Anyone here ever been through an experience like this?

Are they important and real? Are they more illusions?

I'm prepared to share mine, but I don't want to presume on people giving a ****.

Anyone interested in commenting on this?

I once bought a hot dog and then Jesus came.

Yeah.

No.



If you want them to be.



Yes.

/moral endthread

Was Jesus in your toast?

I don't quite understand what you're asking.

He is trying to ask us if we have ever had a religious experience, like direct contact with God..or any diety anyone worships

However, he is only going to share his if we promise not to be skeptical or have a difference of opinion..

Very good insights into my mind, all from a distance. A+ for you

I don't think I could promise not to be skeptical, since to do so would be to deny me my right to be myself.

I cannot remember the last time my imagination convinced me things that couldn't happen were actually happening, but its a pretty common occurrence for most people, I think. I have been convinced a person was standing in the room with me even after looking, but I didn't assume that was my guardian angel.

A friend consistently argues that her anecdotal experience of praying for someone and then having the person bleed where she then touched them is undeniable evidence for the Christian God, only.

I don't understand why people are 1. So trustworthy of their sense's or self, 2. So quick to apply folk gods to their experiences.

I think everyone's had that feeling at one point in time. Hell, if you close your eyes in your living room and think hard enough you can make yourself feel the same thing even in a comfortable setting.

I'm willing to listen and not criticize, but there have been too many coo-coo stories that turned out to be untrue.

Thanks for this reply.

This is not about miracles, angels, god, etc... Those things, in all probability, don't exist, and all people of rationality know this.

But then, why call it a "religious" experience? Why not a glitch, or a perceived anomaly?

Kirby... normally i don't give atheists the "you were SOOOOO wrong" tour when they get to hell... but for you i shall make an exception

Yeah I always thought religious experiences had something to do with spirituality, like God or a NDE or something like that. You didn't just have an epiphany and automatically attribute it to being from God did you?

anyway i've met god personally... used to be a real dick but he's mellowed out lately

jesus cheats at cards

the norse gods... those guys really know how to party and thor is the greatest drummer ever...

Anyone here ever been through an experience like this?

Yeah.

Are they important and real? Are they more illusions?
They are important and they are just as real as anything else in reality. It's funny that you should mention illusions, however. People very often mistake the conveyance of understanding as that which itself is to be understood. Not so. If people would stop squabbling over how their packages are different they'd have time to open them and see that what's inside is all the same.

At this point, I honestly see more common ground between atheists and theists than I do between myself and either of them. It's rather disconcerting having such an estranged perspective that these two groups start to seem like groups that actually agree but just can't see it.

I've seen far too much to believe that the words religion or God mean anything remotely coherent. Religion has a terrible connotation among most thinking people and I can't really blame them. Much the same it is with God. But the thing to remember is that there is absolutely nothing requiring God to be like the popular conception of Him. You know we've borked up when angels themselves are not religious according to our popular understanding of the word.

Thing is, my perspective, my package, is not like yours, but that's okay. It's what's inside that counts. I see more value in an atheist with humanistic values than a theist with typical fundamental views despite myself being theist. I can accept your atheism with open arms and laud it as your own path to understanding, your unique package.

I have been given certain experiences and knowledge that might set me apart from the rest, but I can't be sure that it has any basis in objective reality. The specifics of my situation can only apply to my subjective perspective, and I can use that to infer things about objective reality should such a thing exist by looking at what I am to really understand about it.

I can't really be sure if the conception of existence I've been given is 'right,' despite being exceptionally sure of what I've seen. As for whether they are illusions, it would seem that they are. They all are, and we're trying to deal with it. This entire existence is rather an illusion—we the results of imagination.

I'm prepared to share mine, but I don't want to presume on people giving a ****.

I do, but only if you are willing.

Anyone interested in commenting on this?

Very.

If you have something valid to share, it doesn't matter if people believe you or not. So long as you aren't making any of it up, then it was as real an experience as reading these words.

