Mysticism & Meaning Dr. Steven Engler On Spiritual Beliefs Across Cultures

Summary

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The Good Question Podcast

Episode: Mysticism & Meaning – Dr. Steven Engler on Spiritual Beliefs Across Cultures

Host: Richard Jacobs
Guest: Dr. Steven Engler, Professor of Religious Studies, Mount Royal University
Date: May 5, 2026

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Overview

This episode dives into the complex and varied world of mystical and spirit incorporation religions, especially in Brazil, through the fieldwork of Dr. Steven Engler. The conversation explores why people across cultures have such different explanations yet report similar spiritual experiences, how traditions like Kardecism and Umbanda function, what actually happens in spirit possession and exorcism rituals, and why Dr. Engler takes a pragmatic, experiential approach to the study of religion, steering clear of questions of truth or falsity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Dr. Engler's Research and Perspective

• Fieldwork Focus: Engler works with spirit incorporation religions in Brazil—specifically Cardas Spiritism (Kardecism), Umbanda, Afro-Brazilian religions, and Neopentecostal traditions.
• Comparative Observation: Despite outsiders witnessing similar possession phenomena (speech, posture, personalities), believers within each tradition offer radically different explanations based on their own religious frameworks.
  • "From the outside, [possession] looks the same in many traditions... But when you ask people what's going on, they'll give you very different stories." (03:03, Engler)
• Non-Evaluative Approach: Engler emphasizes understanding impact over judging truth.
  • "I never ask if a certain person's religious belief is true or false or better or worse. I'm just trying to understand... when people believe something, it makes a difference." (02:16, Engler)

How Spiritual Experiences Are Learned

• Learning Processes: Spiritual experiences are often learned, with novices imitating others, repeating affirmations, and using techniques also found in self-help and neuro-linguistic programming.
• Gradual Immersion: Engler notes that becoming fully incorporated into these experiences can take time—"often ten months, a year."
  • "You use kind of the same techniques you see in the self help movement. You are working with affirmations... and after a while you just start seeing it from that other point of view. But it's something people learn." (03:11, Engler)

Case Studies: Spiritual Practice as Therapy

• Neopentecostal Exorcism: Woman finds relief from anxiety through regular "demon expulsion" sessions at church, forming a cycle much like psychological therapy.
  • "She would feel great for a couple of months and then she'd go back again... her regular psychotherapy, having demons expelled." (04:31, Engler)
• Narrative Healing in Umbanda: After seeing a deceased friend, a man is guided to become a medium, integrating the experience positively.
  • "In that society, it's not hard to find someone who totally believes in spirits... He learned to work with what he sees as a very positive ab. And now he's a medium in a religion called Umbanda." (05:44, Engler)

Good, Evil, and Ambiguity in Spiritual Practices

• Not Always Positive: In some traditions, experiences are framed as battles with negative spirits, while others view spirits as exclusively positive. Engler has himself undergone "disobsession" rituals but reports no subjective change.
  • "I've been not exorcised, but disobessed a couple of times... I can't say that I couldn't see what the problem was before or what the solution was after." (08:17, Engler)
• Differentiated Trance States: Each tradition interprets possession and trance differently—some mediums remember everything but feel out of control, others recall nothing.

Dr. Engler’s Relationship to Spirituality & Research Rigor

• Self-Description: Engler calls himself "religiously tone deaf"—interested in respectful study rather than personal spiritual transformation.
  • "Maybe it's a personal quest... Just fascinating to see another culture where belief in spirit and spiritual evolution over many lifetimes is... part of life." (07:18, Engler)
• Experience with Ritual: He sometimes feels a palpable energy when addressed by spirits in rituals, but maintains an ethnographer’s distance—even when unsettled or caught off script.
  • "The way he said [my questions were trivial] really hit me... If I were less of an ethnographic person, I think I would have started going back... for rituals myself." (14:51, Engler)

Techniques & Theories: A Comparative Inventory

• Techniques Shared Across Systems: Focusing attention, affirmations, auto-suggestion, behavior modeling, and narrative creation recur in self-help, therapy, religions, and even magic.
  • "That's the heart of self help... psychoanalysis... hypnotherapy... mesmeric techniques, new age, theosophy, many UFO religions... The modern world has taken an interesting turn." (11:19, Engler)
• Set Aside Truth Claims: Engler repeatedly stresses that exploring the effect of belief on life is more fruitful than debating the ultimate reality of spiritual encounters.

