turner (03/01/83)
#N:ucbesvax:12300001:000:1790
ucbesvax!turner Feb 27 17:25:00 1983
Ray,
Missing from your account is corroboration from independent
witnesses. Did anyone around you report the same observation and
sensations? You certainly weren't there alone.
Let me point out that I am not religious either. I have also had
the experience you mentioned, but as I recall, it was my MOTHER talking,
and not a minister. I had this way of appearing attentive to her, while
thinking entirely irrelevant things. One day, while I was "listening"
to her, I found that I couldn't for the life of me figure out what she was
saying -- by which I mean not simply her SUBJECT, but what words she was
saying. It sounded like total gibberish. This went on for about 15
seconds, roughly, before she caught me gaping. It was rather bizarre.
Frightening, even.
As it turned out, she was giving me detailed instructions for something
or other, and was rather irked that I needed to be told all over again.
Mechanisms of attention are complicated. To comprehend what someone
is saying is a multi-level process, at the bottom of which there is
simple word-recognition. Even this low-level mechanism is subject to
odd failures and even some kind of control. I respectfully suggest
(in the absence of corroborative reports) that something of this
kind may have occurred. No doubt, in breaking with the church, you
went through a period where you had to break your attention away from
the services which you did not really want to attend. If you were
a little drowsy, you might have dislocated the lowest level of
attention from the service, while suddenly re-engaging every other
level as you struggled to regain focus.
Reductionistically But Attentatively Yours,
Michael Turner