Embracing God in my brain

I'm still trying to get my head around the main message of a book that I'm reading: God is in the brain.

And not just "God," whatever this famously fuzzy word means, but also every form of religious, spiritual, or mystical experience.

This shouldn't be a big surprise, to me or anybody else. Yet the more I dig into The Mystical Mind, by Eugene d'Aquili and Andrew Newberg, the more I'm having to re-examine some deeply held and largely unconscious beliefs.

Like, the notion that when I'm meditating, something marvelously mysterious is going on. Or, at least, could go on if I were able to turn the key that unlocks the door separating Me from It – really real reality that is out there somewhere, though I'm completely clueless about "where" and "there."

Most meditators and spiritual aspirants feel this way. But you'd think (or rather, I'd think) that with my decidedly churchless attitude toward spirituality, my attitude would be firmly in line with d'Aquili and Newberg's.

Echoing a quotation I included in my last post, they say:

The implication is that the brain and the mind either generate mystical states or allow us to experience mystical states. Differentiating whether the brain and mind actually cause mystical phenomena or are merely the necessary occasion for them is most difficult.

The former implies that mystical phenomena are completely caused and contained within the functions of the brain and mind. The latter requires that mystical phenomena exist "out there" in the external world, which can then be experienced by human beings through the brain and mind.

We have argued in the past that the most problematic aspect of this issue is that the only way in which to solve this problem is somehow to get out of the function of our brain and mind, since, so far as we know, everything about the world, both internal and external, comes to us through the brain.

Thus, it is difficult to form an epistemological perspective to determine the true reality of any phenomenon, whether it be mystical or ordinary in nature.

That's for sure. The kitchen stool I'm sitting on feels hard at the moment. But "hard," obviously, is my feeling. I just said as much. To someone else with a differently sensitized posterior, another adjective would apply. So what's the true reality of the situation? Tough to say.

Similarly, even a powerful mystical experience like the one James Austin described at the start of this story is happening inside a human brain. A physical lump of matter. A concoction of chemical and electrical impulses. A piece of flesh.

The Mystical Mind is full of sentences like these, which are describing what happens in passive meditation, often called the via negativa.

The partial deafferentation of the right orientation association area likely results in stimulation of the right hippocampus by means of the very rich interconnections between the orientation association area and the hippocampus.

If, in addition, there is a simultaneous direct stimulation of the right hippocampus from the right attention association area, then the right hippocampus ultimately stimulates the quiescent centers of the right amygdala.

Oh, now I know what I've been doing wrong in my meditation. Got to do a better job of stimulating my right amygdala. Whatever the heck it is.

But seriously…I'm beginning to settle comfortably into an obvious truth that hadn't really dawned on me until this book hammered it home. Every experience that I have, whether meditative or otherwise, comes to me via my brain.

More, my brain and my experience aren't two separate entities. We're one and the same. Brain/Brian.

Naturally this isn't true just for me. It's true for everyone.

There's little (or no) doubt that if you stuck Jesus, Mohammad, Moses, Buddha, Lao Tzu, or anyone else in a brain scanner while they were communing with God or ultimate reality, their mystical experience would be reflected in a particular pattern of brain activity.

I find this to be a comforting thought, one which brings me closer to myself. And, my thoughts. Along with all the other experiences that my mind and brain generate through their fantastically complex neuronal goings-on.

There may indeed be a spiritual "out there." But as d'Aquili and Newberg said, there's no way to tell whether a mystical or religious experience is solely the internal product of a brain, or whether it reflects an independently existing external reality.

All we know for sure is that the brain is where it's at – what's happening.

And that's marvelously close to home, for all of us. There's nothing nearer to me than my brain. It's what just typed out those words, and came up with the thought, "It's what just typed out those words."

The idea of "nearer, my God, to thee" is appealing to many. Me too.

Yet it could well be that the "God" being sought for is a lot nearer than we could ever imagine. As near as the brain that imagines, in fact.