Questions of Personal Experience & the Limits of Participation

• Engler, despite regular exposure, hasn't had "inexplicable" spiritual events himself, and resists immersive participation as he feels it would not be authentic or respectful to the tradition.
  • "It wouldn't have been a natural desire... It would have been an observation, and that felt a little too invasive." (22:31, Engler)
• When challenged about his motivation, Engler reframes his interest—he’s after the mechanisms of belief and knowledge-formation in all domains, not just religion.
  • "The more I study it, the more I realize we're nowhere near as rational as we think." (26:27, Engler)

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Memorable Quotes & Notable Moments

• On the Impact of Belief:

  • "If it makes a difference in people's lives, that is worth studying on its own." (02:16, Engler)

• On the Repeated Relief Ritual:

  • "Her regular psychotherapy, having demons expelled." (05:09, Engler)

• On Personal Experience:

  • "Like I say, I bring the Ouija board into my classroom... Nothing's ever happened. I tell my students maybe I'm just like a lightning rod, I just ground all the energy." (12:25, Engler)

• On Encountering Spirits:

  • "So I was talking to an Eshu... he thought my questions were trivial... If I were less of an ethnographic person in the field, I think I would have started going back to that place for rituals myself." (14:51, Engler)

• On Mediums During Ritual:

  • "I'm talking to the spirit in them... Some I know socially, but in the ritual, they don't see me, and I don't really see them. I see someone else there." (16:43, Engler)

• On Meaning and Reality:

  • "The more I study religions, the more I think that question just doesn't get us anywhere to ask what's real. I don't think there's any payoff to that question... The meaning is in what you end up with, not whether you find what really exists." (10:01, Engler)

• On Science, Belief, and Knowledge:

  • "It seems to me that's a lot like people who believe in religion, because in all cases, again, once you set aside... is this the truth, is that the truth... you look at the underlying experience." (25:00, Engler)

• Daily Magic:

  • "Once you realize that there's a thousand different perspectives that bring meaning to people's lives, you can't go through your day... without realizing that we're making magic every day just through... the frames we start applying to the world around us." (29:40, Engler)

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Important Timestamps

• [01:16] – Engler introduces his research and approach
• [03:03] – On shared ritual behaviors and different interpretations
• [04:31] – Neopentecostal exorcism as therapy
• [05:44] – Healing through Umbanda, personal story
• [08:17] – Disobsession rituals and ambiguous outcomes
• [10:01] – On meaning versus reality in religious study
• [12:25] – No personal inexplicable events, classroom Ouija story
• [14:51] – Confrontation by Eshu spirit in a ritual
• [16:43] – Drastic change in friends’ behavior during rituals
• [21:17] – Ritual experiments with off-script responses
• [22:31] – Why Engler avoids full immersion as a “test”
• [25:00] – Comparing religious and scientific knowledge and belief
• [29:40] – Engler’s concluding thoughts on daily meaning-making

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Conclusion

Dr. Steven Engler provides a nuanced and open-minded look at spirit-based religiosity in Brazil and beyond, showing both the variety and the similarity of mystical practices. He argues for a pragmatic approach to religious studies—focusing on lived impact rather than metaphysical truth—and suggests that belief, ritual, and meaning-making are common to all human endeavors, whether religious, scientific, or everyday life. His accounts and reflections challenge listeners to reconsider what counts as “rational” and how reality is constructed through shared narratives and techniques.

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Transcript

[Richard Jacobs]

You're listening to the Good Question podcast with Richard Jacobs. Our goal is to make each of our guests exclaim, hmm, that's a good question. I don't know the answer. Because when that happens, it means you, the listener, may be inspired to learn more beyond the interview and to ask great questions yourself that lead to new insights. In this podcast, we cover historical and current anthropology, comparative religion and history. Welcome. And let's get started.

Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Good Question podcast. Yesterday is Stephen Engler. He's a professor of religious studies in the Department of Humanities at Mount Royal. We're going to talk about a whole bunch of unusual topics. The esoteric tradition of mesmerism, as, I guess as in mesmerizing people, and the self help movement that, you know, began the, I guess in the 18th century. I didn't know that. And then we're going to talk about other areas of his work that I, if I describe them, I'll probably completely butcher them. So I'll let him do it. But to welcome Professor Engler. Welcome, Stephen. Thank you.

