Neurotheology

[juantoo3]

Originally Posted by Thomas

The pursuit of supposed mystical experience via drug use then, is the chemical pursuit of the excesses of the sensible faculty similar to those of the supposed mystical, which themselves may well be the result of nothing more than the fruit of a pre-existing chemical or neurological imbalance.

Just an observation, but you do realize this is an opinion, right?

[Netti-Netti]

Originally Posted by juantoo3

This from one of the links I pointed to earlier:

The scientists said that although the research and its conclusions are preliminary, initial results suggest that the phenomenon of religious belief is "hard-wired" into the brain.

New Page 2

That's what I was responding to.

As I see it, belief in G-d is different from certainty. Belief is often largely defensive (concered with countering one's own sense of helplessnes (e.g., petitioning the L-rd for protection and blessings, making sacrifices, negotiating deals with the L-rd, etc.). The defensive, selfish orientation usually does not go past intellectual assent to various ideological propositions about what one can expect or hope for from G-d (in the way of personal safety or security) and outward submission (rites and rituals).

I'd say this position is several steps removed from authentic religion, which is a Living Faith which is constantly evolving in the context of environmental complexities through a faith process that involves the person's ongoing interaction with the Divine. In the course of this process, it is totally possible that one's prior understandings about religion will be thoroughly deconstructed (some archetypes will be recognized as delusional projections that are dependent on lower order neurological functions) to the point where they are made functionally obsolete. Previous mental imagery seems to burn up in the holy fire and all that's left is pure adoration (in Arabic, Ishq-e-Haqīqi = love of G-d) and total, absolute certainty (in Arabic, Haqq al-Yaqin = the Truth of Certainty). For more detail, check the Sufi literature.

[juantoo3]

Originally Posted by seattlegal

Interestingly, I just saw this article from Science Daily describing factors that lead to dynamic asymmetry between the right and left hemispheres.
Game Of Two Halves Leads To Brain Asymmetry

Somebody recently dropped a bug in my ear about the brain separating into hemispheres...but for the life of me I don't remember where or in what context.

[juantoo3]

Originally Posted by juantoo3

Somebody recently dropped a bug in my ear about the brain separating into hemispheres...but for the life of me I don't remember where or in what context.

There's something to be said for bulldog tenacity...

Originally Posted by Paladin

I think it hard to continue this line of inquiry without delving into the origin of consciousness. At some point in the development of the species we moved past trying to influence our environment with magical thinking.
If I remember rightly there was a book that outlined the breakdown of the bi-cameral mind?
The premise of philosophy coming from religion might be validated somewhat if we factor in the ancient ideas of trying to influence the environment and thus our fortunes with superstitious rites and rituals.
I contend that nested within us is the same propensity (and probably need) to influence our fate with that same type of thinking.

Originally Posted by earl

Paladin, here's an interesting discussion regarding consciousness and soul/spirit matters. earl

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The article earl linked to is quite interesting.

[juantoo3]

The experimental science that began to emerge in the 17th century would eventually challenge many of the everyday assumptions of the Christian West, including the notion of an Earth-centered cosmos. But few of the great men of early modern science viewed themselves as foes of religion. Few questioned the special status of the soul or its boon companion, the mind. In fact, prominent among the shapers of the scientific worldview was the French mathematician and philosopher Renee Descartes, whose most enduring contribution to modern thought was his argument that reality consisted of two entirely different substances: material substance (res extensa) and thinking substance (res cogitans). But how did these two different substances interact? According to Descartes, the bodily organs sent perceptions and other information via the brain to the mind, located in the pineal gland in the middle of the head. Reflecting upon these data, the mind then made decisions and directed the body's responses, in words or deeds. This dualistic picture of the body-mind relationship would later come to be attacked as the "ghost in the machine" argument. But for centuries, Christians and others found Cartesian dualism a reassuring and reasonable explanation.

It would not be long, though, before philosophers and scientists, particularly in the new field of psychology, would turn in earnest to the problem of consciousness, bringing to it not just the experimental methods of investigation but a philosophical conviction that all phenomena were reducible to their more fundamental parts and that the interactions of these parts were governed by discoverable "laws of nature." Following the path of many 19th-century German psychologists, the great Harvard philosopher and scientist William James carried the study of consciousness to impressive lengths, most notably in his 1890 book, Principles of Psychology.

But something curious happened within a generation of that book's publication. Psychology quite suddenly dropped the investigation of consciousness. Dissatisfied with the reliance on introspection-how do you make an objective science out of people's subjective reports on their private experiences?-psychologists followed the lead of researchers like Ivan Pavlov and John Watson and turned to the observable results of consciousness: behavior. Or at least most did. For those less enchanted by the business of running rats through mazes there was the siren song of Sigmund Freud's theory of the unconscious mind. For more than half a century, varieties of behaviorism and psychoanalytic theory dominated the field of psychology, banishing the subject of consciousness to the realm of the occult or mere philosophy.

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An excerpt from Earl’s link, emphasis mine.

[TealLeaf]

Out of curiosity how many of the people responding to this thread have ever experienced psilocybe mushrooms?