Who the **** cares what other people think? Especially nerds on a message forum

Just tell us

Most of the time I apply occam's razor to anything that is explained by others as a religious experience.

Define "came".

Anyone here ever been through an experience like this?
I used to get into some kind of a group "feeling" as part of a youth group I went to with friends. But as far as seeing a statue cry blood or finding a picture of Mary in my cereal? No.

Are they important and real? Are they more illusions?
Importance is very subjective; it depends on what the image means to the person. Are they real? I don't think so. My friends insist that they were at a church where they saw a statue of Mary spontaneously start crying blood, but I would really like to see some X-rays or split open the statue and find the plumbing and embedded sack of fake blood. Things like Mary in toast are just as legitimate as seeing a ship made up of clouds floating in the sky.

Anyone interested in commenting on this?
Yes. Although I may not share another's belief in the legitimacy of the event, I find religion to be a fascinating study.

I once read an OP that appeared to be written in tongues, and then Couchman interpreted it for me.

No. When I was a kid I was pretty sure I saw a ghost (most likely an illusion or hallucination or some other mindbuggery), does that count?

Always glad to assist m'lord.

I found a manuscript made of gold with alien inscriptions and I translated it with a fisherprice toy viewmaster thinghy and it explains that the Battlestar Galatica people are going to arrive from space and will land in Los Angeles.:D

omg Tenshu why don't you just tell us what you're talking about

I faked the "gift" of the holy ghost/spirit once & pretended to speak in tongues well enough that all of the elders bought it. I've never had nor have I ever witnessed a religious experience that I believed to have any basis in reality.

If you're merely referring to spiritualism similar to what Einstein alluded to then I suggest using a more appropriate term. I'm up for hearing anything that anyone has to say (including the ridiculous).

When I was younger I was born into the LDS church and had to attend every sunday (almost forced), I never felt spiritual at all, even when I tried to I never felt the "gift" of the holy ghost. When I turned 20 I left that Church. When Im up in the mountains around big beautiful pine trees, a crystal clear creek running through with meadows of green grass and the snow covered peaks of higher mountain tops nearby, this all gives me that real true spiritual and inspirational feeling that makes me feel like Im closer to God.

OK, so here goes, at least a few people are interested in discussing (I don't want anyone dropping skepticism, exactly the opposite...)

So a few years back I was in a very bad place. Women, family, friends, studies, etc... trouble. I was in the pits of hell actually. I'd be so full of self-hate, deeply introverted, replaying scenes in my head over and over and over again until I became truly deeply unhappy and borderline insane. People would try to talk to me, but then they'd see my face which was twisted in some kind of agony, and it was clear I wasn't really 'there', not listening, retreated in my own dark world, and frightened they'd get away from me.

I didn't have any life situation nearly as bad as lots of people in the world of course, but there were some things stuck in my head I just couldn't get out, and they made me truly and deeply unhappy.

During Summer vacation a few years ago, during that dark period, I was making some extra money in a hospital, working with the nursing unit. I was taking a break at noon, having a coffee in the kitchen. There was a man who worked there stacking crates of water bottles, intended for the patients. I just sat there drinking my coffee, listening to the sound of him working.

Suddenly everything became quiet. The sounds of that man stacking crates were exactly the same volume of course, but a perfect, expansive silence came to the foreground. I got up and went to the 4-patient room in the center of the corridor, where patients were getting ready to eat. I was overflowing with this silence. Inside me something was dancing with unbelievable joy. This wasn't even 'joy relative to the suffering before'. This was absolutely perfect bliss.

I know I sound like a retard to you, at this point.

I proceeded with my duties, helping a elderly woman, who had taken a liking to me over the past weeks, eat. I prepared her food and fet it to her. But I actually didn't do any of these things.

I didn't feed her: I *WATCHED* that hand feeding that woman. That hand had NOTHING to do with me. It was just as much not me as the keyboard I'm typing this on is.
I wasn't speaking the words to her, I wasn't the speaker of the words - I was the LISTENER, THE WITNESS of the words being spoken. All this still in perfect silence, endless joy, (I hate to say it) deep love. I never felt so close to another human being in my whole life. She could feel it too.