[Stephen Engler]

Thanks much. Good to be here.

[Richard Jacobs]

Yeah. Well, if you would tell me about your work, what does it encompass? It's seems like a lot of unusual, religiously tied aspects, but how would you describe it?

[Stephen Engler]

I do field work with spirit incorporation religions in Brazil, so Cardas spiritism and Umbanda, and some field work with Afro Brazilian religions and Neopentecostal traditions. And what I'm interested in is the fact that people have similar sorts of experiences in different religious traditions, but very different ideas about what's going on.

[Richard Jacobs]

So what happens in these religions? I know, like Pentecostal religion, they, they'll get the Holy Spirit into them and people sometimes will shake or speak in tongues or, you know, fall down and roll around and, and things like that. And then just through TV and all that. I don't know. You know, I would imagine in Brazil it's, you know, it's kind of the same thing. They get infused with a spirit and they would dance or sing or maybe speak in a certain language. Like what happens when, when these processes happen.

[Stephen Engler]

Part of that is the same in many traditions from the outside, have a different personality, a different voice, a different body posture. And so that's very similar. And yet when you ask people what's going on, they'll give you very different stories that reflect the different beliefs of the traditions. So I think one of the first things we need to do is establish, as a religious studies person, I never ask the question of whether a certain person's religious belief is true or false or better or worse. I'm just trying to understand where they're coming from. Because where I start from is the idea that when people believe something, it makes a difference. Now you don't have to even get into the question of is it true, is it not? If it makes a difference in people's lives, that is worth studying on its own. And in a way, that's what we're talking about. We're starting with mesmerism and on and on. How does believing make a difference?

[Richard Jacobs]

I mean, if you haven't had the experience yet, let's say you're new to the religion, either you grew up in it and you've seen it or you're curious about it or you've seen it as an adult and you're going. And you're going to have hopefully your first experience. I mean, I don't know. I would think you'd have far less belief than someone that has had the experience. So that if people first do it.

[Stephen Engler]

Well, it depends on how far you want to go. You can go to many different religions and just be there and you're not going to have that sort of experience. Some people never do. And anthropologists, people like Tanya Luhrmann has studied how whether you're looking at say witchcraft, a community, or whether you're looking at Protestants who learn to talk to God or the French scholar Aloy who looked at how you learn to incorporate the data deities, the gods and an Afro Brazilian religion and various people show the same thing. You use kind of the same techniques you see in the self help movement. In neuro linguistic programming, you are working with affirmations. You're trying to reinterpret the world and you're training your body by sort of imitating other people and you get in the zone. Often that takes ten months, a year. And after a while you just start seeing it from that other point of view. But it's something people learn and we can study how it's learned. So it doesn't necessarily have to be supernatural at all. But your first encounter with some of the religions I visit is going to be pretty odd. It looks very different when you talk to people. They see it as a totally positive, healing, spiritually developing experience.

[Richard Jacobs]

Well, what have you literally seen? I mean, I'm sure you hung around and seen a lot of these things in person. What's an experience that they really impacted you?

[Stephen Engler]

I interviewed a woman who had gone to psychiatrists, psychologists, and it didn't help her deal with her what she felt was just increasing anxiety, and she started to get upset at the people in her life, and she started to feel out of control. But she went to a neopentacostal church in Brazil, and though she wasn't one of the people up on stage, which is very dramatic, where up to 20,000 demons are, according to the pastors, expelled from a person with great force. But she, dealing with another pastor on the sidelines, would have what she was told was a demon pushed out of her body by the power of Jesus.

[Richard Jacobs]

It.

[Stephen Engler]

And she would feel great for a couple of months and then she'd go back again. And that was her regular psychotherapy, having demons expelled. And I've talked to other people who go to a psychologist with about the same timeline in the same schedule. Anxiety increase, go there, check in. That's what fascinates me, is if you stop asking, what really exists? Do these things really exist? What's the truth? And you start just asking, what difference does it make in people's lives? You start to see more similarities than differences.

[Richard Jacobs]

What difference does it make? Clearly it allowed you to live normally for a month at a time. But what are the common reasons people do it?