Comments

[william]

actually the mystics have been telling us this for a long time.

the indwelling spirit within or heaven within or the kindgom within is to the mystic within us.

the mystics only get a glimpse of this awareness within us and it changes their outlook on life and the universe.

god is everywhere there aint nothin but god.

now to express its attibutes it manifests entities through the power of innocence and these entities perceive themselves as separate and unique.

form is not an illusion but an interaction between substance and vitality.

form is enternal whereas substance and vitality are infinite.

it does not take a lot of research to see that consciousness survives outside the brain but it does take a very rare phenomenon. an open mind and at this stage of human evolution this term is an oxymoran.

[Marcel Cairo]

I'm not 100% sure what you're getting at here, Brian, but it sounds to me that your true inner atheist self is finally adopting the reductionist materialist stance which it was naturally headed to for awhile now - That everything is the brain.

This book may have finally brought to mind (pun intended) a science/philosophy based "compromise" explanation for your "there's no God" journey that you've now been on for some time.

Have you read the Irreducible Mind? I recommend you put that one on your reading list before you draw any real conclusions about the brain.

Best,
Marcel

[Tucson]

What Marcel recommends is no doubt an interesting book, but don't we already know quite enough? I imagine most of our bookshelves are quite full. Will one more book be the answer? Maybe. Who knows where one's catalyst lies. One's irrepresible seeking is perhaps their biggest obstacle, assuming they have not achieved philosophical satisfaction to their satisfaction, for which assumption, if incorrect, I ask forgiveness.

Our "real nature" lies wherever the senses and intellect cease to function. It is where we are before we look for it and it is not seen by looking. It is the unmanifest of what we sensorially perceive including the brain and the activities of its billions of cells. An "I" only has to cease in order to become what an "I" is. To see that "I" is not is to be all that is. Where thought and sensorial perceptions cease, where nothing can be known by their means, is the formless unalloyed awareness that is all that really is, that cannot be known as any sort of 'thing'.

Some may be thinking, "Great, if he's right, ultimately it's all a big nothing, exactly what we mortal egos fear.", but we are the matrix of all that we are aware of, the unmanifest from which everything springs, the within of the without, the Not-I which is all that really is right now, the splendor of this incomprehensible infinite moment.

The fact that it is so simple makes it difficult. The joke so hard to get until it dawns on you.. A-ha! Ha ha ha. That's all it is? Wow, it was right here all along.

[Dave]

The nervous system extends throughout the body; body and mind are thus inseperable, it is rarely ever 'all in your head.' Second, the body was once physically connected to, and dependent on, another body which enclosed it, and I wouldn't be surprised if it retained some cellular memory of that. Third, we have evolved as social beings, with acute sensitivities to the thoughts and feelings of others essential our survival. The intensity of shared feelings and shared visions, which religious communites tend to be built around, is nothing to sniff at.

I would argue that the only really significant spiritual events do indeed take place "out there" - in the space between self and other, in the networks of reciprocity between and among beings. But then, I tend to think of spirituality much more in terms of concrete, ethical actions than in mental/emotional states. To the "spiritual but not religious" crowd, I say: heaven is highly over-rated. Can you care for the sick for 40 years despite being filled with loneliness and doubt bordering on despair, as Mother Theresa apparently did? She is my new hero.

[Dave]

(Should be "...essential TO our survival.")

[mysti]

Brian:

“Every experience that I have, whether meditative or otherwise, comes to me via my brain.”

There are quite a number of scientists who would now say that every experience we have, whether meditative or otherwise, comes to us via the ground of consciousness.

All manifestations and experiences, including the brain itself, arise out of unitive consciousness. The brain, for example, only exists as a quantum possibility and becomes an actuality when this quantum wave is collapsed by consciousness. Consciousness causes the brain to be, not the other way around.

Further reading Amit Goswami, or Alan Wallace for the Buddhist perspective. Plenty others out there.

[mysti]

I see all this was covered in other posts elsewhere.

Oh well.