The Evangelical Universalist Forum

JRP interviews Joe Hinman on THE TRACE OF GOD

I’m sure lots of people here will be particularly interested in that part. :wink:

(That isn’t a question for Joe, just highlighting something for members in passing. :slight_smile: )

I can definitely relate Jason. Christ said to trust in God but trust in Him also. So, when my faith is in Christ I trust in the Father. This is what I believe Jesus did. He said, “Not My will but Yours be done” It was by the joy set before Him that He endured the cross. When I stop trying to figure it out with reason and let go faith arises and I come into a faith union with Christ. It’s a love union like a marriage. Sometimes it’s more intense than other times. But when my future is secure and the past is gone then I’m free to live in the NOW. It’s in this present moment that I experience this wonder and joy when I enter into the “Beautiful”. It stirs a sense of longing. It’s like I just know that there is a God of love. Either/or becomes both/and. Saints and sinners unite. This where it’s no longer us and them but we can love the enemy. Now, keep in mind that if it’s both/and then it has to be BOTH either/or AND both/and. It’s unity and division. This is what I see in the Trinity. Three separate persons and one God.

Joe: The M scale or “mysticism scale,” invented by Ralph Hood Jr. professor of psychology at U.Tenn. Chattanooga, is a means of establishing a control mechanism so we know what is and what is not a mystical experience. For example in his book on brain chemistry and religious experience John Hick talked about these researchers that claimed they have manufactured religious experience in the laboratory. Thus it’s just a product of brain chemistry. but they didn’t’ establish how to tell what is and what is not a mystical experience. So researcher said his respondent dreamed she was having sex with Jesus so that’s a mystical experience. Is it? So the M scale is a means of determining.

There are other such scales that were made. The problem is old and Maslow made his own scale to control for other kinds of experience. But Hood’s scale is the most validated. That means it has the most corroboration form other studies. He made other language versions of it and administered it to people around the world in various coteries and got the same answers. So people all over the world in many different faiths are having experiences that they all understand as experiences of God, they are same kinds of experiences. They score the same on the M scale. That’s how they determine they have the same kinds of experiences, because the point is scale designed to reflect certain kinds of experiences.

Remember in the last question I spoke a guy named W.T. Stace? He was philosopher from England. He wrote in the 40s and 50s. He took all of the writings of the great mystics and distilled from those what he thought would be the profile so to speak of mystical experience. That became the basis for Hood’s scale. Hood did his scale to valuate Stace’s theory and so validating it created a means of establishing a control for comparing religious experiences to non religious experiences. He’s assuming that a religious experience conforms to Stace’s theory.

How does he know Stace got it right? That’s the importance of applying it to people around the world. They did it in Sweden, UK, India, Iran, Japan and U.S.A. They have the same kind of break down. People who say they had experiences of God and their lives are made better by it also describe, via the way they answer the questions, the kinds of things that Stace’s theory predicts they would experience.

Now later Hood did another one where he took out the names and the doctrines and had a sort of neutral version. So you are not asking “did you experience Jesus” but “did you experience a supreme being?” He also did one where uses the names appropriate to the tradition, “did you experience Buddha?” The experiences are the same. The names change with reference to the tradition, and the explanations of the meaning changes with reference to the tradition, but the thing experienced (undifferentiated unity, presence of love, whatever) are the same the world over.

The whole body of studies that I use are not all using the M scale. It began in the 70s but didn’t catch on until the 90s. It’s now the standard method of determining a mystical experience in psychology of religion. There have been other scales and they are not far off from the content of the M scale, or from the outcome. But the M scale has the best validation, and has been applied in a more diverse set of countries and so on. It’s hailed as the best. Two other scales that are widely used are by Greely (1974) and another by Alexander and Boyer (1982). In terms of the whole body of research for the 50 year period back to the 60s, there’s general agreement along the same lines. But the M scale really nails it.

A lot of atheists have argued “how do you know they are not lying?” Since this is like a survey you asked questions and rate them on a scale according to their answers. These atheists imagine these peasants in Iran are asked to do this and they going to say “Let’s lie to them, ok we’ll do it in such a way as to validate Stace.” Well, they would never have heard of Stace, they would not know anything about what they are supposed to be validating. Had it not validated Stace one might be able to argue they did lie, but then no one would care. But the 32 items on the test are complex, to get them all exactly the way you must in order to validate, would require a complex understanding of Stace’s theory. I think you would be hard pressed to find even American College students who have heard of Stace. Even philosophy majors might not have heard of him. He’s not exactly a household name. The idea that peasants in Iran, Japan and India will know enough to fraudulently validate the claim is silly. The idea that it happen by coincidence is just out of the question. It’s 32 items. So several hundred peasants in 3 different countries are going to accidentally get 32 items a certain way to validate this guy’s theory? Pretty safe to assume not.

That means we can study mystical experiences scientifically. We can’t study the actual nature of the experience in people’s heads but we can study the effects of having the experience. Now we have a means of saying what is and what is not the experience.

