The Story of God with Morgan Freeman (2016) s01e03 Episode Script
Who Is God
The blues were born right here in the Mississippi Delta.
John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, BB King, Jessie Mae Hemphill.
I can't see 'em anymore, but their spirit lives on, right here.
And we call it low down dirty blues I can lose myself in music.
Hear it.
I feel it.
And it transports me to another time and place.
Some would call it a religious experience.
Can't say that I disagree.
Makes me think of all the ways people around the world connect to God.
Moses saw God in a bush.
Buddha found enlightenment under a tree.
Muhammad experienced Allah on a mountain.
Is there some universal concept of God that all religions share? Or, is God fundamentally different to people of different faiths? I'm setting out to discover who God is.
God wants to be your best friend.
To find out how believers around the world see the divine.
The holy people are around us right now.
I'll explore how the identity of God has changed over the millennia.
He thought that there were too many gods and not enough focus was on him.
I'll learn how many gods merged into one.
It's a single force that gives order into our whole world.
And I'll search for the presence of God So you're looking for - physical manifestations of God? - Yes.
inside my brain.
I grew up with a Christian concept of God, a single divine being who created and governed the universe, of Jesus as God's earthly incarnation.
I know that's not the way everyone sees the divine.
I want to know how other religions see God.
So, I'm going to India.
To Hindus, there's not one God, there are millions.
Busy little thoroughfare.
In the holy city of Varanasi, I'm meeting historian Binda Paranjape to find out how Hindus see their gods.
At every corner of the lane, and just to see anywhere, and you see a shrine, and no corner they can leave without having a god there.
So, like we've got this small little shrine here.
Mmm-hmm.
And it has got that elephant-headed god, Ganesha.
- Ganesha.
- Yeah.
It's a god that removes the obstacles.
- Removes obstacles.
- Yeah.
Hindu deities come in many forms.
Some are male, some female, some are part human, part animal.
Each one has its specific powers.
So, she's the goddess of disease.
- Disease? - Yeah.
So when you're diseased your body gets inflamed.
Then you invoke her and she sends the cool breeze - and the body gets cooled.
- Right.
All right.
Here's a question for you.
You've got a choice of how many? - Millions.
- Millions of gods.
- How do you choose? - Usually, it's the family.
Each family has got one family deity and that is passed on to the next generation, or sometimes, in times of distress, one goes to a god and say Or goddess That, "Please take me out of this difficult times "and forever I'll worship you as my personal god or goddess.
" I'm interested in finding out how these statues become vessels for divine beings, how Hindus connect to their gods.
So, Binda is taking me to an intimate prayer ritual.
Yeah.
Can you hear these chants which are going on? - Mmm-hmm.
Yeah.
- They're chanting the chants for invoking the goddess.
So, now we're going to be blessed.
This prayer ceremony is dedicated to the goddess Lalita.
So, this is Lalita, here.
This is her physical representation.
What kind of god is she? She was created to kill a demon and that is the power of a virgin.
This 16-year-old woman - She's a virgin? - Yeah.
So all the potential is still in her, so she has got the highest form of energy in her.
And she gives that power to others to fight against that demon.
So what they're doing is they're invoking the goddess's 1,000 names and with every name they'll offer the flowers.
So anything, any syllable that we have pronounced goes to the goddess.
So, by saying these 1,000 words you have almost covered all the possible syllables that you could have uttered.
So you can invoke her with just about any syllable? The goddess is in the form of speech, the human sound.
And the world is supposed to have been created out of these rhythms.
For her devotees, Lalita exists in the rhythmic energy of their chanting.
A divine energy that powers their lives.
Anyway, the goddess has blessed you, that she has invited you here.
- Believe me.
- I believe you.
Seeing the ceremony really helps me understand what God means to Hindus.
Behind all the gods, Binda tells me, there is a single divine energy that believers seek to tap into.
They say that it's just a principle.
- It's like pure energy form.
- Mmm-hmm.
Which is neither a male or a female or having any name.
So they're just given one name, Brahman.
So, in the Western church, in Christianity, Judaism, even Islam, there is one God.
It's just It's pure energy.
There's no name you could put to him, there's no face you can put to him, there's nothing you can touch.
- Do we make a comparison there? - Yeah.
It's like the tree having the trunk and then the branches and leaves, also.
We have the shade tree of Brahman? - Right? Okay.
- Yeah.
Yeah.
So beautiful.
- It's really nicely described.
- Thank you.
All right.
How about some lunch? Game for that? Right.
And we can invoke gods for giving us good lunch.
I like the way believers here find gods that best suit their own beliefs.
It's like a spiritual fingerprint.
Unique to each person.
It's unlike the monotheism of the West.
But Maybe that's only on the surface.
On the surface, Hinduism looks like a religion of many gods.
But underneath the surface, there is a single divine energy.
So, why do some cultures see many gods and some only one? Where did the idea of worshipping a single God first take root? Perhaps it began here.
Stonehenge, Britain's iconic 5,000-year-old monument.
The culture that built Stonehenge had to endure long, cold winters.
Their survival depended on plentiful crops.
So, it would make sense to focus on the single source of energy that drove all of that The sun.
An archaeological team is uncovering new evidence that may reveal the beliefs of the people who once lived here.
We're going to look at the ditch and the interior here.
Vince Gaffney and Paul Garwood have been studying a giant C-shaped enclosure less than two miles away from Stonehenge.
The enclosure, called Durrington Walls, was built around 4,500 years ago and appears to be aligned so its opening faces the rising sun on the midwinter's day.
This is a ground-penetrating radar device.
But what enthused Vince and Paul is the remains of an older monument they found buried underneath it.
The radar located a series of very large features.
There's a long arc of stones or large buried features underneath the bank.
So they've remained undetected, effectively, for several thousand years.
The hidden rocks are massive, each of them as tall as two men.
They also form part of a C-shaped monument but the direction this C faces is different from the orientation of the mound that buries it.
There was an earlier monument of a very different form on this site.
It was looking towards Beacon Hill, this dramatic line of hills to the east, which is a dominant topographic feature in this area and certainly must have had significance at the time.
Vince and Paul think the original monument may be older than Stonehenge.
They don't know what its alignment to the hills meant.
Perhaps the hills were revered as divine or were associated with ancestors.
But after the ancient Britains built the iconic stone circle at Stonehenge They demolished the old stones at Durrington Walls and made a new mound faced the same direction as Stonehenge, toward the rising midwinter sun.
They've been pushed over and the bank of the later henge monument has actually been placed on top of them.
It moved in its orientation, its form changed, and presumably to some extent its function.
The creation of Stonehenge itself and the building of the new architectural Durrington Wall suggested a shift towards a greater emphasis on the sun as the main focus of worship and religious interest.
The builders were trying to establish a very particular connection with the summit.
