| |
Excert from the article The Emerging Science of Neurotheology
Iona Miller, Asklepia Foundation, 2003…The God Program
Belief and biology are entwined like mind and matter, like the twin serpents of the Caduceus, which represents enlightenment. Neurology, ritual and religion all join in what psychologist Carl Jung (pioneer of the collective unconscious) called a Mysterium Coniunctionis, or Royal Marriage with the divine. The soul becomes lost in the Self; all duality is erased.
We have a natural human capacity for spiritual experience, just as we have one for comprehension of language or mathematics. Transpersonal experience, myth, ritual, morals and ethics are undergird by a comprehensive religious ecology. The cognized environment is the stage of experience. Networks of neurophysiological structures orchestrate the play on the stage. Intricate electromagnetic and biochemical mechanisms underlie human ritual, myth, mysticism, and religious phenomena.
Whether God exists as an overarching cosmic entity or not, there are certain mechanisms in the brain which mankind has harnessed over thousands of years to facilitate the process of non-ordinary experience. They all manipulate the body’s nervous system either by over- or under-stimulation of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems of arousal. They lead us toward seeing, hearing, touching and feeling the Lord in an experiential, rather than conceptual way that culminates in fusion.
Biologically, heavenly states are dependent on the limbic system or emotional part of the brain, and hormonal secretions. Mystical states are not fantasies, delusions or intangible events – they are the end result of complex chemical and neurological processes. They begin with instinctive awe and indefinable thrills, floating sensations, and perhaps spiritual hunger.
Ego-death can occur when the hyperactive “I” submits or gives in to sensory overload, which overwhelms it. Hypoarousal leads to a characteristic silencing of the mind or emptying when the ego voluntarily submits to unification of subject and object, of “I” and Self. Cortical and subcortical activity become indistinguishably merged. There is no separate “I” left to perceive objective reality. Thus, dualism is paradoxically obliterated in the maximal excitation of both the hyper- and hypo-arousal systems.
Because they produce personal euphoria and creative inspiration, these initial states are common to poets, artists, and mystics. But mystics tell us these ecstasies may be nothing more than overloading of the emotional channels. Ecstasy is a desire for contact, a striving after union. Entering these regions in full consciousness indicates greater spiritual maturity. Stabilizing them at the personality level means the phase of emergence is over and enlightenment becomes a steady state. The neurological changes have become integrated and permanent.
The oldest shamanic techniques include fasting, drumming, trance dancing, inner journeys, and mind-altering plants. The relaxation techniques for transcendence include meditation, imagery, prayer, postures, and chanting. All of them work on the physiology to change the chemistry of the mind/body and induce oceanic ecstasies that are either all-consuming or ultimately serene.
Any constant, rhythmic stimulus to the central nervous system will induce a trance-state and accompanying “high.” Driving the system toward either polarity of arousal or quiescence leads to a paradoxical reversal into its opposite, much like sexual arousal leads to post-orgasmic afterglow. Similarly, at some point, meditation can release an intense rush of energy and emotion, partly through the limbic system.
One methodology produces sensory overload, while the other empties the sensory field by withdrawing attention from sensory signals. There may be sensory melding – a phenomenon called synesthesia – where one can “see” music, or “taste “colors.”
When the mind/body is either exhausted or emptied of external input, the mind is free to process the endless loops of its own manifestation, its own internal processes. Fear and shame give way to grace, a sense of Presence, perception of sanctity, response to realization of the divine. Time, space and the separate ego seem suspended or transcended in the experience of cosmic consciousness. All is One. Beyond the unity experience is the nondual experience of the Void…
The whole article: http://www.ajna.com/articles/how_the_brain_creates_god.php
|
Help
Sign In
RSS Feed
About This Group
Permalink
Print
Email
