Actually, what Samantha describes is what is known as a hypnogogic trance, the
same sort of phenomenon that is now thought to trigger sleepwalking, OOB
experiences, and alien abduction experiences (which used to be thought of as
visitations from the eldritch fairies). It has more, I think, to do with
narcolepsy than epilepsy (having had two rather odd experiences myself once, and
being a known narcoleptic from excessive caffiene use (its an odd allergy, that
only comes up when I am taking about a half a pack a day of no-doze).
Spudboy100@aol.com wrote:
>
> Not to get holy-roller on anyone here, but I agree with Samatha's conjecture
> that if there is no God, then there is certainly room for one in a Universe
> that includes suffering. What Samantha gets when she "recieves a lift" from
> reading certain religious tracts is one of the religious experiences
> described by 19th century psychologist Willam James. Having a God module is
> good if it connects one up with a sense of a better ethical system. If it
> leads only to the Inquisition torture chamber, then it's a bad bet. So I am
> talking 'outcomes' here.
>
> Ultimately, it may turn out that some advanced primate species (humans) once
> had a God module as part of their brain, and it helped them develop computers
> that colonized the cosmos, which in the end leads to an ultimate Mind (God)
> which fixed things that needed fixing (since it has ultimate computing power)
> and help resurrect people such as Samantha! This is more inspired from a
> reading of Julian Barbour (The End of Time) as well as Tipler and Barrow's
> Final Anthropic Principle. Talk amongst yourselves, i'm getting ver-klempt!
> (sob!)
> -Mitch
>
> In a message dated 9/16/00 2:15:24 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
> samantha@objectent.com writes:
>
> << But when the God module kicks in things happen similar to stuff in the
> mystical literature. I don't levitate or anything really wild like that
> but it feels as if my being is lifted up and sometimes turned inside out
> and that I am within or in communion with or at least sense deeply this
> much larger Presence, Power, whatever you want to call it. The "me"
> disappears mostly or melts into whatever this is or gets recast
> somehow. The emotions soar into the heavens. It goes beyond anything
> I can put into words pretty rapidly. Often it will include what seems
> like a tremendous amount of information and intensionality and directed
> energy sweeping through me. I have guesses (ranging from faulty mental
> wiring to too much religous upbringing to substances sampled in my
> youth to Vingean powers looking for agents to ???) but no real
> explanation for it. It just is - now and then. Thankfully rare enough
> it doesn't totally sweep me away. It came close when I used to meditate
> more. Whatever it is meditation intensified it quite a bit. So I
> stopped doing that because shadows of whatever this is became too strong
> to allow me to concentrate on my work easily.
>
>
> - samantha >>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:38:23 MDT