The people of Stonehenge may have been the first to worship the sun as a single all-powerful God.
But in focusing on the sun, I wonder if they lost something.
When the gods were ancestors or rivers or mountains, they were much more accessible, easier to connect to, to speak to.
How do you speak to a God that's so remote? I hope to find the answer at my next destination, Egypt.
More than 1,000 years after Stonehenge was built, an Egyptian man also decided to worship the sun.
His idea was considered so dangerous that his memory was nearly wiped from the face of the Earth.
Thank you very much.
Today, just a few mementos of his life remain at the Cairo Museum.
Hey! - Oh, there you are.
Hello.
- Hello.
Amid the remains of dozens of pharaohs, Egyptologist Salima Ikram is going to help me find one whose name is Akhenaton.
There he is.
- Akhenaton.
- Yup.
He thought that there were too many gods and not enough focus was on him.
"There really needs to be an important God "whom only I can channel.
" - So, he changed things.
- Radically.
He basically closed down most of the temples, said that there is a special God, the sun God, the Aten.
And that, "You can worship the Aten "through me.
" And that didn't go over too well with a few people.
No, no.
That was not a very popular move because of course, all the priests of the other important gods were shut down.
Around the year 1350 BC, Akhenaton declared the sun would be Egypt's only God.
In doing so, he would found the first faith in recorded history with a single deity.
But it would not last.
As soon as he died, the old priesthood struck back.
This piece has been hacked away as you can tell.
You can see how the name of the king is hacked out.
The name of the Aten is also attacked.
Everything there is chip, chip, chip, chip, chip And it's gone away because Destroyed.
They just destroyed his memory - Yeah.
the best they could.
Akhenaton hoped his son would continue this legacy.
But his son was only nine years old when he took the throne.
His name was Tutankhamen.
Here is the coffin of King Tutankhamen.
The most famous pharaoh.
- Absolutely.
- But he took the throne at age nine.
- Nine to nineteen, only ten short years.
- Ten short years? I would imagine that a nine-year-old taking the throne would be under the thumb of the old guys who would say, "Look, we can't keep this up.
"We got to go back to what works.
" Absolutely.
He did what he was told probably.
And effectively, his reign sort of knocked out Akhenaton's reign and we have a return to the religion.
And to, to the gods.
The old gods are back in full force.
Tutankhamen's priests erased Akhenaton's monotheistic religion and tried to erase him from history.
Here we go.
This is Akhenaton's sarcophagus.
This is his sarcophagus? Or what's left of it because it's all smashed to pieces.
Well, that's what you get trying to change the world.
Well, poor thing didn't manage to change it for very long.
Do not fool around with the gods.
Well, Akhenaton's experiment in monotheism failed.
But, I can't help wondering if what happened Oh, around 1300 BC, didn't influence the beginning of another religion.
Because it was here on the banks of the Nile that Jewish tradition says Moses was found among the bulrushes.
And from that period, belief in a single God began to spread around the world.
How did the belief of a small band of Israelites spread so far and wide? Today, almost four billion Muslims, Christians and Jews worship the same single God.
What was so special about this God? I am traveling around the world to find out how people of different faiths connect to the divine.
And, uncovering how our ideas of who God is, have evolved over the millennia.
My quest brings me to Jerusalem, because half the people on the planet can trace their God to this ancient city.
It was here, around 3,000 years ago, that belief in a single, all-powerful deity took root.
I meet Jewish philosopher Yoram Hazony to find out how one God won out over many.
This is the old city.
Old Jerusalem.
The old city of Jerusalem.
And, stores like this have been lining these streets for thousands of years.
Except you know that thousands of years ago they actually sold idols.
Like representations of gods.
Like little figurines.
In fact, there's an old Rabbinic story, going back to the time of the Talmud, that Abraham's father was an idol-shop owner.
So, these idols, what were these gods for? So, the gods, they represent, in the old pagan religions, they represent anything that a human being could want or need.
There's a god that brings the rain.
That's the rain god.
You want victory on the battlefield, so, there's a god of war.
But, you'd have to figure out how you're gonna please all the different gods to get what you wanted though.
Right, exactly.
So, some of those gods, all they want is like, you know, a party.
They want wine and song and some good food.
That's not such a bad thing.
But, some of those gods demanded bloodshed.
"You want something from me, I want something from you.
"I want, you sacrifice your son or something" All right, all right How do I get, now, from the rain god, I got a god of fire.
To one I can't see, I can't touch.
I don't know for sure is there.
That's what this story about Abraham is about.
Abraham looks around at all these different gods, there's got to be one set of rules, one set of laws of nature, one set of laws of morals, that apply to all human beings.
So, what does he do? Where's he gonna go? - Let's take a walk and I'll show you.
- Okay, all right.
So, right here, we're looking at the absolute center of the religious world.
This is it.
This is the place.
We have, over there, the Dome of the Rock.
Over there Al Aqsa Mosque.
The Mount of Olives, and, the Valley of Gethsemane.
And down below, the Western Wall, the holiest prayer shrine of Judaism.
- Why here? - For one reason exactly.
When Abraham almost sacrificed his son, Isaac, it took place right up there on that spot.
Now, let's remember, Abraham is surrounded by idolaters who are sacrificing their children.
Murdering their own children.
Abraham thought that he was following God's commandments by taking Isaac up there and, and But, God says to him "You're not gonna touch your son.
"Not this time, "not for all time.
"There's one God.
"And," he says, "you are not gonna sacrifice another child ever again.
" And commemorating that, "Never again," is the reason that the Jews built the temple here, and from there Judaism and Christianity make this the holiest place in the history of the world.
That brings up a question though, this is an invisible God.
There's no way that you can make some proximation of him.
There's no idols.
It's a single force that gives order, the physical order, and, the moral order, to all of mankind and to our whole world.
There's no representation because he's not a local power.
Temples to the single Jewish God stood on this spot for almost 1,000 years.
Until the Romans destroyed the one that was standing in 70 AD.
But that destruction did not end this faith.
One incredible thing about this is that, the one invisible God that's beyond all things, it turns out that, you know, when you destroy the temple to that one God You don't destroy the God.
You don't destroy the God.
It turns out he's just as much there as he was before.
That's well put.
It's understandable.
The God of Abraham was a God you could commune with without any temples, without idols.
For Jews and also for Christians and Muslims, this invisible God is always with them, no matter when or where they turn to him.
It is truly amazing that three of the world's great faiths exist in such close proximity.
All worshipping one God.
The same God.
A God who has survived calamities from the destruction of the holy temple, to religious violence.
But, how do you connect with a God who has no physical form? How do you know what's divine and what isn't? I've decided to return to Cairo to try and understand who God is to Muslims.
Islam believes in the same God as Jews and Christians.
