1
00:00:10,807 --> 00:00:14,051
What I want to talk about this morning 
is a remarkable phenomenon:

2
00:00:14,241 --> 00:00:17,003
that people not only talk to God

3
00:00:17,023 --> 00:00:21,073
but they learn to experience
God is talking back.

4
00:00:21,962 --> 00:00:25,682
Many, many Americans are involved -
and many other people -

5
00:00:25,683 --> 00:00:29,684
are involved in what you may call 
a renewalist spirituality,

6
00:00:29,756 --> 00:00:31,200
a kind of spirituality

7
00:00:31,200 --> 00:00:36,637
in which they want to experience God
intimately, personally and interactively;

8
00:00:36,911 --> 00:00:40,533
they want to reach out
and touch the Divine here on earth.

9
00:00:40,776 --> 00:00:43,636
I wanted to find out how they did that.

10
00:00:44,578 --> 00:00:46,308
I am an anthropologist.

11
00:00:46,318 --> 00:00:49,958
My job is to immerse myself
in the world that I've come to study

12
00:00:49,968 --> 00:00:52,068
and to keep observing

13
00:00:52,105 --> 00:00:53,917
so that to some degree,

14
00:00:53,917 --> 00:00:57,817
I get a sense of what it would take
to become a native in that world.

15
00:00:58,207 --> 00:01:00,177
Unlike Margret Mead and Gregory Bateson,

16
00:01:00,177 --> 00:01:02,016
who are pictured here in New Guinea,

17
00:01:02,016 --> 00:01:04,266
I did this work in America.

18
00:01:04,533 --> 00:01:07,923
I spent two years 
in the Renewalist Church in Chicago

19
00:01:07,935 --> 00:01:11,387
and another two years
in one in the Bay Area.

20
00:01:11,387 --> 00:01:13,189
I went to Sunday morning services.

21
00:01:13,189 --> 00:01:16,392
I was a member of house group.
I was in a prayer circle.

22
00:01:16,392 --> 00:01:17,622
I hung out with people.

23
00:01:17,622 --> 00:01:18,637
I prayed with people.

24
00:01:18,637 --> 00:01:22,692
I really wanted to know
how their God became real to them.

25
00:01:23,542 --> 00:01:25,332
So let me begin by asking,

26
00:01:25,362 --> 00:01:27,782
Who is God in a church like this?

27
00:01:27,802 --> 00:01:31,842
Well, God is God, God is big, 
God is mighty and holy and beyond,

28
00:01:32,322 --> 00:01:34,952
but God is also a person among people.

29
00:01:35,222 --> 00:01:37,232
The pastors in this kind of church

30
00:01:37,232 --> 00:01:42,072
want you to experience God the way
the early disciples experienced Jesus.

31
00:01:42,244 --> 00:01:43,454
They walked with Jesus.

32
00:01:43,454 --> 00:01:44,624
They ate with Jesus.

33
00:01:44,624 --> 00:01:45,814
They talked with Jesus.

34
00:01:45,814 --> 00:01:47,104
He was their friend.

35
00:01:47,766 --> 00:01:49,406
And these pastors

36
00:01:49,406 --> 00:01:53,816
will tell you that you should put out
a cup of coffee for God,

37
00:01:54,027 --> 00:01:55,787
you should have a beer with God,

38
00:01:55,787 --> 00:01:57,767
go for a walk with God, hang out,

39
00:01:57,767 --> 00:01:59,267
do the kind of thing with God

40
00:01:59,267 --> 00:02:03,586
that you'd get to not do with anyone
who you wanted to know as a person.

41
00:02:03,626 --> 00:02:07,133
And he cares about all the stuff 
in your life, the little stuff:

42
00:02:07,133 --> 00:02:09,233
where you want to go
in your summer vacation,

43
00:02:09,233 --> 00:02:11,377
what shirt you want to wear 
tomorrow morning.

44
00:02:11,377 --> 00:02:13,507
You can talk to him about that.

45
00:02:14,543 --> 00:02:15,743
So I wanted to know

46
00:02:15,753 --> 00:02:20,023
how people learned to interact with God,
how they felt that God was speaking back.

