The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience (Theology and the Sciences)

Rating:
Summary: Frustrating and incomplete
Review: Given the title of the book, and the author's pioneering research background, I had expected some in depth discussion of the author's research and results. Instead, we are presented with pedantic background material having to do with religion and biology which is widely available in thousands of other books, and perhaps 5 pages altogether of research reports. And those 5 pages are not even contiguous! As a result, I find myself quite skeptical of the author's hypothetical framework that he labors so hard to present in this work.

There is at least one glaring omission as well - there is no discussion of the commonality of the kundalini experience among the major mystics, nor any background on the chakra system and its relation to the endocrine system. To have ignored these topics in a book dedicated to 'probing' mysticism, is to be presented with a very shallow probe indeed.

This book is evidently intended as an undergraduate text for a narrowly focused survey class, and not for the general reader.

Rating:
Summary: Misconceptions...
Review: I'd looked forward to reading this book, hoping that it would describe the resesarch and actual experiences in some detail. Instead it was a hotch-potch of assumptions and generalisations that ultimately add nothing to our understanding of these states. The writers started off with the opinion that the states weren't real and set out to prove that this was so, rather than weighing up the evidence and then drawing a conclusion.

On the whole, the researchers make exactly the same mistake about what meditation is as every other researcher does, Persinger in particular. Meditation in the way that most think of it is only a tool to calm the mind, not meditation itself. No practitioner will sit staring for hours at religious images, nor is there a trance state that is the platform for such experiences. In meditation (and in spontaneous events) the perfect 'ground' for enightenment experiences is a perfectly natural awareness of the moment, not a 'locked in' state of not thinking.

Anyone who wants to seriously examine how meditators create a ground for these experiences should read books covering Mahamudra and Dzongchen rather than misinformed nonsense like this.

Ian Harling

Rating:
Summary: Frustrating and incomplete
Review: The reader is initially introduced to archetypal and mythical concepts of good and evil, the fall and resurrection, and the theosophical concept of God. The authors describe the development of religion and the role of ritual. They try to develop the argument for a universal "metatheology" which crosses the boundary between religion and science. The book takes a cognitive approach, using process theory to describe domains of experience. Neurobiological and anatomical correlates are emphasized by quoting recent evidence from functional imaging (such as photon emission tomographic scans). The authors designate this approach as "neurotheology" which "refers to the study of theology from a neuropsychological perspective".

The reader is introduced to basic neuroanatomy and the functions of the brain. The authors then describe their own categorization of domains of experience, termed "cognitive operators". These include locations in the brain which deliver the experience of wholeness, in contrast to other sites which deliver the experience of the parts. They introduce the concept of "spiritual intelligence" , which is the integrating and transcending function of the cognitive operators. This process creates transformation or a reframing of the gestalt or world view. Myth is discussed as a transcendent cognitive process which can explain reality and catalyze transformative integration of multivalent experiences. In a nut shell, the neurobiological basis of spiritual experience may provide the physical explanation for personal evolution and adaptation to life crises and change. Ritual may entrain the cognitive operators to process new information and allow integration to occur. The authors discuss the salient experiences of "absolute unitary being" and the "near death experience" to illustrate the neurobiology of transformative experience.

The authors conclude with a summary of their philosophy of a "metatheology and megatheology". Their emphasis is on the brain as a neurophysiological processing system of spiritual experience. This neurological function can be accessed through the rituals of religious practice, such as liturgy. They conclude that their scientific viewpoint should transcend the boundaries of religious organization "without violating their essential doctrines".

The book attempts to integrate spiritual experience and religious philosophy with neurobiological process theory. It is not comprehensive in its discussion of current theories of consciousness, neuroscience or process theory, but does provide a useful introduction of these concepts. It is a complex book which may be a challenge to both theologians and medical scientists. Despite the emphasis on neurobiology, it is not atheistic in its approach, but provides some evidence that the experience of Spirit has a neurobiological correlate. Since our current Western culture emphasizes the objective evidence of science, this book may encourage some agnostics to re-evaluate a spiritual approach to life's vicissitudes.

Rating:
Summary: Heavy Reading--Excellent Results
Review: The text of this book is difficult to work through. It is not designed for the light reader or the quick student. Taking twice as long to read this book was a drain, but the payoff was excellent.

He does not simply give facts, but works to tie them together into a specific working hypothesis, which is yet to be proven. Yet he has asked the correct questions and cannot be faulted in not having all the answers.

Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: A few comments
Review: This book attempts to integrate mystical and religious experience with our current understanding of the brain. Starting out with a review of the revelant neuroanatomy and neurobiology, the authors go on to discuss those areas of the brain that are thought to be intimately involved with the mediation of mystical and religious experiences. Various areas of the brain have been found to produce feelings of wholeness and oneness akin to those experienced by mystics, such as has been found in the case of abnormal stimulation of the temporal lobe. The authors examine this evidence in detail, and then in the final sections propose a general theory of how the mind and brain give rise to mystical and spiritual experience.

