The transcendent: Is is all in our heads?

Faith & Science Conversation
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Of course the possibility that what we call God may be experienced differently within various cultures does not render any of the ways He is experienced a delusion.

Our experience is internally constructed but what our experience assembles need not be a counterfeit. Same goes for the expression of that experience in narrative form.

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C S Lewis wrote a useful reflection on the relationship between perception and our analysis of that perception. It’s called “Meditation in a tool shed”, and you can find it here.

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Excellent and new to me. Thanks!

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Many spiritual experiences may be genuinely spiritual and supernatural, but that doesn’t mean they are all genuine encounters with the divine.

For example, one spiritual experience may lead someone to believe that Jesus is God and died for our sins, while another may lead someone to believe that Jesus was simply an enlightened prophet, that sin doesn’t exist, and that the fullness of divinity resides within each of us and simply needs to be discovered. Both may be real spiritual experiences, in the sense that they aren’t merely figments of the person’s imagination and/or delusions, but they certainly cannot both be of divine origin, because God is not a deceiver; He is the God of truth, not the God of deceit and confusion.

1 John 4:1-3 : “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.”

There are certain demons (one in particular) who can be understood as forces that drive the mind toward madness by dissolving the ordinary ability to distinguish true from false, self from not-self, and meaning from chance: in other words, they corrupt the mind’s use of logic by making every statement unstable, reversible, and self-undermining.

The principle of non-contradiction says that the same thing cannot both be and not be, at the same time and in the same respect. This principle is fundamental to reasoning, communication, and coherent thought, and some of these entities attack precisely that level of mental integrity.

In Crowley’s The Vision and the Voice, one such entity is called Dispersion and is described as being unable to “fix his mind upon any one thing for any length of time”.

The destruction of consciousness happens because consciousness depends on distinction, with this I mean that, to be conscious in any stable way, the mind must be able to say:

“This is this.”
“This is not that.”
“This is a thought, not a command.”
“This is a symbol, not literal reality.”
“This is fear, not revelation.”
“This is contradiction, not mystery.”

When this collapses even language breaks down, for example: words no longer point clearly to anything, as a statement means one thing, then its opposite, then both, then neither. At first, this may feel mystical or profound; but eventually, language stops guiding the mind and starts trapping it ( the ordinary “I” depends on a certain continuity: “I am the one experiencing these thoughts”, but if every thought can claim truth even if they contradict themselves, and if a statement can have contradictory meaning, the self is no longer centered, it’s pulled apart by competing fragments).

The crucial point is that a positive mystical experience, a true encounter with the divine, may stretch the mind beyond ordinary categories, but it ultimately produces greater clarity, humility, and integration. And this can be verified by reading the lives of the saints.

Coming in contact with a deceitful entity produces the opposite: “everything is true, everything is false, therefore follow whatever fragment feels absolute in this moment”.

This is why Jesus calls the devil “the father of lies.”

Not all demonic experiences lead to the fragmentation of consciousness (although they all lead people to believe lies as if they were truths), but some do lead to fragmentation, and these experiences are often disguised as “ego dissolution,” when in reality they lead to madness and to an even greater demonic influx (someone who has lost a coherent center of consciousness is far more vulnerable, and far less capable of defending themselves, for obvious reasons).

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The discussions in this thread are wide ranging, and I am interested in how a Christian may view our understanding of God (I discuss this in my book “Salvation”, for anyone interested) – we claim that God has revealed Himself to humanity. When considering revelation, even if it is agreed that we avoid considering God as an object for empirical investigation, we cannot reason that revelation may be within a range of natural phenomena accessible to our human senses. We have ruled out objective-based activities such as found in the natural sciences. Revelation cannot be defined as a philosophy or a science that may be argued and tested experimentally. In making negative statements about our capabilities, I need to show that my arguments are reasonable; it is not necessary for an argument to be testable as absolutely true, but it is necessary for what is reasoned to be coherent and believably true. Those aspects of reason and knowledge that are intuitive (and indeed all knowledge), are usually subjected to tests of falsification (theoretical) and verification (practical) in the sciences, and to criteria of reason in philosophical discussion. It is my assertion that reason needs to sustain the goodness and the continuation of life. It is possible for a person to consider the good in life through experience (à posteriori).

Regarding revelation, the person being revealed unto needs to understand, respond, reason, and to consider this within his/her (context of) life. The meaning of God, which includes that of love and concern for all humanity, is provided by revelation and needs to be completely comprehensible. Since I understand all human life and reason to be within the freedom of birth, of life, and of thought (intent), revelation is also understood within freedom. The unreasonable part of the human condition is lack of freedom that finds its ultimate condition in death.

Theologians discuss general and special revelation; for the present discussion, it is sufficient to note that we would respond spontaneously, instinctively, to revelation, and subsequently we may decide to consider and reason regarding the experience. This argument may be developed into a major premise that equates revelation of the meaning of God with the meaning of life (i.e., gives our life meaning). Briefly, such meaning is the goodness that God provides to life. This goodness is synonymous with the Holy Spirit. Reason may respond to revelation rather than synthesize (or contrive) an idea of revelation. In general, I believe such a respond is via the ideal (not to be confused with idealism). Any reasonable person may respond to revelation in this manner. Some may communicate this ideal in almost illiterate ways, while others may communicate this ideal with great elegance.

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The transcendent: is it all in our heads?

The presumption being that if it is all in our heads, then it is nothing and of little importance.

But I think it is the other way around. If it is all just like our bodies and material then it is more superficial and of little importance. I think it is in our minds where the greater portion of our life and humanity is to be found. Some people look at “meaning” and “love” and “justice,” and they just see words – all in our heads. But I think the mind is a living organism and saying these are just words and in our heads is like saying our lungs, heart, and liver are just organs in our body. In each case they are how our minds and body organize themselves, live, and respond to the world.

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You’re certainly right on one point. People here are unlikely to think that diverse spiritual experiences imply delusion for the sole reason that they are diverse.

Suppose you are a maths teacher and you give your class a difficult maths problem to tackle. If several different answers came back, that fact alone would be a bad reason for concluding that all the answers are wrong. What you would do is assess each answer on a case by case basis.

Spiritual experiences need to be assessed on the same basis. It’s theoretically possible that all of them are delusions. But other treatments are possible. Perhaps one is valid and others are delusional. Perhaps they are all real experiences but have been interpreted in different ways. Perhaps some experiences are partially valid. (In maths, only one answer is right. But some wrong answers are much closer than others to the right answer.)

So the important question is, how do we wisely assess an individual spiritual experience? That’s a big question, but I would start with a few basics:

  1. An openness to the fact of spiritual experience in principle. If there is no spiritual reality, or no way of connecting with the divine, then of course a presumed experience will be false or delusional.
  2. A corresponding humility. Experience should be tested against other factors, such as the overall story of the scriptures and the wisdom of the body of Christ. Personally I think the church family safety net is critical here. Private experience has a much higher chance of going wrong.
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Started to say I agreed with all but your second statement because I am still convinced by my own feral experience. But then I realized it is true for anyone whose experience takes on the background of the Christian mythos. In those cases even poorly informed me would likely catch a false note. But I do agree about the residue of humility. That would be a constant regardless.

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Mark, I appreciate your openness there. I too have had bad church experiences, so I agree that the church is by no means infallible. Fortunately I’ve also had loving and accepting church community life, which has at least given me a picture of what is possible.

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@seamitchell
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