Did you ever "feel god"?

[salm]

No, never. Perhaps that´s the reason that when i was a kid and had religion in school i allways thought that it was an open secret that everybody (including the teacher) just pretended to believe all that stuff for 45 minutes and after that went back to normal.

[Lagmonster]

It's like this: maybe it's just me, but you know that feeling that you get (or used to get as a child) when you start thinking there's a bad guy in a dark room, or something under your bed at night? You really start to feel like something is there, and you get goosebumps, etc. That's how it was with sensing God's presence.

We're designed to recognize specific shapes, such as human faces, and certain sounds, such as the movement of possible predators. And when we're tired, all bets are off as our consciousness starts to shut down for the night. So it's not surprising that people think they see and hear all kinds of things at night. Of course, what we think it is will be defined by our cultural upbringing. Was it god? Angels? Demons? Ghosts? Spirits? Aliens? Goblins? Trolls? Depends on where you grew up, and in what time period.

Maybe that's why I still sometimes become completely debilitated by the fear that someone is in a dark room at night. I am honestly frightened when I am the only one at home at night (doesn't happen very often) because of this, though I should say that I am frightened on an emotional level but not on a rational level.

It is every bit conditioning, and every bit something we learn and, many times, don't un-learn. I still can't sleep comfortably in a room with dolls, for reasons relating to my own history of being fascinated with ghost stories. I know there's absolutely no danger, but those feelings from our childhood remain. That's why people who leave religion in their middle years often return to it in some form in their old age; many of our childhood fears and conditioning, which never really left, catches up with us as we slow down mentally.

[Liberty]

No, I never once felt the influence of God in my life ever, which, since I was supposed to as a child growing up in a religious life, left me terrified that I was going to Hell for some crimes/sins I didn't realize I'd committed, leaving me in a continuous cycle of rigorous penance and mental and sometimes physical self-flagellation in a desperate attempt to cleanse the sins I must have committed to keep me from feeling God. This process didn't end until I was a teenager, having started around age six or seven.

You know, even though I could "feel god" I was always afraid that I was making those feelings up. Even though I believed that only the sinner's prayer and simple faith was necessary for salvation, I was terrified that maybe I actually didn't have enough faith, or hadn't said the prayer with the right intentions in my heart, etc.

[Skylon]

I felt something the first time I was in St. Patrick's Cathedral, during a Mass I felt "Wow, I have really never been to Church before". For a second I thought it was God, but then realized, that was the effect of the architecture, the congregation, the music...growing up Catholic, it was everything my dinky suburban Church wasn't, but I'd been primed for.

Would you count feeling like the Universe is screwing you as "feeling God" (albeit, a vindictive one)?

[Modax]

I've never felt god per say, but I used to have a paranoia about alien abductions where I would sometimes have that "I'm being watched" feeling, especially at night.

Huh. When I was 9-10 years old, I had exactly the same paranoia, almost nightly. Good to know it wasn't just me.

As for the chills and the tingling of the spine, those are indeed powerful emotional experiences (or accompany such), but I don't think I ever associated it with anything religious/paranormal/superstitious. To be honest, I can't remember ever thinking that these feelings needed an explanation; they are just that: powerful emotional responses, similar to bursting into tears. Why is it that no one feels the need (that I know of) to invoke the supernatural to explain crying?

I've never *felt god*, either, but I'd always thought it was supposed to be some kind of grand hallucino-schizophrenic experience, not just a garden variety "spine-tingling feeling of awe".

[SirNitram]

For the general feeling of awe and beauty and.. PRESENSE that people speak of here, yes, I can say I've felt it. I treasured each time. My first was looking through a massive observatories eyepeice to a nebula I forget everything about of, except the colours I saw, the shapes, and that feeling running through me. I experienced similar with some of the more amazing photos taken of cosmic events NASA has put up.

[hongi]

I was going to say I felt God but then got slapped with a restraining order. But then I thought seriously about it.

Damn it, I had the same idea.

Take Deja Vu, for example. I experience those quite often, and I find it fascinating to see what happens when my perception of time glitches. Most people want to believe they are an insight into the future, and do so, even when it is all too easy to point out that whenever you have a Deja Vu, you coincidentally have trouble "remembering" what is going to happen next. Again, it's all about what people want to see.

