In addition to conflicting mystical claims, the alleged scientific reduction of mystical experiences to purely natural events is the other major challenge to mystical claims to valid knowledge. Do scientific explanations of mystical experiences in fact defeat mystical claims to knowledge? In particular, are introvertive mystical experiences explained away by natural explanations as nothing more than internal brain events? Or, conversely, can science supply support for mystical cognitive claims? In short, does the study of the physical states of experiencers bear in principle on the truth of mystics’ alleged insights? Scientific research on meditators and experiencers is growing, but the philosophical issue has not received as much scholarly attention. Advocates and critics alike typically simply assume without discussion that the studies obviously validate or invalidate religious beliefs, depending on their prior convictions.
To address the relevance of the scientific study of mystical experiences, two assumptions must be made. First, we cannot seriously doubt that there must be a biological basis enabling these experiences to occur. Mystical experiences, like all our other experiences, are firmly embodied. Theists may argue that introvertive theistic mystical experiences involve a unique input from God alone. Nevertheless, there must be some basis in the human anatomy that permits God to enter our mind. The Dalai Lama suggests that there may be no neural correlates for “pure consciousness” (Gyatso & Goleman 2003: 42). But even if this consciousness exists independently of the brain, there still must be some basis in human beings permitting its appearance in us. Thus, even if mystics realize a transcendent reality, they still need some basis in the brain for this to occur, and so mystical states of consciousness must somehow be mediated by the neurological processes in the body. That is, these experiences are not disembodied transcendent events, but are human experiences that must somehow be grounded in the human body. In particular, all experiences apparently have neural substrates and a biochemical basis in our brain. Mystical experiences do not differ from any other experience in this regard. As professor of behavioral medicine Richard Sloan says: “there is nothing at all remarkable about reporting that ecstatic religious experiences are associated with a neurological substrate,” since “all human conscious activity, religious or otherwise, has an underlying counterpart in the brain” (2006: 247–49). Nor is there any reason to doubt that scientists can study the brain during these experiences like any others, or that they may be able to identify neural and other biological bases. Thus, pointing out neurological bases in no way begs the question against mystical cognitivity: even if these experiences produce an insight, they need a biological basis to appear.
The second assumption is that whether mystical experiences are delusory or involve a genuine insight into the nature of reality, today it is increasingly becoming accepted that they are connected to genuine observable neurological events that are distinct from other types of mental events and are not merely products of imagination (Newberg, d’Aquili, & Rause 2002: 7, 143). Much mental activity involves different parts of the brain, and mystical experiences may too, but there is objective evidence of distinctive configurations of brain events uniquely connected to mystical experiences.
These assumptions also apply to meditation: because of the interaction or identity of the mind and the body, any calming of the mind during meditation will probably have effects on the body—at a minimum, calming and stabilizing some biological functions. Such effects may be measurable in different ways. Nor is there any reason to doubt that neuroscientists may eventually identify the exact parts of the brain that are active or inactive in such experiences, as indicated by blood flow in functional MRI imaging or the activity of chemicals by PET and SPECT scans. Indeed, that meditation physically affects brain structures is becoming well established (e.g., Davidson et al. 2003; Lazar et al. 2005; Hölzel et al. 2011b; Leung et al. 2013; Kang et al. 2013).
The picture of neuroscience in this area at present is of an active field with numerous competing explanations of different types of mystical experiences, both in terms of the brain mechanisms involved and in the alleged loci in the brain associated with the experiences. The data are not always consistent, but there is no reason to doubt that eventually scientists may end up with a consensus on these matters. Nevertheless, scientists should be cautious in jumping quickly to a conclusion about the material basis of mystical experiences. To begin with, there are two different classes of mystical experiences with different types of experiences within each, and how the brain functions during the difference experiences may well differ (see Hood 1997; Dunn, Hartigan, & Mikulas 1999). So too, scientists can distinguish concentrative and mindfulness meditation (Valentine & Sweet 1999). If, for example, some drug can stimulate some part of the brain and enable depth-mystical experiences to occur, this does not mean that that drug can enable mindfulness or that the same areas of the brain are active in mindfulness and the other types of experiences. And within the two basic meditative tracks, there is also a plethora of techniques (see Andresen 2000; Shear 2006); these may well involve different neurological states. In short, scans of concentrative meditators such as Yogins may well differ from those of mindfulness Zen Buddhist meditators, and different neurological explanations may be needed for each case. So too, there may be different neural states for those introvertive mystical experiences with differentiated content and those without such content.
First, two points should be addressed concerning the scientific study of mysticism generally rather than the issue of its relation to the matter of mystical knowledge-claims.
Scientists studying meditators are doing science, not engaging in a mystical practice. This may seem obvious, but the point is often overlooked. Getting readings on monks during meditation does not make this science mystical. Conversely, mystics do not “observe” their consciousness for scientific purposes. The mental training of meditation is designed to familiarize the practitioner with specific types of mental processes (Brefczynski et al. 2007: 11,483). Meditators are trying to calm their mind to attain God or some other such end. Over the centuries Buddhists have developed precise descriptions and a classification of the mental states relevant to their practices and goal of selflessness, not out of a scientific interest in how the mind/brain works, but to aid in taming the mind. The Buddhist Abhidarmists’ taxonomy of mental states is not part of a “2,500-year research program in phenomenological psychology” (contra Flanagan 2011: 81) but only related to relevant states for ending suffering. Nor have Buddhists been pursuing the “scientific study of consciousness” for two-and-a-half millennia (contra Beauregard & O’Leary 2007: 256). Even the Yogacharins, the Mahayanists who most concentrated on the analysis of the mind, did not conduct a general scientific survey; their phenomenology of experiences focused on such questions as how the mental construction of “objects” arises from the transforming of consciousness. As the Dalai Lama says, the purpose of Buddhist psychology is not to catalog the mind’s makeup or to describe mental functioning but to overcome suffering and clear away mental afflictions (2005: 165–66). So too, the analysis of states of mind in the Hindu Yoga Sutras is related only to how to control them and end “mental activities.” Meditators may permit scientists to scan their brains while they meditate, but it is not as if they want to develop a new neuroscientific theory. They witness events in their own mind as if from a third-person point of view, but not out of a disinterested desire to learn how the brain works: they are interested in attaining the knowledge necessary to align their lives with reality. Buddhists have not been studying the problem of the relation of mind to matter for ages and have not been developing new hypotheses on that issue (contra Wallace & Hodel 2008: xviii)—they have been focusing on attaining an insight to end their suffering and not studying the relation of the mind to the brain at all. (It is not at all clear how meditation can shed light on the relationship of “mind” to “matter” since whether mystical experiences are products of the brain alone, as naturalists claim, or involve something more, they would still be the same phenomenologically. Thus, it is not obvious how attaining new states of mind through meditation will help us understand the mind/body relation.) And putting the word “experiments” in quotation marks when discussing meditation (ibid.: 142) does not make the meditators’ observation of their mental states as they attempt to calm their mind into scientific experiments.
It should also be noted that in the Buddhists’ mindfulness type of enlightenment, the enlightening insight occurs outside of the “lucid trances” (dhyanas) related to concentrative meditation, although the mind is prepared by such concentrative exercises. Similarly, the enlightened state of Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta is not a continuous depth-mystical experience but a state of consciousness that is outside of that experience: in the enlightened state, sense-experience remains (perhaps now in a mindful mode), and the insight is knowing the world’s true status as illusory.1 The mystics’ interest is in the insight into the nature of reality in order to align themselves with it, not in any unusual experiences, and whether these insights can be tied to specific states of mind or body is irrelevant to practicing their religious ways of life and their ultimate concerns.
José Cabezón reports that there is “widespread skepticism” among meditating Buddhist monks regarding the value of neuroscientific studies of meditative states and the long-term effects of meditative practice (2003: 42). From the point of view of mystical practice, such skepticism is justified. Meditation is part of an encompassing mystical way of life leading toward enlightenment, and any biological mechanisms enabling mystical experiences to occur are simply irrelevant to those participating in such ways of life. It is as irrelevant to mystics as the mechanisms enabling visual observations are to physicists. Rather, the permanent transformation of a person to a state in accord with reality is central to mysticism, not any changes in brain events that may or may not accompany such a transformation.2
In short, not all introspection is for a scientific purpose: the mystical objective is a spiritual enlightenment regardless of the findings of how the brain or mind works. Of course, what meditators report or what scientists find studying meditators may benefit neuroscience—meditators may have discovered states of consciousness or other aspects of the mind that are not known to modern neuroscientists. But this is not why the practitioners are engaged in meditation. Nevertheless, whether the scientific study of persons undergoing mystical experiences is relevant to the cognitive status of mystical knowledge-claims is a legitimate issue.
Thus, meditation and mystical experiences are potential sources of new data for neuroscientists. Brain-imaging technology is beginning to identify the areas of the brain affected by meditation. But it is one thing to study the brain during previously unexamined states of consciousness or mental functioning; it is another to come up with a new theory of the mind or of how the brain works. Efforts at theorizing are beginning regarding the mechanisms and areas the brain involved in these experiences. Nevertheless, these studies do lead to a broader question: do mystical experiences force a revision in the current framework of neuroscience?
It is not at all obvious that scientists must revise any accepted theory of how the brain works in light of these studies of mystical states of consciousness (see Harrington & Zajonc 2006). They may be able to explain the workings quite conventionally. However, mystical experiences may reveal aspects of consciousness or types of mental functioning that cannot be explained by existing theories. Perhaps, as many classical mystics claimed, there is a unique mental functioning in mystical experiences distinct from reasoning and other experiences (e.g., the “intellect” of medieval Christian mysticism or the “buddhi” in some Indian traditions). Meditation may aid in understanding consciousness itself by clearing away the noise in most conscious states, thereby leaving a “pure awareness,” free of other activity (Forman 1998a). Some neurological evidence exists for such a state of awareness free of sensory and conceptual content (see Sullivan 1995; Peters 1998: 13–16). The depth-mystical experience may be presenting consciousness in its simplest form. If consciousness can exist free of input, it is harder to see consciousness as merely a product of sensory or other bodily activity. A contentless consciousness would also present problems for functionalism or any information-processing theories of the mind. Meditation may also be enhancing and extending the faculty of mental perception through the techniques for cultivating extraordinary states of concentration (Wallace 2003: 23). It may show that we are capable of controlling what were thought to be involuntary bodily processes or that we can train our awareness or compassion.3
And just as high-energy physics caused physicists to rethink aspects of Newtonian theory, so too developing “high-energy states of consciousness” may open neuroscientists to the need for new explanations (Wallace 2007: 167). Or maybe not: naturalists argue that no new theory is needed even for depth-mystical experiences since they involve either a malfunctioning brain (e.g., Saver & Rubin 1997) or a feedback effect occurring when all sensory and other differentiated content is removed while one remains conscious. This may explain all of the experience’s properties and thus explain away its alleged cognitivity. Indeed, most naturalists need convincing that there is a state of “pure consciousness” devoid of any intentional object. Most think there can be no consciousness without an object being present: consciousness is inherently intentional—when there is no object, there is no consciousness. Nor is it clear that studying the neural correlates active in a state of pure consciousness brings us closer to understanding consciousness itself or how it arises, although it may bring its correlates into clearer focus.
Currently the metaphysical framework for most neuroscientists is materialist: consciousness is simply an activity of matter or at most its product. Somehow consciousness emerges from the brain, and thus the focus in studying any experiences can be exclusively on the material bases producing our consciousness. Some neuroscientists recognize that materialism is a philosophical assumption and accept it only tentatively, but many think it is an empirical finding of science itself and do not qualify their claims—they immediately go from establishing neural correlates to a reduction of mental events without an argument (see Hick 2006: 92–103). However, others reject materialism, and a nonmaterial mind acting on the brain and having its own causal powers may become accepted as an intrinsic part of the universe, even if the mind remains dependent on material bases for its appearance. If so, neuroscience will have to change. But just because meditation may, for example, lower stress levels in the body, does not mean that the mind is necessarily not a product of matter. So too, “pure consciousness” events may be explainable in a materialistic framework, even if this requires dismissing these experiences as malfunctions. Mystical experiences in themselves do not require that the mind be somehow unattached to the brain—even if mystical experiences are cognitive, the mind may still simply be the product of (or identical to) the brain.