I like that. Never realized it but I have that experience with time too. It’s like now and eternity are qued to each other. Past and future are irrelevant.

Hey Joe, thanks for coming on. I’ve not read much on or from mystics, though I’ve had a couple mystical experiences, including a major one that brought me into the understanding of Universalism. I did not believe that any of that stuff was for our time prior to that day a few years ago. I certainly do now :slight_smile:

Hey Joe!

Yes, I have experienced it after doing yoga. I also experience it when I have faith that my future is in the hands of an infinitely wise, all loving, holy God. When my future is secure I have hope. I no longer fear the future or death. The past is over and gone and forgiven. So, I can live in the present without anxiety or frustration.

Yay for Tennessee scholars! :mrgreen:

A set of further questions:

1.) In administering such tests, is data biased to be from people already nominally religious (e.g. only that kind of data is collected), or have atheists, agnostics etc. also been included in polling techniques? If not, why not; if so, are there any expected or unexpected correlations or discorrelations? For example I might expect atheists and agnostics to also have such experiences, but some atheists and other theists might not expect atheists to have such experiences. Obviously there’s a question of willingness to report in any case, but can you give us an idea of results or restrictions to the methodologies?

(Ultimately I realize the answer would be read-and-find-out. :wink: But if you can think of a promotional answer, that’s okay.)

2.) If members were interested, would there be any sense in you providing an example of such testing here on the forum? I put it that way because I realize there might be control issues or other factors which preclude even making the attempt, but if possible I’d like to give readers an idea of what it’s like to take such a test. (I keep wanting to say “the” test, but part of the point of your book is that there’s a surprisingly large body of research through multiple related tests.)

I do have other questions if #2 doesn’t work out, don’t worry. :ugeek:

Note to members: while I’ve done what I can to make the interview visible on the forum, it is after all tucked away here in the Books category; so if anyone reading the thread wants to ping or pm other members you think would be interested, go ahead! I have a couple of people already in mind myself… [tag]Sobornost[/tag] and [tag]johnnyparker[/tag] for example.

I do find this fascinating. It also imo resonates with Hick’s An Interpretation of Religion, a book I like very much. His theory, that the experience with the Real is an experience shaped by culture and belief, leads to his form of pluralism, which gets a little sticky, for me, when the fact of competing truth-claims is brought up.
I have a copy also of William Alston’s Perceiving God, which I have started a couple of times but not finished.
I’ll be very interested in following your presentation, Joe.

Also Joe,

I wanted to tell you that now that I have learned better in how to let go and have faith and live in the NOW I no longer take medication for being bipolar. I’ve been off of it for a little over a month now and I’m focused and doing better than I ever have. No major anxieties or worries. :smiley:

Incidentally, Kristen Rosser presents a far more personal review of the book at her weblog here: krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2014/05 … od-by.html

Hey Jason!

I would agree with a lot of that. Bill Wilson from A.A. explains his experience of God that transformed his life in the Big Book of A.A. Such ecstatic experiences happen when someone is real depressed and insecure. When the insecurity is suddenly released it produces an ecstatic experience or mountaintop experience. This is what has happened to me on many occasions. It’s a dark night of the soul that you go through with a confusion of the mind. As Bill Wilson has stated, for most people the change comes gradually and therefore they aren’t aware of it on such an intense level. The psychological change for some people is like a roller coaster. For some it’s instantaneous for others more gradual. Bill Wilson was also a big fan of William James’ - Varieties Of Religious Experiences.

I’m pretty unfamiliar with the term mystical experience or exactly what it means so sorry if this question shows I am completely misunderstanding what you are writing about and just let me know if it is totally off base. . .

How are these mystical experiences different from enlightening moments people have on LSD? I’m specifically thinking about when LSD has been used in conjunction with therapy in a controlled environment. It sounds like the experience and results are very similar.

Hey, BPW! (That’s Baptist Preacher’s Wife, Joe.)

Joe has already kind of answered this a little above, but when he gets around to talking in more detail about the M-scale (per my question, plus some planned followups) you should have a good beginning to that answer.

Joe suffers from a chronic leg infection, which is acting up more than usual right now (my bet would be due to the stress/excitement of the book being published), so he’s having to go to the doctor every day for treatment. This is likely to delay his side of the interview somewhat.

Atheists have mystical experiences. They don’t have them as much, because such experiences do tend to lead unbeliever who have them to God. My own case was not mystical per se [editor note: by criteria like the M-scale which Joe will talk about soon], but the sense of numinous was clearly involved in the conversion part. The surprising thing is when atheists have them the experiences are the same. They work just like the other religious people (I say “other” on purpose) in that atheists explain it with their own doctrine and put the name from their own tradition it (no name, or “void.”) They do have the same experience and they respond to it in the same way.

It is as though the constructs we use to understand things are the lens and the thing the lens focuses upon is colored by the lens. Atheists are doing that no less than the religious types.

ha! if you said that you would have no interviews.