But, I want to know if there are differences in how they think about the divine.
Historian of Islam, Ahmed Ragab has brought me to the Al Hussein Mosque.
And, you can just come in here just like a Catholic church.
- So, it's always open to prayer.
- Yeah.
You want to come in here and - You can hang out with yourself and Allah.
- Yeah, absolutely.
I am just in time to hear what Muslims believe is one of the most beautiful sounds in the world.
The call to prayer.
For the faithful, the song of the muezzin is a manifestation of God himself.
So, that's The end of the prayer is by saying as-salamu alaykum.
Much like, when you end an encounter with anybody.
And it's because a prayer is essentially a meeting with God.
Like, "Hey," you know, "See you later," "Nice talking to you.
" Exactly.
"See you the next time.
" Prayer to Allah seems like a conversation with a person.
But, how do you speak to a person who has no human form? To help me understand, Ahmed has arranged a meeting with the mosque's spiritual leader Imam Al'amir Mapous.
- Thank you so much for speaking with us.
- Welcome.
In the Christian religion, God is so manifested.
But, there is no such thing in Islam.
So, who am I talking to? Do I envision anything? You cannot imagine God.
God is beyond imagination.
Whatever you would imagine with our human minds, God would be different from it.
One of the most haunting and beautiful sounds in the world, is the Muslim call to prayer.
What's the origin of that? It is said that one of Muhammad's companions had a vision, while he was asleep where he heard this call for prayer.
And, when he woke up he went to Muhammad and told him about it.
And, he's made it into this ritual, of using it to call for prayers every day.
Five times every day.
The muezzin, how is he chosen? Do you hold auditions? There are auditions where they would listen to people and the one who has the best voice would be given the position.
How about that? You have to work on it.
I have to work on it.
Okay.
I get it.
Mosques are designed to be filled with beautiful sounds and images that delight the senses.
From elaborate architecture, to verses of the Quran written in the finest calligraphy.
Many Muslims see this beauty as a manifestation of God himself.
Islam sees God in all things that are beautiful.
Because God has no physical form, he can be experienced anywhere with any of the senses.
But these experiences are only ever aspects of the divine.
God is always more than we can imagine.
Across so many faiths around the world and throughout time, people have emulated the divine in the beauty of their temples and glimpsed God in the splendor of nature.
But some faiths believe God can take a physical form.
And that form is a person.
I'm in Ship Rock, New Mexico, in the heart of the Navajo nation.
I am about to witness something that few outsiders ever see.
A sacred ceremony, where a god and a human become one single being.
- Welcome.
- Thank you.
- Thank you, thank you.
- Thank you.
- Hi, Morgan, good to see you.
- How are you? - We have something for you too.
- Oh, you do? Yes.
Look out.
- Thank you.
- You're welcome.
Where are we going now? - We're going inside.
- Are we? - Yes.
- All right, I'll follow.
Inside the traditional Navajo ritual hut, or a hogan, the Peterson family has agreed to share with me the ceremony that allows their youngest daughter, Mason, to pass from girlhood to womanhood.
By the end of the four-day-long ritual, one of the Navajo deities will be living inside her.
- Yeah, just like that, and make the cone.
- Oh, yeah.
Like a cone, like this.
The core of the ceremony is the making of a giant corn cake in honor of the sun.
How big has the cake gotta be? - It's gonna be huge.
- Huge.
Are you the fire-tender? - Yes.
- Okay.
Mason's older sister, Kayla, went through the same ritual four years ago.
And, learned about her connection to the Navajo gods, or, holy people.
Do me a favor.
Tell me about this ritual.
So, it's referred to as the Kinaalda ceremony.
- Say that again.
- Kinaalda.
"Kinaalda.
" I had my ceremony when I was around 12.
And, it's a puberty ceremony, it actually originates from Changing Woman, we call her Sa 'ah Naaghzii.
"Sa 'ah Naaghzii"? - Yes Close.
- Close? - Pretty close.
- Sa 'ah Naaghzii.
The story originated because they wanted Changing Woman to bear children.
So, it all starts when first woman and first man see a dark cloud come over Gobernador Knob.
And, they hear a baby crying.
And, him and first woman were instructed to care for the baby by the holy people.
So, within 12 days, she grew from an infant into a 12-year-old girl.
- In 12 days? - Yes.
She was ready to become a woman.
To grow into a woman, Mason must connect with the divine spirit of Changing Woman, which the Navajo believe still inhabits the landscape.
Each day, she has to run toward the rising sun.
Do the young ladies always run east in the morning? Yes.
So it goes back on the story with Changing Woman, as she becomes a woman.
When she does bear children, it is with the sun.
The holy people are around us right now.
This is an opportunity for the ceremony where these prayers come apart and push on her.
And it's all about her.
Yes, yes, yes, it is.
So she gets all the prayers, and your hopes and your dreams that you want for her.
Just whatever positive you can push into the cake and make sure that her life is strong and complete, and that she knows that she has all these prayers that will - go with her.
- Go with her.
As the corn cake begins its slow overnight bake, Mason begins the final night of her kinaalda.
Tonight, she'll be joined with the spirit of the Navajo deity, Changing Woman.
She and her family will stay in the hogan until dawn, while the Navajo medicine man sings sacred songs.
Are all of these songs prayers and blessings for the young girl? Yeah, these can help her along the way, that she's just barely changing into a young adult.
So I just sing for them at the kinaalda, to give them strength.
It's what the run is about, okay.
- Yeah.
- It's an endorsement, build the muscles, and everything, that way, they change slowly into womanhood.
There are many more songs to be sung tonight, but hearing them all is prohibited for outsiders like me.
- Thank you.
- You're welcome.
- See you.
- See you in a bit.
Okay.
At dawn, Mason makes the final and longest run of her kinaalda.
How are you feeling? I think I'm gonna pass out.
- You're gonna pass out? - Yes.
- She's hot, she's gonna pass out.
- Yeah.
I'm glad it's cold out here.
You're glad it's cold.
Otherwise you would pass out, right? On this morning, the spirit of the Navajo deity has moved inside Mason and made her a holy person.
Be proud, your cake is good.
That means things are gonna work out just fine.
Right, right? The cake can only be eaten once it's been blessed by Mason.
- I can take a bite of it? - Yeah.
Don't burn your tongue.
Now that it's over, how do you feel? I feel like I say this, I'm just like, "Mom, "I survived, "it felt like boot camp!" Great.
In the kinaalda, Navajo girls have a personal experience of the Changing Woman.
One that can only be gained through rare moments of insight.
She is the spirit that infuses the entire Navajo landscape.
If we believe that God not only surrounds us, but also has the power to move inside us Can we, perhaps, discover what God is by looking inside our minds? For thousands of years, to many people, God has been invisible, intangible, a presence believers can sense but not see or touch.
