WEBVTT

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What I want to talk about this morning 
is a 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 in what you may call 
a renewalist spirituality,

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a kind of spirituality

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in which they want to experience God
intimately, personally and interactively;

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they want to reach out
and touch the Divine here on earth.

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I wanted to find out how they did that.

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I am an anthropologist.

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My job is to immerse myself
in the world that I've come to study

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and to keep observing

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so that to some degree,

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I get a sense of what it would take
to become a native in that world.

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Unlike Margret Mead and Gregory Bateson,

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who are pictured here in 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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and another two years
in one in 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 a prayer circle.

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I hung out with people.

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I prayed with people.

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I really wanted 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 God in a church like this?

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Well, 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 pastors in this kind of church

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want you to experience God the way
the early disciples experienced 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

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will tell you that 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'd get to not do with anyone
who you wanted to know as a person.

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And he cares about all the stuff 
in your life, the little stuff:

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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

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how people learned to interact with God,
how they felt that God was speaking back.

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And I knew that they learned

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because newcomers
would come to these churches,

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and they would say things like
"God doesn't talk to me,"

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and then six to nine months later,

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they would say,

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"I recognize God's voice

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

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What I saw the church teach

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was that you should think about your mind

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not as a fortress

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full of your own self-generated thoughts
and feelings and images,

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but you should think of your mind

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as a place where you were
going to meet God,

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and that some of those thoughts
that you might have thought of as yours,

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they were really God's thoughts 
being given to you,

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and your job was
to figure out who was God.

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And in fact, people did talk in ways
that suggested that they would have -

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as if they had experiences 
that weren't their own.

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A woman said to me,
"As I've started to pray in this church,

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it feels like my mind is a screen
that images are projected on.

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Somebody else is controlling
that clicker."

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And of course, not all thoughts
were thought to be good candidates

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for the kinds of things God would say.

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People would look for thoughts
that stood out,

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that were more spontaneous 
than other thoughts,

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thoughts that were louder,
that captured your attention.

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One woman explaining to me
how she learned to discern God speaking

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said that 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 live in Kansas.

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She was kind of idly thinking 
about visiting them,

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but when this thought
just captured her attention,

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it made her say, "You know,
makes me want to say,

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'Where did that come from?'"

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

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(Laughter)

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I did think people were
reasonably thoughtful about the process.

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I also thought that the church
took care to minimize those risks.

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One morning, the pastor said in church,

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"You know, if you think God is telling you
to relax and calm down -

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totally fine, take it as God.

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If you think that God
is telling you to quit your job,

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pack your bags and move to Los Angeles,

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I want you to be praying
with every member of your house group,

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I want you to be praying
with your prayer circle,

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I want you to be praying with me

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so that together,

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this community can help you
to discern whether that's actually God

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or just some of your own stuff

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that's getting in the way
of your relationship.

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(Laughter)

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

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They're using their imagination

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to do something that they do not
regard as imaginary.

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

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you've got to use imagination

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because God is invisible.

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It's a very 21st-century thing

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to draw the inference
that if you're using your imagination,

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you are doing something false.

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It turns out that using the inner senses,
using the imagination

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has been part of the tradition
of Christian spirituality

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for many, many years.

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The medieval monastics
cultivated their inner senses

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to make God more alive
and present to them.

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That's what these Christians are doing.

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They are not only
talking to God in their mind -

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using their mind's ear to talk

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and then to listen
to something that God might say -

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they are imagining that they are sitting 
on God's lap while they're doing that,

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or they're on a park bench

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and they're trying to feel God's arm
around their shoulders,

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or they're in the throne room
and their cheek feels warm

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because of the heat
of the blazing light from the throne,

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or they're lighting a candle
to God in their mind

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and they're trying to smell the scent
of the smoke as it wafts up to heaven.

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My work demonstrates
that this cultivation of the inner senses,

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it's 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
that their mental imagery gets sharper,

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they say that things they have to imagine
become more real to them,

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and they are more likely to report

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that God's voice would
sort of pop out into the world

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and they'll hear it with their ears.

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

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This is a woman who said to me

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that as she began to pray,
her images would get 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 this example

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

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So one morning, 
she had wonderful devotions,

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she felt great about
her prayer time with God,

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she came out on to the street -
it was Chicago, it was freezing -

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she was very grateful that God 
brought the bus along really quickly,

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she gets onto the bus,
she's reading a book,

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she's getting all caught up in the book,

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and she is missing her stop
to get off the bus.

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And God says to her
in a way she can hear with her ears,

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"Get off the bus!"

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So she stops the bus driver, she gets off,

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and she feels wonderful all day

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that God has been
so intimately involved with her

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as to enable her to make her stop.

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What do we make
of those kinds of experiences?