Problem is I never learned to score it. I didn’t need to all I did was report Hood’s findings. I didn’t administer it myself. I’ve looked at the question I feel I would score high on it, but I didn’t score for myself. I’m just writing the book not applying for a job as a mystic.

ha! I always know i can count on Jason to come up with more questions!

Good question. There is a huge body of literature (a sub field) that deals with drugs and religious experiences. I’ll give you a link to such a site later.

I don’t advocate drugs of any kind. I did them before I was a Christian. That’s part of my conversion story. The sense of God’s presence when I prayed took away my desire for drug high. I just said 'what do I need this stuff for, I can feel God’s presence, that’s much more than just a high and they can’t bust me for praying."

Having said that here’s a link to a site, the Council on Spiritual Practices. They are pshrinks who deal with religious experience. On that sight you can read much about both mystical experience and drugs and religious experience.

csp.org/experience/docs/unitive_consciousness.html

William James theorized that there is a continuum from very mild experiences that are really little more than just “insightful moments” all the way up to Moses on the mountain top or whatever. There’s a continuing range in between. Most of the experiences that are strong enough to warrant notice and produce conversions are sort of in the middle range. I did know a guy whose conversion experiences amounted to shedding a tear in church. That was what from the outside, there was more going on in his heart.

There’s more to these experiences than that, or they would not be worth talking about. The review by Wordgazer of my book shows her experience. She talks about her mystical experience.

krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2014/05/book-recommendation-trace-of-god-by.html

[Editor’s note: that’s the introduction to Kristen’s review, not the full review itself. The rest can be read at the link.]

Both of those guys are among my favorites. I read different books in researching for my book, but by the same same authors. Hick had been a favorite of mine since way back in the 70s (undergraduate days). He figured prominently in my early conversion. I was looking for intellectual Christians, since I was an undergraduate who fancied himself a big intellectual. I first found him in the ‘arguments for God’ articles in philosophy anthologies.

Alston is great. I see him as a bigger name and bigger thinker than Hick, but that’s saying something because I see Hick as great. I discovered Alston in Seminary. It was William Abraham who put me on to him. I read a book about epistemology and religious experience by him for the book I wrote. I can’t think of the title off hand.

A bit more about drugs and religious experiences. Many atheists argue that this is proof that religious experience is just a matter of brain chemistry. They point to the Good Friday Experiment by a guy named Walter N. Pahnke. He gave psilocybin to the experimental group and the control group just went to church. The experiential group had way more mystical experiences than did the other group.

The problem is his data was contaminated. Everyone in his sample had mystical experiences a child. That opens the door to the possibility that they were just being refreshed in memory rather than having new experiences created by the drugs. There are a lot of differences in drug induced and “natural” mystical experiences. That leads Hood (the M scale guy) make the argument about “receptors.” He uses that answer against all the arguments that Mystical experience is just induced by brain chemistry. The answer is that the drugs open the receptors that God created us with so we can sense his presence. So it’s just triggering the experience not creating the experience.

Other differences include time duration, drug induced lasts a lot longer. The quality is different. With my experience my actual prayer life included feelings of love for God and God’s love for me. A pot smoking high did not.

I talk about all of this in the book. I even go into detail on the Good Friday follow up study. Chapter seven is about drugs and placebos.

Hey Joe!

I know exactly what the lady is talking about. I struggled with intense shame and fear most of my life. I went to a Dr. Phil seminar back before he was popular. We played this game where we had to dress up and sing what was called our “stretch song”. Well they made us do it until we did it right. My song was “Walking On Air”. When I finally let go of all the intense shame and fear and started dancing I became focused in on the moment. The whole place went up in an uproar. After the song was over everybody came out and lifted me up in the air and they played the song “Hero”. When we were through I went outside by the pool and laid down in a chair. Running up the side of the building were the most beautiful lights I have ever seen. The wind was gently blowing across the water making tinny waves. The peace and joy was intense. God just seemed real to me. I was looking people in the eye and communicated better than I ever had. That night when I went to bed and I woke up the next morning the intense fear and shame were back.

Really what the Holy Spirit is - is love, joy, peace. It’s having hope and loosing your fears of living in the moment. It’s an experience you have when your ego deflates and you become more humble and filled with a childlike wonder.

Joe,

Well instead of guest-scoring (so to speak), could you give readers an idea of the questions (generally and particularly) which are asked for evaluating the M-scale, and how those questions are important?

I think doing so will help address questions of how various scientists are testing for any distinctions between mere chemical reactions and something more than chemical reactions, as well as opening up a way to discuss how results from such tests can be used as the co-determinate evidence you were talking about earlier.

You might also thus open up a line of discussion on why you don’t recommend using the content of the experiences to build doctrinal sets, and/or how the results of the experience point toward something other than an omnidirectional moral mush (which obliterates the idea of good or leads to the idea that Satan and God are equal or are equal aspects of the same yin-yang or whatever).