I had a religious experience the other night

[WinterHold]

Personally; I believe that when we're asleep, our souls go to God. As this verse from the Quran suggests:

Sura 39, The Quran:
( 42 )   Allah takes the souls at the time of their death, and those that do not die [He takes] during their sleep. Then He keeps those for which He has decreed death and releases the others for a specified term. Indeed in that are signs for a people who give thought.

We go to God when we sleep, and remember fragments only after waking up; fragments translated by our brains into a picture we know being familiar.
Until this moment, science doesn't know why we sleep. Sleep to me is the time we get disconnected from this simulation.

Ah; marijuana makes me sleep so deep. But it might be due to other drugs mixed with the hash. Things aren't pure around here. Been years since I had pure stuff.

But your lucid dreams might have a base, With weed or without it.

[ignoramus]

I believe that when we're asleep, our souls go to God

C'mon man!
That's a "loaded nested fallacy" fallacy right there!

Please, only one ridiculous claim at a time allowed!

[Aroura]

Personally; I believe that when we're asleep, our souls go to God. As this verse from the Quran suggests:

Sura 39, The Quran:
( 42 )   Allah takes the souls at the time of their death, and those that do not die [He takes] during their sleep. Then He keeps those for which He has decreed death and releases the others for a specified term. Indeed in that are signs for a people who give thought.

We go to God when we sleep, and remember fragments only after waking up; fragments translated by our brains into a picture we know being familiar.
Until this moment, science doesn't know why we sleep. Sleep to me is the time we get disconnected from this simulation.

Ah; marijuana makes me sleep so deep. But it might be due to other drugs mixed with the hash. Things aren't pure around here. Been years since I had pure stuff.

But your lucid dreams might have a base, With weed or without it.

So when I dream about a faceless monster endlessly chasing me, or about masturbation, or about wearing no pants to school, or my cousin being a vampire who destroyed my grade school by creating an earthquake, or something mundane like tripping while walking on a sidewalk, that's all happening with God, eh?

Makes. Perfect. Sense.

[SaStrike]

The quran is usually wrong, because it's an outdated book.

[WinterHold]

I believe that when we're asleep, our souls go to God

C'mon man!
That's a "loaded nested fallacy" fallacy right there!

Please, only one ridiculous claim at a time allowed!

It's a belief after all. I don't claim to have evidence for it.
But if life wasn't fishy enough; I wouldn't carry such a belief. Sleep is a mysterious thing if you gave it enough thought.

---

So when I dream about a faceless monster endlessly chasing me, or about masturbation, or about wearing no pants to school, or my cousin being a vampire who destroyed my grade school by creating an earthquake, or something mundane like tripping while walking on a sidewalk, that's all happening with God, eh?

Makes. Perfect. Sense.

What do the monsters represent for your mind? What do "being faceless" mean to a person like you?
I tend to think about it like that. Maybe your sucking blood symbolizes the sucking of your cash.

In the story of Prophet Joseph, he saw a dream about his future and it came true. It's all about symbolism if you ask me.

[Aroura]

C'mon man!
That's a "loaded nested fallacy" fallacy right there!

Please, only one ridiculous claim at a time allowed!

It's a belief after all. I don't claim to have evidence for it.
But if life wasn't fishy enough; I wouldn't carry such a belief. Sleep is a mysterious thing if you gave it enough thought.

---

So when I dream about a faceless monster endlessly chasing me, or about masturbation, or about wearing no pants to school, or my cousin being a vampire who destroyed my grade school by creating an earthquake, or something mundane like tripping while walking on a sidewalk, that's all happening with God, eh?

Makes. Perfect. Sense.

What do the monsters represent for your mind? What do "being faceless" mean to a person like you?
I tend to think about it like that. Maybe your sucking blood symbolizes the sucking of your cash.

In the story of Prophet Joseph, he saw a dream about his future and it came true. It's all about symbolism if you ask me.

Right, but if it's about symbolism, what has that got to do with God?

[Catholic_Lady]

It occurred to me that in the same way that Carl Sagan came up with his Baloney Detection Kit, we could come up with list of questions that you should ask if you think that you have had a religious experience to determine whether it was just  a product of the mind.

