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