However, scientists arguably cannot develop an adequate understanding of consciousness using only the “instrumental/analytical” functions of the mind and any nonanalytical functions currently recognized by scientists. Unless mystical experiences can be shown to be the result of mental malfunctioning, scientists cannot ignore mystical experiences but also must account for the “receptive/contemplative” modes of both mystical tracks. If so, then it would only be the experiences themselves as new data on states of consciousness that scientists would have to accept, not the alleged mystical insights into the nature of reality. Neuroscientists are attempting to study mystical states of consciousness as mental phenomena, not any mystical knowledge-claims. It would be comparable to studying the nature of sense-experience by scanning practicing physicists—any of the physicists’ theories based on those experiences would be irrelevant. But if scientists revise their theories in light of mystical knowledge-claims about consciousness or perception, this would be an instance of mysticism contributing to science (see Goleman & Thurman 1991; Austin 1998; Wallace’s response to Smith-Churchland’s materialism in Houshmand, Livingston, & Wallace 1999: 33–36).
But neuroscientists to date are using standard Western scientific techniques to study meditators, not devising a new and different science. Only facts discerned by the analytical mind and current scientific methods are accepted into the body of knowledge. Scientists today try to explain the mind materialistically in terms of material forces acting on the brain’s constituent parts. There is some first-person self-reporting (e.g., Smith & Tart 1998), but any first-person approach emphasizing a subject’s actual awareness has not been fully incorporated into science. First-person “subjective” experience is not quantifiable or measurable in any exact way but is something different in character. There is no objective way to assess the person’s phenomenological claims: first-person claims relate merely how the experience seems to the subject, and this sense may be misleading. Instead, only the third-person approach of what is objectively measurable, with its results being testable by others, is seen as leading to scientific knowledge in consciousness studies. Indeed, checking and testing by others is essential to any science. Thus, the focus remains on the processes accompanying subjective experiences that can be measured in the same way as any other process in physics and chemistry. Even when a neuroscientist who had mystical experiences—Mario Beauregard—speaks of a “new scientific frame of reference” that goes beyond materialism, he still ends up speaking only of the scientific investigation of the neural, physiological, psychological, and social conditions favoring the occurrence of mystical experiences (2007: 294–95), not a new type of science.
A second-person approach through trained interviewers asking questions about one’s experiences is especially popular in the study of drug effects. Because such questioning is after the experiences themselves and relies on testimony, it is only indirectly empirical and thus only “quasi-experimental” (Hood 2001: i). In the psychology of religion, Ralph Hood devised a questionnaire (1975) based on Walter Stace’s phenomenology of mystical experiences (1960a). He revised his “M Scale” later to differentiate extrovertive and introvertive experiences and postexperience religious interpretations (Hood, Morris, & Watson 1993). One issue is how questions are framed. Usually questions reflect a theistic bias. For example, a recent Gallup poll on religious experiences omitted anything related to mysticism but only had questions about a numinous experience of a “divine actor”—i.e., an active theistic god, not an inactive mystical ground. Classical introvertive mystics do not speak of a transcendent reality set off apart from the experiencer. Answers also are limited by how the questions are framed and by the participants’ culture’s framework: subjects may answer “God” because they have no other concepts for a transcendent reality even if the experience did not seem personal in nature. Nor is it always clear what degree of theological ramification participants intend. They also may simply assume that whatever experience they have must be the same as others have had when they speak of “experiencing God.” Participants may not mean the same thing that the questioners mean by such terms as “mystical,” “oneness,” and so forth. (One is reminded of Wittgenstein’s problem of public versus private meaning and the example of a beetle hidden in a box: the word “beetle” has a public meaning, and each person knows what a beetle is by looking at his or her own beetle, but this does not mean that what is in the box is what each expects.) For example, an experiencer may label a premonition as being momentarily “one with God.” A vague sensed presence becomes seen by Christians as Jesus or Mary. Any weakened sense of self becomes an experience of “mystical oneness” or “mystical union.” One may feel “in the presence of God” anytime one is in church or just feeling happy. Any positive state of consciousness may be deemed “mystical.” So too, one person’s experiences of “cosmic consciousness” and LSD experiences may be described with the same words, even though they seem qualitatively different to the experiencer (Smith & Tart 1998: 106).
Thus, little of the experienced content may be revealed even by low-ramified terms. In general, words about transcendent reality are emotionally loaded, and their meaning may differ from one subject to another and from the questioner’s meaning. If there is something truly ineffable about mystical experiences, such problems are only aggravated. In sum, because experiencers usually learn the vocabulary for “mystical experiences” prior to those experiences (and Wittgensteinians would add, outside those experiences in public events), we cannot tell exactly what experience they had when they label something “an experience of God” or whether they have had the same experience as others. More questions, more detail in the questions in surveys, and in-depth interviews can limit this problem but not eliminate it entirely.
Current neuroscience reflects the standard scientific third-person approach: it is a matter of studying the neural “hardware” of the brain through PET scans and so on. However, some argue that neuroscience also needs supplementary “soft sciences” to deal with the “software” of the mind (Goleman & Thurman 1991: 57–58). Currently scientists specify and test theories in the ordinary dualistic state of consciousness, the mind’s default mode. Charles Tart and Roger Walsh see this as problematic for the scientific study of any altered states of consciousness.4 They think that the nature of mystical experiences cannot be judged by the unenlightened in ordinary consciousness, and they propose that “state-specific sciences” be developed to understand the phenomena of the altered states that complement standard neuroscience. Since all sciences depend on methods appropriate to their subject and on replication by properly trained observers, scientists would need to be trained to be participant-observers of altered states of consciousness to report on the experiences (Walsh 1992; see also Pekala & Cardeña 2000; Wallace 1989, 2007).5 Fritz Staal was an earlier advocate of the need for first-person experiences to study mysticism: mysticism cannot be studied seriously only indirectly from the outside but also directly from within—otherwise, “it would be like a blind man studying vision” (1975: 124): “No one would willingly impose upon himself such artificial restraints when exploring other phenomena affecting or pertaining to the mind; he would not study perception only by analyzing reports of those who describe what they perceive, or by looking at what happens to people and their bodies when they are engaged in perceiving. What one would do when studying perception, in addition, if not first of all, is to observe and analyze one’s own perceptions” (ibid.: 123–24). One can study the history of art, the physics of paintings, and the physiology and neurology of perception, but this collectively would not indicate what it is like to be an artist or the “subjective” experience of anyone observing a painting. So too, a science of mysticism would require more. This would separate the study of mystical experiences from the objective approach of physics that is the current paradigm for neuroscience. A new science would not be based in the ordinary state of consciousness but would have state-specific knowledge. But problems of how to replicate another’s experience and to test any theories in an altered state persist.
Such a “contemplative science” would not be a replacement for neuroscience as currently practiced in the ordinary state of consciousness by studying biological correlates of mystical experiences. Rather, first-person approaches would fulfill aims that the methods of the current natural sciences were never designed to achieve (Wallace 2003: 260; see also Ricard 2003). Thus, it would be part of a new expanded science of consciousness embracing both neuroscience and personal “subjective” experience—a collaboration of first-person and third-person approaches (see Shear & Jevning 1999; Cabezón 2003: 52–55; Lancaster 2004; Dalai Lama 2005: 133–37). In fact, the basic idea of a research strategy linking the phenomenological approach with a neurological approach is already in place (Flanagan 2011: 82); the study of mystical experiences did not introduce the idea. But some advocates go beyond the supplemental approach and advocate a synthesis of the two into one new hybrid science that would change the character of current neuroscience, letting the first-person approach “reshape” the third (e.g., Thompson 2006: 233).
In any case, little has been done as yet on this front with regard to mystical states of consciousness. A contemplative science would also be subject to all of the problems of first-person reports for any science. Such reports are notoriously unreliable: since we are not aware of all that goes on in the mind or what influences observations, there is always the problem of self-deception. How is science to accept any introspective account given after a mystical experience as incorrigible evidence of a state of consciousness, let alone any ontic claim? Indeed, whether the “pure consciousness” of a depth-mystical experience is amenable even to any first-person introspection is an issue: “awareness itself” cannot become a phenomenal object—it is inherently subjective. When we “observe consciousness” in ordinary self-consciousness, we are only aware that we are aware—if what is observed becomes an object, then by definition it is not the subjectivity of consciousness or the content of the depth-mystical experience. The depth-mystical state becomes an intentional object of thought only after the experience is over.
But if consciousness constitutes a level of reality that is not reducible to material bases, then insights into certain aspects of what is real in the universe could only be achieved in a first-person manner and not by a third-person approach. If consciousness is accepted as causally real, this raises another issue: the question is not only whether a new hybrid science incorporating both first-person accounts of experiences and neuroscientific accounts of mechanisms is needed, but also whether third-person neuroscience as currently practiced is fundamentally misguided.
Naturalists who reduce the mind to the brain or who entirely eliminate subjectivity believe that studying the brain simply is studying consciousness (see Jones 2013: 98–102). But for antireductionists, there is an issue here: can experiences be studied scientifically? If science can study experiences, the scientific study of meditators and persons undergoing mystical experience potentially adds a new way to study mystical experiences, not merely the brain and physiology. But this leads to the very real issue of whether the subjectivity inherent in any experience can be studied scientifically at all. It is one thing to identify the neurobiological correlates of an experience and quite another to study the “lived” experience itself. In consciousness studies in general, there is the problem of the “felt” aspects of such states as sense-experience and pains—“qualia”—versus the physical activity in the brain occurring during those experiences (see ibid.: 106–109, 122–24). Any causal property of consciousness would also be distinct from the qualia. Because qualia remain experientially distinct from brain mechanisms, they cannot be explained away by identifying the base in the brain permitting them to occur—the first-person sensation of seeing the greenness of grass is not reducible to the sum of the physical events occurring when we look at grass.
That consciousness is itself a mystery is revealed by the fact that scientists and philosophers cannot agree on what exactly they are studying or come up with a common definition. When scientists speak of a “science of consciousness” today, they are still referring to identifying neural or other bodily correlates of conscious events, not to studying the subjective side of these events.6 It is not a science of consciousness itself—in fact, based on science, there is no reason today to believe that consciousness exists. Identifying the correlates in the body of particular conscious events (e.g., identifying the areas of the brain that are active when moral judgments are being made) or explaining how these events arose is not getting into the conscious events themselves. Merely identifying the neural correlates of a conscious event tells us nothing about what consciousness is, nor does it explain why it exists. Every conscious event may well have a neural correlate, but mere correlation does not address the fundamental issues of how or why consciousness emerges or whether changes in consciousness can cause changes in the neural base or why conscious events are correlated with material events at all—indeed, a correlation of phenomena is not an explanation of anything but only something new that needs an explanation itself.
