Gateway of the Mind

In 1983, a team of deeply pious scientists conducted a radical experiment in an undisclosed facility. The scientists had theorized that a human without access to any senses or ways to perceive stimuli would 
be able to perceive the presence of God. 
They believed that the five 
senses clouded our awareness of eternity, and without them, a human 
could actually establish contact with God by thought. An elderly man who
 claimed to have “nothing left to live for” was the only test subject to
 volunteer. To purge him of all his senses, the scientists performed a 
complex operation in which every sensory nerve connection to the brain 
was surgically severed. Although the test subject retained full muscular
 function, he could not see, hear, taste, smell, or feel. With no 
possible way to communicate with or even sense the outside world, he was
 alone with his thoughts. 
Scientists monitored him as he spoke aloud about his state of mind in
 jumbled, slurred sentences that he couldn’t even hear. After four days,
 the man claimed to be hearing hushed, unintelligible voices in his 
head. Assuming it was an onset of psychosis, the scientists paid little 
attention to the man’s concerns.
Two days later, the man cried that he could hear his dead wife 
speaking with him, and even more, he could communicate back. The 
scientists were intrigued, but were not convinced until the subject 
started naming dead relatives of the scientists. He repeated personal 
information to the scientists that only their dead spouses and parents 
would have known. At this point, a sizable portion of scientists left 
the study.
After a week of conversing with the deceased through his thoughts, 
the subject became distressed, saying the voices were overwhelming. In 
every waking moment, his consciousness was bombarded by hundreds of 
voices that refused to leave him alone. He frequently threw himself 
against the wall, trying to elicit a pain response. He begged the 
scientists for sedatives, so he could escape the voices by sleeping. 
This tactic worked for three days, until he started having severe night 
terrors. The subject repeatedly said that he could see and hear the 
deceased in his dreams.
Only a day later, the subject began to scream and claw at his 
non-functional eyes, hoping to sense something in the physical world. 
The hysterical subject now said the voices of the dead were deafening 
and hostile, speaking of hell and the end of the world. At one point, he
 yelled “No heaven, no forgiveness” for five hours straight. He 
continually begged to be killed, but the scientists were convinced that 
he was close to establishing contact with God.
After another day, the subject could no longer form coherent 
sentences. Seemingly mad, he started to bite off chunks of flesh from 
his arm. The scientists rushed into the test chamber and restrained him 
to a table so he could not kill himself. After a few hours of being tied
 down, the subject halted his struggling and screaming. He stared 
blankly at the ceiling as teardrops silently streaked across his face. 
For two weeks, the subject had to be manually re-hydrated due to the 
constant crying. Eventually, he turned his head and, despite his 
blindness, made focused eye contact with a scientist for the first time 
in the study. He whispered “I have spoken with God, and he has abandoned
 us” and his vital signs stopped. There was no apparent cause of death.