--- Mycos <mycos at shaw.ca> wrote:
> But this only highlights the nature of the
> conversion experience. Is
> it based on rational thought or merely a sense of
> profound
> realization about the "rightness and truth" of their
> thoughts?
No, it's not based on rational thought. (What's "rational" mean anyway?)
>
> I myself have had such an experience.
Me too.
But like the
> deja vu
> experience, the mere feeling does not make it true
> *in fact*. The
> mind that can invoke the certainty of deja vu can
> also invoke an
> overwhelming sense of profundity. Many people who
> have experimented
> with powerful hallucinogens can tell you of how
> certain they were
> that they KNEW THE TRUTH, only to have this effect
> vanish and the
> realization dawn on them that the feeling of
> profundity was itself
> the hallucination.
But the sense of deja vu or drug-induced profundity (usually) passes. The conversation experience (usually) is permanent.
>
> So be it for the religious or born again experience.
> Without a drug
> to account for it, I am certain that it would be
> near impossible for
> many individuals to pass it off as merely a curious
> effect of a
> stressed mind.
I think you meant to write "not to pass it off"? No, but they're not trying to convince you (unless they're born-again evangelical types, and I think lots of those guys are frauds actually succumbing to peer pressure). It's real enough to them.
Not all conversion experiences take place under effects of stress. Cf. William James again.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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