Atheism & ESP
“Can an atheist be psychic?”
Mark, an evangelical youth minister, asked me this question last weekend at the coffee house. The wi-fi cafe where I go to write in the afternoons and on weekends is the favorite mobile office for a lot of ministers in the community where I live. You might assume I would prefer to be surrounded by a flock of bright-eyed New Agers, but not only is an environment like that unlikely to exist in Chattanooga, it wouldn’t necessarily appeal to me.
I am comforted by diversity. There are a few Buddhist monks here and there, plenty of college students and professors and even a few technopagans (usually in the evenings), but the overwhelming number of “regulars” whose work weeks most resemble my own are Christian preachers. We each have “our” (preferred) table or couch — our spots where we play modern scribes on laptops, week after week… I can’t say that they see the resemblance between our roles as much as I do — but they behave as if it’s true, and actions are what counts.
If the cafe were filled with mystics who wanted to chat, I’d never get anything accomplished. And, besides, I see the distances and the differences as a promising vision of an interfaith future; where we respect each other as people first, regardless of our vocabularies.
Even though Mark is Pentecostal, he experiences a high-level of clairaudience that is more similar to my own than anyone I’ve ever met. He’s even “confessed” his ability to me, to ensure more understanding between us. Just like anyone I meet on my path, my goal as a minister is always to communicate permission for you to believe what you will, and encouragement for you to create the world you want to live in. I politely refuse to argue theology, politics, or define Source with anyone — last time I allowed myself to engage in that conversation, I almost lost Mark — he asked me by whose Authority my abilities are endowed, and I succinctly responded “Mine.”
“Now don’t fret,” I quickly appended the statement when I saw the light in his eyes go dim, and I picked up the silent keyword heresy, “You already know the Source resembles your own in a way that words and definitions only confuse. Repeat your Question, ask my Source directly this time, and not me…”
I mentally stood back, stood down from the protection I normally project, and received his quick, shy, telepathic probe. It was interesting to note that he went straight for my guides and they answered him directly. Mark looked flushed and slightly embarrassed, but the pinched eyebrows relaxed, and his face softened with a kind of child-like smile. He suddenly looked hopeful and happy, like he’d just heard something wonderful and clever. Guess he found the Authority he needed in there, the one my personal labels could not have affirmed for him.
Now, reassured, Mark respects me and trusts me enough to still ask me brilliant, challenging questions once in awhile — but not to challenge me; more to share with me the ways in which he feels challenged.
So, back to last Saturday, when Mark turned around in his chair, peeked over my laptop and asked me “Can an atheist be psychic?”
“Absolutely!” I said. “I feel that psychic abilities — extra-sensory perceptive abilities — are independent of any agenda we might attach to them. Look at this way: you can draw a picture on a napkin without being an artist; you can sing in the shower without being a musician; you can talk without being a speaker; you know when something tastes delicious, whether or not you can deconstruct the recipe and whip it up yourself in the kitchen. The mechanics of the senses have no predetermined goal.”
See, only a day prior to this question, I began participating in a university study which profiles psychic abilities, or extra-sensory perception, from a purely clinical, scientific perspective. I have grown so used to attaching my own faith and personal understanding of the supernatural, that I’d actually forgotten that academic ESP literature rarely addresses religion or spirituality at all.
You don’t have just five biological senses, you actually have nine — your psychic faculties exist and are constantly available to you, regardless of any belief system. Your body — certain regions of your body — act as antennae. You receive and process information using your four extra senses much as you do the five you’re most familiar with — you don’t have to believe in anything to be able to see, hear, taste, smell, or feel.
You can interact with, respond to, receive information from, and communicate with your environment — especially with other people or other living things in your environment — regardless of what you believe or don’t believe.
How you process, define, identify who, what, or where the information comes from is another conversation entirely.
You don’t have to see radio waves to use them in your everyday life. You don’t have to believe in electricity to flip switches. You don’t have to understand the way light behaves as both waves and particles to be able to see.
I feel that anyone can strengthen their psychic senses. You are psychic; you use these senses all the time. You don’t have to sit down and pray once a week to be able to smell. You don’t have to remember to hear when you wake up in the morning.
Now, who it is you may be hearing… That’s another story. (Or most of the stories on this blog.)
Can you think of an example of a personal experience that you would call psychic, but not necessarily attached to any religious context? The comments around here lately are truly rocking — please share some more of your thoughts.
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17 Responses to “Atheism & ESP”
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Slade,
How beautiful and well-crafted this post is! My experiences, whether they qualify as “psychic” or not, are all interwined with a conception of the Spirit. If experience and Spirit can be parsed out, I lack the sophistication to separate them. As for religion, it relates to none of my experieces because I’m not religious in the sense your question seems to imply. Tell me if I’m missing your mark . . . this is too simple an answer maybe, but it’s the best I’ve got right now
I agree with your point that anyone, regardless of beliefs or lack thereof, can exercise their perceptions beyond the conventionally named senses. I don’t even have to “believe” that this is true, because I understand that people of all faiths and beliefs, in fact, do. Some exercise them more acutely, or on purpose. Others aren’t totally aware they have them.