Same here. I get deja vu a lot. It's fun, but pretty freaky at the same time.

[Axiomatic]

I had something similar to feeling God, I suppose, except it was in essence the exact opposite. I was in a forest one summer, and I looked up at the sunlight shining through the leaves, and suddenly it felt like I could see each and every individual leaf in the forest and trace the path of each photon that poured through them, and I remember thinking over and over, in stunned amazement, "the world is sufficient. The world is sufficient."

I'd never thought much about religion before that, but that experience made me realize that the material world was entire orders of magnitude more beautiful than any of the tawdry religious fantasies people came up with, and it felt unspeakably tragic that anyone would ever reject this, our most incredible universe, for spiritual pipe-dreams. In a way, you might say I felt the lack of god, and it felt like glory.

[freker]

I can't say I have ever felt God. Being raised christian I have asked several (christian) friends about it, and they seem to have felt God at certain times in their life or even feel him often.

Recently, while attending a conference about developments in medical technology, I did feel a momentous sense of purpose (for the lack of a better word), a feeling that I have never felt in church.

[SapphireFox]

I had something similar to feeling God, I suppose, except it was in essence the exact opposite. I was in a forest one summer, and I looked up at the sunlight shining through the leaves, and suddenly it felt like I could see each and every individual leaf in the forest and trace the path of each photon that poured through them, and I remember thinking over and over, in stunned amazement, "the world is sufficient. The world is sufficient."

I'd never thought much about religion before that, but that experience made me realize that the material world was entire orders of magnitude more beautiful than any of the tawdry religious fantasies people came up with, and it felt unspeakably tragic that anyone would ever reject this, our most incredible universe, for spiritual pipe-dreams. In a way, you might say I felt the lack of god, and it felt like glory.

Experinces like yours make me think that religon and their fanactics should be more mindfull of great quotes like this.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE / Hamlet Act 1. Scene V abt. 1601

It makes me question what is greater the awsome universe we live in or the idea of someone creating it.

[Liberty]

I had something similar to feeling God, I suppose, except it was in essence the exact opposite. I was in a forest one summer, and I looked up at the sunlight shining through the leaves, and suddenly it felt like I could see each and every individual leaf in the forest and trace the path of each photon that poured through them, and I remember thinking over and over, in stunned amazement, "the world is sufficient. The world is sufficient."

I'd never thought much about religion before that, but that experience made me realize that the material world was entire orders of magnitude more beautiful than any of the tawdry religious fantasies people came up with, and it felt unspeakably tragic that anyone would ever reject this, our most incredible universe, for spiritual pipe-dreams. In a way, you might say I felt the lack of god, and it felt like glory.

This is beautiful. Just beautiful. And it very much describes where I am now. It's really no wonder that many of the earliest religions involved the worship of nature, of trees, etc (at least in my understanding - I'm not an expert on early religions).

[TithonusSyndrome]

You know, even though I could "feel god" I was always afraid that I was making those feelings up. Even though I believed that only the sinner's prayer and simple faith was necessary for salvation, I was terrified that maybe I actually didn't have enough faith, or hadn't said the prayer with the right intentions in my heart, etc.

This. There were points in my adolescence where I had the most bleak and unfulfilling existential crisis a first-world kid could have, and all my moderate Catholic parents would say was "well just trust that God will work it all out." What kind of bullshit non-answer was that? I tried and tried and forced myself as hard as I could to feel that presence, to convince myself that powerful faith would be rewarded with works on earth when I had nothing else, and bupkis was all that happened. One delinquent teenager and drug-troubled early adulthood later, I still kind of wish my parents had just been able to at least point me in some other direction when I asked "what's the point?"

[Morilore]

I had something similar to feeling God, I suppose, except it was in essence the exact opposite. I was in a forest one summer, and I looked up at the sunlight shining through the leaves, and suddenly it felt like I could see each and every individual leaf in the forest and trace the path of each photon that poured through them, and I remember thinking over and over, in stunned amazement, "the world is sufficient. The world is sufficient."

I'd never thought much about religion before that, but that experience made me realize that the material world was entire orders of magnitude more beautiful than any of the tawdry religious fantasies people came up with, and it felt unspeakably tragic that anyone would ever reject this, our most incredible universe, for spiritual pipe-dreams. In a way, you might say I felt the lack of god, and it felt like glory.

