Visions & other gifts
Callahan, Sidney
~ hat are we to make of modem religious visions and intense experiences--mine, yours, Mother Angelica's? Such episodes produce conflicts for me as an intellectual Christian believer...
...On the surface, the Paycheck Protection Act has an obvious appeal...
...What is the meaning of a particular religious experience and by what criteria do we judge it...
...Hypnotic-trance behaviors and altered states of consciousness are part of the human repertoire and are found in many cultures...
...Stimuli, cues, and responses operate to shape both our internal and external behavior...
...My outlook for the future was not great (you'll be an invalid for life), but in the next year's x-ray the grit had not spread and I'd taken up tennis and a regime of exercises...
...Corporate America counterattacked with so-called "Right-to-Work" Commonweal 8 May8,1998...
...For Republicans, Proposition 226 is more than a vehicle to undercut union influence...
...Labor will focus most of its political energies on defeating Proposition 226, dubbed by proponents the "Paycheck Protection Act," enactment of which would require that unions gain yearly permission from their members to spend members' dues in political campaigns...
...Even more puzzling was a visionary encounter with Mary who in a midlife health crisis calmed my desparate prayers by telling me that my lung disease (potentially fatal) was going to be all right...
...I've thought of the vision thing as a minimiracle, a post-traumatic stress reaction, an intuitive read-out in imagery of the basically healthy state of my organism-or some combination of the above...
...but no, the ominous dark spots were still all over my lungs...
...Not since 1958 has labor's institutional strength come under such a direct attack...
...When I read that the disciples on the road to Emmaus recalled that their "hearts burned within them," I recognize the condition...
...Human beings can construct mental narratives that with the passage of time seem real...
...Two great assaults upon the integrity of religious experience confront the skeptical inquirer...
...Since then, political contributions to state AFL-CIO unions have declined by 40 percent, and in 1994, conservatives took control of the state legislature...
...Sound is all around us in the air but all radio antennae are not equally, or as accurately, tuned...
...Thus, Proposition 226 is aimed at the heart of the progressive coalition...
...Prudential judgments are required in the psychiatric practice of differential diagnosis, just as they are in the traditional practice of discernment of spirits...
...These moments took place decades ago in my youth, but I can still remember how intensely intimidating or awe-inspiring these perceptions were...
...Much to the chagrin of the police, people under interrogation confess to crimes they did not commit, and sometimes continue to believe their own made-up stories...
...As a Christian and psychologist, however, I want to know more...
...The newest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, published by the American Psychiatric Association, distinguishes betweeen mental disorders and manifestations of religious and spiritual problems (what some have called "spiritual emergencies...
...So why couldn't all these tricks of the mind and emotions apply to my religious experiences...
...Scientific psychology requires rigor, doubt, and a skeptical, testing attitude...
...the other is that our nonconscious mental processes create experiential phenomena that fulfill our wishes or needs...
...Human thoughts and verbal behavior can be conditioned...
...So far so good...
...Kelly Candaele & Peter Dreier UNION DESTRUCTION ACT California's Proposition 226 ~ emember 1958...
...So when you or I or mystics or little ladies in Bayside have visions of Mary or religious consolations, we are doing what comes naturally...
...But at the same time this world and the people in it live and move and have their being in God...
...Labor mobilized members in an unprecedented grassroots effort and helped restore thin Democratic majorities in both houses...
...The next day when I went for a second lung x-ray I expected to be cured...
...It would not require corporations to get shareholders' permission before making corporate campaign contributions or lobbying for specific bills--business interests already outspend labor by ten to one in state races, not including corporate-dominated "soft" money--but it would make it nearly impossible for unions to raise substantial funds for political purposes such as TV ads, direct mail, and get-out-the-vote efforts...
...If consolations (or visions) help you to be more loving and just, much less heal your disease, then be grateful to accept the lift from the rising tide...
...I am always shaken by evidence that shows how much a human organism can be conditioned, with or without awareness...
...I end up trusting my religious experiences because they have buoyed me up and helped me to love and endure...
...Mary did not seem to be as physically present to me as another human person in the room, but I beheld her image and felt the comfort of her message...
...More disturbing, however, have been several experiences of Jesus' actual presence while in private prayer...
...after all, cults and brainwashing programs have always operated on these principles...
...Then, too, unusual emotional states are not so rare...
