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What I want to talk about this morning 
is remarkable phenomenon

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that people not only talk to God

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but they learn to experience
God is talking back

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Many many Americans are involved,
and many other people

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are involved, as you may call, 
in a renewalist spirituality -

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a kind of spirituality
which they want to experience God

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intimately, personally and interactively;

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they want to reach out, 
touch the Divine here on earth

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I want to find out how they did that.

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I am anthropologist,

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my job is to immerse myself in
the world I come to study,

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and to keep observing

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so that at some degree,
I got a sense of what it take to

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become a Native in that world.

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Unlike Margret Mead &
Rev. Gregory Bateson

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were pictured here in Papua New Guinea.

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I did this work in America.

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I spent two years 
in the renewalist church in Chicago,

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another two years
in one of the Bay area.

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I went to Sunday Morning services.

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I was a member of House Group.
I was in the prayer's circle.

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I hang out with people.

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I prayed with people.

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I really want to know how
their God became real to them.

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So let me begin by asking:

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Who is the God in the church like this?

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God is God, God is big, 
God is mighty, and holy and beyond,

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but God is also a person among people,

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The Pastor in this kind of church 
want you to experience God

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the way the earliest cycle of experience Jesus,

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They walked with Jesus.

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They ate with Jesus.

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They talked with Jesus,

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He was their friend,

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And these pastors will tell you that

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You should put out 
a cup of coffee for God,

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You should have a beer with God

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Go for a walk with God, hang out.

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Do the kind of thing with God

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that you get do with anyone who 
you want to know as a person.

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He cares about all the stuff 
in your life.

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the little stuff, where you want to go 
in your summer vacation;

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what shirt you want to wear 
tomorrow morning;

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you can talk to him about that.

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So I wanted to know how people
learn to interact with God

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and how they felt God 
speaking back.

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I knew they have learnt because
the newcomers would come to this church,

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and they would say things like:

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"God does talk to me."

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and then six or eight months later
they would say :

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"I recognize God's voice the way I 
recognize my mum's voice on the phone . "

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But I thought the church teach

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what you should think about your mind

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is not a fortress full of your own 
self-generated

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thoughts, feelings and images;

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you should think your mind is the place 
where you will be going to meet the God.

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and then some of thoughts
you might think that was yours,

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They were really God's thoughts 
being given to you

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and your job is to figure out
who is God.

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And in fact, people did talk in the way
suggested they would have

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as they had experiences 
that weren't their own.

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A woman said to me as 
I start to pray in this church:

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"I feels like my mind is a screen 
that images were projected on.

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Somebody else is controlling
that clicker."

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And of course, not all the thoughts
would be good candidate

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for the kind of things God would say.

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People would look for thoughts 
that stood out,

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that was more spontaneous 
than another thoughts;

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thoughts were louder and
captured your attention.

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One women was explaining to me how
she learnt to discern God's speaking:

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so the people were praying
over her one day,

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and the phrase "go to Kansas" 
flashed into her mind.

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So her parents was living in Kansas,

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she was kind of idly thinking 
about visiting them.

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but when this thought 
captured her attention,

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it made her say, you know,
made her want to say,

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where that come from.

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So you could imagine there will be risks
for this style of discerning God's voice.

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I didn't really think people were
reasonably thoughtful about the process.

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I also thought the good church took
care to minimize these risks.

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One morning, 
the pastor said in the church:

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"you know, if you think God are telling
you to relax, calm down,

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it's totally fine.
Take this from God.

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If you think God are telling you to

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quit your job, pack your bag 
and move to Los Angeles,

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I want you to pray with
every member of the house group;

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I want you to pray with
your prayer circle;

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I want you to pray with me.

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So together, this community
could help you to discern

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whether that's actually God,

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or it's just some own stuff that's
getting in the way of your relationship.

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So what are people doing when
they're praying like this?

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They're using their imagination
to do something

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that they do not regard as imaginary.

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If you're going to represent God,
you got to think about God,

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you got to use imagination.

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Because God isn't visible.

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It is very twenty-first-century thing
to draw the inference

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that you're using your imagination,

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you are doing something false.

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It turns out using the inter-senses and 
using the imagination

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has been part of traditional 
Christian Spirituality

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for many many years.

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The Medieval Manassity cultivated 
their inter-senses to make God

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more a live presence to them.

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That's what these Christians're doing.

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They are not only talking to God
in their mind,

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using their mind and ear to talk, to
listen to something that God might say,

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they are imagining they are sitting 
on God's lap when they're doing that;

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or they're on a park bench,
they are trying to feel

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God's arms around their shoulders;

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or they're in a throw room, 
their cheek feel warm

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because the heat is blazing
like a throw;

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or they're lighting a candle to God,
their minds are trying to smell

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the scent of smoke walks up to Heaven.

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My work demonstrates that this cultivation
of inter-senses is a skill,

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you get better at it over time
and it changes you.

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The people who do this - they say :
their mental imagery gets sharper.

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They say that things they had to
imagine become more real to them.

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and there are more like reports that

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God's voice is sort of pop out to 
the world and they hear with their ears.

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So just give you a sense of the way 
people talk about their own change.

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This is a women who said to me after
she began to pray,

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her image gets so vivid,

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sometimes she said it's almost like
a PowerPoint presentation.

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And then she spontaneously 
gave us an example of

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God's voice popping out into the world, 
so she could hear with her ears.

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So one morning, 
she had wonderful devotions

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she felt great about
her prior time with God.

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She came out to the street,
It was Chicago, it was freezing,

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she was very grateful that God 
brought this bus along really quickly.

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She gets on the bus, she's reading a book, 
she got all caught up on the book.