(Cannot help but me-too) this is an excellent illustration of the way I feel as well. All of man's ideas about God and Heaven and transcendence are small and bland and anemic compared to what actually exists in the world outside of our imaginations. Religious people and other spiritual people have it precisely backwards; they think they're "getting outside the box" of our material reality with their beliefs, but what they're really doing is hiding inside the box in their own head. There is nothing, nothing, nothing whatsoever that a priest or a prophet or a pastor could come up with that is more amazing than what physical reality can come up with. It reminds me of Carl Sagan's quote:

In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed"? Instead they say, "No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way."

You know, even though I could "feel god" I was always afraid that I was making those feelings up. Even though I believed that only the sinner's prayer and simple faith was necessary for salvation, I was terrified that maybe I actually didn't have enough faith, or hadn't said the prayer with the right intentions in my heart, etc.

Heh. My mother was flabbergasted when I told her that during all the time I tried to be a Christian, the only thing that motivated me was what the Sunday School teachers had inculcated in me at a very young age: "If you don't believe in God then you're going to hell." Everything about Christianity for me was an attempt to program myself sufficiently that God wouldn't call me out on not really truly believing when I died; the ironic thing being that that effort itself proves that I didn't "really truly" believe. I was just scared, and I can't help but wonder how many people in this world call themselves Christians simply because they're just scared, and how far such people would go.

[General Brock]

Hmm.

Hrmmmmm.

Hrmm. Hmmm? Hrmmm.


Yes. People can personify and anthropomorphize things, and Creation is no different, (if somewhat more overwhelmingly complex) than trying to coax a car to start when reason knows darn well -30 degrees and a dying battery aren't good odds. Call it an ontological metaphor or whatever. I don't see the utility in denying a potentially useful perspective.

It makes sense to me that one of the most developed parts of the brain, that which governs the ability to communicate and understand, would be applied to non-human phenomenon and abstractions.

That feeling, however, has never been used to validate any particular religion so much as critique it, and oft reject it.

[Ryan Thunder]

For the general feeling of awe and beauty and.. PRESENSE that people speak of here, yes, I can say I've felt it.

If that's the threshold we're going by, then I get it any time I listen to some good music.

[Alyrium Denryle]

This is beautiful. Just beautiful. And it very much describes where I am now. It's really no wonder that many of the earliest religions involved the worship of nature, of trees, etc (at least in my understanding - I'm not an expert on early religions).

Religion is basically the concept of the Sacred, which I cannot help but think is derived from that same sense of cosmic wonder with the universe. Most people personify this as some sort of deity or spirit inhabiting a place or favoring an individual or society and then setting out (remarkably self-serving for those doing the message-receiving) some sort of religious commandments or imparting services in exchange for sacrifice (to give people a greater feeling of control over their world as a coping mechanism). This is a theme common to all religions. In the end though, what they are really trying to do is connect themselves to existence, and give their lives meaning through associatation with something greater than themselves (in addition to trying to keep the smallpox away through prayer).

I make no pretense of the fact that I basically worship nature. I dont sacrifice goats to appease the sun god or anything, but there are many parallels. Niel DeGrasse Tyson I think says this sort of thing the best

The knowledge that the atoms that comprise life on earth - the atoms that make up the human body, are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy elements in their core under extreme temperatures and pressures. These stars- the high mass ones among them- went unstable in their later years- they collapsed and then exploded- scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy- guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and all the fundamental ingredients of life itself. These ingredients become part of gas clouds that condense, collapse, form the next generation of solar systems- stars with orbiting planets. And those planets now have the ingredients for life itself. So that when I look up at the night sky, and I know that yes we are part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the universe is in us.

Not only is the universe in us, but in a very real sense we are the universe. Not in any sort of hubristic way, but we share an indelible continuity with everything else that has ever existed. This becomes especially profound in biology. I will stand listening to frog calls, just to attempt to find out what is breeding so I can do my field work. I will stand transfixed knowing that those same amphibians have been doing that often in that same spot, for millions of years. And when I look at the little toad calling his heart out, I think back to the fact that somewhere in the Devonian we share a common ancestor. That one little amphibian produced eggs and that one of those eggs would lead to the evolution of reptiles and thus to us, and the other eggs would lead to modern amphibian lineages.