Since we're on the subject, I thought I would make a few more comments on that, specifically related to the mystical approach to knowledge and spiritual experience. The mystical view of the world and that of science now stand at a critical juncture, since science now has the tools to investigate this experience in more detail. The question I want to consider is that, although I think meditation and other mental disciplines can provide self-knowledge, and I think there is value in that, but what can we say about the mystical view of consciousness and the mind in view of current evidence?

The mystical view of things and the western views were probably pretty close in terms of knowledge until I would say, post-Cartesian philosophy, but certainly after Kant, the western models have taken things much further than the old mystical models in terms of their understanding of the mind and brain. What they accomplished was certainly worthy of note for the time, but progress doesn't stand still, and things have just moved on, and they really haven't gotten the message.

One reason the mystical models and concepts seem so vague and unsatisfying to modern ears is that they really have reached an impasse. The reason why their concepts are so vague is for a very good reason--and again for one they don't understand since they're usually not aware of the science--but when you understand the neurology, it's quite obvious.

This is because the human brain has no intrinsic cranial nerves for sensing its own internal states, or even basic sensory information. In fact, you could take a knife to your own brain and you wouldn't feel a thing, because there are no intrinsic pain nerves. The brain is specialized to receive and process and analyze information from the five senses, not itself.

Thus, the brain has no direct way of sensing and getting information about its own internal states, because it actually lacks the nerves for doing so. Hence, mystical knowledge must be gleaned second-hand from very indirect perception of these vague, amorphous, hard to define mental states. So these systems are really nothing more than vague speculations about what are basically epiphenomenal interior states.

In other words, the brain really isn't designed to do what they're trying to do with it very well, since the very act of trying to empty the mind goes against highly optimized memory functions relating to memory storage and retrieval.

I'd like to consider one more thing we've learned about the brain in the light of the present discussion. This is the question of why emptying the mind during meditation is so difficult. The mystical view doesn't explain this very well, if at all, only that it is very difficult to do, but that it is necessary in order to penetrate to the deeper levels of awareness and consciousness.

The answer is basically very simple, even in terms of the brain neurophysiology (which it often isn't), and the answer came from a seemingly unlikely area--from sleep studies.

It used to be thought that the brain basically was quiescent during sleep, except for things like dreaming and REM sleep, but many centers are active during sleep, such as the locus coeruleus in the brain stem, the occulomotor nuclei, and so on. And also memory areas in the temporal lobes become more active. This is the reason why people often experience vivid imagery during sleep.

But it was learned that memory functions play an important role in sleep that is different from waking consciousness as a result. It turns out that during waking, the memory areas of the brain are actually under a certain amount of constant inhibition from centers lower in the brain. The reason why is that without it, memories would flood willy-nilly into consciousness, and make ordinary attention and thought impossible. Hence, there must be some overall mechanism to prevent this from happening. There is and it's known as corticocipedal inhibition.

Then, as I said, during sleep, this tonic or constant inhibition is turned off, allowing memories to be retrieved pretty much at random. This is one reason for why dreams often seem to be so chaotic or nonsensical, since there's no overall pattern to the flow of memories. Some dreams are more meaningful, of course, but many aren't and this is the reason why.

This is also why so many pre-scientific systems of thought that try to make sense of dreams are unfortunately missing the point-- which is that many, perhaps most dreams--are just nonsense.

But anyway, the point here is that during wakefulness the inhibition of the memory areas and consciousness is basically optimized so that memories are retrievable when needed, but not so disinhibited that they flood into consciousness unbidden.

Hence, the reason for why it's so difficult to quiet the "monkey brain." During meditation, the memory areas become more active and so it's harder to quiet them down. So the reason why emptying the mind is so difficult is that it goes against the basic overall functioning of the memory and attention mechanisms.

To sum up, I am willing to concede that meditation and other mental disciplines perhaps can provide self-knowledge, and there is certainly value in that, but as far as an explanation of the mind and consiousness goes, they are no longer adequate. It's now very clear that self-knowledge derived from introspective methods and a true explanation for the mind and consciousness are two different things.

Finally, consider the concept of "pure consciousness" in mystical experience. Despite the undifferentiated and unitary nature of consciousness that is presented to meditative experience, this is an illusion, nor is there any one area in the brain where such consciousness can be said to reside or be controlled. Rather, it has become clear from recent research that consciousness is the result of a number of diverse and separate brain areas whose actions have to be coordinated and integrated in time for it to occur.

These explanations are good examples of the type of advance in our understanding of the brain that had to await the advent of more modern scientific techniques.


Rating:
Summary: Just dense enough to be chewy
Review: This book was not what I expected; it was better. I was primed for a pop-science/new-age lightweight discussion full of simplistic generalizations; what I got was a solid theoretical work that's not too dense for the nonspecialist. If you read and comprehend "Scientific American" magazine, you can handle this book, and will probably enjoy it. The authors have thorough backgrounds, although in neuroscience rather than theology, but they don't try to dive too deep into theological constructs. My only quibble is that, as a specialist, I would have liked more documentation of the studies on which the theories were based.

This is a book about humans using our neurologic apparatus to construct meaning in the world, and some possibilities as to how this might occur. Read, and weep at the beautiful complexity of life, and be awestruck at the wonders of the divine Designer.