The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience

[stevo247]

The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience

By Eugene d’Aquili and Andrew B. Newberg

 

This book explores the biological mechanisms and neurological basis of mystical and religious experience. Many of the concepts pertaining to the mind/brain are based on existing research in neurology, psychology, and psychiatry. It provides a conceptual framework for understanding states of altered consciousness, and how a wide variety of states (spanning a continuum towards the experience of “absolute unitary being”) are involved in the development of various religious beliefs and myth formation.

 

Curiously, science and religion are explored in a complementary manner, where the two come together; rather than in their historic mutually exclusive duality.

 

I found the book to be unique and very interesting.

[lucaspa]

Remember while you are reading that, should deity exist, it is going to have to communicate thru our material brain. So, as you read about the neurological states that correspond to religious experiences, ask yourself -- where is the stimulus that triggers those states coming from?

 

Also remember that most people's experiences of deity do not involve altered states of consciousness.

[stevo247]

Remember while you are reading that, should deity exist, it is going to have to communicate thru our material brain. So, as you read about the neurological states that correspond to religious experiences, ask yourself -- where is the stimulus that triggers those states coming from?

 

In the book, the authors state “The bottom line in understanding the phenomenology of subjective religious experience is to understand that every religious experience involves a sense of the unity of reality at least somewhat greater than the baseline perception of unity in day-to-day life”.

 

The “stimulus” could simply be the profound realization of the unity of all things. The experience of life, or nature, or the universe, as “one”.

 

Also remember that most people's experiences of deity do not involve altered states of consciousness.

 

From the book: “Religions are not primarily composed of mystics or people who have attained advanced spiritual states. They are composed by and large of ordinary people who must face ordinary problems in life. For them the control of the environment represents a necessity of day-to-day living. They may occasionally experience altered states at the lower end of the unitary continuum. These experiences may lend credibility to the powerful witness of mystics. But for the ordinary person such experiences, and the testimony of mystics, function to support the power of the gods or personalized power sources. It is thus that mystical religion tends to reinforce the first manifestation of religion, namely, the control of the environment.”