A woman in the bed near the window was watching this scene with a look of amazement on her face. A thought popped up 'what the hell is she looking at'? At that point the silence, the joy etc... ended.

I will follow up on this, if people are still interested and I have some more time (= next study break

And yes, I do know I sound like a complete imbecile.

Sounds kinda cool, actually. Although if I were to experience the same, I probably wouldn't attribute it to religion.

Well. You weren't as low as you think you were, if you were able to keep that job. So start from there.

Then, you achieved a brief moment of satori. Good for you. But it's not God, it's chemicals.

Google Image Search for "chemical god" revealed the true face of this all-powerful being (image search page 3).

Interesting, although it sounds like you haven't finished the story yet...

You are such an irritating person.

OK thanks for this reply, I will expand on it, discussion and flamewar later

So after this experience I did what everyone here would do: try to find out what the **** happened to me during those 5 to 30 minutes. Of course I wanted to have it again.

So I searched the internet and found many descriptions of experiences like these. Some would date from hundreds or thousands of years back, some of them were quite new. This pure and endless silence was mentioned a lot:

Dionysius the Areopagite (5th century AD Christian):
Supernal Triad, Deity above all essence, knowledge and goodness; Guide of Christians to Divine Wisdom; direct our path to the ultimate summit of your mystical knowledge, most incomprehensible, most luminous and most exalted, where the pure, absolute and immutable mysteries of theology are veiled in the dazzling obscurity of the secret Silence, outshining all brilliance with the intensity of their Darkness, and surcharging our blinded intellects with the utterly impalpable and invisible fairness of glories surpassing all beauty.

I was of course in shock. I recognized this immediately. This is obviously a dude who was as stupefied as I am. My heart skipped beats when reading the bolded parts. He goes on to say 'you can't say what God is' and writes a summation of all things God is not (not love, not soul, not power, not universe, not light etc...). Once you talk about it, you lose it. Lots more texts and references, but I'll try not to bore you with posting them. (lots in the bible as well)

So the last months and probably years I have been living my life with getting this state back as a priority. I have had glimpses of it again, there's one moment I still want to share, hoping I'll not come across as a complete ass.

This was a few months ago. I was at my student flat at night, just before going to sleep, as always looking within for this state (noone has ever found anything on the outside - why can't people understand this? The kingdom, the holy land is WITHIN you).

Several texts (Christian, mystical, South-American, Jewish, cultures all over the world actually) say the answer to 'who am I?' and 'who/where is god?' is the same. So once again I was looking inside, lying on my bed, just about to fall asleep.

All of a sudden the observer of me lying on that bed came rushing forth. The silent awareness (the real 'I' !) watching this body and these thoughts became so clear, it hit like a hammer. At this moment I gasped out loud:

IT DOESN'T SAY A WORD??!!

Again I didn't say that, I watched and heard it being said. The awareness that was there was so endless, so silent, it had absolutely NO spot in it, no impurity. I cannot explain this in words. Absolutely SPOTLESS.

I spent the next couple of minutes (hours?) lying there in perfect bliss, feeling so good I thought I'd melt into my bed, until I fell asleep.

Of course by the next morning it all passed again

So I know I sound like I'm having a nervous breakdown. To me, you have to understand, all this has become the only thing that really matters, and I know I'm not alone in this (there are people not LEARNING religion, but seeking, the only true way)

Skepticism is of course always encouraged. Thanks for any and all replies, although I see why it might be difficult to reply to a post as retarded as this

**** I never write posts this long, this must really be a nervous breakdown.

Hey this is really interesting.

No offense meant, but have you experimented with any psychotropics lately (or at all)?

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Nope

And I know it sounds retarded. I take comfort in the fact many people will recognize what I'm talking about. Although maybe not people on these forums