Most basically, there does not appear to be any way to study the subjectivity of a person’s consciousness itself by objective, third-person means. No doubt scientists could conduct brain-imaging studies to demonstrate the differences in the activity of cerebral structures occurring while someone is listening to Beethoven or listening to white noise—but would this mean that this experience is explained by the activity of a specific brain region and that this is all there is to it (Sloan 2006: 253)? Subjectivity is not phenomenal, i.e., it is not an object that can be presented for study. There simply is no way to present subjectivity itself for inspection or testing by others. Scientists can show that our conscious states are affected by changes in brain states, but this does not mean that consciousness is necessarily a product of matter—the brain states still may be only the material bases needed to allow a separately existing consciousness to appear in different ways. With their success in the study of brain activity, it is easy to see why neuroscientists may miss the philosophical issues and claim to be producing a “theory of consciousness.” But as things stand, neuroscientists are only studying something closely associated with the appearance of consciousness in us—its bodily underpinnings—and not consciousness itself. They study the state of the brain during an experience, not the experience itself or experience in general. Even if the mind and the brain are materially identical, there is an “inside” to experiences that cannot be studied from the “outside” by examining the brain.
In short, any third-person experience of brains does not give us knowledge of anything but an object, and subjectivity cannot be made into an object. Neurological scanning can only reveal the correlates of experience—the observable bodily responses—not the “subjective” consciousness itself. It can only show what the brain is doing or not doing during an experience, but not the experience itself. Even the emerging technology that “reads minds” only reads brain states, not experiences. No scientific account of the mechanisms active during sense-experience or self-awareness can make us understand what it is like actually to experience those states. In sum, no accounts of phenomena in purely third-person terms would ever even suggest the existence of, much less explain, the subjective qualities that constitute the bulk of our conscious life (Shear & Jevning 1999: 189).
This general inability of one person to witness what another one experiences applies equally to mystical and meditative experiences. Even if previous experiences can be reproduced by the meditators themselves during scientific experiments, the inability of others to see what is going on will always limit a “science of meditation.” Moreover, even if others could in fact duplicate the physiological state of the brain of an enlightened mystic through meditation, how do we know the subjective state of consciousness is also being duplicated? Identifying what is going on in the brain when a mystical experience occurs is one thing; what meditators actually experience—the felt sense of selflessness, unity, timelessness, or whatever—is another. A science of meditation is not achieved by a science of a meditator’s brain. Only reductive materialists would disagree. And it must be admitted that as of yet little is known about the neurobiological processes involved in meditation and about its possible long-term impact on the brain (Lutz et al. 2007: 500). The biological studies of meditation have not produced anything dramatic about what is occurring during meditation. Indeed, scientific studies to date, as Richard Sloan says, reveal the “entirely unremarkable findings” that during meditation the areas of the brain associated with concentration and attention show increased activity compared to other regions (2006: 247–49).
Nevertheless, two types of reductions discrediting mystical claims have been advanced in this field: scientific reductions of mystical experiences to nothing but electrochemical activity in the brain or some other physical or biological phenomenon, and sociocultural reductions of the experiences to social, psychological, or cultural phenomena.7 First the former. Scientists look for the biological or chemical conditions within the body such that anyone under those conditions would probably have a certain type of mystical experience. A one-to-one correlation of conscious states with the bodily states of the brain or other parts of the body would permit the stimulation of the mechanisms at work in the body during mystical experiences, thereby inducing an experience. For a true correlation, there must be a one-to-one relation of changes in states of consciousness with changes in bodily states. All the phenomenological content of the experiences also must be accounted for. Different neural and physiological bases and explanations are currently being proposed (see Cahn & Polich 1999; Wulff 2000; and Lutz et al. 2007 for overviews).8
There are currently five areas of scientific research.9 First, drugs administered to subjects cause a percentage of them—sometimes 70-some percent—to have either extrovertive or introvertive mystical experiences.10 From William James experimenting with nitrous oxide (1958: 298) to Aldous Huxley’s experiences with mescaline (the active ingredient in peyote) (1954, 1955) to Walter Pahnke’s “Good Friday” experiment with psilocybin (the active ingredient in “sacred mushrooms”) (1966; Smith 2000: 15–32) to Robert Masters and Jean Houston’s work on LSD (1966), early advocates claimed to duplicate all the phenomenological elements of mystical experiences making them experientially indistinguishable—not merely something “similar to” a mystical experience or a “partial” mystical experience. Bruce Eisner found that the drug “ecstasy” led patients to a profound sense of “unconditional love” and to a state of empathy in which they, others, and the world seemed basically good (1989). Altered states of consciousness, including mystical ones, have been part of religion since its early days (see Winkelman 1999). More than 10 percent of the hymns in the Rig Veda are to soma, a psychotropic plant used in rituals. Indeed, many claimed that drug-induced experiences among early shamans and others are the source of religion.11 Terence McKenna (1992) has argued that we have deep genetic roots for a need for intoxicants and that psychoactive drugs played an important part in human evolution (see also Weil 1986; Siegel 1989).
Drug studies were revived in clinical studies in the 1990s, first with DMT (N,N-dimethyltryptamine) (Strassman 2001). The effect of drugs on the production of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which plays a role in regulating consciousness, has been of special interest because they inhibit prefrontal cortex activity. LSD apparently deactivates regions of the brain that integrate our senses and our sense of a “self.” It may also loosen the “reducing valve” of the mind that permits in only the data we need (Goodman 2002). In addition to more intense visual and aural sensations, this can lead to an extrovertive sense of being united to the rest of reality without any memory loss. But drugs can also have disturbing and terrifying effects. In addition, “cosmic consciousness” and LSD experiences may be qualitatively different states of consciousness (Smith & Tart 1998). However, in one psilocybin study, three-fifths of the participants had what the scientists considered “complete” mystical experiences; one-third of the participants considered it the most significant spiritual experience of their lives, and for another quarter it was one of the top five; and the significance lasted more than a year (Griffiths et al. 2006, 2008). A long-term study of Pahnke’s experiment also showed that the induced mystical experiences had lasting positive effects (Doblin 1991). Other studies also found that experiences occasioned by psilocybin caused persisting positive changes in attitudes, mood, life satisfaction, behavior, altruism/social effects, and social relationships with family and others (Griffiths et al. 2006, 2008).12 Such experiences have also led some drug users to adopt a mystical way of life.
Many in the religious community are enthusiastic about these drug results, claiming that drugs induce the same experiences induced by other means such as fasting and meditation by producing the same biological effects in the brain as those activities do and that this proves mystical experiences are veridical. However, since James Leuba (1929), others have argued that these are nothing but subjective brain events. Others object on theological grounds that these are not “genuine” mystical experiences but only a superficial copy with no spiritual component—true mystical experiences are different in nature and content and come only from God. R. C. Zaehner tried mescaline and ended up only with an upset stomach (1957: 212–26). (But this does point to the issue of a proper dosage and supportive conditions [Griffiths et al. 2011].) He concluded that “nature” and “monistic” mystical experiences may be triggered by drugs, but “theistic” introvertive mystical experiences can be produced only by acts of grace from God (1957: 14–29)—no set of natural conditions such as ingesting a drug can compel God to act.13 To some, drug-induced mystical experiences seem unearned and undeserved (see Pahnke 1966: 309–10). But all agree that the “set and setting” (the psychological disposition and beliefs of the subject and the physical setting) are important and at least partially account for the great variation in the experiences: drugs more often facilitate mystical experiences when the subject is prepared for one by pre-experience spiritual practices and beliefs and in a religious or otherwise favorable setting, but the disruption caused by drugs cannot guarantee a mystical experience will occur even then. Also, most volunteers for such experiments are spiritually inclined and seek mystical experiences, and thus they are already predisposed to having such experiences.
A second area involves other alleged “triggers” producing mystical experiences. Such events as listening to music, contemplating the beauty of nature, illness, stress, or despair can trigger extrovertive or introvertive mystical experiences. On the other hand, many meditate daily for years without producing any mystical experiences. But from John Lilly’s sense-deprivation tanks in the 1950s to Michael Persinger’s “God helmet” (1987), scientists have produced devices that appear to be able to induce mystical experiences in a significant percentage of subjects. As discussed below, nothing can force a mystical experience to occur 100 percent of the time, but naturalists use the mere possibility of artificial triggers to conclude that mystical experiences are purely natural events that are touched off naturally without any transcendent realities existing.
The third area is the study of brains damaged by trauma and psychotic and schizophrenic states of mind. The neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran’s focus on microseizures in the left temporal lobe of patients is a prime example (1998). The classic account of this type of epileptic seizure comes from Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who put it in the words of a character in his novel The Idiot: “His mind and heart were flooded with extraordinary light; all torment, all doubt, all anxieties were relieved at once, resolved in a kind of lofty calm, full of serene, harmonious joy and hope, full of understanding and the knowledge of the ultimate cause of things.” Michael Persinger also found that brain-injured patients sometimes had a “sense of presence”: if the damage is to the left hemisphere, the presence may be a voice and be positive; if the damage is to the right hemisphere, the presence is more likely to be frightening and to be seen as an evil ghost or demon (Horgan 2003: 95). Religious experiences are thus simply the left hemisphere seeing the activity in the right hemisphere as a separate religious entity. Early in the twentieth century, William James derided the “medical materialism” that explained away Paul’s vision on the road to Damascus as a discharging lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic; Teresa of Avila as a hysteric; and Francis of Assisi as a hereditary degenerate (1958: 29). It remains common to conclude that there is “little doubt” that the experiences of at least some mystics from history, such as Teresa of Avila and Catherine of Siena were the result of temporal lobe epilepsy even though scientists must admit that their biological details are “too meager to allow an accurate assessment” (Dewhurst & Beard 1970: 504). More refined attempts to explain all features of all religious and mystical experiences in terms of the stimulation of the temporal lobe structures are still popular—Persinger sees the experience of God as nothing but “a biological artifact of the human brain” (1987: 17). Isolated mystical experiences are explained by short bursts in the relevant locus in the brain, and longer-lasting states are explained by chronic disturbances.
The fourth area is the recent neuroscientific scanning of meditators’ brains and physiology during meditation, which is central to the budding field of cognitive neuroscience.14 In particular, “mindfulness neuroscience,” which examines the neural mechanisms and systems supporting mindfulness meditation, has become a “hot topic” (Tang & Posner 2013a: 1). More and more neuroscientists today are concluding that mystical experiences are unique “genuine, neurobiological events” worthy of study (Newberg, d’Aquili, & Rause 2002: 7). And with advances in noninvasive technology (especially neuroimaging), the last few decades have seen a marked increase in studies of the effect of meditation and other spiritual exercises (e.g., fasting, contemplative prayer, and liturgical practices) on brain activity and on other parts of the body. The experiences apparently have reproducible and measurable biological effects, and advanced meditators can produce more stable and reproducible mental states than can the untrained (Lutz et al. 2007: 257). The effect of meditation on various functions can be studied (e.g., changes in blood flow or in metabolic or respiratory activity), as can changes in the autonomic nervous system and neurochemical activity in the brain as with any other physical event, since such activity is subject to the same laws of physics and chemistry as any other activity. Meditation’s effect on such mental activities as attention, perceptual sensitivity, responses to stimuli, and the regulation of emotional states can also be studied. Meditative practices may also induce short-term and long-term neural changes (Lutz et al. 2004). Different structures (e.g., the left amygdala and right hippocampus) are now drawing attention.
Lastly, scientists are also asking whether there is a genetic base to mystical experiences (e.g., Hamer 2005) or at least a genetic propensity to having mystical experiences. There may not be a unique “God gene,” but there may be a genetic basis for mystical experiences or for pursuing spiritual goals. Whether there is some evolutionary basis for the continuing presence of these experiences in human history (i.e., some genetic advantage in cultivating such experiences or spirituality in general) is also being examined (e.g., Hardy 1979).
