How often does the holy spirit talk to you?

[Simon Moon]

And so says the vast majority of schizophrenics. They are also absolutely certain about their experiences...their descriptions sound identical to yours...As outsiders, how do we go about telling the difference between your above described experience, and those of schizophrenics?

Mystical experiences do not have the same content as the the products of mental illness. While each experience is unique, they are generally marked by feelings of unity with the divine and transcendence of ego awareness. The opposite is true of hallucinations and delusions which produced a heightened feeling of alienation between self and others. The objects seen and heard by the mentally ill are described as having an independent existence from the person having the experience.

Even if mystical experiences are purely mental constructs, they still should not be grouped with mental illnesses. Hallucinatory, delusional, and drug experiences are debilitating and interfere with a person's ability to function normally in society. The same cannot be said for mystical experiences that often result in people finding themselves better adjusted afterwards.

You may be correct concerning mental illness. Although I am not willing to disregard all forms as an explanation for religious experiences.

But that does not explain the symptoms of temporal lobe epilepsy, which can be induced in people without TLE.

Their descriptions of their experiences are no different than what you just described.

‘The most striking aspect of these people is that not only during the seizures, but “interictally”— between the seizures—they have tremendous religious experiences and mystical experiences,’ says VS Ramachandran, a renowned Indian neuroscientist who became obsessed with temporal lobe epilepsy in the 1990s.

‘They say things like, “I experience God—I see the meaning of the universe, the true meaning of the universe, for the first time in my life. I understand my place in the cosmic scheme of things.” That’s what they say. Sometimes they’ll actually say, “I’m talking to God”, or “God is talking to me”.


This is from Wiki:

The relationship between religion and schizophrenia is of particular interest to psychologists because of the similarities between religious experiences and psychotic episodes; religious experiences often involve auditory and/or visual hallucinations, and those with schizophrenia commonly report similar hallucinations, along with a variety of delusions and faulty beliefs. A common report from those with schizophrenia is some type of a religious delusion - that is, they believe they are divine beings, God is talking to them, they are possessed by demons, etc. In a study of patients with schizophrenia that had been previously admitted to a hospital, 24% had religious delusions. This has led some researchers to question whether schizophrenia leads an individual to become more religious, or if intense religiosity leads to schizophrenia