On with my train of thought here!
DEATHBED VISIONS.
Or, near death experiences, etc.
One of the most common near death visions is going into a heavenly light, some people say they saw God even. Some people come back with crazy hallucinatory episodes to think about.
What I was trying to do here was highlight the mind/body relationship, and what physiological changes can due to your patterns of thought.
Drugs
Starvation
mental illness
death experiences
All things which can affect what we percieve, in our minds.
So we would ask, well, how come all these people have had visions from God?
Well looking at what our minds can generate we realize one thing, we need fuel for our visions. We need memories or suggestions stored within our brains with which to fuel our hallucinations.
In my amusing yet theoretical look at a bunch of stoned out Hebrews in a tent full of pot smoke, we know they would already have had a notion of what they believed about God. They would have gone in there hoping for a vision of God, and that is likely what they would have recieved, because the suggestion was there.
In the case of my somewhat foolhardy experiment, I went in with the knowledge of The Amanita muscaria bequeathing a "death trip" in many people. That is what I got.
For persons who use or have used starvation to induce visions, they seem to get what they were looking for, simply because it was what they wanted. They don`t seem to report that they wanted to see Allah, for instance, and end up getting Buddha instead.
In the Case of Joan of Arc, she had visions which seemed to fit the religion she was raised on, very interesting. When we read about some Schizoid who talkes to Jesus, God or Satan, he has these things already in his head for his altered mind to draw upon.
When we get to Death bed hallucinations, you can bet the person has had some time to lay there and ponder his death. As his mind is shutting down he could imagine anything really, and compare it to what he might think God would be like. To a believer, God is shrouded in bright light, to me, it would just be a strange last gasp of my brain as I ceased to exist. Those who come back could be so touched by their near death experience that it would have a profound impact on them, even though they generated the episode themselves in their dying brain.
Gee, If I had an amanita-like experience at a time where I had nearly died, I might believe we really do pop into another dimension to live in reverse, hallucinations can be that realistic.
Well gotta go clean the blood off my pentagram, he hates when I leave it messy.