[Stephen Engler]

Grow spiritually. And sometimes I talk to several people who, when they were young, they saw people, dead people, or heard voices. And they come from a culture that accepts that. So someone I talked to, he used to play hooky and get on his motorbike and just skip school. He and his friend were heading out, but his bike didn't work. So he stayed home to work on his bike, and his friend got in an accident and died. And that evening, in his kitchen at home, his friend appeared to him right there. He said it was undeniable, it wasn't a ghostly person. It was his friend standing there, looking just as real as he'd stood there many times before. And then the friend disappeared, so that worried him. He went to talk to someone. In that society, it's not hard to find someone who totally believes in spirits, works with spirits. And that person said to him, well, that's no surprise. Your friend was shocked. Violent deaths confuse people. But then he's getting on with his afterlife. Don't worry about him. Let's talk about you. You're seeing dead people. And he learned to work with what he sees as a very positive ab. And now he's a medium in a religion called Umbanda. And once a week, different types of spirits on different days come down and he helps people. He's one of the people now who's helping others. Maybe a person has a sore elbow. Maybe a person's losing their keys all the time. Maybe the person's just had a bad relationship talking to these spirits and being blessed as part of how they get through difficult moments in their lives.

[Richard Jacobs]

So, like, why do you study them? Is it just like an anthropologist point of view? You wanted to see how this works and what it means to the culture. Why do you do what you do?

[Stephen Engler]

I'm always asking questions. In a way, I feel like I'm religiously tone deaf. You know, I respect every religion I've countered. I mean, some of them have dark sides or rough edges, but it doesn't touch me. So maybe it's a personal quest. I'm often told that I'm told you're here for a reason. You were brought here, and I'm open to that. Part of it, though, is just what you said. I went to Brazil when I was an exchange student and met people there, and then years, years later went back and ended up getting married to one of the people I knew there. So that's a. To keep going to Brazil. And it's just fascinating to see another culture where belief in spirit and spiritual evolution over many lifetimes is on the television. It's in the music. It's down the street, it's around the corner. It's drums keeping you awake at night from the umba in the center next door. And it's just part of life.

[Richard Jacobs]

Of all the religions that you've seen, are any of the encounters negative or are they always positive for the people that engage in them?

[Stephen Engler]

Well, some people, it depends on the religion. In neopentecostal, and people see themselves as attacked by demonic forces, and then they're protected from that. The religions I tend to go to more, the spirits are totally positive, but sometimes there are negative spirits who hinder you, sort of get in your way. So I'd been not exorcised, but disobessed a couple of times in rituals, though, honestly, I can't say that I couldn't see what the problem was before or what the solution was after. But it was interesting to go through the process.

[Richard Jacobs]

Okay. So they would say, like you, you need to. I. I see be treated. They would treat you, and after, you kind of felt the same.

[Stephen Engler]

Yeah, like I said, I sometimes I think I study religion because I respect people who get it more than I do. I can tell you a lot about religions in terms of their historical context, their ritual variation, their demographic characteristics, but I don't really feel it.

[Richard Jacobs]

Have you ever, have you ever had a spiritual experience like this, like they talk about?

[Stephen Engler]

Not like those, no. But on the other hand, isn't every day, if you're paying attention, filled with spiritual experiences? A chance encounter with a generous person or the ability to help someone out or, or a coincidence that throws luck in your way or bad luck that you just narrowly missed? I try to remain open to that sense of wonder everywhere. And maybe that's why I enjoy these religions because they're just so varied. You're in a room with people who see another world behind this world and they found a way to open that door and you can sort of catch glimpses through it. It's a privileged job to have to go and visit people in their spiritual spaces.

[Richard Jacobs]

I mean, with all the things that you've seen, you must have seen a lot. Do you believe there is a spirit world? That there is more than just the material world that we see?