But science may be about to change that.
I took a train to Philadelphia to meet a neuroscientist who studies what happens in our brains when we have religious experiences.
I'm about to see whether I can find the presence of God, in my brain.
Doctor Andy Newberg is pioneering a new field of study he calls "neurotheology.
" And I know that you have done a lot of research on the brain, how the brain reacts to, say, spiritual meditation.
Can you elaborate on that for me? Well, certainly, you know, as we look at the brain, we can see very substantial differences when people are religious or spiritual in their practices, when they're trying to pray, meditate on God.
You know, we can see what's going on in us as we think about God, experience God, pray to God, whatever the person is doing.
So, you're looking for physical manifestations of God? Yes, you are looking for physical manifestations of God.
Okay so, I'm interested in finding out if there is any manifestation of God within me, in my brain.
Right.
We could take a look at that.
- Come on.
- See if we can find it.
Little pinch.
- Ow! - I'm sorry.
I'm kidding.
The process begins with an injection of radioactive dye.
What happens if you drop that? Well, if we spill on the floor, we have to close that room and evacuate everybody.
- So, don't spill it, okay? - Don't spill it.
With the radioactive tracer in my bloodstream, Andy can measure how much blood flows through the various parts of my brain.
The more I'm using a part of my brain, the more radioactive dye it will accumulate.
I already did a baseline scan while I was just resting with my eyes closed.
Now, I'm attempting to meditate on the divine to see whether anything changes.
- It's time to start focusing on your breath.
- All right.
Now, just try to get into as good a state as you can, focusing on the breath, just trying to really bring really deep concentration to it.
I think that'll be great.
- So shall I start now? - You can go ahead and start now.
Okay.
Okay, you can finish the meditation.
How did it go? Fine.
How long was that? It was about 11 or 12 minutes.
Before the radioactive tracer flushes out of my system So you'll be on your back.
I have to quickly climb into this 3D scanner and see whether my brain has changed because I mediated on God.
- All right.
- Well, look at that, two eyes, a nose and a mouth.
Well, but to me, it looks like you're smiling a little bit.
What do you see, or do you see anything? So these are your two scans side-by-side.
Here's your resting scan.
Here's the meditation scan.
And you can see, if you look at the frontal lobes here, it's mostly yellow, just a little bit of red, whereas, if you look during your meditation, the whole frontal lobe just kind of has blossomed.
So, if you are concentrating on something, if you're saying a prayer, or if you're focusing on God, if you're trying to connect with God, then you tend to increase the activity in the frontal lobes.
How do I compare with say, a nun praying, or, let's say, a Buddhist monk who is meditating, do I compare at all? As with the nuns who were concentrating on a prayer, the Buddhists who were focusing on an image, they all activated their frontal lobes.
And that's exactly what you did too.
And if I was contemplating the image of God could you tell the difference? We actually scanned an atheist, who was a very good meditator, and we asked him to concentrate on God, to meditate on God, and he wasn't able to activate his frontal lobes very much.
So, in fact, if anything, as you can see, it's sort of decreased a little bit.
So, even though they said, "Yeah, I'm concentrating, "I'm trying to contemplate God," they just were not able to do a very good job of doing it, 'cause they didn't really believe it.
So, I think, part of what that told me is that regardless of what our practice is, the key is, do you believe it? Do you buy into it? Is it important to you? It's amazing that somebody came up with the idea that you could shoot somebody full of radioactive drugs and look at their brain.
The brain is just so unbelievably complex that it's not that there's one "God" spot, or one "God" part of the brain, but it seems to be the whole brain that gets involved.
And, ultimately, these change the way you think and feel about the world.
So, apparently, it is possible to see physical manifestations of God inside us.
Whether you're Christian, Buddhist, or any kind of spiritual person, experiencing the divine actually changes the brain, changes the way we see the world.
That's really something.
The evidence that experiencing God changes us on the inside will come as no surprise to believers, including the people at Lakewood Church in Houston.
I've come to see how 10,000 Christians can all have a meaningful, personal experience with their God.
The pastors of this mega-church, Joel and Victoria Osteen, have agreed to meet with me before the service begins, and let me in on their philosophy.
I wanna leave them something that they can use this afternoon.
So, I don't do a lot of doctrine and You know, I go practical.
Today, I'm talking about, you know, using what God's given you.
And so, when you leave, you'll say, "You know what, it was worth me going to church today.
" Let me ask you, can we pray? We got about one minute, and we're gonna pop out there.
So, I'm just gonna pray, will you pray with us, Morgan? Lord, thank you for this day.
And, Lord, all the people that have come out and many who are gonna watch on television and listen on the radio, and we just ask you that you give us the words to speak.
That every person would feel your presence, your power, that they'd feel encouragement and hope, and inspiration.
That you'd know that you have them in the palm of your hand.
I just ask you, Father, for a great service - in Jesus' name, amen.
- Amen.
Amen.
Thank you.
Very honored to have you.
- Thank you, I'm very honored to be here.
- We'll catch you afterwards.
- You gotta watch it.
- Loving it.
You'll be dancing before you know it.
It doesn't take much to get me started.
Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Yes, it is good to be in the house of the Lord and I am excited to be here today, with you! See, we were designed to function our best when we are connected to God.
You've got power on the inside you can rely on.
Don't live life in neutral, not passionate, not intentional, not focused, stir up what God's given you.
Dare to take those steps of faith.
I'm gonna ask a flat-out question, who is God? I believe God is our father, the creator, somebody that gives us purpose and destiny.
Well, sometimes it's hard for people to say, "How can I believe in something I can't see?" But it's what you choose to believe through faith.
"Lt's what you choose to believe through faith.
" When Jesus came, he said, "Look, "I want you to come to me.
" So I tell people, "You can talk to God all through the day, "like you talk to your friend.
" In your thoughts, you can say, "God, "you know, thank you for this day.
" I think, that God can be as involved in your life as much as you want him to be.
So that's what we try to teach people, to get God out of your Sunday morning box.
God has been a lot of things to a lot of people and now, here, you're making God - Personal.
- Yes.
- Approachable.
- Yes.
- And helpful.
- Yes, that's right.
The life of God lives and dwells in us.
And it's a spiritual life.
It's your spiritual power on the inside of you.
And that is what we need to tap into.
That was quite a show.
Maybe 10,000 people worshipping, celebrating, each of them having his own personal experience with God.
This is clearly a faith in the God in you.
Your inspiration, your power.
God is so many things to so many people.
The warm light of the sun.
The sound of sweet music.
An inner voice that drives us forward.
A friend.
If you ask me who God is, I would say, there's a bit of the divine in all of us.
There's God in you, there's God in me.
The God in me is who I really am, at my core.
The God in me is the best version of me.