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She was near missing her stop
to get off the bus

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and God senses to her in the way
she hears with her ears

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"GET OFF THE BUS".

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So she stops the bus driver
and she get off the bus.

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She felt wonderful all day that 
God's been so intimately involved with her

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to enable her to make her stop. 


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What do we make from 
those kinds of experiences?

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It turns out that 
these funny voices and visions

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are less unusual than you'd imagine.

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So depending on the way 
you ask the questions somewhere

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between 10% of general population and
70% of general population

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would say that they had one of 
these audio experiences,

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like maybe even drifting off to a sleep,
you hear your mum calling your name;

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or maybe walk to the living room,

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you look at the cat, 
the cat is on the couch,

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but you look at it again, 
you realize the cat was never there.

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These are not crazy, 
they have different structure and pattern

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in the kind of experiences 
people have had,

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when, for example, 
they meet the category for schizophrenia.

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They tend to be rare, 
they're common and

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A lot and many people have them.

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But you ask people whether
they had such experiences?

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They remember one or may be two,
maybe a handful of these experiences,

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They're really brief.

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You see the wingtip of the Angle 
and then it's gone,

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You hear the voice or its words
and then it stops.

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And they are positive.

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and I remember a woman 
who was in distress,

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she was driving down a street;

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She felt she really heard God speak out 
of the seat behind her in the car and say:

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"I will always be with you."

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It was a little freaky. 
She pulled over to the side of the road.

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And then she was wept with joy, 
because why would you not?

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So these experiences can be powerful.

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My work demonstrates 
they respond to training.

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The more people practice
inter-sense cultivation,

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the more likely they will say it,

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the more likely they say that
they had one or more these experiences.

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and more likely they're to say 
these experiences were powerful .

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while doing this work,
I ran an experiment.

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I got hundred people into my office,

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we randomize them into 
lectures on the Gospels, or

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this inter-sense rich prayer.

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The rule was 30 minutes a day, 
six days a week for four weeks.

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We brought them back and gave them
a bunch of computers experiments and

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standardized questionnaires.

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It turns out that these folks
in the prayer condition

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who on average,
reported sharper mental images,

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they reported more senses of 
God's presence

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and they said God was more present 
as a person to them

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and they were more likely to say that
they had unusual spiritual experiences of,

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among them, these voices and visions.

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We are also able to demonstrate that

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some people are better 
at this kind of stuff,

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independent of the amount of time 
they spent praying.

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We gave people standardized
questionnaire that asks them:

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in fact, will they feel comfortable
being adsorbed in their imagination?

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It turns out there're more items 
you say true to on that scale,

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the more likely you're to say 
you are experiencing God as a person;

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the more likely you're to say 
you have a back-and-forth relationship to God;

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the more likely you're to say 
you had one or more

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these odd voices and visions.

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So what do we learn from this?

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Well, the skeptics could say 
that we learnt that

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you know that Christians're just making about
their imagination,


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and that's what I have always thought. 
End of story.

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I actually don't think
we learnt anything about

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the real nature of God
from these observations.

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I don't think that social science
can answer that question.

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There's also a Christian way to 
ask this question which is

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God is always speaking,
how can not anybody hear his?

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I think what we learnt that
change is real,

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As people entered 
the church like this,

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they began to pay attention to
their minds in new ways,

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they began to pay attention to 
their their inter-senses;

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they really do have different experiences,
that associate with the presence of God.

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I came to think churches as offering
a social invitation to pay attention

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in particular ways,

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and I thought individuals are having
a psychological response to

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the way of they trained that attention.

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I also think we learnt that
belief is not a thing.

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Sometimes if you are a secular person,

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as you looked at somebody
who is a believer,

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it is tempting to think they have 
this extra thing in their life,

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it's like they got a piece of furniture 
in the house but you don't have.

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I think these kinds of observations 
suggest that in many ways,

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the experience of God was made slowly to
the way you pay attention to you world,

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to the way you pay attention to your mind,

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to your history of hearing God, 
talking with God,

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and feeling more confident 
that God is there.

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I think these practices make
God more real to people

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and that has probable 
effect on their life.

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I also think this helps to explain
why these kinds of practices

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are so much more appealing in this kind of society

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Since 1960s, there were Christian
mainstream liberal churches,

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their membership has been plummeting.

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churches like this, they exploded, 
the congregations are huge.

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I think it's because of 
these kinds of practices.

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I think they made God more relevant.

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you know, you're trying to hear God speak,

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God shifts from 45minutes engagement on Sunday Morning,

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to something you're doing
throughout the week

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These practices made God 
more real to people,

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they made God more alive,

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And I think these churches, by putting 
the emphasis on these practices,

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00:13:11,316 --> 00:13:13,626
emphasize the experiences of God,

239
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and emphasize God's mystery.

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And that help somebody to 
hang on to a sense of God in

241
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what they perceived to be
skeptical secular society.

242
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And finally, I think we learn 
something about our minds.

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I think we learn the way 
we are to pay attention to our minds

244
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changes our mental experience.

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It is so tempting to think 
the inter-mindscaping

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00:13:38,641 --> 00:13:42,091
you are experiencing, 
somehow it is set the way it is.

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I think we learnt from this whether or
not you are religious person

248
00:13:47,701 --> 00:13:50,011
whether or not you're believing the God,

249
00:13:50,011 --> 00:13:52,121
You are making choices in the way

250
00:13:52,177 --> 00:13:54,987
you're using your imagination and 
your inter-senses.

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And the choices you make
will change you.

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Thank you very much.

253
00:14:00,788 --> 00:14:01,758
(applauds)