• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 541 0

to Smith’s research, 18 percent of Americans reported experiences that could be listed on the pages of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; hearing God talking to them, floating outside their bodies, dying yet remaining conscious, contacting or being contacted by the dead, feeling a supernatural “jolt” and seeing a light (in a tunnel or otherwise), seeing a spirit, having a physical sensation of God. Are all these people crazy? Am I crazy, since I have experienced some of those phenomena myself? A century ago, these people might have been candidates for the asylum, or lobotomy, or both. But in recent decades, studies have found that people who experience mystical states are quite stable. They are better educated than the average American, wealthier, and relatively mature (in their forties and fifties). Psychological testing reveals that they tend to be open to new experiences, have a breadth of interests, and are innovative, tolerant of ambiguity, and creative. True, they are more easily hypnotized and prone toward fantasy. But when you pass a mystic walking down the street, she probably won’t be muttering obscenities. Chances are she’s healthy and smiling. As pollster, author, and priest Andrew Greeley put it, “Mystics are happier. Ecstasy is good for you.” See M. A. Thalbourne, “A Note on the Greeley Measure of Mystical Experience,” International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 14(3): 215-22.

24 He asked that I not use his real name, to protect his reputation.

25 Naturally, William James recognized this phenomenon a century ago. Mystical states, he wrote in The Varieties of Religious Experience, allow the mystic to become one with the Absolute, and be aware of that oneness—a tradition that defied “clime or creed.” “In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, we find the same recurring note, so that there is about mystical utterances an eternal unanimity which ought to make a critic stop and think, and which brings it about that the mystical classics have, as has been said, neither birthday nor native land.” James, Varieties, p. 324.

26 John 14:6.

CHAPTER 3. THE BIOLOGY OF BELIEF

1 Norman Cousins also took massive doses of vitamin C. But his case seemed to demonstrate that positive emotions are good for your health. See his Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979).

2 A study conducted in fifty-two countries found that psychosocial stress accounted for about 40 percent of heart attacks. Salim Yusuf et al., “Effect of Potentially Modifiable Risk Factors Associated with Myocardial Infarction in 52 Countries (The INTERHEART Study): Case-Control Study,” The Lancet 364, no. 9348 (September 11-17, 2004): 937-52.

3 Janice K. Kiecolt-Glaser and her colleagues found that chronic stress altered the immune response to a flu virus vaccine in older adults. They looked at the responses of “caregivers” (who took care of spouses with Alzheimer’s disease for at least three years) and compared them with a control group of less stressed people. In the control group, 70 percent responded to the flu vaccine, contrasted with 35 percent of caregivers. This suggests that stress reduced the number of people who produced the protective antibody to the virus by 50 percent. Janice K. Kiecolt-Glaser et al., “Chronic Stress Alters the Immune Response to Influenza Virus Vaccine in Older Adults,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 93 (1996): 3043-47.

4 J. K. Kiecolt-Glaser and R. Glaser, “Psychoneuroimmunology and Cancer: Fact or Fiction?” European Journal of Cancer 35 (1999): 1603-7.

5 In one study, British researchers followed the cases of 578 women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer. Five years after diagnosis, those women who scored high on an anxiety and depression scale had a significantly increased risk of death. Those scoring high on the helplessness/hopelessness scale had a higher risk of relapse and death. M. Watson et al., “Influence of Psychological Response on Survival