The God in me is who I strive to be.
Who I was meant to be.
February 2017
John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, BB King, Jessie Mae Hemphill.
I can't see 'em anymore, but their spirit lives on, right here.
And we call it low down dirty blues I can lose myself in music.
Hear it.
I feel it.
And it transports me to another time and place.
Some would call it a religious experience.
Can't say that I disagree.
Makes me think of all the ways people around the world connect to God.
Moses saw God in a bush.
Buddha found enlightenment under a tree.
Muhammad experienced Allah on a mountain.
Is there some universal concept of God that all religions share? Or, is God fundamentally different to people of different faiths? I'm setting out to discover who God is.
God wants to be your best friend.
To find out how believers around the world see the divine.
The holy people are around us right now.
I'll explore how the identity of God has changed over the millennia.
He thought that there were too many gods and not enough focus was on him.
I'll learn how many gods merged into one.
It's a single force that gives order into our whole world.
And I'll search for the presence of God So you're looking for - physical manifestations of God? - Yes.
inside my brain.
I grew up with a Christian concept of God, a single divine being who created and governed the universe, of Jesus as God's earthly incarnation.
I know that's not the way everyone sees the divine.
I want to know how other religions see God.
So, I'm going to India.
To Hindus, there's not one God, there are millions.
Busy little thoroughfare.
In the holy city of Varanasi, I'm meeting historian Binda Paranjape to find out how Hindus see their gods.
At every corner of the lane, and just to see anywhere, and you see a shrine, and no corner they can leave without having a god there.
So, like we've got this small little shrine here.
Mmm-hmm.
And it has got that elephant-headed god, Ganesha.
- Ganesha.
- Yeah.
It's a god that removes the obstacles.
- Removes obstacles.
- Yeah.
Hindu deities come in many forms.
Some are male, some female, some are part human, part animal.
Each one has its specific powers.
So, she's the goddess of disease.
- Disease? - Yeah.
So when you're diseased your body gets inflamed.
Then you invoke her and she sends the cool breeze - and the body gets cooled.
- Right.
All right.
Here's a question for you.
You've got a choice of how many? - Millions.
- Millions of gods.
- How do you choose? - Usually, it's the family.
Each family has got one family deity and that is passed on to the next generation, or sometimes, in times of distress, one goes to a god and say Or goddess That, "Please take me out of this difficult times "and forever I'll worship you as my personal god or goddess.
" I'm interested in finding out how these statues become vessels for divine beings, how Hindus connect to their gods.
So, Binda is taking me to an intimate prayer ritual.
Yeah.
Can you hear these chants which are going on? - Mmm-hmm.
Yeah.
- They're chanting the chants for invoking the goddess.
So, now we're going to be blessed.
This prayer ceremony is dedicated to the goddess Lalita.
So, this is Lalita, here.
This is her physical representation.
What kind of god is she? She was created to kill a demon and that is the power of a virgin.
This 16-year-old woman - She's a virgin? - Yeah.
So all the potential is still in her, so she has got the highest form of energy in her.
And she gives that power to others to fight against that demon.
So what they're doing is they're invoking the goddess's 1,000 names and with every name they'll offer the flowers.
So anything, any syllable that we have pronounced goes to the goddess.
So, by saying these 1,000 words you have almost covered all the possible syllables that you could have uttered.
So you can invoke her with just about any syllable? The goddess is in the form of speech, the human sound.
And the world is supposed to have been created out of these rhythms.
For her devotees, Lalita exists in the rhythmic energy of their chanting.
A divine energy that powers their lives.
Anyway, the goddess has blessed you, that she has invited you here.
- Believe me.
- I believe you.
Seeing the ceremony really helps me understand what God means to Hindus.
Behind all the gods, Binda tells me, there is a single divine energy that believers seek to tap into.
They say that it's just a principle.
- It's like pure energy form.
- Mmm-hmm.
Which is neither a male or a female or having any name.
So they're just given one name, Brahman.
So, in the Western church, in Christianity, Judaism, even Islam, there is one God.
It's just It's pure energy.
There's no name you could put to him, there's no face you can put to him, there's nothing you can touch.
- Do we make a comparison there? - Yeah.
It's like the tree having the trunk and then the branches and leaves, also.
We have the shade tree of Brahman? - Right? Okay.
- Yeah.
Yeah.
So beautiful.
- It's really nicely described.
- Thank you.
All right.
How about some lunch? Game for that? Right.
And we can invoke gods for giving us good lunch.
I like the way believers here find gods that best suit their own beliefs.
It's like a spiritual fingerprint.
Unique to each person.
It's unlike the monotheism of the West.
But Maybe that's only on the surface.
On the surface, Hinduism looks like a religion of many gods.
But underneath the surface, there is a single divine energy.
So, why do some cultures see many gods and some only one? Where did the idea of worshipping a single God first take root? Perhaps it began here.
Stonehenge, Britain's iconic 5,000-year-old monument.
The culture that built Stonehenge had to endure long, cold winters.
Their survival depended on plentiful crops.
So, it would make sense to focus on the single source of energy that drove all of that The sun.
An archaeological team is uncovering new evidence that may reveal the beliefs of the people who once lived here.
We're going to look at the ditch and the interior here.
Vince Gaffney and Paul Garwood have been studying a giant C-shaped enclosure less than two miles away from Stonehenge.
The enclosure, called Durrington Walls, was built around 4,500 years ago and appears to be aligned so its opening faces the rising sun on the midwinter's day.
This is a ground-penetrating radar device.
But what enthused Vince and Paul is the remains of an older monument they found buried underneath it.
The radar located a series of very large features.
There's a long arc of stones or large buried features underneath the bank.
So they've remained undetected, effectively, for several thousand years.
The hidden rocks are massive, each of them as tall as two men.
They also form part of a C-shaped monument but the direction this C faces is different from the orientation of the mound that buries it.
There was an earlier monument of a very different form on this site.
It was looking towards Beacon Hill, this dramatic line of hills to the east, which is a dominant topographic feature in this area and certainly must have had significance at the time.
Vince and Paul think the original monument may be older than Stonehenge.
They don't know what its alignment to the hills meant.
Perhaps the hills were revered as divine or were associated with ancestors.
But after the ancient Britains built the iconic stone circle at Stonehenge They demolished the old stones at Durrington Walls and made a new mound faced the same direction as Stonehenge, toward the rising midwinter sun.
They've been pushed over and the bank of the later henge monument has actually been placed on top of them.
It moved in its orientation, its form changed, and presumably to some extent its function.
The creation of Stonehenge itself and the building of the new architectural Durrington Wall suggested a shift towards a greater emphasis on the sun as the main focus of worship and religious interest.
The builders were trying to establish a very particular connection with the summit.
The people of Stonehenge may have been the first to worship the sun as a single all-powerful God.
