(March 10, 2009 at 8:44 pm)athoughtfulman Wrote: I don't understand how so many people around the world can have different experiences of a supposed deity. I mean, we're all atheists here (or something along those lines), so generally we believe that none of these religions is true. If none of them are true, then why do so many people have a supposed experience with god?
For Christians it might be supernatural healing, or speaking in tongues, or a vision or dream which comes true. Now, I call myself an agnostic on my way to atheism, but I believe some of these people. Obviously, some of them are just trying to look important, but I've spoken to trustworthy people whom I respect who can describe a specific experience with god.
I'm not suggesting it's god who is giving people these experiences, I'm suggesting there is something going on that cannot simply be put down to, "they're deluded". I think it's naive and arrogant to write them all off as wrong. I think something is happening, and science just doesn't understand it yet.
I want to know what you guys think is happening. Assuming some of them are being honest, are they simply deluding themselves? Are they creating an experience with some untapped part of the human brain that we haven't discovered yet?
What's actually happening?
I have my own ideas, but I want to hear a few of yours.
Start doing some research on peak experiences.
Quote:PLUS FOUR (++++) A rare and precious transcendental state, which has been called a 'peak experience', a 'religious experience,' 'divine transformation,' a 'state of Samādhi' and many other names in other cultures. It is not connected to the +1, +2, and +3 of the measuring of a drug's intensity. It is a state of bliss, a participation mystique, a connectedness with both the interior and exterior universes, which has come about after the ingestion of a psychedelic drug, but which is not necessarily repeatable with a subsequent ingestion of that same drug. If a drug (or technique or process) were ever to be discovered which would consistently produce a plus four experience in all human beings, it is conceivable that it would signal the ultimate evolution, and perhaps the end, of the human experiment.
Alan Shulgin, biochemist on the Shulgin rating scale.
That technique or process is what I've been researching throughout my career. Apparantly I've found it, I just need some ginuea pigs
