An Essay review of "How God Becomes Real," by T M Lurhmann
How "real-making" changes the believer rather than reality
As the author makes clear in the preface, this is neither an atheist's, nor a believer's book. But a provocative (and rather profound) anthropologist's casebook about the anthropology of mind. With rigorously argued hypotheses from anthropology about how humans view the "invisible other," she builds a compelling case.
The subtext adopts the posture that since none of us has direct access to the real, an open mind is likelier than not to get us closer to the truth of reality.
So, in elaborating her six hypotheses the author opens the gates wide enough that all her fieldwork case studies find their way into the analysis. Not all of them are necessarily religious examples; most involve engagements with societies that have only weak distinctions between notions of the natural and supernatural.
Her basic claim is that the "invisible other" (i.e., gods, spirits, ancestors, ghosts, witchcraft, voodoo, supernatural agents, etc.), must be made real to believers. And that this "real-making," rather than changing reality, simply changes the behavior of those who engage in the belief.
Each chapter lays out a different hypothesis and a different set of arguments about how god (or the invisible supernatural) becomes real.
Perhaps the most compelling of them is the first one. It is one with which cognitive scientists are already familiar: that in times of fear and stress, humans quickly, easily and automatically prepare and adopt a frame of reference she calls a "faith-frame." It is a meta-mental construct that coexists along side other more normal constructs of reality.
However, the "faith-frame" can be viewed as a kind of emergency frame of reference, one whose effective consequence is to expand the boundaries of whatever is to be considered real.
For believers, the faithful, or just plain practitioners of the imaginary, the "faith-frame" allows them to change their behaviors in ways that are more consistent with, and make their "felt sense" of the imaginary, qualitatively real.
Second, the work of "real-making," or making the invisible present, (or at least, feel present), begins with a good story. Detailed narratives thus fill-in the "faith-frames" making them more accessible and the invisible feel more real. Indeed, it is rich narrative details (good stories, retold) that allows the faithful to suspend disbelief.
Her third hypothesis is that practice makes perfect: What people do in defense of their beliefs, affects the way they experience those beliefs, and in particular, the way they perceive "the invisible other," their gods, voodoo, witchcraft mysticism, etc. People who become absorbed in their own imagination are more likely to have powerful "felt-experiences" with stronger perceptions of "the invisible."
This absorption, blurs the boundary between the inner and outer worlds of the believer, making it easier to turn to a "faith-frame" to make sense of their world of perception -- and to experience the invisible as being present in a way such that "their presence" can be felt through their senses.
Fourth, the way people think about their own thinking matters as to how real the imaginary can become. As noted above, people who become absorbed in their own imagination are more likely to have powerful "felt-experiences" with, and perceptions of, "the invisible" than those who do not. The evidence for the supernatural is often accompanied by personal testimonies of miracles, near-death and out-of-body experiences; and this is especially so due to a dramatic change in the direction of attention towards ideas and narratives of the imagined.
As attention changes, the imagination of the believer begins to hover in an intermediate meta-space between their inner awareness and the real world. The "faith-frame" guides this change in attention. Mapping and shaping the human terrain of thinking, feelings, intentions and desires into a cultural mode that gives form and meaning to that which goes beyond normal material reality.
Fifth: Imagination begets imagination: The desiderata of delving into the imagined, such as changes in attention, attitudes, and behaviors, has accumulative reinforcing side effects.
In short, with the "faith-frame" serving as a protective psychological enclosure, the imagination progressively strengthens it's hold on the believer. Eventually sustaining a larger more certain picture of the invisible as being present in one's otherwise normal reality.
Sixth. Prayer is the faithful's first act of thinking about thinking -- where "real-making" changes their minds about what is real.
As they pray and interact with the invisible within the protected "faith-frame shell," the invisible becomes increasingly more real to them. And as a result, they remake their reality in relationship to the cultural meanings they attribute to what they imagine. The relationships with their gods and spirits can then become intense, deeply felt, and personal.
These hypotheses are explained and expanded upon more thoroughly in an indispensable set of summary bibliographic essays and notes beginning on page 189 and continuing to the end of the book.
Altogether, it is a clear, non-polemical, jargon-free academic tour de force. Five stars.