When God talks back | Tanya Luhrmann | TEDxStanford

What I want to talk about this morning
is remarkable phenomenon

that people not only talk to God

but they learn to experience
God is talking back

Many many Americans are involved,
and many other people

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

a kind of spirituality
which they want to experience God

intimately, personally and interactively;

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

I want to find out how they did that.

I am anthropologist,

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

and to keep observing

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

become a Native in that world.

Unlike Margret Mead &
Rev. Gregory Bateson

were pictured here in Papua New Guinea.

I did this work in America.

I spent two years
in the renewalist church in Chicago,

another two years
in one of the Bay area.

I went to Sunday Morning services.

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

I hang out with people.

I prayed with people.

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

So let me begin by asking:

Who is the God in the church like this?

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

but God is also a person among people,

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

the way the earliest cycle of experience Jesus,

They walked with Jesus.

They ate with Jesus.

They talked with Jesus,

He was their friend,

And these pastors will tell you that

You should put out
a cup of coffee for God,

You should have a beer with God

Go for a walk with God, hang out.

Do the kind of thing with God

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

He cares about all the stuff
in your life.

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

what shirt you want to wear
tomorrow morning;

you can talk to him about that.

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

and how they felt God
speaking back.

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

and they would say things like:

"God does talk to me."

and then six or eight months later
they would say :

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

But I thought the church teach

what you should think about your mind

is not a fortress full of your own
self-generated

thoughts, feelings and images;

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

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

They were really God's thoughts
being given to you

and your job is to figure out
who is God.

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

as they had experiences
that weren't their own.

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

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

Somebody else is controlling
that clicker."

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

for the kind of things God would say.

People would look for thoughts
that stood out,

that was more spontaneous
than another thoughts;

thoughts were louder and
captured your attention.

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

so the people were praying
over her one day,

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

So her parents was living in Kansas,

she was kind of idly thinking
about visiting them.

but when this thought
captured her attention,

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

where that come from.

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

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

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

One morning,
the pastor said in the church:

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

it's totally fine.
Take this from God.

If you think God are telling you to

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

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

I want you to pray with
your prayer circle;

I want you to pray with me.

So together, this community
could help you to discern

whether that's actually God,

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

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

They're using their imagination
to do something

that they do not regard as imaginary.

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

you got to use imagination.

Because God isn't visible.

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

that you're using your imagination,

you are doing something false.

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

has been part of traditional
Christian Spirituality

for many many years.

The Medieval Manassity cultivated
their inter-senses to make God

more a live presence to them.

That's what these Christians're doing.

They are not only talking to God
in their mind,

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

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

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

God's arms around their shoulders;

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

because the heat is blazing
like a throw;

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

the scent of smoke walks up to Heaven.

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

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

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

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

and there are more like reports that

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

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

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

her image gets so vivid,

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

And then she spontaneously
gave us an example of

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

So one morning,
she had wonderful devotions

she felt great about
her prior time with God.

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

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

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

She was near missing her stop
to get off the bus

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

"GET OFF THE BUS".

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

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

to enable her to make her stop.

What do we make from
those kinds of experiences?

It turns out that
these funny voices and visions

are less unusual than you'd imagine.

So depending on the way
you ask the questions somewhere

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

would say that they had one of
these audio experiences,

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

or maybe walk to the living room,

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

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

These are not crazy,
they have different structure and pattern

in the kind of experiences
people have had,

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

They tend to be rare,
they're common and

A lot and many people have them.

But you ask people whether
they had such experiences?

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

They're really brief.

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

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

And they are positive.

and I remember a woman
who was in distress,

she was driving down a street;

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

"I will always be with you."

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

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

So these experiences can be powerful.

My work demonstrates
they respond to training.

The more people practice
inter-sense cultivation,

the more likely they will say it,

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

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

while doing this work,
I ran an experiment.

I got hundred people into my office,

we randomize them into
lectures on the Gospels, or

this inter-sense rich prayer.

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

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

standardized questionnaires.

It turns out that these folks
in the prayer condition

who on average,
reported sharper mental images,

they reported more senses of
God's presence

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

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

among them, these voices and visions.

We are also able to demonstrate that

some people are better
at this kind of stuff,

independent of the amount of time
they spent praying.

We gave people standardized
questionnaire that asks them:

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

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

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

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

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

these odd voices and visions.

So what do we learn from this?

Well, the skeptics could say
that we learnt that

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

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

I actually don't think
we learnt anything about

the real nature of God
from these observations.

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

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

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

I think what we learnt that
change is real,

As people entered
the church like this,

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

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

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

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

in particular ways,

and I thought individuals are having
a psychological response to

the way of they trained that attention.

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

Sometimes if you are a secular person,

as you looked at somebody
who is a believer,

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

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

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

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

to the way you pay attention to your mind,

to your history of hearing God,
talking with God,

and feeling more confident
that God is there.

I think these practices make
God more real to people

and that has probable
effect on their life.

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

are so much more appealing in this kind of society

Since 1960s, there were Christian
mainstream liberal churches,

their membership has been plummeting.

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

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

I think they made God more relevant.

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

God shifts from 45minutes engagement on Sunday Morning,

to something you're doing
throughout the week

These practices made God
more real to people,

they made God more alive,

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

emphasize the experiences of God,

and emphasize God's mystery.

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

what they perceived to be
skeptical secular society.

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

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

changes our mental experience.

It is so tempting to think
the inter-mindscaping

you are experiencing,
somehow it is set the way it is.

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

whether or not you're believing the God,

You are making choices in the way

you're using your imagination and
your inter-senses.

And the choices you make
will change you.

Thank you very much.

(applauds)