[Stephen Engler]

I don't know, maybe it's, maybe it's ironic or maybe it's just a different variety of open mindedness. But the more I study religions, the more I think that that question just doesn't get us anywhere to ask what's real. I don't think there's any payoff to that question. Even when you ask like what's the meaning of things? I think the meaning is in what you end up with, not whether you find what really exists. I get more and more pragmatic in a sense. I mean, you mention mesmerism, that's a good example. We look at mesmerism, we see something starting there and if we trace it into the future, if you start asking what's going on? Well then mesmer was wrong because he had this theory. And karticism has a different theory and the self help movement has a different theory and Freudian psychology has a different theory. So if you focus on the theory, people's idea of what are the real factors involved, you see this landscape of very different things. But if you focus on the practical side, what real differ does it make in a person's life or even more? Let's say we focus on techniques, techniques of focusing your attention, working different expectations. So in a sense an affirmation that you try to shape reality. Suggestion, auto suggestion, suggestion to others, creating a narrative, trying to tell your story in a way that makes it fit within a certain viewpoint and changing your beliefs. And you try to model your behavior, getting your body involved so you are imitating the other way. Other people work those techniques. We could Say we stopped talking about theory. That's the heart of the self help movement, at least many types of it. That's the heart of psychoanalysis, that's the heart of hypnotherapy, it's the heart of neuro linguistic programming. It's the heart of karticism, of mesmerism, of the new age movement. It's the heart of many types of magic. It's the heart of theosophy, many UFO religions. So when you look at that practical side and the techniques that are used and set aside the theory, what we see is that the modern world has taken an interesting turn. I think that's the most interesting aspect of it. This stuff really did, didn't happen before. I think you nailed the date. The late 1700s again.

[Richard Jacobs]

All the experiences you've seen, I was going to ask you tell me about some of them. I mean, you know, I've, I've, like, I've spoken to people that have certain people when they're, they've had a near death experience and they told them things that they couldn't have known, supposedly. Haven't you seen things that you had no explanation for, yet you saw them or experienced them?

[Stephen Engler]

Me personally? Not really, no. Like, like I say, I, I bring the, the Ouija board into my classroom on esotericism when we're doing our session on spiritualism. Nothing's ever happened. I tell my students, you know, maybe I'm just like a lightning rod, I just ground all the energy. But I've talked to lots of people who have experienced things, who see things.

[Richard Jacobs]

Yeah, maybe. Like I said, you know, the spiritual equivalent of Typhoid Mary, you don't get sick, you hang around it.

[Stephen Engler]

Well, one thing I don't do, I don't say it's that I'm dismissive, right? And I am open. But you know, maybe because of the way I look at things, because I, and I don't even ask the questions of what exists, I just don't get into the way of looking at things that does produce those results. But let me give you a couple examples of what other people I've talked to have experienced. So there I talked to a woman who had a dream of lizard extraterrestrials coming into her house. And one came in a room and was, touched her foot. Then she woke up and then she went out and there were several lizard extraterrestrials in the house. Then one of the entities protected her because the others were threatened. So she took that to a friend from a different religion. But the one that also believes in spirits and said, I don't know what to make of it. So her friend went and they talked to the advanced spirits of karcticism, who are people just like us, but through many lifetimes they're more advanced with each other than we are. So they come back to help us by talking through mediums. So I mean, it's like a self help tradition. Everyone's just trying to, to grow and become a better person by talking to spirits who can help them do that. And the spirit said, yes, what happened was you had some negative energy from a murder that took place just across the street from you. And that energy was in your house because the person was killed had had a relationship with one of the people who worked in that place. And so you were protected because you are a spiritually developed person yourself. So what do you make of it? Doesn't really fit within that person's religion. Doesn't fit within the religion of the other person she's talked about. Those kind of entities just aren't part of that tradition. So what do you make of that? I mean, what I saw was that here's a person who was totally comfortable with this experience, saw it as a positive, protective experience that moved her forward. That's beautiful.

[Richard Jacobs]

Yeah, that makes sense. What's some of the, I don't know, the craziest stuff you've seen?

[Stephen Engler]

Oh yeah. I've had people see me and offer reflections on me. That felt powerful. So I was talking to an Eshu who's a very powerful spirit from West Africa. Appears in different, goes different ways ways in different Afro Brazilian or Afro Cuban or Afro Puerto Rican traditions. And this issue is like, all Eshu is very powerful. Can be dark, can be dangerous, can be a protector. It's sort of beyond morality. Good and evil don't really apply. It's a place people go for black magic. If you want someone to fall in love with you when they're not returning your attentions, you can pay for a sacrifice there. If you have a business partner you want to get ahead of, you can pay for a ritual there. So I was talking to the Es Shu and I was, you know, most people have problems they talk about. I, I don't usually have problems to talk about. So I start more or less interviewing the spirits, which most of them are cool with. And the issue looked at me and said he thought my questions were trivial. He said, you're throwing these words around, trying to label what's going on here. And he said, you're Just starting out spiritually. Look down beneath your feet and you'll see an incruzilada, a crossroads, a place of religious path. So he turned it around, but the way he did it, the energy, because I was talking not to a person, but to a very powerful spir in the person. At least that's what everyone in that building believed. And the way he said it to me really hit me. And if I were less of a sort of ethnographic person in the field, I think I would have started going back to that place for rituals myself. But I think my ethnographic stance keeps me, you know, at a certain distance, which maybe is not a good thing spiritually, but it's certainly a good thing academically.