Social scientists look for social or psychological conditions responsible for mystical experiences. They note that people with certain psychological dispositions or in certain groups are more inclined than most people to have mystical experiences. Social scientists who are naturalists may, like Émile Durkheim and Carl Jung, find religion to be a positive force for a person or society, but they believe only natural realities are involved. Psychological naturalists may explain ecstatic religious experiences as, for example, surrogates for sex.15 Some naturalist social scientists go beyond using social conditions to explain tendencies to have religious experiences—e.g., I. M. Lewis’s theory that religious ecstasy is a means of access to political and social power for disenfranchised and marginalized groups (1989)—to conclude that social factors are the only causal forces producing such experiences (e.g., Fales 1996a, 1996b, 1999a). Mystical experiences are reduced to mere “projections” of the true natural source behind them, whether it is our own mind, our society, or some particular cultural phenomenon. Our projections do not hit any realities outside of natural phenomena, and thus the religious are deluded as to the actual causes of their experiences. (For more on sociocultural reductions, see Jones 2013: 160–71, 174–75, 188–89.)
Thus, reductive social scientists go beyond correlating mystical phenomena with other sociocultural phenomena into denying any transcendent element to mystical phenomena. Thereby, they are not only explaining the occurrence of mystical experiences by specifying their correlated sociocultural conditions but are explaining them away. Thus, what they are doing is not comparable to a neuroscientist finding correlations between brain states of meditators and their experiences. Instead, it is like a neuroscientist making the philosophical judgment that meditation involves no insights into the nature of reality but only involves noncognitive internal brain events and thus is reducible to neural or chemical correlates.
The naturalists’ view can be foreseen in the words of Voltaire: religious experiences are “supernatural visions permitted to him or her who is gifted by God with the special grace of possessing a cracked brain, a hysterical temperament, a disordered digestion, or, most of all, the art of lying with effrontery.” Or as Bertrand Russell put the point more exactly: “From a scientific point of view, we can make no distinction between the man who eats little and sees heaven and the man who drinks a lot and sees snakes. Each is in an abnormal physical condition, and therefore has abnormal perceptions” (1997: 188). Naturalists argue that scientists can duplicate every experiential feature of the various types of mystical experiences through normal, well-understood neurological mechanisms and can also explain the strong emotional effects these experiences have on the participants. Naturalists then conclude that any mystical experience is nothing but natural phenomena: the only realities involved in the experiences are the experiencer and elements of the natural world. This means that, even if a transcendent reality does happen to exist, an introvertive mystical experience is still not an experience of anything but natural phenomena. Mystical experiences are not only internal events but “merely subjective” in a negative epistemic sense that no reality but the brain is involved. Thus, the alleged cognitive content of these experiences—i.e., any beliefs based on them regarding the existence and nature of transcendent realities—is radically discredited.
Besides the “damaged brain” explanation, one popular way to explain the phenomenology of the depth-mystical experiences is as an illusion resulting from a feedback effect: our brain has evolved to produce an intentional consciousness to deal with problems of survival; thus, when the mind is “on” but has no content with which to work, it malfunctions badly, producing the illusory sense of mystical oneness, timelessness, and so on.16 Thus, even if no mental disorder is involved, the depth-mystical experience is at most simply the brain spinning its wheels when it has no mental content to work with. Another explanation is based on empirical research: during mystical experiences, the area of the brain connected to our sense of a distinction between oneself and the rest of the world (the junction of the temporal and parietal lobes) receives less input and thus is less active; this also affects our temporal and spatial orientation. At the same time, the area of the brain connected to tagging events as significant (the limbic system in the temporal lobes) is more active. Thus, it is only natural that there is no sense of a boundary between the self and the world and also a sense that the experience is of great importance. The sense of ineffability results simply from the temporary dominance of the brain’s nonlinguistic right hemisphere (in right-handed males) over the left when the two hemispheres are not operating properly in tandem: the right hemisphere is still cognitive and processing information, but it cannot put that information into words. Thus, at best, what is experienced is our own consciousness. But consciousness is only the product of the brain, and hence a mystical experience is not an experience of a transcendent reality. The “pure consciousness” event is not even an insight into the nature of consciousness, since the brain is malfunctioning during this experience. The experience may well have a powerful positive or negative impact on experiencers, even transforming their personalities, but this is no reason to believe that a transcendent reality rather than purely natural ones is involved. Mystical selflessness could end a sense of self-centeredness and self-importance and thus lead to a sense of a selfless connection to the rest of the universe, but there is no need to invoke any transcendent reality to explain this. Mundane brain activity explains it all.
Other natural explanations are also popular.17 For example, certain meditative techniques may consistently produce the experience of an intense internal light, but naturalists argue that the experience is simply a self-induced physiological change that experiencers misinterpret as involving a transcendent reality. So too, the effects of meditative techniques on the body do not depend on the beliefs of the meditator—the repeated recitation of any phrase can produce the same effect regardless of the content (Jesus prayer, Hindu mantra, Sufi prayer, or gibberish), and so the content can be ignored. Any sense of presence is simply anthropomorphized into a separate divine figure. Or if some “God gene” is found for having religious experiences of self-transcendence, then naturalists conclude that it has evolved in us only to enhance the genetic advantage of its practitioners. Thus, mystical experiences can even be seen as a positive force in our lives but treated as totally natural phenomena—ultimately, their only purpose, as with all sociocultural phenomena, is what they do for our survival. The mental processes of mystical experience are predispositions programmed into the neural apparatus of our brain by thousands of generations of genetic evolution. No transcendent realities are in any way involved, only nature working itself out. Thus, mysticism as a product of an encounter with transcendent realities is explained away, even though it may well be valuable as a sociocultural phenomenon for its effect on the genetic level.
One way or another, naturalists explain away all mystical phenomenology, and thus mystical experiences present no reason to accept any transcendent reality or a consciousness apart from the physical base that produces it. Nor is there any reason here to deny the existence of time or of a real and distinct self: the experiencer is simply unaware of them during the experience. Mystical experiences may reveal an innate human mental capacity and may be the same across cultures and eras, but this is only because our brains are basically all the same, at least with regard to these experiences. And the fact that these experiences are open to such diverse doctrinal interpretations by mystics themselves in different traditions from around the world only shows that no alleged transcendent reality is involved that could shape the content of the experiences or constrain beliefs—mystics simply are unaware that they are making up the cognitive claims out of a mixture of cultural beliefs and unusual but purely natural brain events. That is, not only will the biological bases permitting mystical experiences to occur be identified, thereby explaining how introvertive mystical experiences can occur in the human body, but the experiences themselves will be explained away. Any supernatural explanations are rendered groundless, and thus any claim to mystical knowledge should be rejected.
The scientific explanation of seeing a tree does not undercut the possible validity of the experience as evidence that the tree exists, but naturalists distinguish this from natural explanations of mystical experiences.18 In the case of sense-experience, there is no alternative explanation to a sense-object existing externally to our mind as part of the causal chain leading to the perception (short of endorsing idealism or solipsism), while in the case of mystical experiences a successful natural explanation provides an alternative to a transcendent realism, and a transcendent reality would thus not be necessary for these experiences to occur. Being able to produce mystical experiences from purely natural events also makes the occurrence of such experiences more predictable, further solidifying the claim that the experiences are nothing but natural events. The naturalists’ position also avoids one difficult problem: how could “subjective” meditation or mystical experience cause changes in the “objective” physical brain? Drugs and electrical stimulation are physical, and thus these are in the same ontic category as the brain. Naturalists in fact argue that a transcendent reality is not a possible cause at all: the experiences’ complete explanation in terms of a set of necessary and sufficient natural causes means that there is no place for a transcendent cause to act, and so it renders any causal role for a transcendent reality impossible even if a transcendent reality exists.
Different types of mystical experiences may require different explanations (i.e., different sets of biological or sociocultural mechanisms), but to naturalists only natural phenomena will be involved, and the job of scientists is to identify the set of natural processes at work in each type of experience. If successful, scientists will be able to duplicate the phenomenology of experiences of God without God or another transcendent reality. And if the experiences can be completely explained in terms of natural causes and conditions, then there are no experiential grounds to believe that mystics have experiences of any transcendent realities. In sum, if scientists can replicate something by natural means that is presented as being caused by God, why would we think that mystical experiences have a divine origin? Rather, such experiences would be only a purely natural event.
In sum, naturalists, as their name indicates, deny that a transcendent reality is among the causal roots of any introvertive mystical experience. But naturalists need not doubt the sincerity of the experiencers or deny that people in fact have such purported experiences—they must simply argue that experiencers are honestly mistaken about the real causes. Just as seeing a rope as a snake is a genuine experience and can produce a real emotional kick that in turn produces real physiological effects even though there is no snake, so too mystics have genuine experiences even though only natural phenomena are involved. The mistake that advocates of a transcendent realism make, however, can be explained, and thereby the alleged insight can be explained away: the only realities involved in these experiences are the experiencer and elements of the natural world.
So too, naturalists may even consider meditation to be valuable, but only for its purported psychological or physiological benefits, not for alleged insights. In fact, it is possible to give a positive naturalist interpretation of both extrovertive and the depth-mystical experience—i.e., accepting that such experiences give an insight either into the nature of our mind (perhaps revealing our purely natural consciousness free of all intentional content) or into the beingness of the natural world. That is, under this interpretation, mystical experiences cannot be explained away any more than any other cognitive experience. In fact, much of mysticism can be reconciled with naturalism and even with a reductive materialism. (See Angel 2002; also see Wildman 2011 for a “religious naturalist” reading of mystical claims that makes them into only symbolic statements about the world.) Leonard Angel argues that the phenomenology of “universal self consciousness mysticism” (i.e., the depth-mystical experiences) can be explained even assuming that the only causal factors involved are physical (2004: 20–26). Angel argues that strong evidence supports the principle of the physical completeness for all human psychological functioning. (But whether this principle is based only on experiences such as sense-perception where possible nonnatural causes are not an issue is still a question.) However, while this approach treats a mystical experience as a positive occurrence rather than a brain malfunction and can also preserve much of mystical ways of life, it still rejects the transcendent elements of classical mystical metaphysics, thereby negating introvertive mystics’ cognitive claims.
Thus, naturalists are not forced into affirming either that mystical experiences are cognitive or that they must be the product of a mental disorder. There is a third option: mystical experiences are unusual but perfectly ordinary products of the brain that mystics typically misinterpret. Thus, naturalists think they can account for mystical experiences within their psychology better than do those who see a cognitive value in such experiences. For naturalists, other experiences and nonexperiential factors prevail over mystical ones on the cognitive issue. Thus, even if naturalists themselves had mystical experiences, they would understandably dismiss them as mere hallucinations, no matter how vivid, powerful, or “real” the experiences felt afterward. Or the experience may cause them to rethink their position but not change their minds, as A. J. Ayer’s near-death experience toward the end of his life did not cause him to change his belief in the lack of a life after death (or his hope that there is none), but it did weaken his “inflexible attitude” toward that belief a little (1990). His experience contained two beings and a bright but painful red light that he took at the time as governing the universe (with space seeming to be disjointed and the laws of nature to be not functioning properly), but his later assessment was that this was all epiphenomena of a dying brain. The psychologist Susan Blackmore had an extrovertive mystical experience and practices mindfulness meditation, but after studying the issues she also concluded that they have no ontic value or lasting therapeutic effects (see Hogan 2003: 106–18).
Thus, in constructing their metaphysics naturalists are weighing all experiences, including mystical ones—they simply reach a different conclusion about which experiences are cognitive than do advocates of a transcendent realism. Reaching different conclusions than mystics do does not make them any more dogmatic than those mystics who dismiss everyday perceptions as not reflecting reality in the most fundamental sense: everyone—including mystics themselves—must weigh all types of experiences in constructing any metaphysics.
Naturalists, in sum, deny the possibility of mystical experiences being a potential source of knowledge of any transcendent reality. If naturalists are correct, then even if transcendent realities exist, introvertive mystical experiences are still nothing but natural events. Even if mysticism contributes to mental well-being, that is no reason to believe that transcendent realities are involved. That is, if mysticism is explained exclusively in natural terms, e.g., as enhancing social solidarity or compensating for the lack of social power, the alleged cognitive value of these experiences that are used as epistemic grounds for mystical ways of life is undercut. Indeed, it becomes difficult in such circumstances to treat any commitment to a way of life based on mystical experiences as even minimally rational. But before adopting this conclusion, certain problems with the naturalists’ reductions should be addressed.
