Tasting God?

You can't prove that taste exists. Sure, you can measure it physiologically. When someone puts in their mouth a roasted piece of turkey, or steamed broccoli dripping with melted cheddar cheese, or a gooey chocolate chip cookie, there are changes that happen in the body that can be measured, scientifically proven, graphed, and recorded for the better of all mankind. Yet on a separate, more emotional, almost ethereal level, the person just feels it. There's no way to prove or even quite explain the kind of feeling one gets when eating a delicious food. The way a moist, hot brownie smothered with vanilla bean ice cream and warm fudge can just make your body melt and shudder is something that touches the soul and can't quite be measured physically because it exists on a different level. Also, everyone tastes things slightly differently. And there may be a way of calculating the certain neurons in their brain receptive to certain foods, and determining which taste buds they have more of, etc. But in the end, it's something they alone feel inside and we just have to take their word for it.

I'm wondering if feeling God is the same thing. When a person speaks of feeling God, or having some sort of likewise contact with the higher being(s) of the ethereal and unprovable, I'm sure there are many changes in their body that can be measured physiologically. And those reactions can trigger other responses in the body that can be said to explain the emotions they may be feeling. However in the end, I think the person just feels it in their soul; a joy that swells in their heart as if the sun itself were inside their chest. And many other wonderful experiences that the deft and agile words of man can feebly attempt to describe. In the end, people just know the feeling exists and we have to take their word for it. Similarly, everyone feels God differently, and there's no way we can prove or disprove the way these experiences make people feel.

We try to describe God in the boundaries of our physical world: we tell stories, we draw pictures, we use words. Even the personified sense of God seems kinda silly sometimes, and assigning him a sex, as if he were some old man in a white robe waiting in the clouds, sitting on a big throne of cherubs or some other silliness. Those ideas make for great Renaissance paintings, and good for Michelangelo for that whole Sistine Chapel business. I just think that's our best attempt at explaining a force greater than ourselves that exists in a place where we only have such intangible and immeasurable contact with. We try to define God in physical terms, and it works to get the story across, but I don't think it quite comes close, and I think sometimes we should remind ourselves of that. We also try to measure God with scientific method, which of course will ALWAYS turn up with a big fat negative on the geigometer, but I think it's because you're using the right equipment in the wrong sport. It's like bringing a tennis racket to a water polo game and wondering why you can't get anything done. We don't have a way of measuring what the soul tells us, so we're just stuck with people's hearsay, and of course our own feelings (which we should either be trusting, or just giving up on life altogether).

And yes, I certainly believe in a soul, in a level of our consciousness that goes beyond the physical world that we know how to touch and measure. Being an artist, musician, dancer, etc, beautiful things in this world stimulate my essence in a way that I don't think anyone can explain. I certainly can't, and they happen to me every day. You can't explain love. You can hook electrodes up to my brain and print the results out on a chart, and that's wonderful because there is something we can all learn from that data to benefit humankind. And furthermore that type of scientific analysis that rules our physical world should never be discredited; in fact it should be praised and diligently continued until we unlock every quark the universe holds. However, the experiences of the soul are just different, and they should be acknowledged and respected as such.