What I love most about this post is the dialog you describe, “where we respect each other as people first, regardless of our vocabularies”. That is truly inspiring - someting to continually strive for and nourish where we find it.
-Sarah
Slade,
Since you asked, last friday morning I got a distinct feeling that I was going to have a traffic spike (without me having done anything to logically expect it). That day I had the second most pageviews ever. However, I heard once that blogging was supposedly spiritual, so it probably doesn’t count
Lately, examples of ESP have been showing up in my life at very high frecuencies, (seemingly) related to the most trivial matters, but always involving interaction with other people.
Sarah,
Maybe an example would help clarify what I’m pointing at:
I experience “telepathy” on a regular basis, with some people more than others — when I send or receive non-verbal communication from another person, it’s definitely “extra-sensory” or “psychic,” and it’s usually pretty obvious who the information is coming from.
Spirit Guides aren’t necessarily involved — it’s an intensely human experience, there’s nothing especially supernatural about it…
Were I an atheist — which, I must admit, I’m not — my belief system or faith (or lack of it) doesn’t impact my ability to communicate with you directly in this manner.
Slade,
Aha! Thank you for that clarification, it did help me understand the kinds of experiences your question refers to. In that case, I’d have to say: “I’m not sure if any of my experiences that do not involve spiritual ritual/meditation are psychic in the first place!”
For instance, I’m very attuned to the emotions of the people around me, and I’m often aware of their feelings and motivations before they are. The only time I’m ever confused about how someone feels is if they are themselves confused. (Cancer rising, go figure)
These traits make me empathetic, but I don’t think they qualify as “empathic” or “extra-sensory”. I see them as a heightened use of the physical senses. Maybe that is the case, or maybe I haven’t learned to differentiate between “heightened senses” and “extra-sensory”, between “empathetic” and “empathic”. What do you think? Do you see a difference, or do you draw/blur the line elsewhere in the continum of experience?
Experiencing the feelings of others doesn’t seem like anything special because I’ve always done it, and it certainly has caused me some trouble in the past. Somehow I think psychic abilities, even independent of a strictly spiritual context like what you describe, are more vivid than just having an extra-sensitive emotional antenna.
-Sarah
Vitor,
I experience intuition surrounding online activity involving my blogs, too.
The more you have those experiences, the more you recognize them and can tune in to them.
You could also “reverse engineer” that experience and apply manifesting techniques: For example, if you want to duplicate that traffic spike, use the emotions associated with that initial feeling, combined with the moment of finding it confirmed when you checked your data.
Ah, Sarah,
The researchers I’ve been working with on the ESP studies this week pointed out that this is a common occurrence — because it feels “normal” to you, and because you can’t imagine feeling otherwise, you dismiss the abilities.
Your empathic abilities are not normal to everyone — this quality is sorely lacking in many people.
Let’s take “feeling” intuition and imagine it as a spectrum — with varying degrees of sympathy, empathy, compassion… I would imagine these fall anywhere in between “normal human emotions” and “extra-sensory perception” — but here’s the point I wanted to make:
Where is the line between “normal sensory perception” and “extra-normal sensory perception”? I would not think there is such a clear line, and I would also assert that all the “extra” stuff is still “normal” to human experience. It may eventually prove to be inherent and entirely biological.
Awesome post Slade - and makes so much ’sense’.
I’ve just committed to a daily meditative practice (see http://www.klmasina.co.nz/2007/09/28/are-you-up-for-the-31-day-challenge/ ) and it is most definitely enhancing my senses - not just the ‘extra’ ones, but also the ‘normal’ ones.
In fact, the increase in my sense of smell is often the most notable after doing regular yoga nidra.
But I’m noticing that I am able to sense information with more intensity and clarity - I just didn’t know ‘how’ I was doing this…
I love too how you point out that one doesn’t need to ‘believe’ in something to be able to use it. Very valid point.
My perception is that part of what we call intuition is actually our ability to perceive and process information we don’t even know we’re getting at that moment. So we may meet someone and instantly get a ‘gut’ feeling about them… and the reason may be that we’re picking up energetic information about them and processing it without even knowing it. One day we’ll be able to perceive and measure this as easily as we can waves of sound… and then it won’t be perceived as ‘paranormal’ at all…
Much joy,
KL
KL,
And how many times have you experienced a strong gut instinct about someone, and then picked away at the impression with logic, essentially talking yourself away from faith in your instincts? Looking back it seems that I’m guilty of that more often than just about any other lapse in judgment…
(Again, how Using an ability and Understanding how it works are two entirely different things…)
Um… like all the time.
But this becomes my dilemma sometimes - perceiving the truth of something.
Is that my intuition saying that? Or my ego desires/fears?
Is that the voice of fear picking away… or the voice of intuition warning away?
K-L,
Think about it this way — you’re trying to decide which voice is speaking — Fear/Ego or Intuition/Truth.
Here’s the deal — both those voices are talking — they’re carrying on a conversation — and you’re listening to them talk to each other.
Maybe it’s the classic cartoon pair — the little devil and the little angel — on your shoulders.
