Maybe God really is a DJ?
Spiritual experiences on and off the dancefloor.
I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in an afterlife, or angels, or ghosts, or Gods. (I do occasionally appeal to the God of Traffic Lights for all greens or thank the God of Money for leaving $50 on the median strip, but that doesn’t count).
I do however believe in spiritual experiences.
I once had a conversation with my mum — a Christian — about the spiritual world. She asked me if I’d ever felt the presence of God. To her, a profound experience was proof of the spiritual world and a basis of her faith. Two memories came to mind…
The first was when I was a small child, let’s say around 10 years old. My parents took me and my siblings along to a church gathering. We attended a ‘cool’ evangelical Church, but I remember most church services as long stretches of boredom — looking around at the large crowd from my hard plastic seat, while pastors and musicians did their thing on stage. This particular evening, at the end of the normal service the pastor began ‘laying hands’ on people.
Imagine a pastor facing a congregation-member and a ‘catcher’ standing behind. The pastor, placing one hand on the person’s forehead and raising the other, prays in a mix of low muttering and loud outbursts. The idea is that the person being prayed-over feels such an overwhelming presence of God that they involuntarily fall backwards and spend the rest of the church service lying on the floor.
In this church, on this night, hundreds of people were lined up to participate. Most of the congregation joined the line, including my parents. So, curious 10-year-old that I was, I lined up next to them. I remember feeling like it was taking a really long time. I stood there and tried to imitate the adults around me who were in religious rapture, swaying slightly with their hands and faces reaching to the heavens. My legs were tired.
The pastor came around to us, my parents were each prayed for and fell to the floor. When my turn came, I couldn’t wait to fall like everyone else had. The strong hands caught me and laid me gently on the floor. It was a relief to rest my little legs.
I lay on the carpeted floor of the giant auditorium with my eyes closed. The band played emotive, looping, almost trance-like music. The fans blew a cool breeze across my skin. In hindsight I’d say I was in a meditative state — the heavy limbs and slow breathing are familiar to me now — but at the time I just knew I felt peaceful. Nowhere to be. Nothing to do. Just feeling the carpet beneath my back.
When I described this to my mum, she said that could have been a spiritual experience. She thought the cool breeze and feelings of peace may have been my experience of God. I remain unconvinced.
The second experience I described to her was at a dance music festival when I was 16. It was late afternoon, but you couldn’t tell in the large indoor arena. It was pitch dark except for the lasers and other party lights. (I’ve always liked that briefly captured moment of visibility you get in nightclubs — when a light illuminates a fellow dancer for a split second.)
There were thousands in the crowd that day, but I was near the front. This was a band I loved in the intense way 16-year-olds love bands. My parents had been reluctant to let me go, but they knew the devastation I’d have felt from missing my favourite band — the one I played on repeat on my stereo long into each night. The lead singer was a black American woman with a voice powerful and raw with emotion. Their hit at the time was a song about a break-up, and her voice perfectly captured the anger, strength, and frustration of the lyrics. It starts with the yearning of violins, the baseline builds, then the release of the drums kicking in. The music vibrated through my chest, and I felt blissful as my limbs cut through the air amongst the sweaty bodies.
It was such a powerful feeling that I was left slightly depressed for a few months afterwards. In my limited 16-year-old experience, I thought I’d just had the peak moment of my life and that surely it was all downhill from there. Of course, that wasn’t true. I just hadn’t discovered live music and nightclubs yet.
It’s harder to argue God’s presence at a dance music concert than at a church, but my mum was a smart cookie. She said that perhaps God used the singer’s voice as a medium to reach people — the singer may have been a believer, maybe trained in church choirs. Music was a legitimate form of praise in the church circles mum frequented.
I think she came out of our conversation believing I’d had religious experiences but didn’t recognise them as such. I believed I’d had human experiences that she was interpreting within her world view. We made a cup of tea and the conversation probably turned to modern art or something.
So, how do we have spiritual experiences if there are no spirits?
Our brains create our reality, and that means we experience all sorts of things that aren’t ‘real’. Phantom limbs are an excellent example, and if you’ve ever looked at an optical illusion, you’ll know that perception is relative. Our brains make stuff up — and that’s fine, it’s how they keep us alive. I accept that whatever you experience is real, in the sense that anything you perceive is your reality.
So ‘spiritual’ is just a word we use to describe a particular mix of chemicals in our brains. Humans have been benefiting from these experiences for millennia, a basis for the ‘trance theory of religious origins’.
“[Evolutionary Psychologist Robin] Dunbar believes that a few hundred thousand years ago, archaic humans … started deliberately to make music, dance and sing. When the synchronised and collective nature of these practices became sufficiently intense, individuals likely entered trance states in which they experienced not only this-worldly splendour but otherworldly intrigue.”
Even though I don’t believe in a spiritual world, who‘d want to miss out on this-worldly splendour and otherworldly intrigue? Maybe you get it in a church, maybe you get it on a dancefloor, either way, it’s pretty cool.
(Inspiration for this story’s headline comes from the Faithless song: God is a DJ)
If you’ve enjoyed reading this, check out more of my (free) Medium articles here: A little bit about me and my writing.