One such problem is often overlooked: there is no one generic or abstract “natural explanation,” but numerous competing candidates. One cannot dismiss the issue of which one is correct with a wave of the hand, exclaiming “Well, one must be right!” without revealing the metaphysical nature of one’s commitment to naturalism. Instead, one must determine if any of the various physiological, psychological, social, and philosophical explanations is plausible at this time.19
It is easy to see why social theorists may be inclined to discount mysticism. From a psychological point of view, certainly anyone who would want to overcome a sense of self could only be classified as “pathological.” So too, major differences in values might put mystics out of step with a society at large. Crises or imbalances may have impelled mystics to choose their path. But psychosocial causes and functions are in themselves irrelevant to the possibility of genuine mystical experiences and the possible truth or falsity of mystical claims. The same arguments could be applied to science. For example, the scientific interest in the repeatable and the predicable may reveal a neurotic fear of the unique, the unknown, the erratic, and the unexpected, as Abraham Maslow argued (1966: 20–32). Few would consider this sufficient grounds to dismiss all of science. Or consider Sir Isaac Newton: he was not a paradigm of psychological health—he was vain, ambitious, humorless, and extremely competitive—but some of these very traits may have been instrumental in him becoming arguably the greatest scientist of all time. Equating “true” with “arising from psychosocial healthy conditions” would be unwarranted for scientific or mystical claims. So too, finding the evolutionary or genetic basis enabling human beings to conduct science (see Shepard 1997) is not grounds to reject science.
Social theories exhibit another problem: broadness and looseness. There is never anything comparable to the tight predictions in natural science—theorists can correlate social groups with the inclination to have mystical experiences, but they cannot predict exactly what percentage of a given group or which specific individuals will have such experiences. Theorists may note that religious experiences come disproportionately to members of certain social groups—e.g., older, college-educated, wealthier, black, Protestant males in America (Greeley 1975), or perhaps from socially oppressed and disenfranchised groups (Lewis 1989), or introvertive mystical experiences may be more frequent among females (Hood 1997), with extrovertive experiences of feeling at one with the universe more common among men and atheists (Kokoszka 1999/2000). But the theories’ predictive element is always a matter of very broad percentages—the theories can always handle any specific experiences occurring inside or outside the groups with the highest occurrences.
Such theories do qualify as explanations since they help our understanding even if there are no exact predictions. But the sociocultural theories will at best only explain why certain persons are prone to having them, not explain why or how mystical experiences appear. This may explain all that sociocultural naturalists want to know, but this has no bearing on whether mystical experiences may really involve transcendent realities. Nor do the social origins of religious beliefs and practices in general explain why we have a physiology with a capacity for mystical experiences to occur in the first place. Nor do evolutionary theories of religion. So too, whether religious beliefs have a positive or negative value for a group’s survival or for an individual’s well-being does not bear on the question of whether a transcendent reality exists or not: as long as the mystics simply believe that they have experienced transcendent realities, the consequences would be the same whether such realities exist or not.20 Merely noting factors in our psychological or social makeup that may be responsible for why certain people or members of certain groups are more likely to have mystical experiences does not impress many people as the final explanation of the experiences. Nor does it affect the question of their possible cognitivity any more than the fact that some social groups may be more likely to produce scientists or that people with certain psychological dispositions are more likely to become scientists undercuts the validity of science.
In addition, as noted in chapter 2, culture may explain why Christian visions are of Mary and not Krishna, but it does not explain why there is some “sense of presence” to experience in the visions in the first place (Bowker 1973: 42–43). Thus, culture does not explain all of the experience, including what may be its most significant part. If so, the cognitive content of religious experiences is not reduced to the cultural framework, and new knowledge is possible. Conceptualizations from our everyday life will always be needed for our mind to feel it has comprehended what has happened in a mystical experience, and to achieve this the religious may use their social or parent-child relationships or some other sociocultural phenomenon as models for transcendent realities. Thus, the religious symbols and theories that experiencers construct may well reflect the culture in which they were raised. These conceptualizations thus will always have some psychological or social basis, and there is no reason social scientists will not be able to identify and explain them. This, however, does not mean that that is all there is to mystical experiences. Even if the models are an active component of the experience itself, as constructivists claim, this cannot rule out a transcendent reality as an additional cause. Similarly, mystics may agree that many of our traditional conceptions of a transcendent reality are merely projections of our egos or social groups, but they would deny that such projections alter the transcendent reality experienced in mystical experiences.
Thus, social scientists may be studying only how sociocultural factors shape a mystical experience and the disposition of some people to have these experiences, not everything about the experiences themselves. Sociocultural reductionists believe that their explanations render transcendent explanations redundant and thus dismissible as superfluous. Sociocultural explanations can be deemed sufficient for explaining mysticism only if we have already accepted that mystical doctrines are false. But these natural explanations may at most explain only the “form” that mystical experiences take or who is likely to have one, but not the “content.” We must still ask whether a mystical experience involves a transcendent reality or not.21
Even in neuroscience today, with our present state of knowledge of the brain, there is an absence of any complete, detailed explanation of the occurrence of mystical experiences. In fact, scientists have not established exact correlations of brain states with everyday states such as emotions.
Talk of a genetic basis to mystical experiences—a “God gene”—as an explanation may also be risky. Apparently even simple human traits involve hundreds of different genes (Beauregard & O’Leary 2007: 47–55). Perhaps there is no single “God gene complex” either. Or consider V. S. Ramachandran’s identification of epileptic microseizures in the left temporal lobe as the neurological basis of mystical experiences reveals another problem: not everyone who has this type of epileptic seizure has religious experiences (1998: 186)—most in fact only have epileptic seizures. Few even have visions (Kelly & Grosso 1997: 532; Horgan 2003: 99). Any explanation of mystical experiences in terms of epileptic activity in the temporal lobe would have to explain why only a few people have these experiences and so many do not, and why the mystical experiences are positive in tone while the seizure state is not. Seizures may be only another way that the mind becomes open to mystical experiences. Something in an individual’s personality or background may be a factor in whether that person with this type of epilepsy has a religious experience. Moreover, this type of epilepsy involves areas of the brain associated with speech; at most, it is associated with triggering numinous visions and voices, not the silent, inner experiences of mysticism. One clinical study found that while most patients in the study had some subjective experience during their seizures, none of their descriptions met the criteria of a “mystical experience” (Greyson et al. 2014).22 One the other hand, the meditating Buddhist monks and Franciscan nuns studied by Eugene d’Aquili and Andrew Newberg exhibited no signs of this or any other pathology, and one cannot simply assume that they must have had this type of epilepsy because that is what causes these experiences without arguing in a very tight circle. The same issue applies to all identifications of the brain mechanisms of mystical experiences: scientists must actually study a large number of experiencers of each type of mystical experience before drawing any conclusions and not simply uncritically generalize from only a few examples.
So too, mystical and numinous experiences may not be associated with only one spot in the brain (Beauregard & O’Leary 2007: 255–88). LSD affects virtually all areas of the brain (Goodman 2002), and mystical experiences may do the same. The “corroborative evidence to support a link between the temporal lobe and mystical experience has been rather sparse” and “a much more complex picture of mystical experience involving extensive neocortical involvement” may be needed; neuroimaging studies of people undergoing mystical experiences show “complex patterns of widespread activation in the cortices, midbrain, and brainstem” (Greyson et al. 2014: 11, 12). Thus, mystical experiences may not be associated with one region of the brain or one simple pattern of brain activity. Ramachandran realizes that scientists are still a long way from showing that there is a “God module” in the brain that might be genetically specified—scientists are currently in a “twilight zone” of neurology (1998: 188). Thus, any simple explanations in terms of, for example, temporal lobe activity may not elucidate the neurological base of all types of mystical experiences in both of its classes. Arguably, it should be easier to find biological bases for the depth-mystical experience than for numinous experiences such as revelations, since the latter experiences seem to be more complex events involving sensory-like activity (visions, voices, tactile sensations, or a combination of these), memory, emotions, and motor activity. Depth-mystical experiences seem simpler in this regard, but even they may be complex. The extrovertive state of mindfulness combines mental calming with sense-experience and internal mental operations. Introvertive mystical experiences may also involve different parts of the brain. If so, they too would have no simple neurological explanation of any mystical experience. And considering the different physiological effects that the same type of meditation often produces, the picture may be a good deal more complex than could be handled by any simple explanation.
In sum, there are many different types of extrovertive and introvertive mystical experiences, and there is no reason to believe the physiological base is the same in every case. For example, research shows that EEG indices differ in mindfulness meditation from those in the concentrative meditation connected to the depth-mystical experience. Consistent differences in neurological readings between different types of extrovertive and introvertive mystical experiences strongly suggest a difference in the states of consciousness involved (but this does not prove this, due to the multiple-realization problem and its inverse discussed below).
There also are other problems. First, if electrical stimulation or a drug could produce a given mystical experience 100 percent of the time, naturalists may be confident that there is a natural reduction—no “grace of God” would be needed. But that has not occurred: no triggers approach that figure—only significantly lower percentages are ever attained, and the exact experience apparently depends on the setting and the experiencer’s beliefs. This leaves room for grace or some other explanation of why some participants have these experiences and others in the same setting do not. Thus, this affects the issue of whether natural factors cause mystical experiences and whether the experiences can be explained away or are cognitive.
Second, note again the gap between brain conditions and consciousness. Mystical experiences no doubt share this gap with other conscious phenomena. Again, this means that scientists do not study mystical experiences at all when they study the biological correlates of an experience (see also Jones 1986: 219–22). In addition, apparently different states of the mind can have the same biological bases. Consider Herbert Benson’s finding that there is a great variety of “subjective” (i.e., experiential) responses—including no change of consciousness at all—accompanying the same physiological changes produced by his simple relaxation technique (1975: 115). Different states of mind apparently share the same bases in the brain. According to Stanislav Grof, no subjective phenomena are an invariant product of the chemical action of LSD (Smith 2000: 81). The placebo effect also holds for some psychotropic drugs: once we learn a response, we can be given what we think is the drug (when in fact it is a placebo) and the response will occur; conversely, we can unknowingly ingest the active ingredient and no change in consciousness occurs. In short, the same state of consciousness may occur with different biochemical bases and vice versa. Thus, the “multiple realization” problem from the mind-body field (see Jones 2013: 38–39, 76–78) and its inverse are both possibilities in the case of mystical experiences. This does not rule out finding more exact neurological bases of these experiences in the future, but without a one-to-one explanation, a natural reduction is not possible: all mystical experiences will, of course, be grounded in some bodily state, but simply identifying those states will not explain why the same state can be realized in more than one biological state or vice versa. Thus, the explanation of the experiential level would still be missing, as would an explanation of why reality permits the higher-level events to occur at all.
