Spirit on the Brain

I’ve been reading Matthew Alper’s (2001) The “God” Part of the Brain. From which:

Michael Persinger … found that “one of the main differences between the nineteen percent of high school students who had religious experiences before their teens, and the rest, was the presence of a head injury or blackout at least once during childhood.” (p. 80)

Persinger used a machine called a transcranial magnetic stimulator (a helmet that shoots a concentrated magnetic field at a specific region in the brain) to excite different regions within his own brain…. [W]hen Dr. Persinger used the device to stimulate his own temporal lobe he experienced what he described as his first feelings of “being at union with God.” When the device was used on volunteer students in a research study, many reported spiritual and mystical experiences, as well as seeing visions of Jesus, angels, and other spiritual deities (subjects also reported imagery similar to near-death experiences as well as alien encounters and abductions, offering support to the notion that such experiences are also related to temporal lobe sensitivity). (p. 114)

It would be one thing for there to be merely a “psycho-physical parallelism” between supposed higher states of consciousness/reality, and the operation of the physical brain—so that a genuine experience of a higher level of reality would cause some predictable and measurable temporary change in the functioning of the brain. But, as Persinger has shown, you can induce experiences of such “spiritual phenomena” which are felt to be as real as any “natural” mystical experience, even though they are obviously merely imagined. (Or can you really summon Jesus and the angels of heaven just by pressing the “On” button?) And since that is done simply by subjecting the physical brain to some pattern of electromagnetic stimulation, it would take a real, deluded “Wilber” to cling to the belief that any of those phenomena are ontologically real.

In his research, [Dr. Arnold] Sadwin discovered individuals who, after suffering from a head injury, showed distinct changes in their religious attitudes and behaviors. In some cases, he found individuals who, though they were extremely religious prior to their accidents, afterwards were indifferent to religious concerns. On the other hand, Sadwin also came across individuals who, though they were previously non-religious, after experiencing a head injury suddenly became extremely religious, obsessively praying to God and expressing intense religious feelings and urges. (p. 80)

And with regard to drug-induced mystical experiences:

[W]hereas the entheogenic drug mescaline is almost identical in its molecular composition to the neurotransmitter noradrenaline [sic], a molecule of psilocybin, more commonly known as “magic mushrooms,” is almost identical in composition to a molecule of the neurotransmitter serotonine [sic]….

[T]he fact that psychedelic drugs have a cross-cultural tendency to stimulate experiences we define as being either spiritual, religious, mystical or transcendental means we must possess some physiological mechanism whose function is to generate this particular type of conscious experience. If we didn’t possess such a physical mechanism, there’s no way that these drugs could possibly stimulate such experiences in us. In short, the fact that there exists a certain class of drugs—molecules—that can evoke a spiritual experience supports the notion that spiritual consciousness must be physiological in nature. Herein lies the basis for an ethnobotanical argument against the existence of either a spiritual reality or a soul. (p. 129-30)

Yep. Not that that stopped the “mad scientists” (including Huston Smith) from conducting the Good Friday Experiment back in 1962, unconscionably messing up other people’s lives for their own transpersonal “believer” research purposes.

Bit of a problem with the following, though:

It is a common claim of individuals in the midst of a meditative or trance-like experience to be impervious, or at least less susceptible, to pain. Whether we’ve seen this demonstrated by someone lying on a bed of nails or walking across hot coals, the evocation of a meditative or mystical experience seems to make us at least partially immune to physical pain. (p. 126)

Yikes. Both the distribution of pressure in the bed-of-nails demonstration, and firewalking, have long been explained in terms of simple laws of physics.

The theologian Lewis Rambo points out that certain religious groups such as the Evangelical Christians make it part of their practice to target vulnerable individuals. For example, in large urban areas, some churches focus on ministries to those recently divorced as they know that within the first six months after a divorce, a person is more likely to be converted. This practice of seeking out those in crisis is most evident among prison populations, where stress levels are critical and conversions are practically endemic. Another example in which the vulnerable are targeted for conversion is practiced by recovery groups such as Alcoholics, Eaters, Gamblers, and Debtors Anonymous, all of which emphasize—through the use of the renowned “12 step” program—faith in religion and God as primary tools in their effort to combat these addictive behaviors. (p. 143-4)

Heh. I thought only cults were supposed to target the vulnerable for conversion. (“Mainstream religious organizations do not concentrate their search on the lonely and vulnerable”—Margaret Singer, Cults In Our Midst, p. 99.) Who knew?

In light of recent discoveries in the neurosciences, there are those who have suggested that if we truly do posses a physiologically-based spiritual function in the brain that perhaps God put it there. My response to this is: What kind of a god would install a device in us that would compel us to believe Him to be so many different things that we’d each be prompted to kill one another in order to prove that our version of Him is the right one? (p. 182)

This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 6:13 am and is filed under Neurology, Psychedelics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.