But in focusing on the sun, I wonder if they lost something.
When the gods were ancestors or rivers or mountains, they were much more accessible, easier to connect to, to speak to.
How do you speak to a God that's so remote? I hope to find the answer at my next destination, Egypt.
More than 1,000 years after Stonehenge was built, an Egyptian man also decided to worship the sun.
His idea was considered so dangerous that his memory was nearly wiped from the face of the Earth.
Thank you very much.
Today, just a few mementos of his life remain at the Cairo Museum.
Hey! - Oh, there you are.
Hello.
- Hello.
Amid the remains of dozens of pharaohs, Egyptologist Salima Ikram is going to help me find one whose name is Akhenaton.
There he is.
- Akhenaton.
- Yup.
He thought that there were too many gods and not enough focus was on him.
"There really needs to be an important God "whom only I can channel.
" - So, he changed things.
- Radically.
He basically closed down most of the temples, said that there is a special God, the sun God, the Aten.
And that, "You can worship the Aten "through me.
" And that didn't go over too well with a few people.
No, no.
That was not a very popular move because of course, all the priests of the other important gods were shut down.
Around the year 1350 BC, Akhenaton declared the sun would be Egypt's only God.
In doing so, he would found the first faith in recorded history with a single deity.
But it would not last.
As soon as he died, the old priesthood struck back.
This piece has been hacked away as you can tell.
You can see how the name of the king is hacked out.
The name of the Aten is also attacked.
Everything there is chip, chip, chip, chip, chip And it's gone away because Destroyed.
They just destroyed his memory - Yeah.
the best they could.
Akhenaton hoped his son would continue this legacy.
But his son was only nine years old when he took the throne.
His name was Tutankhamen.
Here is the coffin of King Tutankhamen.
The most famous pharaoh.
- Absolutely.
- But he took the throne at age nine.
- Nine to nineteen, only ten short years.
- Ten short years? I would imagine that a nine-year-old taking the throne would be under the thumb of the old guys who would say, "Look, we can't keep this up.
"We got to go back to what works.
" Absolutely.
He did what he was told probably.
And effectively, his reign sort of knocked out Akhenaton's reign and we have a return to the religion.
And to, to the gods.
The old gods are back in full force.
Tutankhamen's priests erased Akhenaton's monotheistic religion and tried to erase him from history.
Here we go.
This is Akhenaton's sarcophagus.
This is his sarcophagus? Or what's left of it because it's all smashed to pieces.
Well, that's what you get trying to change the world.
Well, poor thing didn't manage to change it for very long.
Do not fool around with the gods.
Well, Akhenaton's experiment in monotheism failed.
But, I can't help wondering if what happened Oh, around 1300 BC, didn't influence the beginning of another religion.
Because it was here on the banks of the Nile that Jewish tradition says Moses was found among the bulrushes.
And from that period, belief in a single God began to spread around the world.
How did the belief of a small band of Israelites spread so far and wide? Today, almost four billion Muslims, Christians and Jews worship the same single God.
What was so special about this God? I am traveling around the world to find out how people of different faiths connect to the divine.
And, uncovering how our ideas of who God is, have evolved over the millennia.
My quest brings me to Jerusalem, because half the people on the planet can trace their God to this ancient city.
It was here, around 3,000 years ago, that belief in a single, all-powerful deity took root.
I meet Jewish philosopher Yoram Hazony to find out how one God won out over many.
This is the old city.
Old Jerusalem.
The old city of Jerusalem.
And, stores like this have been lining these streets for thousands of years.
Except you know that thousands of years ago they actually sold idols.
Like representations of gods.
Like little figurines.
In fact, there's an old Rabbinic story, going back to the time of the Talmud, that Abraham's father was an idol-shop owner.
So, these idols, what were these gods for? So, the gods, they represent, in the old pagan religions, they represent anything that a human being could want or need.
There's a god that brings the rain.
That's the rain god.
You want victory on the battlefield, so, there's a god of war.
But, you'd have to figure out how you're gonna please all the different gods to get what you wanted though.
Right, exactly.
So, some of those gods, all they want is like, you know, a party.
They want wine and song and some good food.
That's not such a bad thing.
But, some of those gods demanded bloodshed.
"You want something from me, I want something from you.
"I want, you sacrifice your son or something" All right, all right How do I get, now, from the rain god, I got a god of fire.
To one I can't see, I can't touch.
I don't know for sure is there.
That's what this story about Abraham is about.
Abraham looks around at all these different gods, there's got to be one set of rules, one set of laws of nature, one set of laws of morals, that apply to all human beings.
So, what does he do? Where's he gonna go? - Let's take a walk and I'll show you.
- Okay, all right.
So, right here, we're looking at the absolute center of the religious world.
This is it.
This is the place.
We have, over there, the Dome of the Rock.
Over there Al Aqsa Mosque.
The Mount of Olives, and, the Valley of Gethsemane.
And down below, the Western Wall, the holiest prayer shrine of Judaism.
- Why here? - For one reason exactly.
When Abraham almost sacrificed his son, Isaac, it took place right up there on that spot.
Now, let's remember, Abraham is surrounded by idolaters who are sacrificing their children.
Murdering their own children.
Abraham thought that he was following God's commandments by taking Isaac up there and, and But, God says to him "You're not gonna touch your son.
"Not this time, "not for all time.
"There's one God.
"And," he says, "you are not gonna sacrifice another child ever again.
" And commemorating that, "Never again," is the reason that the Jews built the temple here, and from there Judaism and Christianity make this the holiest place in the history of the world.
That brings up a question though, this is an invisible God.
There's no way that you can make some proximation of him.
There's no idols.
It's a single force that gives order, the physical order, and, the moral order, to all of mankind and to our whole world.
There's no representation because he's not a local power.
Temples to the single Jewish God stood on this spot for almost 1,000 years.
Until the Romans destroyed the one that was standing in 70 AD.
But that destruction did not end this faith.
One incredible thing about this is that, the one invisible God that's beyond all things, it turns out that, you know, when you destroy the temple to that one God You don't destroy the God.
You don't destroy the God.
It turns out he's just as much there as he was before.
That's well put.
It's understandable.
The God of Abraham was a God you could commune with without any temples, without idols.
For Jews and also for Christians and Muslims, this invisible God is always with them, no matter when or where they turn to him.
It is truly amazing that three of the world's great faiths exist in such close proximity.
All worshipping one God.
The same God.
A God who has survived calamities from the destruction of the holy temple, to religious violence.
But, how do you connect with a God who has no physical form? How do you know what's divine and what isn't? I've decided to return to Cairo to try and understand who God is to Muslims.
Islam believes in the same God as Jews and Christians.
But, I want to know if there are differences in how they think about the divine.