When you are consciously evaluating what they’re saying, it may not be (as simple as) one or the other of them speaking directly to you, it may be that they are debating one another — you’re the referee, the judge, the by-stander, but ultimately the Actor (the one who decides, makes a choice, creates, takes action).
So, instead of trying to figure out who’s talking, let’s assume you are actually hearing both of them, so the question becomes “Which one is saying what?”
That’s a little easier to identify. If necessary, write out their dialog, literally in the form of a screenplay or script.
Great conversation, Slade. What a wonderful, thought-inspiring post.
I absolutely think someone can be an atheist and have psychic experiences. I agree that you don’t have to “believe” in psychic ability in order for them to occur. I do question, though, whether someone can have ongoing psychic episodes and continue to disbelieve in something greater than the physical world - call it spirituality, call it God, or whatever other vocabulary fits that person’s frame of reference.
For many people, spontaneous psychic or paranormal experiences jolt them into a spiritual awakening. We are suddenly catapulted into an awareness beyond the five “normal” senses. And once we are aware, we really can’t go back. And so we start our path …
So, I think an atheist can be psychic … but can a psychic be an atheist? Hee hee, I don’t think so! To me, the work I do in that area forever reminds me of the miraculous interconnection between us all, the fact that we are all One.
Blessings,
Andrea
That’s a good question, Andrea. Of course, I feel the same way about it that you do. I spent some time (at least the week leading up to this post) trying on that idea.
Of course, I didn’t arrive at my current beliefs just because I woke up one day and felt like believing — it was a struggle — my intellectual side was mortified and uncomfortable. The words I require to express what I experience are found (universally) in spiritual vocabularies…
I still continue to look for affirmation in science rather than faith; and I do find them there, as well…
That is a good question. See, though I call myself Pagan, half the time I still think of myself as an atheist–I guess because maybe in my head I think of it as having a specific meaning of “not believing in that judgemental old bearded patriarch dude in the sky who likes to smite a lot and all that”; but I guess that’s just my rejection of the monotheistic stuff talking. I suppose I think spirituality and atheism can coexist perfectly fine.
As for my Paganism, the way I’m seeing it is that everything is natural, all of it, the so-called “supernatural” included. I suppose at the root of it this is all just differences in vocabulary, as Slade said.
And Slade–yeah, I, too, am very enamoured of science, and the logical part of me anyway will try to find the explanations there first. I was also brought up very much as a skeptic by parents who were pretty anti-religion, so it’s taken me a long while to even get to accepting that religion (or spirituality for that matter) can be a good thing.
Thalia,
I’ve always wanted to write a book titled
The Bearded Man & The Fat Lady in the Sky.
I’m not so motivated anymore beyond the happy irreverence of the title — I’ve passed beyond that deconstructive conversation about the personifications of God[dess] across neo-paganism and Judeo-Christian belief systems…
And then of course there are the distinctions between theism, pan-theism, poly-theism, pan-in-theism…
The -ologies, if not more comforting than the -isms, at least offer another set of manageable language labels and boxes and subsets to contemplate.
Wonder and Awe are my spiritual compass points — my initial motivation — the origin of exploration and explanation — the place where the Questions begin. I don’t know about you, but I find that both science and spirituality offer paths that lead away from and back to the reverence for All this amazing experience we call reality…
My sister, I think, thinks that I am losing it. I was talking to her last night and telling her about the voices in my head. When I am talking to my guides, angels and God, I get answers from voices in my head. This happens more so when I am in India on my “spiritual retreat”. India trips are always a time of asking questions and then waiting for the answers. Just before my 1st trip to India in 1998, I had a dream in which Sai Baba came and told me, “Come to India and all of your questions will be answered.” Well, I am still asking questions and getting answers when I go to India. I choose to not believe that I am crazy or losing it. I see the inner voices as Sai Baba, my Higher Self, or my healing angel Manoah who finally is talking to me after at least 5 years of me being aware of his existence.
Before I left for India, I “knew” that I would start working more with my chakras as a form of healing. A few weeks before I left for India, I won a book and set of CD’s that are about Intuition Medicine. It teaches how to ground yourself and work with your chakras to access your intuition for healing purposes.
It’s funny you should begin this blog with a description of your conversations with Christians. I used to be a Christian. Was for a very long time. I read books on ritual and magic and had my falls and reconversions, but basically was a Christian. Then I guess I did more research and thinking and found that at least the historical, ‘God created the world in 7 days and Jesus is my personal Savior’ bit just didn’t make sense for me. I didn’t believe it any more and was agnostic, at least for an objectively real, transcendent, and personal God.
But from what I can tell, Christianity still works. It has amazing rituals. The divinatory and magical stuff is there too. It definitely works for the people who believe it to be true. And even though I don’t believe it in the same way that I believe that the earth is round, it still works, in some ways, for me. I’ve tried to find traditions that make more sense to me. I get along pretty well with Gaia, Tarot cards and Plato’s God. But at the same time, I still feel like setting up a ‘Christian’ section in the local New Age bookstore.
Bob, Patricia,