I recently started seeing a new patient for addiction. This man has been through an incredible amount in his life, and substance abuse has been a part of this world for many years. When talking about what brought him into treatment, described a series of religious or spiritual experiences. He was reluctant to talk about them, uncomfortable describing them, and skeptical (at best) about even acknowledging how real, important, and meaningful they had been. He would describe himself as a religious person, and these events where someone or something (god? the universe?) had reached out to him were difficult for him to accept or make sense of. As a result, he initially downplayed their importance. When talking about these experiences, he couched them in skeptical, arms-length terms.
We no longer have good frameworks for wonder, for experiences that do not easily fit a rational, scientific framework. Ask people if they have had these kinds of experiences, and many, (perhaps most) people will say yes– but maybe only in a whisper. Ask further questions about how these experiences get integrated into our worldview and our life, and the response is tepid at best. We tend to move on from them, acknowledging them as a footnote or eddy in the river of our life. We rarely talk about them, rarely embrace them, and usually question whether they happened at all, or instead were some sort of hallucination.
Moreover, when we do talk about them, there’s a real concern that we will be stigmatized, or labeled as crazy, for disclosing that they have occurred at all. “Doc, you’re going to think I’m nuts” or “Doc, I don’t want you to think I’m crazy” is usually the preface to the conversation. Even though we are rooted in the experience, we simultaneously disbelieve it.
The deep irony is that from a strictly rational, scientific approach would actually have the opposite reaction. The true spirit of scientific inquiry starts from the perspective of humility, of not knowing, of recognizing the limitations of our knowledge. From this position of uncertainty, inquiry begins. A rational, scientific framework would be excited to investigate and embrace unexplained phenomena, would take these unusual experiences and dive in. In our society though, that’s not what usually happens.
It was not always this way. Other cultures have made space for the inexplicable, incorporating awe and wonder into their understanding of the world. In a certain sense, it was not really viewed as abnormal. Many indigenous traditions, for instance, integrate visions, dreams, and encounters with the divine as core aspects of reality rather than anomalies to be dismissed. Saying that the spirits visited in a dream was simply accepted as a part of life. Ancient philosophical and religious traditions, from Greek mysticism to Eastern spiritual practices, embraced experiences beyond rational explanation as vital parts of human existence. Within Western culture, christianity has space for this– visits from angels and miracles were blessed events, but well within the realm of how the world works. Before the rise of strict materialism, there was more openness to these kinds of encounters.
We humans tend to disregard evidence rather than change the narrative. When faced with something that challenges our existing framework, we are more likely to dismiss it than to reconsider our assumptions. We prefer coherence, even if it means ignoring data that doesn’t fit. We are more likely to disregard data that does not fit the story than we are to adapt the story to fit new data. The technical name for this is belief perseverance or the Semmelweis reflex– more broadly called paradigm resistance. This phenomenon occurs in science when entrenched theories resist revision, or in medicine when new discoveries upend long-held beliefs– it is a part of how the human mind works. If something profound happens to us—something we cannot explain—our first instinct is often to suppress it or dismiss it, rather than wrestle with its implications.
Despite the broad rejection of these experiences, and the narrative that they are freak statistical events, or explainable by neurological misfires, psychological biases, or evolutionary conditioning, they persist. God, or the universe, or something beyond what we can currently explain, is still talking to us. We continue to have moments of inexplicable connection, profound insight, or profound clarity. Ignoring these experiences is not rational. If we were truly committed to understanding reality as it is, rather than as we expect it to be, we would listen. We would engage with these moments rather than dismiss them. We would make space for wonder—not as a relic of superstition, but as a crucial aspect of what it means to be human.
I am speculating a bit here, but I do not think it is a coincidence that our disconnection from the divine has corresponded to a rise in our feelings of isolation and emptiness. As we have shifted toward a strictly materialist worldview—one that prioritizes measurable outcomes and dismisses anything that cannot be quantified—we have lost the frameworks that once provided meaning, purpose, and a sense of connection to something greater than ourselves. Religious and spiritual traditions offered a shared language for awe, mystery, and transcendence. Now, those experiences are often dismissed or privatized, leaving us to navigate them alone, cut off from community, and unsure of their significance. We have disconnected the divine from the human, and in so doing, disconnected from each other. Without a sense of connection to a greater reality, many of us feel adrift, caught in the paradox of having more knowledge than ever before but also feeling more disconnected from meaning. Perhaps our increasing rates of anxiety, depression, and loneliness are not just byproducts of modern life but symptoms of something deeper—the cost of severing ourselves from the mystery that has always been central to the human experience.
Cheers,
Doc