I have.

[Thomas]

Originally Posted by Netti-Netti

Yes. I would add that having mystical experiences doesn't have that much to do with the existence of G-d.

Yes. we have to discriminate between a natural mysticism, and a supernatural mysticism. As the French philosopher Henri Bergson noted, "Neither in Greece nor in ancient India had there been an integral mysticism ... The integral mysticism is, actually, that of the great Christian mystics".

Originally Posted by Netti-Netti

I see these kinds of experiences as personal revelations of a reality that transcends the person.

Well here we need to proceed cautiously: a nature cannot transcend itself, as a nature cannot be other than itself. It might realise depths of itself that are new, or profoundly different to its common order of experience, this may well be an awakening, but it is not transcendental. The nature remains as it is.

A properly transcendent experience requires the action of the higher drawing the lower out of itself, into Itself, so that the lower sees with the higher's eye, as it were.

Originally Posted by Netti-Netti

As an aside, based on the UK survey I mentioned previously, the experiences seem to be very commonplace. It's just that people may not interpret them within an apophatic conceptual framework or talk about them using terms/ideas drawn from organized religion.

Agreed, but then the experiences themselves might not be religious, or not experiences of a supernatural order ... the Philosophy of the Sublime, which I dare say would encompass the vast majority of those experiences reported, is a natural philosophy, not a supernatural one.

Thomas

[juantoo3]

Originally Posted by TealLeaf

Out of curiosity how many of the people responding to this thread have ever experienced psilocybe mushrooms?

I have.

At the risk of exposing my youthful indiscretions, I have too. But frankly, I didn't experience anything I would class as metaphysical revelation. I didn't see Jesus, and I didn't talk to G-d. I didn't contemplate any moral contradictions, and I didn't become more acutely aware of ethical failings of those around me. I just enjoyed the pretty colors...

[seattlegal]

Originally Posted by Thomas

Following from my post, Ruth Burrows, a Carmelite Abbess, has suggested that mystical 'experiences' fall into two categories, one 'lights on' and the other 'lights off'.

She has drawn some 'revolutionary conclusions', one being that the 'feeling or experience of God’s presence', the accounts of which we regard as the hallmark of mystical experience, is really accidental to it.

The point being that the vision, or whatever, is not synonymous, or even equal, to the grace that that produces it. Thus such phenomena are not a valid criteria by which the Divine Indwelling is measured.

In her mind then, St Teresa of Avila, author of tracts on prayer and the contemplative life which are considered authoritative, are not without error. For the saint, the more intense the emotional experience, the more advanced the mystical experience.

St John of the Cross took her to task on this point more than once.

The Greek Orthodox Church is critical of St Teresa for this very reason, the power and presence she accords to her vision of her heart being pierced by the Dart of Divine Love, her intense focus on this imagery they view as somewhat unhealthy sentimentality, and regard it as a fantasia of the senses, rather than the illumination of the intellectus.

The point I wanted to bring out in this however, is that Burrows observes a correlation between the measure of experience and the physical health of the body, many of the great mystics who offer us profound and compelling visions, for example, suffered ill-health. Indeed there is enough data there for critics to assert that mystical experience is entirely the result, albeit at distance, as it were, of illness — St Catherine of Siena, another mystic and with St Teresa a Doctor of the Catholic Church, was believed to be epileptic.

Buddhists, as I know, eschew such phenomena as psychic and psychological by-products, and as such to be ignored.

The pursuit of supposed mystical experience via drug use then, is the chemical pursuit of the excesses of the sensible faculty similar to those of the supposed mystical, which themselves may well be the result of nothing more than the fruit of a pre-existing chemical or neurological imbalance.

The goal of the pursuit being the one element of an experience which should be ignored, for they are, in and off themselves, empty.

This is not to discredit St Teresa, by the way, rather simply highlights an error within what is, in every other respect, an exemplary work on the meaning and nature of prayer.

Thomas

The term, "behaving like prophets" (Jer 29:26-27, 1 Sam 19) comes to mind.

[seattlegal]

Originally Posted by TealLeaf

Out of curiosity how many of the people responding to this thread have ever experienced psilocybe mushrooms?

I have.

Yes, they grow wild around here. Their use is not uncommon in this area.

I would not call the effects of their use a religious experience, by any means.

[TealLeaf]

Originally Posted by juantoo3

At the risk of exposing my youthful indiscretions, I have too. But frankly, I didn't experience anything I would class as metaphysical revelation. I didn't see Jesus, and I didn't talk to G-d. I didn't contemplate any moral contradictions, and I didn't become more acutely aware of ethical failings of those around me. I just enjoyed the pretty colors...

The study done at Johns Hopkins was done using subjects who already had spiritual or religious beliefs. I too took psilocybe mushrooms when I was young without experiencing anything particularly profoundly religious. It was however very insightful, life affirming and a great bonding experience for myself and my friends. Later in life after I had acquired a religious or spiritual orientation I found that when I took psilocybe I experienced the ultimate ground of the Universe and saw or rather fully felt the perfection and miraculousness of God's plan and creation.