At this time, that a complete biological explanation of a mystical experience is even possible is a speculative assumption. Each scientist’s proposed explanation of mystical experiences is disputed by a majority of other scientists. Some scientists question the empirical findings of other scientists. (One recurring problem in these studies is to make sure that scientists are actually measuring activity connected to mystical experiences and not merely to any intense experiences producing emotional effects.) Some investigators express skepticism over whether technology is able to produce a genuine mystical experience or activate all the subjective aspects of such experiences. For example, Michael Persinger’s “God helmet” generates a weak magnetic field that triggers a small burst of electrical activity in the temporal lobes; this causes about 40 percent of his subjects to experience a sensed presence of a vague separate spectral entity; this entity is interpreted by the religious (but not by others) as a religious figure (1987). Critics have had difficulty duplicating Persinger’s results and suggest that the “sense of presence” is due only to suggestibility (Granqvist et al. 2005). This might support attribution theory: the neuroscientist Mario Beauregard dismisses such numinous experiences as merely the products of suggestibility and not genuine religious experiences at all (2007: 96–99).23 But apparently no one stimulated by the God helmet has publically reported anything resembling the phenomenology of a mystical experience—bliss, sense of unity, and ineffability (Horgan 2003: 98–99). Edward Kelly and Michael Grosso also question the entire focus on temporal lobe epilepsy, since even “garden-variety levels of euphoria” are rare in such epileptic episodes, not anything truly mystical, and such euphoria lasts only a few seconds out of a total epileptic episode; moreover, the emotions more typically shown are fear, terror, anxiety, apprehension, and anger (1997: 531–34). They also slam the work of Eugene d’Aquili and Andrew Newberg as bad science unpublished in peer-reviewed publications and their “model” as “little more than a neurological fairy tale” (ibid.: 537–38). Richard Sloan also thinks that Newberg and d’Aquili’s studies (1999, 2002) speculate too broadly based on two small SPECT studies with a total of eleven subjects and no control group (2006: 247).24 Indeed, some critics today dismiss the entire enterprise of trying to locate a locus in the brain of any behavior or complex mental event as “the new phrenology.”
Nothing today except a metaphysical commitment to naturalism can rule out the possibility of a transcendent reality as part of the causal chain of introvertive mystical experiences. Of course, someday a complete and detailed explanation in natural terms may be worked out and agreed on by most scientists. But at present, naturalists’ reductions are based on no more than an assumption. They are in the same position as reductive naturalists on the mind: the explanations are complete only in the sense that their metaphysics dictates the possibility of such an explanation. We are left at present with only an “in principle” reductionism, and this is simply a restatement of the reductionists’ metaphysical beliefs.
One other problem is often overlooked: all experiences have biological explanations, and no type of experience can be rejected as a possible vehicle for insights because of that. No one argues that sense-experiences are illusions because they have a neural base. EEG examinations of scientists doing research are irrelevant to the possible veridicality of their observations or the truth or falsity of their theories: the readings would be the same in the case of correct or incorrect observations and for insights or mistakes.25 And the same holds for meditators. As William James said, “Scientific theories are organically conditioned as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see ‘the liver’ determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the Methodist under conviction anxious about his soul” (1958: 29–30). The truth or falsity of a claim is simply independent of such accounts and turns on other considerations.
Finally, another fundamental problem touched on above concerning experiences in general applies here: merely establishing correlations of a mystical experience and neural events does not prove that the neural events cause the experience or vice versa. So too, changes in a state of consciousness may correlate one-to-one with changes in brain states, but this does not mean that the latter cause the former. Correlating does not explain anything—only metaphysics leads naturalists to conclude that biological changes must be the cause of the experience. Based on correlations alone, whether bodily events cause experiences or vice versa and whether experiences are reducible to only bodily events or accompany physiological events remain open issues. In short, reductions cannot proceed by merely establishing correlations.
Consider further the “multiple realization” problem and its inverse. Not everyone who meditates or ingests a drug undergoes a change in consciousness even when they have physiological changes. Meditative practitioners well along the path to enlightenment may have the same physiological reactions as beginners, but they still may have very different subjective experiences. Conversely, it may be that enlightened states produce only very subtle differences or no differences at all in physiological reactions than do unenlightened states in advanced meditators. In sum, meditators, including those within the same religious tradition, may be undergoing different experiences when their physiology registers the same state. Also consider the inverse of the multiple-realization problem: in one study, Buddhist monks and Franciscan nuns exhibit similar changes in the brain, but the Buddhist monks experienced selflessness while the Christian nuns experienced “a tangible sense of the closeness of God and a mingling with Him” (d’Aquili & Newberg 2002: 7). This suggests that the introvertive experiences were different (one an “empty” depth-mystical experience and one a differentiated theistic one), but that they had the same physiological bases and effects—if so, a duplication of these bases would not guarantee duplicating one subjective experience. The opposite of this problem also cannot be ruled out in advance of actual study (if possible): meditators may undergo similar subjective reactions while having different physiological reactions. That different meditative techniques can lead to the same effect should also be noted, e.g., sensory overload and sensory deprivation apparently both lead to hyperactivity in the limbic system.
Thus, scientists may be able to trigger changes in brain states or other physiological changes, but it is not obvious that they can produce a given experience or subjective state.26 So too, meditation may rewire the brain’s neural system (Austin 1998), but mystical experiences may be a different type of event. There is also the related issue of whether all of the experiences induced by drugs or another artificial stimulation are in fact the same as those cultivated by meditation or those occurring spontaneously. (Again, for theological reasons, theists will want to claim that the phenomenal content of true mystical experiences is different.) The artificial production of a mystical experience may duplicate the chemical reactions of a mystical experience but not the “subjective” experience. Drug-induced experiences may also have less of a long-term impact on a person’s physiology than do experiences resulting from cultivation on a path. May at least some of the experiences differ in nature too? It may be that experiences produced by artificial stimulation do not duplicate all the features of spontaneous or meditation-cultivated mystical experiences but only their biological features—i.e., the stimulation may indeed activate the areas of the brain involved in genuine mystical experiences, but there may still be more to the subjective side of these experiences than is enabled by the laboratory procedures. There is also the very real issue of whether a laboratory setting affects the subjective side of the experience since “set and setting” matter. In sum, scientists may in fact not be duplicating the full phenomenology of any mystical experience. Or it may be that some people who have the artificial stimulation administered to them do indeed have genuine mystical experiences and other people do not. That is, perhaps some experiences are triggered that are not similar to genuine mystical experiences but are in fact genuine mystical experiences. However, other types of experiences may also be triggered.
At a minimum, more is involved in a mystical experience than merely brain activity being altered. Drugs may produce some of the necessary conditions for a mystical experience to occur by altering the brain’s chemistry, but they may not provide all of the necessary and sufficient conditions. If that is the case, as the psychologist Ralph Hood notes, it would be naive to claim that mystical experiences are drug-specific effects (2005: 354). That is, drugs would not cause the experiences. Hood concludes that the weight of evidence is that drugs elicit brain states that permit religious awareness but do not necessitate it (1995: 584). At most, ingesting the drugs sets up the conditions enabling or permitting the experience to occur by disrupting the conditions for ordinary experiences, or however the chemicals in the brain do what they do. And once the experience is learned, the drug may no longer be necessary to set the conditions. But the ingestion of a drug cannot guarantee a mystical experience, even if it is administered in a conducive setting to a person actively seeking mystical experiences. Neither drugs nor anything else so far can produce the experience on demand. Thus, a drug or electrical stimulation of part of the brain is not a deterministic trigger of such experiences.
In addition, even if scientists do discover, say, a drug that triggers a depth-mystical experience 100 percent of the time, the basic issue concerning physiological studies still remains: is an introvertive mystical experience a purely natural phenomenon, or have the scientists merely identified the conditions in the brain making a person receptive to the infusion of a transcendent reality? Near-death experiences may set off a mystical experience.27 Even stress, despair, or another severe psychological crisis may be a way of breaking the grip our everyday life has on our mind, thereby setting up the physiological conditions necessary for a mystical experience. Unusual psychological states may be sufficient to set up the base-conditions, but it does not follow that therefore the experiences do not permit veridical mystical insights. Indeed, perhaps chemical imbalances or other abnormal bodily states brought on by drugs, breathing exercises or other meditative techniques, fasting or other ascetic practices, or whatever, are needed to permit mystical states to occur. It is question-begging to assert without further argument that only experiences occurring in the states of consciousness evolved to deal with survival give knowledge of reality. Drugs impair our ordinary cognitive and perceptual apparatus, but does this rule out the possibility that they must do so to open the doors to other types of cognitive consciousness? As William James noted, for all we know, a temperature of 103 or 104 degrees Fahrenheit might be much more favorable for truths to germinate and sprout in than is our ordinary body temperature (1958: 30). Or as C. D. Broad put it, maybe we have to be a little cracked to have peepholes into the super-sensible world. This may be true at least for certain truths.
Moreover, even if it turns out that mystical experiences are associated with parts of the brain that more commonly produce hallucinations, advocates of mysticism can turn this situation around and argue that the hallucinations are the product of the malfunctioning of brain mechanisms that when functioning properly enable veridical mystical experiences to occur, even if the former are more common. For example, some psychologists argue that dissociative states of schizophrenia and some psychoses result from the same implosions of a transcendent reality that occur in mystical experiences, but that the patients are not equipped to handle them, and so the disconnect from a self or mundane reality produces confusion and panic. Mystics, on the other hand, have a belief-framework and the training or psychological preparation needed to handle the disintegration of the mundane worldview and so can later successfully reintegrate into the normal world (Brett 2002: 335–36). However, naturalists may take the connection of mystical states and psychosis and conclude the opposite: a mystical episode is only a perfectly natural, if abnormal, state of mind resulting from a problem with the brain: psychotic breakdowns and mystical states result from the same material processes and cannot be differentiated in content (e.g., the loss of subject/object boundaries). Simply because mystics have the mental training and framework of beliefs to expect and handle the disintegration of the mundane worldview calmly and thus can successfully reintegrate into the normal world does not mean that any insights are involved. Mystics’ conceptual frameworks merely act like circuit breakers that keep the purely natural disruptions under control. Thus, drugs and mystical techniques open the same dangerous waters as in a mental breakdown, but mystical selflessness is a more coherent mental state, and mystics do not conclude that the experiencer alone is God. This would also explain the difference between the mystic’s feeling of calm and bliss versus the psychotic’s feeling of confusion and fear with the same loss of a sense of self, and why the former can think rationally and live productively. However, it should be noted again that these studies involve states of mind with visions and voices, not the mystical states devoid of such content. In addition, the mindful perception of the world can be explained without appealing to psychoses (Deikman 1980; Austin 1998; Hölzel et al. 2011a).28
However, the point of interest here is that once again the scientific findings on the locus or brain activity of any particular mystical experience will not themselves answer the philosophical question of whether the experience is cognitive or not. Perhaps something like the parietal lobe (or whatever the locus of a given mystical experience is) or disrupting the activity in the brain is necessary for a being to have any mystical experience, but this does not mean that therefore the experience is only a product of that lobe or the disrupted mechanisms or that cognitive experiences may not result.
The last point is the most significant problem for scientific reductions and should be elaborated: whether natural and transcendent explanations of mystical experiences are in fact compatible. Naturalists argue that if scientists can identify a set of conditions causing a mystical experience to arise in a significant percentage of participants, then the experience is totally natural and a transcendent reality cannot be a causal factor in the chain of events producing the experience. One response is simply to deny that any complete natural explanation is possible in practice (Alston 1991: 230)—the complexity of any human phenomenon renders it impossible for scientists to be certain that they have identified all the necessary conditions for any experience (Wainwright 1981: 73–76). While this strategy definitely raises a very real problem with these explanations, the approach here will be to assume that some complete and detailed natural explanations for mystical experience will someday occur, even if each type requires a different natural explanation.
