Tuesday, October 29, 2024
I had a genuine religious experience while “under the influence” of Spravato today. I’m not going to walk it back or qualify it. It felt very real while I was feeling it.
Of course, I can’t precisely remember the feeling now that I have come down (or perhaps “back to the material world” would be more appropriate) but I can remember some of the things I thought about.
First, just like with my “Zen experience” I was in a dark place. This time there was no pool with ripples, no words made of smoke, just my thoughts. I was no longer aware of my body, or rather, I was aware enough of it to know that if I thought about it I could move and feel but I didn’t want to think about because I wanted to have the experience. So I didn’t.
I thought about the issue of having a mind, and possibly having something else immaterial that was not quite the mind called a soul. I thought about the phrase “a beautiful soul.” What would it mean to have a beautiful soul? I felt that having a beautiful soul was the highest aspiration a human being could have. When we are touched with pity when someone is about to cry, when we automatically sympathize with someone in distress, when we experience beauty in nature, or peace in a moment, that is having a beautiful soul. Feeling love for someone that is unconditional is a moment of beauty for the soul.
That led me to think about the pain and evil in the world, and wonder if the bad stuff is really just an opportunity for people to care, to help, to share, to show love to one another.
I also began to think, over and over, “it’s going to be ok”. This seemed like a very significant thought, in those specific words. They are words of comfort–you say them to someone who is scared or hurt or upset. It is not ok right now, but it will be.
In the midst of this some area of my brain was triggered that made me feel like I was experiencing something sacred, holy, or divine. That’s one way to interpret it, at least.* I felt I understood, as I had never been able to before, why some people are so devout, and experience religion so passionately. I didn’t feel extasy, but I felt I had a notion of what religious extasy was–being transported to a higher realm, feeling touched by God, being in some state not fully of the material. I thought about Christianity and felt I could almost understand why people worshipped Jesus. That the very fact that Jesus’ life and sacrifice were so specific to a certain time and place was what made his divinity worthy of belief. I felt I finally understood what was meant by having to abandon reason at some point and just rely on faith. If a belief does not seem reasonable or rational, that does not make it untrue. [Believing Jesus healed people is not the same as believing he made 3 = 7].
I began thinking of the soul as something made of light, triggered by memory of Yoda saying “luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.” I understood this as one person’s attempt to express a truth that cannot be put into words. I thought of all these lights, hanging separate in the darkness, and I thought of the lights being ensnared and enmeshed in the material–the brain and the body. True understanding cannot be achieved while we are bogged down in the swamp of the physical world. I thought several times that I should really start learning to meditate.
But actually, despite thinking of souls as lights, all of this went on in perfect darkness, inhabited only by my thoughts, which were not material at all. And I thought of the darkness not as bad or evil but as clear, free, empty, and peaceful. Darkness is not always bad: the darkness when you close your eyes and begin to calm yourself is actually positive, a place for rest and unencumbered thought.
As I came down I tried to hold on to some of this. I was well aware that I was going to forget parts of the experience and was sure that I would not be able to remember what being “touched by God” felt like, or what it was like to feel like I understood religion as I never had before. But I remember a few phrases:
“it’s going to be ok”
“the purpose of pain is to evoke sympathy and comfort”
“darkness can be empty and peaceful”
More than anything else, I want to hang on to the idea of trying to cultivate a beautiful soul. I don’t know what that means exactly–obviously this will take a while to process and mull over. But I know getting joy from helping others is part of it.
.
*there are a number of ways to contextualize this experience. Humans might have parts of their brains that, when triggered, give them religious or mystical feelings. My own unbelief in this case might just be a weakness or lack in that part of my brain, which in others is much more active. Or, I might have a mind or soul that I usually ignore or am unaware of, which was temporarily freed from the physical restraints of the body/brain and rose to a higher plane or reality. Or I was touched by God while in a trance–why not?
Black Hole Radiation 