I just... dont need to manufacture that connection with the universe. I already have it. The World is Sufficient, as Axiomatic put it.

[General Brock]

Cool.

Although, religion seems to want to institutionalize the concept of the sacred and control the experience and people. Rather than connect, it seems personifying and deifying the experience can become more like a kind of defining and distancing, than recognition and acceptance on its own terms.

Better off not to need religion, it is.

[Buritot]

Well, no. I never did feel "god" or have any religious feelings for that matter.

As for more information on that:
Link to new Scientist article

Overview: James Dow wrote an agent program and included a religion feature. The results are, if non-religious people interact with religious people and expect positive results, religion will spread. This did only work for cases in which "religion" was acceptance of the supernatural and not if "religion" was treated like factual knowledge.

[Dragon Angel]

I've, personally, experienced a LOT of times where I thought I had felt some sort of "God"...but ultimately, I managed to reason them out as just being well-crafted constructs of my mind. With no doubt, I can say that my history as a former Catholic (educated and indoctrinated since infancy!) has caused me, in the past, to mistakenly attribute some of those feelings as either God or Jesus Christ somehow embracing and comforting me...but the mind can play MANY tricks on you when you just aren't thinking straight. And, whether I was a Catholic or if I had worshipped Aphrodite or <insert some such god>, I would probably still reflexively think that <insert some such god> was trying to aid me in some way.

It's strange, actually, thinking about them now...my feelings were more along the lines of some other girl whispering to me "It will all be fine...", whenever I felt really depressed. I didn't understand it at first - this was back during the period when I tried to completely repress my thoughts - but now that I am in the process of completely fixing my life...it starts to make total sense.

[RazorOutlaw]

I've, personally, experienced a LOT of times where I thought I had felt some sort of "God"...but ultimately, I managed to reason them out as just being well-crafted constructs of my mind. With no doubt, I can say that my history as a former Catholic (educated and indoctrinated since infancy!) has caused me, in the past, to mistakenly attribute some of those feelings as either God or Jesus Christ somehow embracing and comforting me...but the mind can play MANY tricks on you when you just aren't thinking straight.

It's funny to look back on my past and recall a lot of similar things happening to me too. I recall forcing myself to imagine that transubstantiation actually occured during Mass, with angels doing a loop-de-loop into the host from heaven to help bless the wafer, while the priest gave his own blessing. I remember that by the time I reached high school I was praying out of habit, not out of any genuine sense that it would work. I also had literally no faith that God would carry me through anything because of the phrase "God helps those who help themselves". If I'm 99^ sure prayer doesn't work, why would I expect God to perform a special miracle just for me?

None of these things, at the time, pointed to me that God didn't exist. He existed becaue he existed but he simply didn't work in an Old Testament way. Stories about divine intervention for other people were always accepted, slowly, because God did exist and those people couldn't be lying. Their stories were fringe evidence for a belief in prayer/God that I didn't expect to have an effect anyway.

[Dragon Angel]

It's funny to look back on my past and recall a lot of similar things happening to me too. I recall forcing myself to imagine that transubstantiation actually occured during Mass, with angels doing a loop-de-loop into the host from heaven to help bless the wafer, while the priest gave his own blessing.

That actually reminds me of something else... Whenever I walked up to receive the Eucharist back then, and ate the wafer from the priest, my mind also somehow "tricked" itself into thinking that I was being warmed by some kind of mysterious force. My dad told me that it was Jesus' spirit coming down to bring comfort to my soul, and that he also felt similar emotions...in reality, it was most likely just a sensation of comfort my brain derived from my Catholic beliefs.

[amd52289]

I guess you could say that I have "felt God" before. I have a biased opinion, going to church ever since I was around 7 years old and now teaching Sunday School occasionally, but taking that into consideration I have felt it before. Not an easy thing to describe though. I think that people have different ways of feeling it. My first time I felt it was when I invited God into my heart. As cheesy as it sounds it is the truth. The best way I can describe it was a refreshing feeling in your heart, like the feeling after you brush your teeth and breathe in.
Besides that I think that it comes over me in a form of relaxation and a sense that everything will be ok, because he has a plan for my life.