of a battered human body.

Can I get other explanations here?

abe smith

...um.... Perhaps, "more things are wrought by" FAKERY "than this world dreams of."

Skeptical

Corgan, your experience is readily explainable as a known psychological phenomena. There are a myriad of "altered states" of consciousness that include things as diverse as complete insensitivity to pain to full blown hallucinations of 3-dimensional objects that walk and talk.

Let's take for example faith healing. In experiements conducted under controlled settings, it has been proven that the power of the faith healing rests entirely in the mind of the person being healed. If the person being healed believes that someone who can heal is working on their behalf, they tend to get better whether someone is working for them or not. Conversely, when faith healers work on someones behalf who is not aware of the healer, they don't get better.

If your interested in these kinds of phenomena, I cannot recommend highly enough a book dedicated to these topics: "Anomalistic Pschology: A study of magical thinking". You can get it on Amazon. It's a little pricey at $40, but well worth it. You may be very suprised at the type and variety of experiences that psychologists have studied, including experiences such as your own.

Corgan Sow

That was a good one, thanks.

I'll try to buy the book.

excreationist

On the topic of faith-healing, I think it just involves the patient becoming less worried and more relaxed - rather than being stressed out. When we worry about something, we automatically go into a "fight or flight" mode and I think resources are taken from less vital areas of our body, such as our digestive system(?) and immune system(?) and reallocated to areas that would help us survive when things got dangerous in the jungle - areas like the muscles, heart, lungs and the brain. That's why we get a lot of nervous energy (faster heartbeat and breathing rate, and tense ready-to-act muscles) when we are stressed.
When you have a placebo you'd think "well I've had my medicine and now I've just got to wait"... you would have a lot less conscious and subconscious worries about your sickness.

Bible Humper

I've read that drunks tend to suffer less injury during crashes, falls, etc. because they are more "loose" during impact due to their slower reactions.

Your own experience seems to suggest that you were much more "loose" than a drunk would be during your fall.

cydonia

When Benny Hinn (sp?) is on tv, and slaps people on the forehead and they fall back and faint, are they really fainting or pretending? It seems to work on them everytime.

excreationist

When your muscles are relaxed and you hit a surface, more of the surface of your body would come into contact with the surface and the relaxed muscles would allow your body to move during the impact, absorbing a lot of the shock.
But if you were expecting the impact, your muscles would tense up and the area of impact would be smaller and you'd be more likely to break bones because your body would move less to absorb the shock...

Corgan Sow

Sorry, it's INVOLUNTARILY

Secular Pinoy

Similar experience here. Attended a revival session when I was borderline agnostic, the pastor touched my forehead and I fell down. I sobbing profusely and uttering prayers for repentance to god. It felt really weird, and I returned to xianity, though for only one more year.

The experience is explicable as a kind of hypnotic trance. I was at that moment very troubled by my unbelief, and wanted to return to the flock. Before the session some of my fellow noncommittal xians were discussing it. I found out that if you really believe that you are a sinner you would fall down on your back. So I deduced that it was the subconcious desire to meet the expectations of the group. It was also a bit of role-playing even though at the time I felt sincere in my belief that it was god that struck me down.

The formula is to take a suggestible person in a very emotional and vulnerable time of his life, add some expectations from others in the group, add a dash of willingness of the participant to join in on the game, and you get a miraculous performance, fooling everyone, even the participants themselves. And it doesn't hurt if the pastor has a certain air of authority and piety in him.