[Richard Jacobs]

But again, have you seen anything just, I don't know, people levitating, people speaking in know as if they're possessed. Have you ever been around, you know, like, exorcisms or anything or.

[Stephen Engler]

Well, yeah, exorcisms like the ones I mentioned in the New Pentecostal Church. Every tradition is different, but usually that's one of the things I do, is read the rituals like a text. And as an outsider, how do you know when someone has the spirit? There's always going to be signs. A hand behind the back, the voice changes, the posture changes. They work with different. Might have different clothing, a different. You know, a certain sort of spirit's going be bent over with a little cane. Then you know what type of spirit is. Another one's going to light a pipe. Then you know, it's a different type of spirit. They speak with different accents, with different vocabulary. So there's lots of signs that you're dealing. Some of the mediums I interviewed, I interview the people, and then I go and see them in the rituals, and I'm talking to the spirit in them. And it's like this person. Some of them I know socially, I go and have a beer with these people, but in the ritual, they don't see me, and I don't really see them. I see someone else there. That's a very interest and even unsettling experience at first. But after a while, you simply say, well, that's the way it is.

[Richard Jacobs]

What do you mean you don't see them there?

[Stephen Engler]

When you're talking to someone, you know, there's an energy. You look in their eyes, they look in your eyes, you see them. They say you. It's the same thing. But when I'm talking to a medium, I know personally when they're incorporating a spirit, their body language is different. Their voice is different, the eye contact is different. Like they don't really see me. Like I've never met them before. For their attitude is different. They're a very generous, powerful person, somewhat condescendingly, but also very charitably reaching out to help me. They're not someone I'm having a beer with. Part of it's the ritual situation, the clothing. Maybe they're playing a role. I don't think it even helps to ask that, because I'm playing a role there as an ethnographer. But I don't recognize some of these people are people I'd call friends. And in the rich, I don't see my friend.

[Richard Jacobs]

And they say they don't see you. What do they see when they're you?

[Stephen Engler]

Depends on the religion. In, say, Afro Brazilian religion, normal is the medium will not remember what went down when the Odisha was incorporated in Umbunda people. The normal is to remember, but remember that you were not in control. So if I talk to the person afterwards, they'll say, yeah, I saw you there, but I was just watching, I wasn't talking to you. That was the spirit talk. And in karcticism, people remain totally in control. Control. So different religions have different trance states. Interesting. I asked someone once, do the people you work with in Umbananda ever fake the incorporation? So do you have mediums who are faking it? And he said, yeah. And he said, I know there's one guy who can't remember. And he lies about it and says he does remember. Well, that was the opposite of the question, the answer I expected. He was saying that someone didn't have the right sort of trance because they went too deeply into trance, which isn't the typical trance for that particular religion. So there's all these ideas of what's normal religious experience, but they're very similar in terms of the effects they have on people's lives.

[Richard Jacobs]

Well, have you ever had the spirits? I don't say stuff to you. You're like that unsettled you or you couldn't. How did they know that? Or they, I don't know, said crazy shit to you that just shocked you?

