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It’s notoriously difficult apply science to spirituality – quantify the mysterious or explain the supernatural. Why do some people report being possessed by demons or remember being visited by angels? Why are others not interested in questions of the divine?
In a study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers are finding psychological clues that influence this fracture.
According to interviews and surveys of more than 2,000 people in the United States, Ghana, Thailand, China and Vanuatu, two crucial factors shape the perceived experience of people with a spiritual presence: porosity and absorption.
Porosity refers to the degree to which people view their inner mind and the outside world as permeable, while absorption refers to how much people tend to “get lost” in sensory experiences. These factors can predict whether a person is likely to report vivid experiences with gods or spirits.
“What we experience is shaped by the way we pay attention,” says study co-author Tanya Luhrmann. Reverse. Luhrmann is a medical and psychological anthropologist at Stanford University.
“The way we pay attention really affects what becomes real.”
The study does not deal with whether a message from God or a sign from heaven really exists. Instead, researchers followed the spiritual experiences of individuals and found that cultural perceptions determine whether people feel they are living in a world of angels and demons or not. A propensity for porosity and absorption, on the other hand, is often influenced by these cultural perceptions.
The mind sculpts our experiences while culture sculpts the mind, says study co-author Kara Weisman Reverse. Weisman is a psychology researcher at Stanford University.
“Whether it’s the voice of God or the more ordinary aspects of mental life, our experiences are always filtered through our minds and, by extension, through our cultures,” Weisman says.
Documenting spirituality – While deep spiritual experiences – like hearing the voice of God – are seemingly extraordinary, they are also surprisingly common, according to social scientists. According to a 2009 poll, 49% of Americans report having at least one spiritual experience in their lifetime, defined as a “moment of sudden religious awareness or awakening.”
“These experiences are not just things pious people say.”
Despite their prevalence, what actually causes these experiences and prompts some to report divine encounters is poorly understood by scientists.
Luhrmann says that the “elusive” nature of these experiences is partly to blame. Data are generally spiritual memories provided by study participants, and self-reported data is subject to biases and limitations.
What’s up – To identify possible factors behind divine encounters, the team conducted four studies involving 2,356 people of diverse cultures and religions in the United States, Ghana, Thailand, China, and Vanuatu.
During the three-year research project, people from five distinct cultures and a range of religious practices were asked about their spiritual experiences and they see their minds via written surveys and in-person interviews.
The team asked about anomalous events, both spiritual and non-spiritual, such as a voice heard alone, something not physically present, or a spirit’s voices audibly spoken or experienced in the mind.
“These experiences are not just things that pious people say,” says Luhrmann. “These are real events that behave in a structured way, and some people have more of them than others.”
Dig into the details – The researchers also designed questionnaires to capture people’s porosity and absorption levels.
In the study, absorption refers to an individual’s personal tendency to be absorbed by sensory or imaginary events. People with greater absorptive capacity tend to “get lost” in a song, movie or other sensory experience, and are able to ward off vividly imagined events, the authors explain.
It’s a “immersive attention style, “Where people often use their imaginations to understand something beyond the present, to watch for signs of the presence of a being who cannot be seen – thus constructing a supernatural event, often unconsciously.”
Porosity is the idea that the boundary between “the mind” and “the world” is permeable. In practice, people who see the world through the prism of porosity believe that their wishes or curses might come true – or strong emotions can linger in one room and affect others.
In different contexts, researchers have worked with local leaders of Faith-based Methodism in the United States, African Traditional Religion in Ghana, Buddhism in Thailand and urban China, spiritual mediumship in rural China, Presbyterianism in cities. of Vanuatu and ancestral practices of “kastom” in rural Vanuatu.
They also worked with religious leaders from Evangelical Christianity, the fastest growing religion in the world. Evangelical Christianity has relatively consistent theology and practices in different contexts. These religious leaders represented various countries: United States, Ghana, Thailand, China and Vanuatu.
All of the religious leaders helped recruit study participants. The team also recruited study participants from public places and college campuses.
What was discovered – The team identified porosity and absorption as powerful predictors of spiritual presence events, regardless of religion or community of people.
This link has been reproduced three times in different studies and across cultures and religions, reinforcing the results.
In the results, participants from relatively more secular backgrounds like the United States and urban China reported fewer events of spiritual presence.
Meanwhile, participants in less secular contexts like Ghana or Vanuatu reported more from these divine encounters. Charismatic Evangelical Christians in every country also reported more of these encounters with gods or spirits.
A similar model emerged for porosity: participants in Ghana, Vanuatu and Thailand generally maintained more porous models of the “mind-world border”. Participants in the United States and urban China saw the mind and the world as more divided and distinct.
The was not a clear association for absorption, which suggests that this factor varies from individual to individual, rather than primarily differing from culture to culture.
Supernatural Science – Together, porosity and absorption seem to shape how people interpret and engage with their own inner lives as “more alive, material, and powerful,” say the authors. This propensity then increases the probability of experiencing a divine encounter.
“Of course, this is not proof of the reality of God – but these events are often very powerful for those who feel them,” says Luhrmann.
Neither factor is the same as religion. On the contrary, porosity and absorption can be part of “the scaffolding on which religions are built”.
Years ago, Luhrmann observed this discovery firsthand when she was studying a charismatic Christian church that taught people to experience God in their minds.
“When people have a living experience of God, they are more likely to feel that God is real,” says Luhrmann. “This is why revivals that teach people to feel God are often so effective.”
People are also more likely to experience supernatural encounters not only when they believe in God, but when they imagine their minds in a certain way. “It’s not just about the church,” says Lurhmann.
Ultimately, both absorption and porosity “blur the line between inner mental events and an outer world,” the team writes in the study.
Whether or not a spiritual event can or cannot be “proven” by science is beyond the point of this study. “These are human experiences, whether or not they tell us about ultimate reality,” says Luhrmann.
There are still leaps and bounds that are needed before scientists begin to fully grasp divine intervention. This study suggests that it is possible to stretch science to explain the supernatural, even if we have more questions than answers.
Abstract: Hearing the voice of God, feeling the presence of the dead, being possessed by a demonic spirit – such events are among the most remarkable human sensory experiences. They change lives and in turn shape history. Why do some people report having experienced such events while others do not? We contend that experiences of spiritual presence are facilitated by cultural patterns that represent the mind as “porous” or permeable to the world, and by an immersive orientation to the inner life that allows a person to become “absorbed” in the experiences. . In four studies with more than 2,000 participants from many religious traditions in the United States, Ghana, Thailand, China and Vanuatu, porosity and absorption played distinct roles in determining which people, in which contexts cultural, were most likely to report vivid sensory experiences of what they took to be gods and spirits.
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