These Two Factors Are Linked To The Experience Of Otherworldly Phenomena Across Cultures And Religions

By Emily Reynolds Hearing voices is often associated with mental illness. But this belief doesn’t always reflect reality, with much research suggesting that many people who hear voices experience no distress and have never had contact with psychiatric services. Religious hearing of voices also has a tradition outside of what we might consider “pathological”: St. Augustine’s recognition of the voice of God, to use one very famous example. Why do some of us hear otherworldly voices, while others don’t? According to Stanford University’s Tanya Marie Luhrmann and team, it could be related to two factors: “absorption” and “porosity”, both of which concern our beliefs and experiences about how the mind interacts with the world. In a study in PNAS that spanned a range of faiths and cultures, the team examined exactly how porosity and absorption can facilitate different kinds of spiritual experience. “Porosity” refers to the view that the boundary between the mind and the world is permeable — that emotions “linger in a room”, or that some people can read minds. Porous views tend to be contrasted with the more secular idea that the mind is a discrete space, separate from the world. “Absorption”, on the other hand, is the tendency to be engrossed in sensory or imagined events — being able to “lose yourself” in music, films, or nature, for example. The researchers looked at h...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Cross-cultural Personality Religion Source Type: blogs