Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Feb 2;118(5). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2016649118.
Hearing the voice of God, feeling the presence of the dead, being possessed by a demonic spirit-such events are among the most remarkable human sensory experiences. They change lives and in turn shape history. Why do some people report experiencing such events while others do not? We argue that experiences of spiritual presence are facilitated by cultural models that represent the mind as "porous," or permeable to the world, and by an immersive orientation toward inner life that allows a person to become "absorbed" in experiences. In four studies with over 2,000 participants from many religious traditions in the United States, Ghana, Thailand, China, and Vanuatu, porosity and absorption played distinct roles in determining which people, in which cultural settings, were most likely to report vivid sensory experiences of what they took to be gods and spirits.
听到上帝的声音，感觉到死者的存在，被恶魔附身——这些都是人类最显著的感官体验之一。它们改变了生活，进而塑造了历史。为什么有些人报告说经历了这样的事件，而有些人没有？我们认为，精神存在的体验是由文化模型促成的，这些模型将思维表示为“多孔的”，或者对世界是可渗透的，并且由一种沉浸式的内在生活取向，使一个人能够“沉浸”在体验中。在四项研究中，共有来自美国、加纳、泰国、中国和瓦努阿图等多个宗教传统的 2000 多名参与者参与，其中多孔性和吸收性在确定哪些人、在哪些文化背景下最有可能报告生动的感官体验方面发挥了不同的作用，他们认为这些体验是神和精神的体验。