...Ah well, I thought, I must have been hallucinating, and tried to gather courage to undergo a surgical lung biopsy that might mean death at the age of forty...
...A spontaneous remission of a stressrelated parasitical infection...
...The spiritual traditon insists that "by their fruits you shall know them...
...Many observers (including me) think neardeath experiences are images produced in response to the brain's loss of oxygen coupled with cultural beliefs about heaven...
...While intensely praying at Mass I often cry (surreptiously pretending to have a cold) and feel waves of joy, love, and peace well up...
...Since I am now sixty-five I obviously didn't die...
...While I didn't have cancer my physicians and their consultants could never figure out what the mysterious "grit" all over my lungs could be...
...Why shouldn't members be able to decide whether unions can use their dues for political purposes...
...other static is a sign that the vacuum tube is burning out...
...Spirit possessions of various kinds show up among normally functioning folk, and hallucinations do not always signal psychotic breakdowns...
...The fruit of will and exercise...
...That's the rallying cry of organized labor in California as it approaches a June 2 primary election that could determine the union movement's political future, not only in California but elsewhere...
...One reductive explanation is that human beings have been behaviorally conditioned to believe...
...The universe as we know it must be completely natural and completely God-saturated at the same time...
...They view Proposition 226 as a linchpin of their long-term strategy, for without labor's political influence, Democrats will be hard-pressed to maintain their control of the California legislature, or elect a Democrat governor this fall...
...In 1992, a similar measure restricting unions passed in Washington state...
...For the national GOP, orchestrating the redistricting of California's likely fifty-five congressional seats is a prerequisite to controlling the House...
...As I struggle to understand these things, I try to obtain some coherence in my belief system...
...Internal assent to Maoist dogma increases if your inquisitors take away a painful punishment and thereby reward you each time you agree with them...
...To get down to specifics, I'll take my own case...
...Surely, too, those "consolations," and "the gift of tears" that Saint Ignatius writes about, must be similar sensations...
...Our only problem is to discern the quality of these normally occurring experiences of what William James called the "More...
...Better to hunker down and plod on in hope...
...Only secularized modern types achieve religious tone-deafness and thereby manage to confine their intense experiences to sex, violence, art, or creative work...
...The reality is that the typical union member contributes about $20 a year that goes for political purposes...
...Human beings seem to be able to recreate dream states while awake--given enough stress, arousal, or emotional fervor...
...That amount offers an individual little in the way of political influence, but wielded collectively, these funds make organized labor a significant player in politics...
...Some signals are mixed, or merely chaotic noise...
...When the brain/mind is chemically overdosed or deprived, or injured or diseased, other visions can appear...
...I can intellectually comprehend that intense emotional arousal and imagery will produce bodily symptoms...
...Such episodes produce conflicts for me as an intellectual Christian believer and devotee of scientific psychology...
...But if the tide begins to ebb and we grow numb and cold, let's not blame God...
...Our autonomic nervous system, and maybe even the immune system, can be affected by subtle forms of reward and punishment...
...Two years ago, the state's unions played a key role in California's legistlative races...
...Did I really see Mary...
...Furthermore, whatever party has control of California politics will oversee the next congressional reapportionment following the 2000 census...
...Then, surprise, surprise, the following year's x-ray revealed my lungs to be amazingly clear of whatever the infection had been...
...God's largesse will eventually bring renewals of youthful joy and more than a glimpse of heaven...
...To me it looks virtually certain that God has created a freely operating natural world of independent secondary causes open to rigorous scientific inquiry and discovery...
...In mania, probably caused by the brain's biochemical imbalance, persons often experience religious highs and Commonweal ~ May 8, I998 grandiose delusions of special divine revelations...
...This interpenetration of the divine and natural can be realized or sensed by some persons more than others, but religious experience seems intrinsic and natural to the human species--just as language is...
...Ergo, people aren't necessarily lying or psychotic when they claim to remember being abducted by UFOs...
...Do I really experience Christ and the Holy Spirit...
...In the mid-1950s, labor had reached the pinnacle of its size and economic clout nationally, representing over one-third of American workers...
...And what of Mary...
...California's Proposition 226 is a model of hypocrisy...
...Mild depressions and decaying brain synapses are marks of our fallen world...
...In the DSM-IV some religious problems can be diagnosed as overlapping with mental disorders, but the two categories are not the same...
Vol. 125 • May 1998 • No. 9