The question then is: does a scientific explanation of these states undercut their cognitive claims? Consider mindfulness. Arthur Deikman plausibly explains mindfulness in terms of the “deautomatization” of the habitual mental structures that organize, limit, select, and interpret perceptual stimuli leading to an expanded awareness of new dimensions of the total stimulus array (1980). Thus, deautomatization removes precisely the conceptual elements that constructivists argue are the total cognitive substance of mystical experiences. In the mindfulness mode (unlike in the normal “manipulative” mode), one is more receptive to sensory input and responds more immediately. Deikman uses this mechanism to explain features associated with mystical experiences: the sense of ultimate realness, unity, ineffability, the heightened sensitivity of sense-experience, and so on. All are simply the result of the mind being unconstrained by the usual structuring. If so, the sense of selflessness in the mindful state is no more grounds to reject belief in a self than the fact that mystics are unaware of time in their experiences means that time is not real. Deikman thinks the available scientific evidence tends to support the view that all mystical experiences are only a subjective “internal perception” (ibid.: 259). James Austin offers a similar theory about the circuits of the brain associated with self-awareness and those associated with monitoring the environment being deactivated during meditation (1998), leading to a sense of a selfless connection to the world. But do these theories by themselves rule out the possibility of cognition of the unreality of a self and of our connection to everything else in the universe? Perhaps deautomatization permits an extrovertive insight to occur into the nature of the mind by its decentered perspective (Bishop et al. 2004: 234). Based on the science of the brain alone, can we conclude that mindful awareness cannot be cognitive? Without more evidence, can we definitely rule out that mindfulness mystics are not seeing that there is in fact no real everyday ego?
It is not clear how the science itself could possibly answer such questions: whether the experiences are cognitive or not, the scientific findings would be the same. In the end, mindfulness is a process of inner observation, not “self-knowledge” (Bishop et al. 2004: 235), and any ontic claims are a matter of reflection. Thus, it appears that these questions remain matters of philosophy, not science. The issue then is this: what do any scientific explanations actually accomplish? If we assume that scientists can duplicate every feature of an introvertive mystical experience by natural causes so that a stimulated experience is phenomenologically indistinguishable from “real” mystical experiences, does the naturalists’ conclusion follow? No. Advocates of a transcendent realism can still respond that at best all scientists have done is to locate the neurophysiological bases that, when stimulated, permit a genuine infusion of a transcendent reality. If genuine experiences of a transcendent reality do occur, then obviously some mechanism in us permits them to occur—all that scientists may have done is demonstrated how to stimulate those mechanisms by means other than the involvement of a transcendent reality, thereby permitting a transcendent reality to appear. The science cannot in itself rule out the possibility that other causes—transcendent ones—may also produce the same physiological effects or otherwise invalidate a mystical claim to a genuine insight. Only the metaphysics of naturalists requires that conclusion.
This issue involves two points. First, if, for example, during some mystical experiences our brain produces a certain chemical, scientists may well be able to identify this chemical and to manufacture a drug that will substitute for its natural production in the brain during a mystical experience; this drug can then produce the same neural effects when it is artificially introduced into the brain. But scientists cannot conclude that during mystical experiences occurring outside the lab, a transcendent reality is not involved in the production of the same chemical. For example, in an introvertive theistic experience, God may somehow use the normal neurochemical channels of our brain to produce a mystical experience. The artificially administered drug can then produce the same effects in the brain, thereby permitting the possibility of a genuine mystical experience. If the experience of transcendent realities is veridical, the awareness involves natural processes occurring in our body, and all that scientists will have done is locate the parts of our brain that are involved and identify the chemical conditions necessary for a genuine experience of a transcendent reality to occur. Such findings would mean only that some chemical conditions are necessary to set up a genuine experience of a transcendent reality, not that no insight could be involved.
In short, how do we know that the chemical reaction of the drugs in the brain does not simply reproduce the same chemical reactions that mystics have when they are aware of a transcendent reality? Naturalists cannot conclude from the science alone that science has demonstrated that there are no other ways to activate the same exact conditions. Ingesting the drugs may be a final sufficient cause when all the necessary conditions for the experience are in place, but how could the science itself show that other sufficient causes are not possible? Only if the scientific explanations by themselves could in principle rule out the very possibility of a transcendent reality being a factor in a mystical experience could such explanations definitely be grounds for a naturalists’ reduction of those experiences, and there does not appear to be any way that any scientific explanation could accomplish this. In sum, the science alone cannot, even in principle, refute the mystical claim to cognitivity.
Thus, scientists will at best only reveal some necessary natural conditions and one set of possible causes for the mystical experience to occur. It still is simply the naturalists’ assumption that these conditions are the only possible sufficient causes. All that the scientists have demonstrated at best is something comparable to an electrical stimulation of the arm causing it to jerk: scientists have located the mechanisms at work in the event and have stimulated them; they have not proved that no other cause of the event is possible (the mind moving the arm). Naturalists can push the button stimulating the arm movement all they want, but they cannot eliminate the possibility that there may be other ways nature causes that same movement. In short, scientists can never demonstrate scientifically that they have located the only possible causes. So too with mystical experiences: the naturalists’ metaphysics requires them to conclude that something transcendent cannot be a cause, but nothing in the actual science requires this philosophical judgment.
This leads to the second basic point: stimulating certain parts of the brain may be necessary, but this does not mean that natural events are all that is involved. Perhaps by their actions on the brain the drugs merely set the stage to permit something transcendent to enter the subject’s consciousness. That is, a stimulation prepares the brain, but something more is still needed for a mystical experience to occur. (Also remember that at present mystical experiences do not occur every time an artificial stimulation is applied. This strongly suggests that more than the physical base is involved in these experiences.) Without more argument, naturalists cannot conclude from the fact that some chemicals set up the physiological conditions that the resulting experience must be a purely natural phenomenon and no nonnatural factors are involved. Scientists cannot determine that what they find is all there is to an experience, and so they can never demonstrate that they have eliminated a transcendent reality as a possible element. The event generated by the drug, whether administered artificially or generated by the brain, thus may permit true insights into a transcendent reality, or the experience with or without artificial stimulation may in fact only be the source of a delusion—the biochemical bases alone will not determine this. In short, science can never prove that these experiences are only purely natural phenomena.
Science also cannot determine the cognitive status of mystical experiences even if no nonnatural elements are involved: nature-mystical experiences, mindfulness, and even introvertive mystical experiences may not require the intervention of a transcendent reality into the natural order and yet still be cognitive. Extrovertive mystical experiences involve a new sense of the nature of the phenomenal world. If a transcendent reality grounds the reality of the experiencer, the experience of it is not a matter of any sort of signal or energy being injected from a transcendent realm into the natural realm or any sort of interaction with an outside source, any more than with sense-experience. Instead, experiencers can become aware of the reality already immanent in them through the relevant parts of the brain in another manner. The same would hold for a theistic god that is the sustainer of the natural universe. The depth-mystical experience involves emptying the mind of all differentiated content and letting the transcendent ground implode in it (whether it is the ground of the self or of all phenomenal reality). No contact with a separate reality or action by a transcendent reality is involved—the experience leads simply to realizing what has always been the case. Before, during, and after the mystical experience the experiencer has the same ontic relation to the transcendent reality. Even if the brain is only a natural product that evolved to help in our survival, there still may be a configuration of the brain’s parts that also enables us to become aware of a transcendent reality. Indeed, for all we currently know of the brain there may be a dedicated circuit in the brain—a “God receptor”—that has evolved solely for the purpose of enabling mystical experiences. Either way, both the mystical experiences and subsequent states obviously will be as open in principle to as complete a scientific account as nonmystical experiences and states. And any identification of the bodily correlates that form the base for these experiences will not necessitate the conclusion that no insight into the nature of reality is involved.
In sum, the scientific explanations per se are perfectly compatible with theistic and other mystical explanations. Perhaps all that scientists may be doing is identifying the locus where a transcendent reality becomes involved with the brain and then artificially stimulating the neurological mechanisms permitting a mystical experience on some occasions. Such an identification cannot by itself rule out this possibility. Nor can it rule out the possibility that something transcendent is involved even in artificially stimulated experiences that result in cognitive insights. Thus, even a complete scientific account of any mystical experience will not determine whether mystical experiences might provide insights into the nature of reality. That issue will still have to be decided on philosophical grounds.
The compatibility of scientific explanations and the possibility of mystical insights means that there is no forced either/or choice between accepting mystical experiences as either neurological events or authentic cognitive awareness of reality—the experiences may in fact be both. Naturalists might concede this point and admit that science alone cannot determine the issue of cognitivity. But they would then turn to philosophical grounds to reject any transcendent option, starting with Occam’s razor. That is, they will counter that it is improper to invoke a transcendent reality when an ontologically simpler explanation in terms of natural factors alone does the same job. If scientists can duplicate all the phenomenological aspects of a mystical experience by drugs or other natural means, why should we think that a transcendent reality is ever involved? The naturalists’ position also brings coherence to our picture of the mind: no special mental function is needed for these experiences—mystical experiences are explainable in terms of the same ordinary mental capacities that explain all our other experiences, even if naturalists may have to argue that the brain is malfunctioning during these experiences. This, they argue, at least puts the burden of proof on advocates of transcendent realism to show that transcendent explanations are needed when plausible natural explanations either already exist or at least the inklings of them are being established and it is only a question of when, not if, a complete natural explanation will be forthcoming. Thus, they argue that even if the scientific accounts do not absolutely rule out a transcendent cause as impossible, such accounts do at least render such a cause more unlikely than natural explanations since ordinary natural factors can accomplish precisely the same thing, and thus there is no reason to invoke a transcendent reality. Natural explanations thus are the best available option.
And naturalism does seem to have the initial advantage on this point. Surely a laboratory duplication of all of a mystical experience through natural means (if in fact this is possible) would at least count prima facie against the idea that some experiences have a nonnatural cause. In addition, the naturalists’ monism is ontologically simpler than ontic dualisms of this world and transcendent realities, and, everything else being equal, we do believe that the universe is more likely set up with a simpler ontology. In naturalism, no new entities or processes are involved. The religious introduce an entirely new order of reality, and with it a new mystery that the religious probably never will be able to solve: how a transcendent reality could act in nature. Naturalists have no corresponding mystery.
But advocates of transcendent realism will counter that we make exceptions to the principle of parsimony when we think we have reasons to believe that it does not apply. Everyone agrees that it is not a violation of Occam’s razor where a more complex phenomenon requires a more complicated explanation—no one in chemistry accepts Thales’s claim “all is water” even though it is simple. Most obviously, we think sense-experience requires reference to sense-objects to be complete, even though solipsism is ontologically much simpler. Transcendent realists argue that a similar exception is needed here: they argue that there are compelling reasons other than these experiences to believe that transcendent realities exist; and if such realities do exist, explanations of the neurological mechanisms of experiencers undergoing mystical experiences do not cover all that is actually involved in the experiences. To naturalists, this is precisely the type of situation where Occam’s razor should apply, but to the religious the naturalists’ account of the universe is not simple but simplistic and should be rejected.
In addition, transcendent realists will argue that at least introvertive mystical experiences are indeed unique mental events, and so these obviously require their own explanation—to treat them as any other experience would be to distort them. Thus, transcendent realists argue, asking for a unique explanation of these experiences is not a strategy designed simply to protect certain religious beliefs but something that reflects what in fact needs explaining. Transcendent realists argue that naturalists consider their own explanations satisfactory only because these explanations account for all of the aspects that naturalists think on metaphysical grounds are actually involved, but all that scientists may be accounting for are the conditions that permit a mystical experience to occur. Naturalists consider the fact that they can predict on physiological or sociocultural grounds when a mystical experience is likely to occur to be very pertinent—it shows that only natural factors are at work—but transcendent realists consider that fact to be irrelevant to the issue since they too can accept such findings. The science would not demonstrate a true trigger that would compel the transcendent to become manifest in the mystic’s mind but would only be identifying the conditions present when a transcendent reality infuses an experiencer. The key to any explanation is that it makes us believe that we understand why what occurred did occur. A transcendent reality is an explanation in that way, even though the fact that a transcendent reality cannot be empirically tested forecloses it as a possible scientific explanatory posit.
Indeed, since naturalists think in terms of scientific explanations only, there will be a permanent dispute between transcendent realists and naturalists here. At a minimum, the principle of parsimony should be taken as favoring naturalism only if we have other grounds to favor naturalism. Standing alone, the principle is merely located at the center of the basic metaphysical dispute. Similarly, other pertinent philosophical arguments will also end up being grounded in matters of a conflict of metaphysics and thus beyond the scope of a scientific resolution.