[Stephen Engler]

No. Like I said, I talked to so many people who have amazing experiences, but I don't have the experience. One of the interesting things is, you know, how the ritual supposed to go. It's got a script. And as an ethnographer, I, you know, subtly and respectfully will respond off script to see what happens with the ritual. It's a sort of ethnographic experiment. And I remember once I was in a ritual, and they said, no, you stand aside. This was during a time when there were elections in both the US And Brazil coming up. And then they took me up to the second most important person in the house. And so the second most important spirit in the body of that person. They said it was because they wanted me to be able to understand. The accents can make it different. I mean, I speak Portuguese well enough that I don't have trouble, but there I was. And he said, what? You know, the deeper voice, son, what's bothering you, son? And I said, well, I'm kind of worried about the election. And then the spirit said, not only the America. And that shook me. Like I was thinking, wait, spirits shouldn't be knowing what's going on. Current events, or do they know? And so for a moment, I was sort of thrown outside the script, and I didn't know. Am I talking to the media? Am I talking to the spirit? What's going on here? And then this. The script reasserted itself. And then there was the blessing. You touch forearms and everything was back normal. So there's all these cues going on about what is normal in a certain ritual. And that's one of the interesting things, is to see when they. Something off script. Half.

[Richard Jacobs]

Have you ever asked the people around you, like, hey, man, how come I never. How come I never get the good stuff? You know? Have you ever asked for more?

[Stephen Engler]

Well, I'm always open for it. Then in Ubunda, they give a tree. I seriously. So I go back every year. If I haven't been there for a few months, then I go through the triage again. And that's to see whether I have any immediate problems. Because they offer. It's almost like a little hospital, a spiritual hospital. I've never had serious problems that needed to be cured. Whether I need to come back with lesser problems, I've never been told that. And sometimes I'm told, you really just aren't a very developed person spiritually. You need to work on that. I'm happy to agree with that. But sometimes they say that I have great spiritual talent. It just needs to be developed. And I talk to people about what to do with that. But the answer to that question is, you have to join the community and walk the path and spend the time. And I don't do that kind of immersive ethnography. I do more comparative going to different places. I suspect if I committed and went every week and did the study and did the work, I'd end up Having those experiences.

[Richard Jacobs]

Oh, what if you did a sabbatical first six months or whatever your year, you hung out with the one that you liked best and try to go deeper.

[Stephen Engler]

Well, I was on a sabbatical recently and there deciding I was going to do that, but then I decided not to do that for two reasons. First, because it wouldn't be authentic. I feel like it's more respectful to turn up honestly and say, I'm curious, I want to learn, than to do it as an experiment. It wouldn't have been a natural desire to come out of my own feeling I needed to move forward spiritually. It would have been an observation and that felt a little too invasive. And the other reason is the nature of the work I do is more compare and I think, think what I'm trying to do in my studies is learn about a bunch of different traditions. Precisely from this perspective we've been talking about. I'm interested in what they had in common.

[Richard Jacobs]

Oh yeah, I think where you've established that. I guess for a long time. I guess if this was a movie, you would have a. You'd be the character that. Well, you wouldn't. But you'd be the character. And they would say, I want to go deeper and learn more. And they would warn you and they would tell you, you have to do this and that, and then you would do it and all of a sudden you'd get sucked in and realize it's real or, you know, there's a movie that's I'm guessing would happen, but, you know, it hasn't gone. Has anyone ever told you that like, you can go deeper, you can really, you know, find out the real truth of it that you have to do XYZ that you weren't willing to do or there was never even an invitation like that?

[Stephen Engler]

Well, there have been invitations, of course, and. But more to the point, I already know what the invitations look like and what the path look. Paths look like because I talked to people at various steps along those paths. So I'm not sure I'd feel. Pierre Verger was an amazingly important, somewhat problematic in some of the judgments, a very important French anthropologist and Brazil. And he never. He took it deep. He went. He became a master acknowledged in the tradition, but he didn't have that intense incorporation experience. And he said, well, I. I went to school and grew up in France. It's just a different mindset. So I might find that in Brazil as. Yeah, I'm not even comfortable with the degree of, you know, giving people kisses on the Cheeks that Brazilians take for granted as a Canadian. So I. I kind of suspect that's the second B reason. I don't think I'd get that far because of my personality, my upbring.

[Richard Jacobs]

So what? I mean, well, then it's weird at the same point. What drives you then to want to learn so much about all these traditions and compare them, like where, you know, I don't know. I'm not trying to psychoanalyze. Yeah. I hope it doesn't hit my pet. But you're free. But why. Yeah, why do you get into it so much but yet you don't. Like, you go half in, it sounds like, or three quarters in, but not all the way in. And you.

