Could the experience of God be a state of mind?

Benj96

Part of the process of conscious awareness as I understand, is the ability to perceive the self as being localised and orientated to space and time. The ego is for me the sense of my body in my surroundings and the feeling of controlling and possessing a certain dimension of substance in reality that I use to interact with my environment through my senses.

Should it not therefore be possible for the brain to deviate from this default mode of awareness - through whatever means; be it meditation, prayer, deep introspection, trance or maybe even hallucinogenic drugs like DMT etc... to a state of consciousness where the capacity to localise oneself is inhibited or switched off.

We use the term “ego death”. Which I have experienced twice in my life both under different circumstances and by different and accidental means. In this state you are not in one place but all places. It’s an “everywhereness” form of awareness.

It mostly comes with a certain sense of awe and elation that I could only attribute to the most profound of experiences one can have. Such a lack of boundary/ limits fosters naturally the deepest sense of empathy with others as “other” doesn’t really have a place in that state of mind.

It led me to a conclusion that perhaps spiritual and religious experiences are fundamental to how the brain works and that they are the counterpart to much more persistent, typical and perhaps more useful mind-frame/ sense of ego that we require in day to day life and evolutionarily for survival.

But I see the two as symbiotic. Selfishness and selflessness, the ability to objectify the world on one hand and on the other to subjectify it- that is to become it or to extend ones consciousness into it as without empathy, and behaving completely egotistically with only selfish motives the world would be a very barbaric and dark place.

Wayfarer

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Benj96

Neuroscience, elevates the brain, basically a piece of meat, beyond its true capacity. — ArielAssante

I thought the whole point of neuroscience is to elucidate the true capacity of said “piece of meat”?

Angelo Cannata

There is an essential, potential or actual, mistake, that I have seen made in several stories, videos, accounts, books talking about these things. It is the mistake of treating these experiences as if they were something defined and clear, while instead they have nothing defined, nothing clear.
So, for example, I see that even Freud referred to some sort of “oceanic feeling”, but does this mean that now it is a well defined category, like, for example, “joy”, “conflict”, “trauma”, “beauty”? I think it is obvious that the more we ignore the unclear condition of these concepts, the less serious what we say becomes. It becomes easily exposed to a lot of criticism.
This does not mean that talking of these feelings and using this language should be avoided. Rather, we should connect them to other concepts that have a more solid ground, a better explored context.
So, I would encourage research and exchange of experiences about these things, but serious research means intentionally challenging them with a lot of hard, or even harsh, criticism and self-criticism, otherwise it is like a treasure that we reduce to vague romantic words full of charm, but empty of any useful and serious substance.

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Benj96

, otherwise it is like a treasure that we reduce to vague romantic words full of charm, but empty of any useful and serious substance. — Angelo Cannata

I’m not sure if you can apply scientific objectivity or harsh rigorous and skeptical criticisms to all domains of human awareness. I often feel a scientific approach oversteps itself in some areas it doesn’t strictly belong. That’s not to say I don’t find it one of the mightiest tools we have in understanding the physical world but such that consciousness is not a physical thing as far as I know but a subjective state, it doesn’t really seem relevant here.

For example, It wouldn’t make sense to empirically dissect and analyse the components of a poem or say, apply some science to it. Poemology.

It is art. Art and science may overlap but they cannot ever be the same thing. The very act of analysing a poem, or art removes immediately the intuitive sense and pleasure one may get from it. It warps the general perception, the meaning, the feeling. And yet - poetry and art are a product of the mind - which according to the scientifically inclined can be reduced entirely to objectively measurable processes and hard research.

The point I’m getting to is that I believe conscious states of mind like the god-like oneness/ ego death I outlined above may be more akin to the romantic art, poetry etc than to hard neuroscience. Consider here that the hard problem of consciousness still stands to this day unresolved.

I am willing to concede that perhaps it can be reduced to hard objective facts and may indeed be done in the future. The hard problem finally resolved.

But until that certainty is established I dally with the alternative more vague mysterious and romantic approach. Which for the record I don’t think is empty and without serious substance. It’s merely a different but equallly important approach to the kind as sciences one.

Angelo Cannata

↪Benj96

I agree. When I talk about harsh criticism, I don’t mean interpreting art and heart by science. I mean a kind of serious criticism that can come from philosophy, literary critique, art critique, theology.
For example, I think that, if we say "idealism” or “romanticism”, we are talking about cultural currents that have been studied deeply and also with a lot of debates and criticism about their literature, art, paintings, so that I feel that when I hear “romanticism” we are talking about something really serious and culturally substantial. But what about “oneness”, or “awareness”, “selflessness”? They seem to me things that I would compare to the cultural currents I quoted like pseudoscience is compared to science.
I mean, are there artists, literary critique experts, who have somewhat explored extensively these latter concepts? I would say that, at least, they are very young concepts.

Could the experience of God be a state of mind?

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