lpetrich

In Massimo Pigliucci's collection of presentations, there is now one on "how to have your own mystical experience". These can cause mystical experiences:

Meditation
Gases like carbon dioxide and ethylene
Stroboscopic lights
Various drugs, like mescaline, LSD, ...
Scurvy and pellagra
Self-flagellation
Starvation
Sensory deprivation
Concentration on an intellectual task
Brain damage
Schizophrenia
Persinger's transcranial magnetic stimulator

Meditation is known to reduce activity in a part of the brain involved in distinguishing self from nonself (right temporal lobe?); this is where the one-with-the-universe feeling comes from

Also (to quote from the presentation):

It turns out that damage to or stimulation of the left frontal lobes (left) often triggers the sensation of being in the presence of a supernatural entity and of gaining a special insight on the nature of the world. On the other hand, interference with the limbic system (right), which is tightly connected with human’s ability to feel emotions, can yield the feeling of a profound experience, which is so genuinely felt as to leave the subject with the conviction that it most definitely was “real.”

Jackalope

Or, as a friend of mine found out, an industrial degausing gun will work just as well...
(don't ask)

--Lee

Troma

Hi lpetrich,

I recently read a book that gets into this stuff. It's called; 'Why God won't go away'. In the book however they say that these mystical experiences could actually be real. They offered no evidence to my knowledge. But after reading the book I was still kind of impressed by the fact that humans can generate these types experiences.

I've never been in a 'deep' meditiation, you know? that really powerful oneness deal you supposedly can get after you train for years or whatever, but I have still had mystical type experiences that totally floored me.

Anyways, to my point. When you think of God and things like that from the perspective of how our minds can have these types of experiences, it seems almost logical that so many people believe in God. My first mystical experience (which happened after a trauma in my life) was powerful enough to where if I had been even remotely religious minded about things, it would probably have been a believer. Instead of saying what I say now that it's just in my mind, I would probably instead be saying; "I danced with God!"

sourdough

the reason so many people believe in god is,
they've been brainwashed,aka hypnotized,
there's interesting bit on this at
www.americanatheists.com.

punta

I have to.

Did your friend mount it in a helmet or was the holy spirit applied by hand ? Any details would be appreciated.

Jackalope

Applied by hand. Held it up to the side of his head. Said he saw a great flash of phosphors (had his eyes closed). It was in fact Mike Jittlov . Yes, he really is that strange...

--Lee

ps418

I have quite a bit of experience with the drug and meditation-induced mystical states. I had a full-blown 'NDE' once when I took a 'heroic' dose of lab-grown mushrooms. I experienced many phenomena with meditation, which I practiced intensively for about 4 years, especially distortions of time, the feeling that I weighed 10 pounds, the 'feeling' that I am distinct from my mind, and a pleasant phenomena that I've never heard about from anyone else: jamais vu. I never was able to to engage in yogic flying, though (damn you and your siddhas, Patanjali!). But in general, the two types of 'altered states' were very different. I would put psychedelics in a class of their own. They dwarf everything else in terms of power, reliability, and variety of phenomena they evoke.

Herbert Von Karajan

I had a cousin who dragged me to church and even dragged me to a "Slain by Holy Spirit" ritual. A pastor came praying and lays his hands on my forehead. The next thing I know he snapped like barely my forehead and I stumbled. I did not fall on the ground, but I regained my position much to the shock of the church's congregation.

Amazing how these mumbo pseudo-sciences work by mere tricks.

Gringo

A few of us discussed this very thing a year ago in this thread.

Here, I described an experience where I could sense something like electricty coming from the preacher's hands as he laid his hands on me and prayed for me. Still, I wonder about that experience. Herbert, when you stumbled, do you believe you were waking yourself up hrom a hypnotic state or did you stumble to prevent the preacher from putting a dent in your forehead?

People very close to me have experienced these things. They've been laid out in the floor unable to move, but yet conscious. I understand people coming out of sleep into a night terror experiencing this paralysis, but what about otherwise rational people who are wide alert and mobile one moment and paralyzed another. Concerning the people I know, I am fairly certain that they are not faking it nor do they have any medical condition such as epilepsy.

Fundamentalist Christians are not the only ones who experience this; I've read that people who are "treated" with therapeutic touch and people of various faiths experience these same psychosomatic experiences too. However, the Christian fundamentalists generally regard other faiths' supernatural experiences as satanic.

I know these experiences involve expectation, but it seems hard to imagine that just by the power of suggestion someone could feel physical sensations with such intensity or could be momentarily paralyzed.

Godless Dave

I've tried psilocybin and LSD several times and never had anything like a mystical experience. I realized much later that I was looking for one when I tried them. But I just felt like I was on drugs.