Book contents
- Religion, Dissonance, and Systems Theory
- Religion, Dissonance, and Systems Theory
- Copyright page
- Reviews
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 “The Whole Is Other than the Sum of the Parts”
- 2 Gush Emunim (Israel) and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (India)
- 3 “The Martyrdom of Andreas of Rinn as Imagined by Guarinoni of Hall, Austria”
- 4 The Festival of Saint Efisio in Cagliari
- 5 Seeing and Hearing God
- 6 The Dissonant Bodies and Religion
- 7 Religious Clowns and Dissonant Signals
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Seeing and Hearing God
Mitigating Metaphysical Dissonance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2026
Book contents
- Religion, Dissonance, and Systems Theory
- Religion, Dissonance, and Systems Theory
- Copyright page
- Reviews
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 “The Whole Is Other than the Sum of the Parts”
- 2 Gush Emunim (Israel) and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (India)
- 3 “The Martyrdom of Andreas of Rinn as Imagined by Guarinoni of Hall, Austria”
- 4 The Festival of Saint Efisio in Cagliari
- 5 Seeing and Hearing God
- 6 The Dissonant Bodies and Religion
- 7 Religious Clowns and Dissonant Signals
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Chapter 5 brings together two entirely remote and distinct religious systems: the Vineyard Evangelical Church in the United States and the pilgrim worshipers of Krishna in Vrindavan, India. In both cases, religious actors report sensory experiences of God: auditory in the United States and visual in India. The chapter provides a systemic explanation for these reports, considering them as responses to a profound dissonance in systems of faith among committed adherents to a personal God. The chapter also examines psychological theories such as porosity, absorption, decentering, and other mechanisms for altering states of consciousness toward sensory experiences of the divine.
Keywords
Information
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Religion, Dissonance, and Systems TheoryComparing Spiritual Traditions, pp. 123 - 150Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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