In either event whether I was young or old, with a religious understanding or not, my experience with psilocybe seemed to have a very positive and long lasting effect on me for weeks or even months after I took them. This effect was not only apparent in that I felt more calm, satisfied and focused but it was also apparent in terms of my increased productivity at work and in my personal life.

It's funny there used to be a television commercial for coffee back in the 1980's with the slogan "Coffee gives you the serenity to dream it and the vitality to do it." It seems that something similar could be said about psilocybe. Perhaps that "Psilocybe gives you the vitality to dream it and the serenity to do it."

Getting back to the subject of the religious use of psychedelics it seems that there is precedent for their use in both the Abrahamic and Dharmic traditions in the form of manna and soma respectively. Some scholars believe that soma was a form of psychedelic mushroom and that manna was the flour of ergot inffected wheat. However, regardless of which particular substance manna was clearly God had given mankind a substance to consume that would bring him/her into closer communion with God.

[juantoo3]

Originally Posted by TealLeaf

Getting back to the subject of the religious use of psychedelics it seems that there is precedent for their use in both the Abrahamic and Dharmic traditions in the form of manna and soma respectively. Some scholars believe that soma was a form of psychedelic mushroom and that manna was the flour of ergot inffected wheat. However, regardless of which particular substance manna was clearly God had given mankind a substance to consume that would bring him/her into closer communion with God.

I cannot speak as to what soma is associated with, but I have heard many things associated with manna, not least coriander. While I *have* seen ergot implicated in historical events, those events are generally about mass paranoia...the Salem Witch trials and the French Revolution, specifically.

As for entheogenic substances, I think we are neglecting to consider fly agaric mushroom (of which I know Thomas has a cursory familiarity), peyote, and no doubt others that escape me just now. Even the lowly cannabis and its derivatives no doubt can be evoked to establish what can be perceived as metaphysical illuminations...to that I *can* attest, although I must agree with Thomas in that it was more of a "bottom up" realization rather than a "top down" one. Further, that was on very rare instances when considered with the overall usage, perhaps 1% (being generous).

What concerns me regarding advocation of entheogenic substances is that without a "proper" guide (shaman, or some type of spiritual leader to direct the experience), the "trip" is subject to a wide variation of possible expressions, few of which could be considered metaphysical illumination. In my experience, so many similar *religious* uses of organic substances for ritual have become b@st@rdized by consumptive cultures into a faint glimmer of their former selves. Instances include tobacco and alcohol (fermented grain, fruit and / or honey). Often such are or can be addictive when not used in a monitored and ceremonial manner. Ritually speaking, one poisons oneself with the antidote...

Something I have brought up in the past and I don't think has quite made the impact it deserves, is the relationship our own body chemistries have with grain. Our bodies did not evolve to eat grain, our constitutions are not set up to ruminate. So how did grain become such a crucial part of our diet? So much so that "bread" is now considered the "staff of life?" The chemicals evoked in the brain by grain are addictive, and historically human brain power has exploded with the agricultural revolution. The ag. revolution is the threshold marking so many of our modern advances...particularly for this subject the advent of religion as an institution. Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and Judaism all have their foundations in early agriculture. The early Semitic alphabet is based in large part on symbols derived from agriculture and animal husbandry.

[seattlegal]

Originally Posted by juantoo3

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An excerpt from Earl’s link, emphasis mine.

Breaking news regarding this:
Researchers Explore What Contemporary Science Cannot Explain

We'll have to wait and see if they come up with anything...

[seattlegal]

Here's an interesting article that highlights the Buddhist tenet of "no-self" as a possible safety mechanism which might help to prevent schizophrenia in susceptible people:
Altered Brain Activity In Schizophrenia May Direct Focus On Self

[Netti-Netti]

Originally Posted by Thomas

a nature cannot transcend itself, as a nature cannot be other than itself. It might realise depths of itself that are new, or profoundly different to its common order of experience, this may well be an awakening, but it is not transcendental. The nature remains as it is.

Thomas,

I think I understand what you're saying, but I disagree with this way of putting it. In fact, I strongly disagree.

An emphasis on G-d's Transcendence has the potential to obscure His Immanence. It also has the potential to obscure the very process of Creation and the Divine Victory that is the spiritualization of matter: "To those who overcome, I will give to eat of the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God." (Revelation 2:7)

Incarnation is not just the descent of the Divine into the world. It's also the transcendence of human limitations and mergence into the Divine Mystery. This transcendence partakes of the possibilities of Creation. It is through these possibilities that we overcome the fate of death. Faith reveals the possibilities for transcendence as being part of G-d's jurisdiction and organization in the evolving forms of history. I would say these possibilities are effectuated in the world as the Body of the Cosmic Christ, the matrix of spirit and nature.

Jesus' presence on earth was not the end. Rather, it was a new beginning. A fully realized-God-human would actually have been the end of Creation, as though the fate of death could be overcome by bringing Creation to a standstill. Jesus' presence signified the initiation of Grace as a driving force for human history in the direction of the Divine Telos, "so that God may be all in all" (I Corinthians 15:28):

So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.

~I Corinthians 15:45-49