• Did anyone else experience it?
  
• Was it indistinguishable from your own imagination?
  
• Did you see, hear or feel it tactilely?
  
• Did it occur when you were falling asleep, waking up or during your sleep or at a point of exhaustion?
  
• Were you intoxicated at the time?
  
• Were you taking drugs at that period of your life which alter your perception, whether recreational or medication, and which can stay in your system for a long time?
  
• Have you had similar experiences in the past which were not religiously or spiritually themed?
  
• Had you been thinking a lot at the time about religious or spiritual matters? e.g. considering converting? Watched a film etc
  
• Is there a history of relevant mental illness in your family?
  
• Would the experience have otherwise been a normal incident were it not for the fact that you challenged a deity to reveal itself?
  

Anything else to add?

I think that's probably a good list to go by to weigh out the possibility of an experience having been a completely natural occurrence vs a supernatural one.

As for myself, here are my answers:

[*]Did anyone else experience it? Yes
[*]Was it indistinguishable from your own imagination? Yes, unless the other person and myself both imagined the same exact thing at the same time, first separately, and then together.
[*]Did you see, hear or feel it tactilely? It was one of my senses, yes.
[*]Did it occur when you were falling asleep, waking up or during your sleep or at a point of exhaustion? No. Middle of a perfectly normal day.
[*]Were you intoxicated at the time? Neither myself nor the other person were.
[*]Were you taking drugs at that period of your life which alter your perception, whether recreational or medication, and which can stay in your system for a long time? Neither myself nor the other person.
[*]Have you had similar experiences in the past which were not religiously or spiritually themed? No. Nothing else has ever happened before or since that day. Same for the other person.
[*]Had you been thinking a lot at the time about religious or spiritual matters? e.g. considering converting? Watched a film etc? Not at all. Just another normal day, thinking about the boy I had just started seeing (now husband lol)
[*]Is there a history of relevant mental illness in your family? My half sister had mild depression for a phase in her life, and I have a cousin with high functioning autism. But other than that, no.
[*]Would the experience have otherwise been a normal incident were it not for the fact that you challenged a deity to reveal itself? Nope.

[Anomalocaris]

It occurred to me that in the same way that Carl Sagan came up with his Baloney Detection Kit, we could come up with list of questions that you should ask if you think that you have had a religious experience to determine whether it was just  a product of the mind.

• Did anyone else experience it?
  
• Was it indistinguishable from your own imagination?
  
• Did you see, hear or feel it tactilely?
  
• Did it occur when you were falling asleep, waking up or during your sleep or at a point of exhaustion?
  
• Were you intoxicated at the time?
  
• Were you taking drugs at that period of your life which alter your perception, whether recreational or medication, and which can stay in your system for a long time?
  
• Have you had similar experiences in the past which were not religiously or spiritually themed?
  
• Had you been thinking a lot at the time about religious or spiritual matters? e.g. considering converting? Watched a film etc
  
• Is there a history of relevant mental illness in your family?
  
• Would the experience have otherwise been a normal incident were it not for the fact that you challenged a deity to reveal itself?
  

Anything else to add?

To “did anyone else experience it” I would add “did anyone else not known to be suggestable or known to be skeptical experience it through more than one sense?”

[WinterHold]

Right, but if it's about symbolism, what has that got to do with God?

-Based on the verse I quoted; God takes our souls during our sleep:

Sura 39, The Quran:
( 42 )   Allah takes the souls at the time of their death, and those that do not die [He takes] during their sleep. Then He keeps those for which He has decreed death and releases the others for a specified term. Indeed in that are signs for a people who give thought.

-Then; knowing that we are already taken in our sleep; I -personally- assumed that we see stuff that God wants us to see.

-When we wake up; -I assume- fragments from that night journey remain as memories we call "dreams".

So for example, God might warn you about a future event in your dream, but it's up to your interpretation of the symbols your mind recalls from the night sleep.

In the Quran; there's a whole Sura about a Prophet called "Joseph" who had a gift that interprets symbols during sleep. Dreams he interpreted included direct symbolism, like seeing his family in the dream as "planets and stars".

[Cyberman]

Personally; I believe that when we're asleep, our souls go to God.

Yeah, but they don't, do they?