Suffering through a religious experience

In intense suffering, some people (at least sometimes) feel closer to God. Why? Either it's an elaborate coping mechanism and then, why not? You've got to do what you've got to do to get through horrendous experiences. Or, it really is something different—an experience of the divine—god, gods, whatever we may call it.

Let's try an explanation that unifies both. Maybe it is because in moments like these, we realize how fragile we are. Every breath we take, our caloric intake, our social position, all depends on the world around us. The German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher called this a feeling of absolute dependence on God, or God-consciousness. In our moments of greatest dependence, when we realize that we do not stand independently in this world, we realize we depend on something greater than us. In 1830 (Christian Faith) Schleiermacher equated this something-greater with God (note Schleiermacher did explore pantheistic and panentheistic views by Spinoza and others in earlier writings; I wrote about Schleiermacher and God-consciousness in this paper).

At the risk that people will conclude this Substack has jumped the shark I will brutally honestly relate to you a religious experience I had recently, during my cancer journey (the outcome highly uncertain, see here for earlier installment). If only because I don't know what to make of it, the memory (about two weeks ago) will surely fade, and in the future I might well downplay that this ever happened.

At the end of March I had a first surgery which removed some infected lymph nodes (infected as interpreted on the PET scan). In addition, the physician also biopsied some distant lymph nodes in the pelvis. If these were positive, we would need to think carefully how to approach the rest of my illness, as this sort of spread is very hard to control, and we might need to think of my life span in months, not years. The surgery done, I was sent home same day, waiting for results that would come out in a week. The PET scan was ambiguous. So the physician did not know how far it had spread.

How I was in agony. I was in bed, recovering from the surgery, waiting for the results. I negotiated, I prayed, I fell into a pit of despair, what I call to myself the death spiral (which goes something like, “OMG I don't want to die”). Then, a calm voice seemed to come out of nowhere: Do not worry, you will be fine.

I will be fine? I asked. How can you say that? How do I even know you are real?

You will be fine, the voice said.

Here is relevant that I usually do not have inner monologue. I discovered just a few years ago when there was interest in aphantasia and related phenomena that many people really have a kind of internal commentary running. I thought this was a literary device, because I almost never do. I can't imagine how busy it must be in the minds of neurotypical people. I sometimes have some inner voice when trying to compose writing, but even then, the inside of my head is usually devoid of language, but rather filled with non-linguistic concepts and images. When I do hear a voice, like then, I don't experience it as mine. So this probably is relevant in religious experiences I have had.

Okay, if you do not trust me, I will give you some evidence to prove it, the voice said. My phone gave a signal at that moment. I looked at it and it was MyChart, the electronic messaging system the hospital uses. The biopsy test results for the pelvic lymph nodes had come out early: all negative. What a relief. I now have at least a fighting chance. It's still not as optimistic as I would hope, but I do have a chance. I tried to process all of this.

The next few days, I felt at times this warm sense of presence—a feeling of being cherished and loved. But I also was in significant pain I could barely control with painkillers (the pain was not from surgery but the main tumor, which is now thank goodness also removed).

Overall, a very odd experience. I'm writing it down now because I think, if I still have years to look back on, I would not believe it anymore that I did experience this. It felt like a tremendous reassurance that's hard to put into words: even if I did not make it, my life has still been good and worthwhile. Not because I wrote enough books or anything like that, but because I am just me. That is a very beautiful feeling to carry along, and I'm hoping to share it with you that you too might experience, in a second-personal sense, that we are all intrinsically valuable like this. Let's not let our sense of self-worth depend on our achievements or our social position.

I'm a naturalist (in the Quinean sense, by which I mean that philosophy is continuous with science, that we should look for help from the sciences to elucidate and help our philosophical thinking) and I've worked a lot on physical, natural explanations of religious belief and on religious experience too (for instance, here).

So I'm well aware: I was in significant pain and mental anguish about test results, and my brain tried to cope in whatever way it could to reduce the uncertainty. But then, the results were out in only two days though they were expected a week from then, and they appeared right after I got the reassurance of some proof or evidence that things would be better than the worst-case scenario.

So, I'm going to chalk it up as a miracle. Not in the sense that this breaks any laws of nature, but in Paul Tillich's sense. For Tillich, a miracle is an astonishing, shaking event that points to the mystery of being, but that doesn't contradict the rational structure of reality.

Still, I'm going to be honest. I do not trust the voice. It is helping me to cope, even though I worry that is all it is (a coping mechanism). I'm not a person of great faith, and I do wonder why I have religious experiences given that I am not a person of great faith. I'm not even affiliated to any religion at all any more—a decision I do not regret. I can't make sense of it. I just don't know what to make of all of this.