47
00:02:20,023 --> 00:02:21,593
And I knew that they learned

48
00:02:21,593 --> 00:02:23,843
because newcomers
would come to these churches,

49
00:02:23,843 --> 00:02:27,233
and they would say things like
"God doesn't talk to me,"

50
00:02:27,233 --> 00:02:28,896
and then six to nine months later,

51
00:02:28,896 --> 00:02:29,983
they would say,

52
00:02:29,983 --> 00:02:31,803
"I recognize God's voice

53
00:02:31,803 --> 00:02:35,073
the way I recognize
my mom's voice on the phone."

54
00:02:36,258 --> 00:02:38,738
What I saw the church teach

55
00:02:38,758 --> 00:02:40,723
was that you should think about your mind

56
00:02:40,723 --> 00:02:41,733
not as a fortress

57
00:02:41,733 --> 00:02:45,311
full of your own self-generated thoughts
and feelings and images,

58
00:02:45,331 --> 00:02:46,911
but you should think of your mind

59
00:02:46,921 --> 00:02:49,261
as a place where you were
going to meet God,

60
00:02:49,261 --> 00:02:52,681
and that some of those thoughts
that you might have thought of as yours,

61
00:02:52,690 --> 00:02:56,460
they were really God's thoughts 
being given to you,

62
00:02:56,490 --> 00:02:59,840
and your job was
to figure out who was God.

63
00:03:00,042 --> 00:03:05,232
And in fact, people did talk in ways
that suggested that they would have -

64
00:03:06,576 --> 00:03:09,646
as if they had experiences 
that weren't their own.

65
00:03:09,926 --> 00:03:12,736
A woman said to me,
"As I've started to pray in this church,

66
00:03:12,789 --> 00:03:17,819
it feels like my mind is a screen
that images are projected on.

67
00:03:18,039 --> 00:03:21,019
Somebody else is controlling
that clicker."

68
00:03:21,262 --> 00:03:25,901
And of course, not all thoughts
were thought to be good candidates

69
00:03:25,931 --> 00:03:28,041
for the kinds of things God would say.

70
00:03:28,481 --> 00:03:30,960
People would look for thoughts
that stood out,

71
00:03:30,970 --> 00:03:33,370
that were more spontaneous 
than other thoughts,

72
00:03:33,370 --> 00:03:36,730
thoughts that were louder,
that captured your attention.

73
00:03:37,740 --> 00:03:42,546
One woman explaining to me
how she learned to discern God speaking

74
00:03:42,546 --> 00:03:45,336
said that people were praying
over her one day,

75
00:03:45,336 --> 00:03:49,596
and the phrase "Go to Kansas" 
flashed into her mind.

76
00:03:50,573 --> 00:03:52,163
So her parents live in Kansas.

77
00:03:52,163 --> 00:03:54,833
She was kind of idly thinking 
about visiting them,

78
00:03:54,833 --> 00:03:57,590
but when this thought
just captured her attention,

79
00:03:57,675 --> 00:04:01,155
it made her say, "You know,
makes me want to say,

80
00:04:01,155 --> 00:04:02,935
'Where did that come from?'"

81
00:04:03,589 --> 00:04:08,999
So you could imagine there would be risks
from this style of discerning God's voice.

82
00:04:09,004 --> 00:04:10,189
(Laughter)

83
00:04:10,189 --> 00:04:13,937
I did think people were
reasonably thoughtful about the process.

84
00:04:14,147 --> 00:04:18,467
I also thought that the church
took care to minimize those risks.

85
00:04:18,621 --> 00:04:20,941
One morning, the pastor said in church,

86
00:04:20,981 --> 00:04:25,158
"You know, if you think God is telling you
to relax and calm down -

87
00:04:25,208 --> 00:04:27,508
totally fine, take it as God.

88
00:04:27,668 --> 00:04:30,673
If you think that God
is telling you to quit your job,

89
00:04:30,673 --> 00:04:33,058
pack your bags and move to Los Angeles,

90
00:04:33,385 --> 00:04:36,675
I want you to be praying
with every member of your house group,

91
00:04:36,675 --> 00:04:39,076
I want you to be praying
with your prayer circle,

92
00:04:39,076 --> 00:04:41,506
I want you to be praying with me

93
00:04:41,506 --> 00:04:42,564
so that together,

94
00:04:42,564 --> 00:04:46,636
this community can help you
to discern whether that's actually God

95
00:04:46,636 --> 00:04:48,476
or just some of your own stuff

96
00:04:48,476 --> 00:04:51,065
that's getting in the way
of your relationship.