Historian of Islam, Ahmed Ragab has brought me to the Al Hussein Mosque.
And, you can just come in here just like a Catholic church.
- So, it's always open to prayer.
- Yeah.
You want to come in here and - You can hang out with yourself and Allah.
- Yeah, absolutely.
I am just in time to hear what Muslims believe is one of the most beautiful sounds in the world.
The call to prayer.
For the faithful, the song of the muezzin is a manifestation of God himself.
So, that's The end of the prayer is by saying as-salamu alaykum.
Much like, when you end an encounter with anybody.
And it's because a prayer is essentially a meeting with God.
Like, "Hey," you know, "See you later," "Nice talking to you.
" Exactly.
"See you the next time.
" Prayer to Allah seems like a conversation with a person.
But, how do you speak to a person who has no human form? To help me understand, Ahmed has arranged a meeting with the mosque's spiritual leader Imam Al'amir Mapous.
- Thank you so much for speaking with us.
- Welcome.
In the Christian religion, God is so manifested.
But, there is no such thing in Islam.
So, who am I talking to? Do I envision anything? You cannot imagine God.
God is beyond imagination.
Whatever you would imagine with our human minds, God would be different from it.
One of the most haunting and beautiful sounds in the world, is the Muslim call to prayer.
What's the origin of that? It is said that one of Muhammad's companions had a vision, while he was asleep where he heard this call for prayer.
And, when he woke up he went to Muhammad and told him about it.
And, he's made it into this ritual, of using it to call for prayers every day.
Five times every day.
The muezzin, how is he chosen? Do you hold auditions? There are auditions where they would listen to people and the one who has the best voice would be given the position.
How about that? You have to work on it.
I have to work on it.
Okay.
I get it.
Mosques are designed to be filled with beautiful sounds and images that delight the senses.
From elaborate architecture, to verses of the Quran written in the finest calligraphy.
Many Muslims see this beauty as a manifestation of God himself.
Islam sees God in all things that are beautiful.
Because God has no physical form, he can be experienced anywhere with any of the senses.
But these experiences are only ever aspects of the divine.
God is always more than we can imagine.
Across so many faiths around the world and throughout time, people have emulated the divine in the beauty of their temples and glimpsed God in the splendor of nature.
But some faiths believe God can take a physical form.
And that form is a person.
I'm in Ship Rock, New Mexico, in the heart of the Navajo nation.
I am about to witness something that few outsiders ever see.
A sacred ceremony, where a god and a human become one single being.
- Welcome.
- Thank you.
- Thank you, thank you.
- Thank you.
- Hi, Morgan, good to see you.
- How are you? - We have something for you too.
- Oh, you do? Yes.
Look out.
- Thank you.
- You're welcome.
Where are we going now? - We're going inside.
- Are we? - Yes.
- All right, I'll follow.
Inside the traditional Navajo ritual hut, or a hogan, the Peterson family has agreed to share with me the ceremony that allows their youngest daughter, Mason, to pass from girlhood to womanhood.
By the end of the four-day-long ritual, one of the Navajo deities will be living inside her.
- Yeah, just like that, and make the cone.
- Oh, yeah.
Like a cone, like this.
The core of the ceremony is the making of a giant corn cake in honor of the sun.
How big has the cake gotta be? - It's gonna be huge.
- Huge.
Are you the fire-tender? - Yes.
- Okay.
Mason's older sister, Kayla, went through the same ritual four years ago.
And, learned about her connection to the Navajo gods, or, holy people.
Do me a favor.
Tell me about this ritual.
So, it's referred to as the Kinaalda ceremony.
- Say that again.
- Kinaalda.
"Kinaalda.
" I had my ceremony when I was around 12.
And, it's a puberty ceremony, it actually originates from Changing Woman, we call her Sa 'ah Naaghzii.
"Sa 'ah Naaghzii"? - Yes Close.
- Close? - Pretty close.
- Sa 'ah Naaghzii.
The story originated because they wanted Changing Woman to bear children.
So, it all starts when first woman and first man see a dark cloud come over Gobernador Knob.
And, they hear a baby crying.
And, him and first woman were instructed to care for the baby by the holy people.
So, within 12 days, she grew from an infant into a 12-year-old girl.
- In 12 days? - Yes.
She was ready to become a woman.
To grow into a woman, Mason must connect with the divine spirit of Changing Woman, which the Navajo believe still inhabits the landscape.
Each day, she has to run toward the rising sun.
Do the young ladies always run east in the morning? Yes.
So it goes back on the story with Changing Woman, as she becomes a woman.
When she does bear children, it is with the sun.
The holy people are around us right now.
This is an opportunity for the ceremony where these prayers come apart and push on her.
And it's all about her.
Yes, yes, yes, it is.
So she gets all the prayers, and your hopes and your dreams that you want for her.
Just whatever positive you can push into the cake and make sure that her life is strong and complete, and that she knows that she has all these prayers that will - go with her.
- Go with her.
As the corn cake begins its slow overnight bake, Mason begins the final night of her kinaalda.
Tonight, she'll be joined with the spirit of the Navajo deity, Changing Woman.
She and her family will stay in the hogan until dawn, while the Navajo medicine man sings sacred songs.
Are all of these songs prayers and blessings for the young girl? Yeah, these can help her along the way, that she's just barely changing into a young adult.
So I just sing for them at the kinaalda, to give them strength.
It's what the run is about, okay.
- Yeah.
- It's an endorsement, build the muscles, and everything, that way, they change slowly into womanhood.
There are many more songs to be sung tonight, but hearing them all is prohibited for outsiders like me.
- Thank you.
- You're welcome.
- See you.
- See you in a bit.
Okay.
At dawn, Mason makes the final and longest run of her kinaalda.
How are you feeling? I think I'm gonna pass out.
- You're gonna pass out? - Yes.
- She's hot, she's gonna pass out.
- Yeah.
I'm glad it's cold out here.
You're glad it's cold.
Otherwise you would pass out, right? On this morning, the spirit of the Navajo deity has moved inside Mason and made her a holy person.
Be proud, your cake is good.
That means things are gonna work out just fine.
Right, right? The cake can only be eaten once it's been blessed by Mason.
- I can take a bite of it? - Yeah.
Don't burn your tongue.
Now that it's over, how do you feel? I feel like I say this, I'm just like, "Mom, "I survived, "it felt like boot camp!" Great.
In the kinaalda, Navajo girls have a personal experience of the Changing Woman.
One that can only be gained through rare moments of insight.
She is the spirit that infuses the entire Navajo landscape.
If we believe that God not only surrounds us, but also has the power to move inside us Can we, perhaps, discover what God is by looking inside our minds? For thousands of years, to many people, God has been invisible, intangible, a presence believers can sense but not see or touch.
But science may be about to change that.