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It turns out that
these funny voices and visions,

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they are less unusual than you'd imagine.

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So depending on the way 
that you ask the questions,

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somewhere between 10%
of the general population

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and 70% of the general population

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will say they've had
one of these odd experiences,

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like maybe even drifting off to sleep
and you hear your mom calling your name,

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or maybe you walk into the living room

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and you look at the cat,
the cat's on the couch,

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you look again, you realize
the cat was never there.

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These are not crazy;

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they have a different
structure and pattern

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than the kinds
of experiences people have

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

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They tend to be rare, they're common,
and many people have them.

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But when you ask people

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whether they've ever had
such an experience,

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they'll remember one, maybe two,
maybe a handful of these experiences.

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They're really brief.

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You see the wingtip of an angel
and then it's gone.

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You hear a voice, four to six words,
and then it stops.

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And they are positive.

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I remember a woman who was in distress,
and she was driving down the street,

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and she really heard God speak
out of the seat behind her in the car

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and say, "I will always be with you."

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It was a little freaky.

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She pulled over to the side of the road.

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But then she wept with joy
because, I mean, why would you not?

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So these experiences can be powerful.

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My work demonstrates 
that they respond to training.

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The more people practice
inner sense cultivation,

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the more likely it is

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that they'll say that they've had
one or more of these experiences,

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and the more likely they are
to say that the experience was powerful.

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While doing this work,
I ran an experiment.

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I got a hundred people into my office.

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We randomize them

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into lectures on the Gospels
or this inner-sense-rich prayer.

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

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We brought them back;

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we gave them a bunch
of computers experiments

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and standardized questionnaires.

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And turned out it was the folks
in the prayer condition

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who, on average, reported
sharper mental images -

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they reported more sense
of God's presence,

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and they said that 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 -

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among them these voices and visions.

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We were also able to demonstrate

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that some people
are better at this kind of stuff,

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independent of the amount of time 
they spend praying.

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We give people a standardized
questionnaire that asks them, in effect,

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whether they feel comfortable
being adsorbed in their imagination.

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Turns out that the more items 
you say true to on that scale,

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the more likely you are to say 
that you experience God as a person,

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the more likely you are to say

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that you have a back-and-forth
relationship to God,

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the more likely you are to say

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that you've had one or more
of these odd voices and visions.

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So what do we learn from this?

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Well, the skeptic could say
that we learned that, you know,

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Christians are just making it up
out of 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

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that we learned anything
about the real nature of God

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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,

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which is, If God is always speaking,
how come not everybody hears?

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I think what we learn
is that change is real,

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that as people enter churches like these

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and they begin to pay attention
to their mind in new ways,

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they begin to pay attention
to their inner senses,

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they really do have different experiences

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that they associate
with the presence of God.

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I came to think of churches

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as offering a social invitation
to pay attention in particular ways,

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and I thought of individuals
as having a psychological response

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to the way that they trained
that attention.

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

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Sometimes if you are a secular person

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and you kind of look at somebody
who is a believer,

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

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it's like they've got
a piece of furniture in their house

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that you don't have.

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(Laughter)

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I think these observations 
suggest that in many ways,

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the experience of God is made slowly,

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through the way that you pay
attention to your world,

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to the way that you pay
attention to your mind,

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to your history of hearing God
and 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 a palpable 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 the 1960s, there is
Christian mainstream liberal churches -

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their membership has been plummeting.

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Churches like these, they've 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 that they make God more relevant.

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

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God shifts from a 45-minute
engagement on Sunday Morning

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to something you're doing
throughout the week.

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These practices
make God more real to people,

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they make God more alive.

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And I think these churches,

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by putting the emphasis
on these practices,

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emphasize the experience of God
and emphasize God's mystery.

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And that helps somebody
to hang on to a sense of God

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in what they perceive
to be a skeptical, secular society.

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And finally, I think we learned
something about our minds.

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I think that we learned that the way
we pay attention to our minds

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changes our mental experience.

00:13:36.403 --> 00:13:37.641
It's so tempting to think

00:13:37.641 --> 00:13:39.796
that the inner landscape
of your experience

00:13:39.796 --> 00:13:42.390
is somehow set as the way that it is.

00:13:42.820 --> 00:13:44.632
I think that we learned from this

00:13:44.632 --> 00:13:47.662
that whether or not
you are a religious person,

00:13:47.662 --> 00:13:50.002
whether or not you believe in God,

00:13:50.011 --> 00:13:51.621
you are making choices

00:13:51.621 --> 00:13:55.157
in the way that you use
your imagination and your inner senses,

00:13:55.157 --> 00:13:58.408
and the choices you make will change you.

00:13:58.408 --> 00:13:59.988
Thank you very much.

00:13:59.988 --> 00:14:02.468
(Applause)