97
00:04:51,065 --> 00:04:52,515
(Laughter)

98
00:04:53,945 --> 00:04:57,005
So what are people doing 
when they're praying like this?

99
00:04:57,195 --> 00:04:59,100
They're using their imagination

100
00:04:59,110 --> 00:05:02,800
to do something that they do not
regard as imaginary.

101
00:05:02,930 --> 00:05:06,200
If you're going to represent God,
if you're going to think about God,

102
00:05:06,200 --> 00:05:07,860
you've got to use imagination

103
00:05:07,870 --> 00:05:09,330
because God is invisible.

104
00:05:10,704 --> 00:05:13,379
It's a very 21st-century thing

105
00:05:13,379 --> 00:05:16,384
to draw the inference
that if you're using your imagination,

106
00:05:16,384 --> 00:05:18,244
you are doing something false.

107
00:05:18,547 --> 00:05:22,367
It turns out that using the inner senses,
using the imagination

108
00:05:22,367 --> 00:05:25,947
has been part of the tradition
of Christian spirituality

109
00:05:25,947 --> 00:05:27,807
for many, many years.

110
00:05:27,807 --> 00:05:30,964
The medieval monastics
cultivated their inner senses

111
00:05:30,974 --> 00:05:34,234
to make God more alive
and present to them.

112
00:05:34,514 --> 00:05:36,764
That's what these Christians are doing.

113
00:05:36,764 --> 00:05:39,064
They are not only
talking to God in their mind -

114
00:05:39,084 --> 00:05:42,434
using their mind's ear to talk

115
00:05:42,434 --> 00:05:45,064
and then to listen
to something that God might say -

116
00:05:45,064 --> 00:05:49,323
they are imagining that they are sitting 
on God's lap while they're doing that,

117
00:05:49,323 --> 00:05:50,665
or they're on a park bench

118
00:05:50,665 --> 00:05:53,645
and they're trying to feel God's arm
around their shoulders,

119
00:05:53,645 --> 00:05:56,844
or they're in the throne room
and their cheek feels warm

120
00:05:56,844 --> 00:06:01,614
because of the heat
of the blazing light from the throne,

121
00:06:01,614 --> 00:06:03,967
or they're lighting a candle
to God in their mind

122
00:06:03,967 --> 00:06:07,977
and they're trying to smell the scent
of the smoke as it wafts up to heaven.

123
00:06:09,138 --> 00:06:13,461
My work demonstrates
that this cultivation of the inner senses,

124
00:06:13,691 --> 00:06:15,164
it's a skill.

125
00:06:16,084 --> 00:06:19,584
You get better at it over time,
and it changes you.

126
00:06:19,597 --> 00:06:24,157
The people who do this, they say
that their mental imagery gets sharper,

127
00:06:24,172 --> 00:06:28,692
they say that things they have to imagine
become more real to them,

128
00:06:28,699 --> 00:06:30,635
and they are more likely to report

129
00:06:30,635 --> 00:06:34,636
that God's voice would
sort of pop out into the world

130
00:06:34,636 --> 00:06:37,266
and they'll hear it with their ears.

131
00:06:38,601 --> 00:06:42,341
So just to give you a sense of the way 
people talk about their own change:

132
00:06:42,832 --> 00:06:44,262
This is a woman who said to me

133
00:06:44,262 --> 00:06:48,308
that as she began to pray,
her images would get so vivid,

134
00:06:48,308 --> 00:06:52,228
"Sometimes," she said, "it's almost
like a PowerPoint presentation."

135
00:06:52,978 --> 00:06:55,295
And then she spontaneously
gave this example

136
00:06:55,295 --> 00:06:59,515
of God's voice popping out into the world
so she could hear it with her ears.

