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I am an Indian who believed in God and followed Hinduism.

Later, I went to college and became enlightened and ruled out the idea of third party creation or the existence of a creator. That said, during the time I believed in God, when I entered the temples I had a different feeling (I can't explain it, but it felt good) by hearing the chanting of mantras, the glow of lamps, the smoked smell of camphor, etc.

I think this is a spiritual feeling.

As I have lived my childhood as a theist and later as an atheist I can't differentiate if the spiritual feeling is because of childhood memories or is genetically embedded.

I ask this question to understand how people like OSHO and thousands of his variants in India could glue millions of followers without giving any material things.

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    $\begingroup$ Perhaps, you’d better ask this question in the philosophy forum. Anyway, from the neuroscientific point of view, your answer can be shortly answered like this: every feeling (including spiritual feeling), every emotion, every thought, and every other activity of the mind are the results of neural processes. Evident is that all of these mental activities (including spiritual feeling) are altered, stopped, or destroyed permanently by anything that affect the involved neural processes, such as sedatives/psychotropic drugs, head injury, encephalitis, and dementing diseases. $\endgroup$
    – user287279
    Commented Jul 30, 2019 at 5:14
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    $\begingroup$ But, where did the believing in god/gods, in spirits, in supernatural power, etc. come from? From the psychological point of views, IMO, these beliefs came from the psychological need of ancient people to explain natural phenomena that they encountered. Without the current scientific knowledge, it is natural that ancient people invented something to account for these phenomena. $\endgroup$
    – user287279
    Commented Jul 30, 2019 at 5:16
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    $\begingroup$ And, IMO, that OSHO and thousands of his variant in India could glue millions of followers without giving any material things is because they had charismatic abilities. Other people have these charismatic abilities too, such as some other religious leaders, some cult leaders, some national leaders, and some politicians. Finally, please understand that I've tried to give you neuroscientific and psychologic answers frankly, and I hope that they did not insult your feelings and beliefs. $\endgroup$
    – user287279
    Commented Jul 30, 2019 at 5:24
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    $\begingroup$ Related: How to measure the correlation between "spirituality" and the susceptibility to false memories? $\endgroup$
    – Ooker
    Commented Aug 1, 2019 at 4:24
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    $\begingroup$ Meta discussion: Are questions about cognitive aspect of spirituality on-topic? $\endgroup$
    – Ooker
    Commented Aug 18, 2019 at 8:13

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