[extropy-chat] Re: John Wright Finds God

[Acy James Stapp]

I'd like to share a few of my own ineffable experiences and my
interpretation of them. I'll start off by saying I was raised
mormon but have been a devout non-believer for fifteen or twenty
years, so interpret in that context.

The first is a dream I had some years ago.
I was in a large, cylindrical room, infinitely tall and deep, a 
bottomless pit, and around twenty feet in diameter. This room was
the entirety of existence, the entire universe. It was broken into
floors, and each floor had a handrail to keep one from falling. 
On one side of the well, elevated above me, was a giant bronze 
face, twenty feet high. It spoke to me with a huge voice, a 
penetrating and utterly commanding voice. Its speech was my will,
and it was inconceivable that I could disobey. It was majestic,
grand, magnificent, all-powerful, and peaceful, just as I expect a god
would sound, and I wish I could experience it again. Unfortunately 
I can't remember what it said :)

The second is an earlier drug experience which I don't want to go 
into in too much detail; suffice it to say that I had taken altogether
too much of too many kinds of drugs. As I was lying on the floor
with my feet elevated trying not to black out, I realized that
my inner monologue sounded like the movie version of the devil/satan
voice, pitch shifted down a couple of octaves. I thought "this is
really strange" in my devil voice, and then I realized I could
change the voice in my head to sound like anyone I knew. I
expiremented with my parents, girlfriend, donald duck, and friends
and could hear myself as any one of them. I could even become them
for short periods before my identity reasserted itself.

Another experience was a fugue state I entered for an hour or
two while on a long drive alone through Texas. It was quite similar
to the preliminary hints of a psychedelic experience, but it never
manifested itself fully; some might even call it a flashback, but
it wasn't scary and didn't affect my cognition in any perceivable
way; my head just felt tight and everything had a distant and pointy
aspect to it. This was years after I had had any other psychedelic
experiences. I imagine it was some response to the utter boredom
of Texas highway driving. The important aspect of this experience 
is that it was not brought about by any incident; it just happened.

I've also felt pure nirvana, being one with all things, as well
as pure emptiness and isolation, being alone, an infinitesimal
point in the eternal and infinite universe.

In my mind, all of these experiences are a result of temporary
oddities of neurotransmission, signals getting through where they
shouldn't, or being amplified unreasonably, or some other 
neurochemical defect. What caused them? Stress, boredom, drugs?
I don't doubt that someone in an extremely threatening situation
could experience a similar state and have a conversion experience,
when their critical faculties are suppressed by ancient reflexes,
fear, and unimagineable uncertainty.

Introspection is not in general a good way to understand the
details of the mind's workings, but I feel enriched by each of
these experiences in their own way. I would never consider them 
to be of deific origin, though, given the circumstances.

Thanks,
Acy

> A religious experience, or, to be precise, a visitation by the
> Paraclete is a literal inspiration, the entering of one spirit into
> another. The Holy Ghost enters the mind and soul and works a
> transformation. The only analogies I can think of are one both
> shopworn and mildly insulting to my brother atheists: like explaining
> sight to a man born blind, like explaining romance to a boy below the
> age when girls have cooties. 
> 
> No, wait. I am (or pretend to be) a writer after all, so I should be
> able to come up with a new metaphor, one that deprecates me and not
> my audience. Hmm .... 
> 
> Trying to explain a religious experience is like a Yahoo trying to
> explain his love of the shiny but useless metal called gold to the
> dignified and perfectly-rational Houyhnhnms. No matter what he says,
> the Houyhnhnms cannot see the value or the beauty of the substance
> they cannot eat. 
> 
> My experience was one that attacked and changed the axioms, the very
> foundations of my thought. My conception of what constituted myself,
> the universe, and my relation to it, were changed. So radical a
> change cannot be integrated with prior experience because the root of
> all experience is overturned. 
> 
> Imagine discovering where your thoughts come from before you think
> them, and tracing those thoughts back to a mind infinitely greater
> than your own, timeless and unutterably benevolent. It would be like
> one of the characters in my books suddenly growing aware of me, his
> author, and realizing that the thoughts and words I ascribe to him
> are mine, not his. How would you even begin to describe such an
> event? One is not aware of one's own thoughts through the eye or ear
> by means of touch or taste. There would be nothing to hold up to
> another man's eyes. And yet, neither could the experience be
> dismissed.