137
00:07:00,412 --> 00:07:02,702
So one morning, 
she had wonderful devotions,

138
00:07:02,714 --> 00:07:05,174
she felt great about
her prayer time with God,

139
00:07:05,174 --> 00:07:08,833
she came out on to the street -
it was Chicago, it was freezing -

140
00:07:08,833 --> 00:07:12,856
she was very grateful that God 
brought the bus along really quickly,

141
00:07:12,856 --> 00:07:14,949
she gets onto the bus,
she's reading a book,

142
00:07:14,949 --> 00:07:17,083
she's getting all caught up in the book,

143
00:07:18,133 --> 00:07:20,583
and she is missing her stop
to get off the bus.

144
00:07:20,583 --> 00:07:23,694
And God says to her
in a way she can hear with her ears,

145
00:07:23,694 --> 00:07:25,410
"Get off the bus!"

146
00:07:25,940 --> 00:07:27,940
So she stops the bus driver, she gets off,

147
00:07:27,940 --> 00:07:29,422
and she feels wonderful all day

148
00:07:29,422 --> 00:07:32,026
that God has been
so intimately involved with her

149
00:07:32,026 --> 00:07:35,222
as to enable her to make her stop.

150
00:07:36,518 --> 00:07:39,238
What do we make
of those kinds of experiences?

151
00:07:39,575 --> 00:07:42,405
It turns out that
these funny voices and visions,

152
00:07:42,731 --> 00:07:45,191
they are less unusual than you'd imagine.

153
00:07:45,191 --> 00:07:47,625
So depending on the way 
that you ask the questions,

154
00:07:47,625 --> 00:07:50,665
somewhere between 10%
of the general population

155
00:07:50,665 --> 00:07:53,485
and 70% of the general population

156
00:07:53,485 --> 00:07:56,485
will say they've had
one of these odd experiences,

157
00:07:56,485 --> 00:08:01,232
like maybe even drifting off to sleep
and you hear your mom calling your name,

158
00:08:01,232 --> 00:08:03,093
or maybe you walk into the living room

159
00:08:03,093 --> 00:08:05,473
and you look at the cat,
the cat's on the couch,

160
00:08:05,473 --> 00:08:08,013
you look again, you realize
the cat was never there.

161
00:08:09,283 --> 00:08:10,962
These are not crazy;

162
00:08:11,132 --> 00:08:13,606
they have a different
structure and pattern

163
00:08:13,626 --> 00:08:15,763
than the kinds
of experiences people have

164
00:08:15,763 --> 00:08:19,029
when, for example, they meet
the criteria for schizophrenia.

165
00:08:19,239 --> 00:08:24,460
They tend to be rare, they're common,
and many people have them.

166
00:08:24,830 --> 00:08:25,928
But when you ask people

167
00:08:25,928 --> 00:08:27,980
whether they've ever had
such an experience,

168
00:08:27,980 --> 00:08:31,570
they'll remember one, maybe two,
maybe a handful of these experiences.

169
00:08:31,620 --> 00:08:33,000
They're really brief.

170
00:08:33,000 --> 00:08:35,640
You see the wingtip of an angel
and then it's gone.

171
00:08:35,670 --> 00:08:39,230
You hear a voice, four to six words,
and then it stops.

172
00:08:39,331 --> 00:08:40,811
And they are positive.

173
00:08:40,811 --> 00:08:45,811
I remember a woman who was in distress,
and she was driving down the street,

174
00:08:45,821 --> 00:08:51,967
and she really heard God speak
out of the seat behind her in the car

175
00:08:51,967 --> 00:08:55,097
and say, "I will always be with you."

176
00:08:55,400 --> 00:08:56,850
It was a little freaky.

177
00:08:56,850 --> 00:08:58,760
She pulled over to the side of the road.

178
00:08:58,760 --> 00:09:02,830
But then she wept with joy
because, I mean, why would you not?

179
00:09:03,892 --> 00:09:06,452
So these experiences can be powerful.

180
00:09:07,702 --> 00:09:10,822
My work demonstrates 
that they respond to training.

181
00:09:11,079 --> 00:09:14,219
The more people practice
inner sense cultivation,

182
00:09:16,106 --> 00:09:17,813
the more likely it is

183
00:09:17,813 --> 00:09:20,955
that they'll say that they've had
one or more of these experiences,

184
00:09:20,955 --> 00:09:25,158
and the more likely they are
to say that the experience was powerful.

