Author:
T.M. Luhrmann Stanford University luhrmann@stanford.edu

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DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3167/cja.2017.350210
Keywords:
hallucinations; hearing God; infrastructure; mind; religion; spiritual experience; thought
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Abstract

My proposal is that local theory of mind – what I call here the ‘infrastructures of mind’ – shapes the way people recognize and experience supernatural presence. That is, I argue that the local cultural invitation to imagine thoughts, mental images and inner sensations in particular ways – as potent, powerful and dangerous, for instance, or as the heart of an authentic self – will affect the way people recognize and experience God’s voice. I compare interview data from similar churches in the US, Ghana and Chennai, to show that there are systematic differences in the way people experience God and that these differences appear to reflect culturally different understandings of mind. The often-unnoticed infrastructures of the thing that thinks – the way we think about our thinking – alters not only our mental experience but also the very texture of our reality.

Contributor Notes

Tanya Marie Luhrmann is the Watkins University Professor in the Stanford Anthropology Department. Her work focuses on the edge of experience: on voices, visions, the world of the supernatural and the world of psychosis.

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Cover The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
Article Category:
Research Article
Page Count:
18
Keywords:
hallucinations; hearing God; infrastructure; mind; religion; spiritual experience; thought
Print Publication Date:
01 Sep 2017
Online Publication Date:
01 Sep 2017
Copyright:
© The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 2017

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