# The experience of god is simply a brain state...



## Milan (May 29, 2005)

I found this interesting:

http://skepdic.com/altstates.html


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## Epiphany (Apr 28, 2006)

Wow Milan...another interesting read. I get the feeling many of us on here could relate rather well to this.


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## CECIL (Oct 3, 2004)

"Are the brain states that elicit the feelings of mysticism in the religious ecstatic, the epileptic, the one on an ?acid? trip, and the one with electrodes attached to his cranium caused by God? Perhaps, but if so there is no way of finding this out. "

Yes, there is. You can actually DO those things and find out for yourself. You will never understand these things by analysing them logically, you have to experience them yourself.

"In this sense, to seek an ASC is to seek to kill your sense of self while enjoying the ultimate orgasm."

Haha, pretty much. Yet they say it like its a bad thing...

I really don't get what the point of this article is. I guess its another attempt to prove that god doesn't exist, this time by saying that any experience outside the normal is invalid. This couldn't be further from the truth (or at least my truth  ).

We, in our sober state and using our logical/analytical mind, assume that what we experience from time to time is normal. We think of our mind states as static and any swing away from that "normal" mind state to be artifical and something to be abhorred. Scientists and logical thinkers everywhere use this fallacy as a proof that god doesn't exist. Yet they are unwilling to have the same experiences or unwilling to believe their own experiences. They doubt their own intuition and wisdom.

One of the best things about taking psychedelic drugs (for example, since they are one of the easiest yet powerful ways to induce an altered state of consciousness) is that they alter your perception. They make you realise that the reality you have been living in for your entire life is only one of an infinite number of possibilities. Furthermore they make you realise that you have the ultimate power to change this reality if you so wish.

To quote Timothy Leary: "They all do sort of the same thing, which is to rearrange what you thought was real. You're so used to going from A to Z that you forget that there's 24 letters in between".

Your mind state, emotions and perception of reality is constantly in a state of flux. To move from one reality to another is simply a matter of shifting your energy, yet we have learned to be very resistant to this idea. There really isn't "altered states of consciousness", as the article describes, but different focusses of attention. Different arrangements of energy.

People's interpretation of their own focusses, their own consciousness are always unique. Some people choose to believe that anything outside their own (arbitrary construction of) reality is bogus. Others choose to assign a divine meaning to their altered perceptions. Each way is true for both people, because that is their belief and their reality.

In the end you have to decide for yourself. The only way to do that is to actually induce an altered state of consciousness and see what happens


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## Sojourner (May 21, 2005)

"The experience of god is simply a brain state..."

The above explains exactly nothing, of course.

Yes, it's a brain-state, all right, and a *dandy *one that God gives us if we ever even just _seek _to wake up from the dream that things are "simply" what we LABEL THEM TO BE IN OUR IGNORANCE!


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## californian (Jul 24, 2006)

well put, sojourner.

for example, the article itself states, "Are the brain states that elicit the feelings of mysticism in the religious ecstatic, the epileptic, the one on an ?acid? trip, and the one with electrodes attached to his cranium caused by God? Perhaps, but if so there is no way of finding this out. Most likely, however, the mechanisms that trigger these feelings are completely natural."

It is this opposition of the natural and the super-natural that both theists and atheists, religious and non-religious make all the time. Perhaps we religious types are largely to blame for having created such a radical distinction between the supernatural and the natural to begin with. But to say that these mechanisms are "completely natural" as though that somehow excludes God, the one in whom all things "live and move and have their being" is quite symptomatic of the fractured way we tend to think in the modern world.


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## CECIL (Oct 3, 2004)

Yep, can't agree more.

We tend to make a distinction between what's real and what's not. Well, in reality anything you experience, think, feel etc. IS real. There is no such thing as real and unreal, only shifting perceptions of the whole reality.

More to the point, what we currently define as reality in the current moment is not a whole perception of the total reality. As we learn and grow our perception changes, we incorporate more of the true reality into our current understanding.

Resistance to this process stunts our growth and leads to a narrower view of reality and our perceptions. i.e. We are excluding things which we find scary and incongruent to our current perception, but these new perceptions are actually beneficial to our well-being and the evolution of our consciousness.


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## eraserhead (Aug 28, 2006)

When making love to someone, it will alter the state of the brain. That doesn't mean it's just a brain-state.


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