185
00:09:26,248 --> 00:09:29,403
While doing this work,
I ran an experiment.

186
00:09:29,403 --> 00:09:31,218
I got a hundred people into my office.

187
00:09:31,218 --> 00:09:32,226
We randomize them

188
00:09:32,226 --> 00:09:36,208
into lectures on the Gospels
or this inner-sense-rich prayer.

189
00:09:36,368 --> 00:09:40,648
And the rule was 30 minutes a day, 
six days a week, for four weeks.

190
00:09:40,648 --> 00:09:41,668
We brought them back;

191
00:09:41,668 --> 00:09:43,759
we gave them a bunch
of computers experiments

192
00:09:43,759 --> 00:09:45,468
and standardized questionnaires.

193
00:09:45,468 --> 00:09:48,268
And turned out it was the folks
in the prayer condition

194
00:09:48,268 --> 00:09:51,748
who, on average, reported
sharper mental images -

195
00:09:51,748 --> 00:09:54,562
they reported more sense
of God's presence,

196
00:09:54,572 --> 00:09:57,662
and they said that God was more present
as a person to them,

197
00:09:57,662 --> 00:10:02,252
and they were more likely to say that
they had unusual spiritual experiences -

198
00:10:02,252 --> 00:10:05,232
among them these voices and visions.

199
00:10:06,037 --> 00:10:07,609
We were also able to demonstrate

200
00:10:07,639 --> 00:10:11,019
that some people
are better at this kind of stuff,

201
00:10:11,041 --> 00:10:14,381
independent of the amount of time 
they spend praying.

202
00:10:14,391 --> 00:10:18,710
We give people a standardized
questionnaire that asks them, in effect,

203
00:10:18,710 --> 00:10:22,331
whether they feel comfortable
being adsorbed in their imagination.

204
00:10:22,592 --> 00:10:26,102
Turns out that the more items 
you say true to on that scale,

205
00:10:26,102 --> 00:10:30,012
the more likely you are to say 
that you experience God as a person,

206
00:10:30,031 --> 00:10:31,783
the more likely you are to say

207
00:10:31,803 --> 00:10:34,643
that you have a back-and-forth
relationship to God,

208
00:10:34,643 --> 00:10:36,453
the more likely you are to say

209
00:10:36,453 --> 00:10:40,643
that you've had one or more
of these odd voices and visions.

210
00:10:42,213 --> 00:10:44,053
So what do we learn from this?

211
00:10:44,643 --> 00:10:47,405
Well, the skeptic could say
that we learned that, you know,

212
00:10:47,405 --> 00:10:50,116
Christians are just making it up
out of their imagination,

213
00:10:50,116 --> 00:10:52,863
and that's what I have
always thought - end of story.

214
00:10:53,163 --> 00:10:54,253
I actually don't think

215
00:10:54,253 --> 00:10:56,925
that we learned anything
about the real nature of God

216
00:10:56,925 --> 00:10:58,853
from these observations.

217
00:10:58,868 --> 00:11:02,038
I don't think that social science
can answer that question.

218
00:11:02,270 --> 00:11:04,627
There's also a Christian way
to ask this question,

219
00:11:04,627 --> 00:11:09,374
which is, If God is always speaking,
how come not everybody hears?

220
00:11:11,390 --> 00:11:14,440
I think what we learn
is that change is real,

221
00:11:14,617 --> 00:11:17,237
that as people enter churches like these

222
00:11:17,237 --> 00:11:19,977
and they begin to pay attention
to their mind in new ways,

223
00:11:19,977 --> 00:11:22,787
they begin to pay attention
to their inner senses,

224
00:11:22,787 --> 00:11:26,037
they really do have different experiences

225
00:11:26,057 --> 00:11:28,817
that they associate
with the presence of God.

226
00:11:29,217 --> 00:11:30,932
I came to think of churches

227
00:11:30,932 --> 00:11:35,922
as offering a social invitation
to pay attention in particular ways,

228
00:11:35,932 --> 00:11:40,586
and I thought of individuals
as having a psychological response

229
00:11:40,586 --> 00:11:43,626
to the way that they trained
that attention.