I took a train to Philadelphia to meet a neuroscientist who studies what happens in our brains when we have religious experiences.
I'm about to see whether I can find the presence of God, in my brain.
Doctor Andy Newberg is pioneering a new field of study he calls "neurotheology.
" And I know that you have done a lot of research on the brain, how the brain reacts to, say, spiritual meditation.
Can you elaborate on that for me? Well, certainly, you know, as we look at the brain, we can see very substantial differences when people are religious or spiritual in their practices, when they're trying to pray, meditate on God.
You know, we can see what's going on in us as we think about God, experience God, pray to God, whatever the person is doing.
So, you're looking for physical manifestations of God? Yes, you are looking for physical manifestations of God.
Okay so, I'm interested in finding out if there is any manifestation of God within me, in my brain.
Right.
We could take a look at that.
- Come on.
- See if we can find it.
Little pinch.
- Ow! - I'm sorry.
I'm kidding.
The process begins with an injection of radioactive dye.
What happens if you drop that? Well, if we spill on the floor, we have to close that room and evacuate everybody.
- So, don't spill it, okay? - Don't spill it.
With the radioactive tracer in my bloodstream, Andy can measure how much blood flows through the various parts of my brain.
The more I'm using a part of my brain, the more radioactive dye it will accumulate.
I already did a baseline scan while I was just resting with my eyes closed.
Now, I'm attempting to meditate on the divine to see whether anything changes.
- It's time to start focusing on your breath.
- All right.
Now, just try to get into as good a state as you can, focusing on the breath, just trying to really bring really deep concentration to it.
I think that'll be great.
- So shall I start now? - You can go ahead and start now.
Okay.
Okay, you can finish the meditation.
How did it go? Fine.
How long was that? It was about 11 or 12 minutes.
Before the radioactive tracer flushes out of my system So you'll be on your back.
I have to quickly climb into this 3D scanner and see whether my brain has changed because I mediated on God.
- All right.
- Well, look at that, two eyes, a nose and a mouth.
Well, but to me, it looks like you're smiling a little bit.
What do you see, or do you see anything? So these are your two scans side-by-side.
Here's your resting scan.
Here's the meditation scan.
And you can see, if you look at the frontal lobes here, it's mostly yellow, just a little bit of red, whereas, if you look during your meditation, the whole frontal lobe just kind of has blossomed.
So, if you are concentrating on something, if you're saying a prayer, or if you're focusing on God, if you're trying to connect with God, then you tend to increase the activity in the frontal lobes.
How do I compare with say, a nun praying, or, let's say, a Buddhist monk who is meditating, do I compare at all? As with the nuns who were concentrating on a prayer, the Buddhists who were focusing on an image, they all activated their frontal lobes.
And that's exactly what you did too.
And if I was contemplating the image of God could you tell the difference? We actually scanned an atheist, who was a very good meditator, and we asked him to concentrate on God, to meditate on God, and he wasn't able to activate his frontal lobes very much.
So, in fact, if anything, as you can see, it's sort of decreased a little bit.
So, even though they said, "Yeah, I'm concentrating, "I'm trying to contemplate God," they just were not able to do a very good job of doing it, 'cause they didn't really believe it.
So, I think, part of what that told me is that regardless of what our practice is, the key is, do you believe it? Do you buy into it? Is it important to you? It's amazing that somebody came up with the idea that you could shoot somebody full of radioactive drugs and look at their brain.
The brain is just so unbelievably complex that it's not that there's one "God" spot, or one "God" part of the brain, but it seems to be the whole brain that gets involved.
And, ultimately, these change the way you think and feel about the world.
So, apparently, it is possible to see physical manifestations of God inside us.
Whether you're Christian, Buddhist, or any kind of spiritual person, experiencing the divine actually changes the brain, changes the way we see the world.
That's really something.
The evidence that experiencing God changes us on the inside will come as no surprise to believers, including the people at Lakewood Church in Houston.
I've come to see how 10,000 Christians can all have a meaningful, personal experience with their God.
The pastors of this mega-church, Joel and Victoria Osteen, have agreed to meet with me before the service begins, and let me in on their philosophy.
I wanna leave them something that they can use this afternoon.
So, I don't do a lot of doctrine and You know, I go practical.
Today, I'm talking about, you know, using what God's given you.
And so, when you leave, you'll say, "You know what, it was worth me going to church today.
" Let me ask you, can we pray? We got about one minute, and we're gonna pop out there.
So, I'm just gonna pray, will you pray with us, Morgan? Lord, thank you for this day.
And, Lord, all the people that have come out and many who are gonna watch on television and listen on the radio, and we just ask you that you give us the words to speak.
That every person would feel your presence, your power, that they'd feel encouragement and hope, and inspiration.
That you'd know that you have them in the palm of your hand.
I just ask you, Father, for a great service - in Jesus' name, amen.
- Amen.
Amen.
Thank you.
Very honored to have you.
- Thank you, I'm very honored to be here.
- We'll catch you afterwards.
- You gotta watch it.
- Loving it.
You'll be dancing before you know it.
It doesn't take much to get me started.
Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Yes, it is good to be in the house of the Lord and I am excited to be here today, with you! See, we were designed to function our best when we are connected to God.
You've got power on the inside you can rely on.
Don't live life in neutral, not passionate, not intentional, not focused, stir up what God's given you.
Dare to take those steps of faith.
I'm gonna ask a flat-out question, who is God? I believe God is our father, the creator, somebody that gives us purpose and destiny.
Well, sometimes it's hard for people to say, "How can I believe in something I can't see?" But it's what you choose to believe through faith.
"Lt's what you choose to believe through faith.
" When Jesus came, he said, "Look, "I want you to come to me.
" So I tell people, "You can talk to God all through the day, "like you talk to your friend.
" In your thoughts, you can say, "God, "you know, thank you for this day.
" I think, that God can be as involved in your life as much as you want him to be.
So that's what we try to teach people, to get God out of your Sunday morning box.
God has been a lot of things to a lot of people and now, here, you're making God - Personal.
- Yes.
- Approachable.
- Yes.
- And helpful.
- Yes, that's right.
The life of God lives and dwells in us.
And it's a spiritual life.
It's your spiritual power on the inside of you.
And that is what we need to tap into.
That was quite a show.
Maybe 10,000 people worshipping, celebrating, each of them having his own personal experience with God.
This is clearly a faith in the God in you.
Your inspiration, your power.
God is so many things to so many people.
The warm light of the sun.
The sound of sweet music.
An inner voice that drives us forward.
A friend.
If you ask me who God is, I would say, there's a bit of the divine in all of us.
There's God in you, there's God in me.
The God in me is who I really am, at my core.
The God in me is the best version of me.
The God in me is who I strive to be.
Who I was meant to be.
February 2017