How The Brain Creates Spiritual Experiences.
The uniquely human ability to combine bits of stored sensory information into abstract thought has allowed us to mentally travel into the depths of our own imaginations. These specially selected for cognitive abilities, originally evolving in order to help us escape death and prolong our existence, have given us the power to metaphorically transcend our physical existence and death itself, giving rise to our self perception as transcendental supernatural beings, capable of a metaphysical existence beyond the body.
In this article we will discuss the nature of spiritual experience, and how these experiences relate to specific neuronal and bodily processes that give rise to our self perception as spiritual beings.
Key Points
What is a spiritual experience?
Arousal
Transcendence
Interconnectedness
The presence of God
How Neurobiology creates spiritual experience
Ritualistic practice
The Autonomic Nervous System
The Parietal Lobe
Hallucinations
Final Thought
What is a Spiritual experience?
In order to first understand how brain processes can create a spiritual experience we must first define what a spiritual experience is. For the purpose of this article we will surmise that the following aspects of human experience must be involved in order to classify such experience as spiritual in nature.
A degree of pleasurable arousal accompanied by a sense of calm and peace.
When many describe spiritual experiences, one overarching common theme is a high degree of pleasure, ecstasy or a state of nirvana. In addition, spiritual experience can also be thought of as containing a degree of calm, peace, and a release from tension.
A separation or transcendence from the physical body and world.
People who describe having a spiritual experience typically express feelings of transcendence from their body. A freeing of their soul or consciousness from the worldly realm into another type of existence. Sometimes this aspect of spiritual experience is accompanied with a sense of floating on air, or experiencing the world from a different perspective.
A sense of Interconnectedness, wholeness and oneness with the world around them.
Another aspect of spiritual experience is the sense of interconnectedness throughout time and space. Spiritual experiencers may characterize their experience as feeling freed from the confines of space and time. This can be described as a sense of wholeness with the past, present and future, as if eternity exist all in the same cosmic moment.
A presence, or being in the presence of a God, Spirits, or other worldly entities.
A spiritual experience is often anchored by the feeling of a presence that is absent from physical experience. A presence that is often identified by the experiencer as God, other religious or spiritual entities, or even past loved ones who are no longer with us.
In this last section, we’ll discuss two additional phenomena that have been closely associated with spiritual experience, the outer body experience and other forms of visual and auditory hallucinations.
Outer Body Experience
Outer body and near death experiences have served as some of the strongest evidence for an existence beyond the physical realm. Many people who have had such experiences claim to have left their body achieving a perspective from the outside, while experiencing sounds and sights from their immediate and distant environments after they have been pronounced dead.
Spiritual Visions
Visual, auditory and other forms of hallucinations, such as visions of Spiritual beings, deceased loved ones, hearing voices, sensing a presence, tunnels, lights, and seemingly other worldly experiences are also commonly associated with spiritual experience.
So how can Neurobiology create these types of experiences?
Repetition and Ritual
Religious and spiritual ritual practice affects the brain in a number of ways that are conducive to the creation of spiritual experience. These brain processes which are triggered by repetitive behavioral patterns, contribute to various psychological functions such as our feelings of Interconnectedness, loss of self and personal identity.
Ritualistic practice is also believed to contribute to the syncing of neurological processes among a given populace. This helps to create a sense of community and deep bond with those who engage in these ritualistic practices. This allows for a type of collective consciousness to emerge throughout a following, fostering group think and herd mentality.
One of the oldest forms of ritualistic practice that has existed since species first began sexual reproduction is the “Mating Ritual”. Spiritual and religious rituals are believed to have evolved from earlier mating ritual practices. Mating rituals work by allowing a given species to engage in repetitive behavioral patterns that trigger biological processes within a reproductive partner allowing both animals to either harmonize and procreate, or fail to harmonize and reject one another.
Autonomic Nervous System
The Autonomic Nervous contributes to spiritual functions in a significant number of ways. This biological system works as a tandem compromised of your parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, and also incorporates your endocrine system which activates various biochemical functions. This complex constellation of biosystems is responsible for your arousal response.
The Sympathetic Nervous Systems is responsible for triggering your arousal response in relation to environmental threats, while the Parasympathetic Nervous System activates calming processes allowing you to assess and respond to threats effectively. The various combinations of biochemistry created by these two systems create a spectrum of responses which are interpreted by the cortex which create experience.
In some cases, such as spiritual experience, sexual orgasim and other states of rapture, these systems are dually activated in a manner that not only creates a heightened sense of arousal, but one of extreme calm and relaxation. This causes the cortex to create a sense of nirvana that can be interpreted in a spiritual manner.
Parietal Lobe
The Parietal Lobe contributes to spiritual practice in a number of ways. This brain region is responsible for integrating sensory information that is used to determine an organism relationship to its environment. This is believed to play a key role in how the brain creates a sense of self separate from its environment.
Repetitive rituals, such as repeating a mantra, prayer, or engaging in repetitive motions such as bowing, is believed to decrease activity within the parietal lobe causing a blurring between environmental and bodily information, contributing to a loss of self. This loss of self brought on by deactivation of various Parietal Lobe processes contributes to a sense of connectedness, oneness and wholeness between the experiencer and the environment.
Otherworldly Presence
When you focus on a particular being or experience, and engage in ritualistic practice, you forge a connection with what you have been meditating on, blending it into your experience. It's also worth noting that studies have associated spiritual practice and experience with high levels of dopamine, which is also believed to be one of the many dynamics that cause hallucinations within schizophrenic patience. In test studies, subjects that had their dopamine levels artificially elevated were found more likely to believe in stories that were untrue.
Near Death and After Death Experiences
While such experiences are extraordinarily remarkable, and can be profoundly life changing for the individual, they are not entirely inexplicable through scientific inquiry. The brain remains active for a short period of time after the heart has stopped beating and you are believed to be clinically dead. In this time you are still able to receive various types of sensory stimulus, create experience, and record memories. These brain processes allow in some cases, a clinically deceased person who has been revived to have memory of experiences created while believed dead.
Outer Body Experience
As for the experience of floating outside of your body, the brain is also responsible for creating your sense of a perspectival self, which is the perspective from which you experience the world. Experiments and case studies involving specific brain regions such as the temporal parietal junction, have been known to create outer body like sensations. These areas are also believed to be involved in certain types of epileptic seizures that illicit outer body experiences.
Spiritual Hallucinations
As humans, we are prone to many different types of hallucinations such as dreams, vertigo, drug induced, and endogenously induced such as psychotic episodes. In fact, many believe our entire experience of reality is a hallucination created by the brain. In the case of Spiritual hallucinations, there is often a correlation between such experience and religious practice which alters our perceptions of reality by shifting brain dynamics as we discussed earlier.
In conclusion, we do not actually know what causes us to have spiritual experience, however we are closer than ever to unraveling the mystery surrounding our spiritual self perceptions. While neuroscience offers many clues, we can not say conclusively what exactly is going on within the brain beyond detectable activity. However continual study and observation centered around our subjective experience as relates to various brain processes and dynamics can offer a deeper understanding of what we are actually experiencing and probable causes for our experience.
Hope you enjoyed,
Jesse
@TheMadPhilosophersSociety