230
00:11:45,056 --> 00:11:48,696
I also think that we learned
that belief is not a thing.

231
00:11:48,817 --> 00:11:50,934
Sometimes if you are a secular person

232
00:11:50,934 --> 00:11:53,454
and you kind of look at somebody
who is a believer,

233
00:11:53,454 --> 00:11:57,023
it is tempting to think that they have
this extra thing in their life -

234
00:11:57,023 --> 00:11:59,823
it's like they've got
a piece of furniture in their house

235
00:11:59,823 --> 00:12:01,683
that you don't have.

236
00:12:01,688 --> 00:12:02,748
(Laughter)

237
00:12:02,903 --> 00:12:06,213
I think these observations 
suggest that in many ways,

238
00:12:06,213 --> 00:12:09,103
the experience of God is made slowly,

239
00:12:09,103 --> 00:12:11,922
through the way that you pay
attention to your world,

240
00:12:11,922 --> 00:12:14,212
to the way that you pay
attention to your mind,

241
00:12:14,212 --> 00:12:17,081
to your history of hearing God
and talking with God

242
00:12:17,081 --> 00:12:20,041
and feeling more confident
that God is there.

243
00:12:20,191 --> 00:12:24,861
I think these practices make
God more real to people,

244
00:12:24,861 --> 00:12:27,787
and that has a palpable effect
on their life.

245
00:12:28,387 --> 00:12:31,417
I also think this helps to explain
why these kinds of practices

246
00:12:31,453 --> 00:12:34,673
are so much more appealing
in this kind of society.

247
00:12:35,052 --> 00:12:39,942
Since the 1960s, there is
Christian mainstream liberal churches -

248
00:12:40,165 --> 00:12:42,195
their membership has been plummeting.

249
00:12:42,195 --> 00:12:47,085
Churches like these, they've exploded; 
the congregations are huge.

250
00:12:47,085 --> 00:12:49,845
I think it's because
of these kinds of practices.

251
00:12:49,951 --> 00:12:52,371
I think that they make God more relevant.

252
00:12:52,711 --> 00:12:55,831
You know, you're trying
to hear God speak -

253
00:12:56,131 --> 00:12:59,531
God shifts from a 45-minute
engagement on Sunday Morning

254
00:12:59,531 --> 00:13:01,983
to something you're doing
throughout the week.

255
00:13:01,983 --> 00:13:04,743
These practices
make God more real to people,

256
00:13:04,877 --> 00:13:07,047
they make God more alive.

257
00:13:07,049 --> 00:13:08,336
And I think these churches,

258
00:13:08,336 --> 00:13:11,076
by putting the emphasis
on these practices,

259
00:13:11,446 --> 00:13:16,500
emphasize the experience of God
and emphasize God's mystery.

260
00:13:16,730 --> 00:13:20,190
And that helps somebody
to hang on to a sense of God

261
00:13:20,190 --> 00:13:25,516
in what they perceive
to be a skeptical, secular society.

262
00:13:26,454 --> 00:13:30,069
And finally, I think we learned
something about our minds.

263
00:13:30,609 --> 00:13:33,853
I think that we learned that the way
we pay attention to our minds

264
00:13:33,853 --> 00:13:36,403
changes our mental experience.

265
00:13:36,403 --> 00:13:37,641
It's so tempting to think

266
00:13:37,641 --> 00:13:39,796
that the inner landscape
of your experience

267
00:13:39,796 --> 00:13:42,390
is somehow set as the way that it is.

268
00:13:42,820 --> 00:13:44,632
I think that we learned from this

269
00:13:44,632 --> 00:13:47,662
that whether or not
you are a religious person,

270
00:13:47,662 --> 00:13:50,002
whether or not you believe in God,

271
00:13:50,011 --> 00:13:51,621
you are making choices

272
00:13:51,621 --> 00:13:55,157
in the way that you use
your imagination and your inner senses,

273
00:13:55,157 --> 00:13:58,408
and the choices you make will change you.

274
00:13:58,408 --> 00:13:59,988
Thank you very much.

275
00:13:59,988 --> 00:14:02,468
(Applause)