[Stephen Engler]

Yeah, but you have. Let's reframe it. I don't think that's the right way of looking at it. I'm not interested in going into the religion and seeing what those people feel. What I'm interested is looking around at people who believe in science, people who believe in what they hear on television, people who believe in stories that just circulate and they accept those things as true. That's what I'm interested in is the more general idea that people have theories and ideas that they lay over a basic human experience. And I'm trying to understand why people tell themselves certain sorts of stories and believe them so deeply and they think they're so true when from the outside they don't. So in other words, I don't see. See a lot of difference between someone who isn't a scientist, a practicing scientist, but believes that science is the truth. Why do they believe that? They don't have any evidence. That seems to me just like someone who believes in a wacky conspiracy theory or someone who believes in a not so wacky conspiracy theory. It seems to me that's a lot like people who believe in religion, because in all cases, again, once you set aside the idea is this the truth, is that truth, set aside people's theories and look at the underlying experience. We all to some extent are born into a reality around us. And we all to some extent start layering on our own viewpoints about what's really going on. And I see religion as just the most interesting place to look at that bridge, that bridge between experiences that we all share, trying to make sense of the world, trying to change our place in the world, to grow, to develop spiritually, and the very bizarre ideas that get layered on that from many different directions. Whether you're talking hypnosis, which comes straight out of Esoteric or pasi, which is the manipulation of fluids or reiki or working with your chakras. If you look at the experiences under all those things, they're very similar, but the ideas float off in all these different directions. So again, when I come out, I'm not interested in having a religious experience. I'm interested in understanding how people have a knowledge experience that believe certain things. On what kind of evidence do people use? And the more I study it, the more I realize we're nowhere near as rational as we think. So we can learn a lot about how scientists operate by studying how people in spirit and corporation traditions operate.

[Richard Jacobs]

I mean, there must be tons and tons and tons of spiritual traditions. Do you like, how come you keep going back to the same ones? Or do you go back to the same ones to find out more and then you add new ones?

[Stephen Engler]

That's a good question. I go there because it is deeply fascinating. Kardicism is a religion that impresses me because it's idea that we reincarnate over and over. And in Latin America they especially emphasize the idea that you often reincarnate with a similar group of people, different role, and that there are love stories in Brazilian literature and television that take place over many incarnations. And so I've met people, I mean, I'm related by marriage to some people who are more comfortable with the idea of death than anyone I have ever met in my life. And they're comfortable with it because the ideas of that religion see it as so natural and so positive. Every death is a step forward on our path back to God, another reincarnation. That's how that religion and season so cardicism we just really respect and the emphasis on charity. And so many hospitals and orphanages and hospices are supported and paid for by people who belong to that religion because they see that as part of their spiritual development. And Ubanda, a similar sort of thing. It's a religion that's just so positive, it's like therapeutic in a different way for different groups of people. And on the surface of it, you know, the Pentecostals across the street think it's demons working in that building. Fair enough. I just look and say, you know, these are a bunch of people who are using ideas that most people in the world would think are very odd to make their lives better, to make the lives of people around them better. And I just, I think that's a really useful place to look at this general question of how do we construct our reality using ideas that are all over the map.

[Richard Jacobs]

Right? Excellent. Well, very good. Steve, what's the best place for people to learn more about your work? Do you have books on it or there are summary estimations where you do they start?

[Stephen Engler]

I bought this little book on the idea of tradition recently, but you can just Google me, there's a bunch of articles available, or drop me a line in an email.

[Richard Jacobs]

Okay. All right. Well, very good. Well, I appreciate you coming on the podcast and talking about all this, and I'll keep having really cool experiences, and I hope you have one. You have experience one day that, like, knocks your socks off? Safe.

[Stephen Engler]

Oh, every day I have experiences that knock my socks off. Perhaps the socks are loose. But once you realize that there's a thousand different perspectives that bring meaning to people's lives, you can't go through your day, no matter what kind of day it is, without realizing that we're making magic every day just through our the frames we start applying to the world around us. But thanks very much for having me.

[Richard Jacobs]

Excellent.

[Stephen Engler]

If you like this podcast, please click the link in the description to subscribe and review us on itunes.

[Richard Jacobs]

Thank you for listening to the Good Question podcast. Please email support the GoodQuest if you have any referrals to great guests for us to interview, visit thegoodquestionpodcast.com to hear more interviews. And please help us spread the word by rating and reviewing us on Apple podcasts, iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to this podcast.