It follows from the above that the religious can provide an understanding of scientific and sociocultural explanations consistent with a transcendent realism: identifying the bases of mystical experiences does not by itself explain away alleged mystical insights any more than identifying the social bases for the origin of science as a social institution or the physiological bases enabling someone to have the capacity to undertake scientific research explains away scientific insights. Thus, the religious can endorse scientific explanations as providing an understanding of the occurrence of mystical experiences but never as a complete explanation of them. So too, naturalists must accept that scientific analysis is not inherently reductionist: scientists can provide analyses of the makeup and causes of phenomena without making the additional metaphysical claim that only the causes are real or that the phenomena are in any way not real (see Jones 2013: chap. 3).29 Transcendent realists will also have to accept that science per se cannot verify their position either. Naturalists who believe that scientific explanations refute mystical claims will have to defend their position on considerations that are metaphysical in nature. The naturalists’ commitment to sense-experience and science as the only means to knowledge of reality does not get them out of this situation—indeed, this commitment itself will have to be defended on philosophical grounds. The consequence of this is that arguments on the beliefs and alleged insights connected to mystical experiences or their rejection will depend on grounds other than scientific accounts themselves.
It should also be noted that it is not only some naturalists who believe that science alone justified their view. Many contemporary New Age advocates enthusiastically conclude that scientists studying the physiology of meditators have validated age-old mystical claims.30 For example, the general shift of mental functioning in meditation from the left to the right brain hemisphere—a shift from the site of linguistic and analytical activity to that of nonverbal and synthetic activity—has been popular since the 1970s as establishing a physiological basis proving the truth of mystical claims. But the grounds of this claim are as shaky as for the naturalists’. Science does not establish that any insights into the nature of reality accompany the shift: the right hemisphere functioning without contact with the left may in fact be no more than a useless spinning of mental gears incapable of any true insight into the nature of reality; if so, any claim based in such brain activity would then be inherently unreliable. (Also, science does not support this position: meditation may lead to greater activity in the brain’s right hemisphere, but the overall pattern is one of interhemispheric integration and synchronization [Winkelman 1999: 417–18].)
The upshot is that scientific explanations do not bear on the issue of the possible truth of any transcendent explanations of mystical experiences even in principle. Even if neuroscience can be taken as verifying that distinctive mystical experiences occur, it does not either validate or invalidate any mystical knowledge-claims related to selflessness and so forth: merely establishing the nexus in the brain of the event and the circuits involved is irrelevant to the issue of whether the stimulated area of the brain permits a mystical experience of a transcendent reality to occur or whether the experience is no more than an internal function of that mundane brain activity. We are left with a metaphysical question: does our brain naturally cause us to create these experiences (e.g., somehow to aid in our survival or because of the brain is malfunctioning), or did a transcendent reality create our brain to permit genuine experiences of a transcendent reality? To oversimplify: if the brain is not malfunctioning, we may be hard-wired for mystical experiences or for experiences of self-transcendence (Hamer 2005), but did God wire us to experience a transcendent reality, or did evolution wire us just to think so because it somehow aids in our survival?31 So too, mystical experiences may in fact be common, as sociological research suggests, but this does not mean that a transcendent reality is involved. A demonstrated commonality may bear on the question of whether mystical consciousness is a more normal mental state of healthy people than naturalists typically accept, but may not bear on the question of the experiences’ proper explanation: even if mystical experiences are the result of a malfunctioning brain, they still may be quite common. The commonality of mirages does not make them any less delusional. The frequency of such experiences is simply irrelevant to the philosophical question of what scientific explanations accomplish.
Some scientists who study meditators agree that their research cannot answer such questions and thus cannot prove or disprove the existence of a transcendent reality (e.g., Ramachandran & Blakeslee 1998: 185; Newberg, d’Aquili, & Rause 2002: 143, 149–51, 178–79; Beauregard & O’Leary 2007: ix, 38, 276).32 It is not that they consider science incapable of settling the broad philosophical issue of whether a transcendent reality exists. Rather, it is a more specific issue: the neuroscientific study of experiencers cannot settle the question of whether mystical experiences are veridical, let alone determine the validity of any specific mystical interpretation. Scientists studying the same data or colleagues working together may draw diametrically opposed conclusions on the epistemic and metaphysical implications of the data. Such conclusions are simply not part of the science of the mechanisms, nor are they determined by the scientific results. So too, arguing merely that demonstrating that specific brain states are associated with mystical experience at least shows that it is reasonable to believe that mystics are aware of a transcendent power does not help: naturalists could just as easily argue that the demonstration shows that it is reasonable to conclude precisely the opposite—that mystical experiences are nothing but purely natural brain states. Neither side is being more reasonable based on the science alone.
However, even though a scientific identification of the biological bases of mystical experiences does not per se prove that mystical experiences are not genuine, it does render transcendent explanations less probable since an alternative plausible natural explanation is in principle available. Religious explanations are no longer indisputable or the only candidates but now must contend with a real competitor, and so the experiences’ evidentiary force is weakened. Of course, this in itself is not evidence against transcendent explanations of mystical experiences. However, this does neutralize mystical experiences as uncontested evidence of a transcendent realism. Introvertive mystical experiences may be veridical, but if scientists can duplicate all the features of the experiences, perhaps artificial stimulation does not merely permit the infusion of a transcendent reality but only natural conditions are involved. Thus, if mystical experiences can occur whether or not a transcendent reality is present, these experiences lose any epistemic presumption of being evidence of a transcendent reality that they might have enjoyed in the absence of a natural explanation. These experiences may or may not be experiences of a transcendent reality, but we can never be confident one way or the other. In sum, these experiences are not unambiguous evidence for transcendent realities and thus not an objective warrant for believing in them. We are left, not with proof that transcendent explanations are wrong or proof that some naturalist reduction must be right, but in a more uncertain situation. Thus, the damage of a natural explanation is not to the possibility of a genuine mystical experience but to the experience’s philosophical value as evidence in an argument in favor of transcendent realities.
Transcendent realists can reply that merely because mystical experiences are not unambiguous evidence it does not follow that they may not in fact be genuine. And they can point to the problems discussed above concerning natural explanations as an alternative, thus raising the issue of whether today there is in fact an “equally plausible” alternative. At most, natural explanations, if ever demonstrated, mean that mystical experiences cannot be used as decisive in a deductive proof, not that mystical experiences might not be used by the religious as part of an argument about the best explanation of mystical phenomena.
Thus, whether natural explanations do in fact destroy mystical experiences’ evidential value turns on whether at present the naturalists’ option is at least as plausible as the religious ones or perhaps moreso, or vice versa. In short, only if one side can show that the other’s argument are today implausible or at least less plausible than its own will it win. If not, neither has an upper hand in commanding our assent. To assess the overall plausibility of naturalism and any transcendent realism, one must look at all their elements, and that is well beyond the scope of this book. (And whether that is resolvable is itself an open question [see Jones 2009: chaps. 6 and 7].) Here the question must be limited to the plausibility of only one element: their handling of the scientific study of mystical experiences.
So, does one side have better arguments than the other here? The naturalists’ position is far from readily convincing. Even if one ignores the problems with natural explanations raised earlier, one still must concede that such explanations are at present questionable. Naturalists have to assume some natural explanation is possible just to get to the question of whether one of them permits the naturalists’ reduction. With our current state of knowledge, nothing suggests that all mystical experiences are obviously explainable by a few simple natural mechanisms. And whether scientists could ever gather all the detailed neurological and physiological data on the people whose experiences are to be explained to advance with confidence a solid explanation is highly problematic. Transcendent realists thus can argue that at present and for the foreseeable future it is only a matter of metaphysical commitment to naturalism that makes the possibility of any natural explanation seem plausible at all. Naturalists may also have to accept the troubling prospect that no detailed explanations will ever be forthcoming—the current situation may be the best we can expect.
Naturalists can counter that transcendent explanations are examples of metaphysics pure and simple and always will be. For example, even if God uses the normal causal channels of nature to effect theistic mystical experiences, still theists would have to explain how this is possible if any particular theistic explanation is to be plausible. Naturalists will argue that, even though natural explanations are currently incomplete, they at least are better by default than the theists’ broad metaphysical attempts. Certainly, the naturalists’ contention that the depth-mystical experience is nothing but mental gears spinning without any mental content to engage is plausible: the brain evolved to help us survive in the natural world, and if we succeed in removing all sensory and other content from the mind while remaining awake, the brain may well malfunction badly. At best, the state may be simply awareness of consciousness and nothing more. But naturalists contend that any view of consciousness as a searchlight independent of content and independent of matter conflicts with our best knowledge of how the brain works. To them, this is part of a cumulative case to accept that all cognition is exclusively natural. Thus, naturalists may see the experiences as self-induced delusions that seem so powerful to the experiencers that they cannot help but consider them to be insights: if we stare and concentrate hard enough and long enough with nothing but a mental image of a purple gorilla dancing in the corner of the room where there is none, our mind will eventually become stressed out enough that we will no doubt see a purple gorilla dancing in the corner—and, according to naturalists, the same may be happening when mystics meditate for years with some mystical goal in mind.
Advocates of mystical experiences as cognitive believe that mystical experiences “feel so vividly real” and cognitive after mystics return to their baseline state of consciousness—indeed, they feel even more in touch with what is fundamentally real than experiences in ordinary consciousness—that they must be rooted in a direct contact with a reality and thus are not merely the subjective product of our brains (Strassman 2001; Newberg & Lee 2005: 485). They do not have the feel of a dream or hallucination, which is seen to be an illusion after the experiencer returns to a normal state of consciousness; rather, the memory of mystical experiences has at a minimum the same sense of reality as memories of ordinary “real” events (Strassman 2001: 312–13; Newberg, d’Aquil, & Rause 2002: 112). To advocates of mysticism, that scientists can in principle identify the neural correlates no more explains away the insights than a neurological explanation of perception explains away claims based on scientific observations. In fact, neurophysiology arguably helps the mystics’ case by showing that the experiences are grounded in unique configurations of the neural bases of a healthy brain and are not the product of speculation or a faulty brain. Meditative techniques may simply rewire the brain to permit certain insights that are unrelated to the survival functions of the brain to occur more easily.33
This appears to be the end of the argument. For example, if our ordinary consciousness has evolved for our survival, how can a state of consciousness empty of all differentiable content possibly permit a cognitive insight into reality? How can it be anything other than the result of the brain malfunctioning, or at best a spandrel, i.e., a useless evolutionary byproduct of some useful adaptation of the natural brain, that does not produce knowledge? But on the other hand, how could it not be cognitive when we have evolved a capacity for it? Indeed, even if it is a spandrel, this in itself does not mean it cannot be cognitive of fundamental beingness. Ordinary consciousness evolved for our survival and thriving, yet we are able to learn at least something about the scientific workings of nature underlying what we actually experience well enough to make successful predictions even though this is not necessary for our survival. (Depending on its nature, mathematics might also be included as a useful mental product unconnected to our survival.) So too, our capacity to have mystical experiences also arose as we evolved. So how, without the support of a further philosophical argument, can we give ordinary consciousness priority in determining all matters of what is ultimately real? Or consider evolution. An evolutionary explanation for the existence of mystical experiences may be that they lessen a fear that death is the end of our existence, thereby increasing the willingness to sacrifice ourselves for our social group and thus increasing the survivability of the group (Persinger 1985). Even if only a small percentage of a group had mystical experiences, they could add more possible options for action, and this flexibility may enhance survivability (Murphy 2010: 505). Or certain types of meditation may have directly affected the areas of the brain critical to attention and working memory (Rossano 2007), even if they did not necessarily produce mystical experiences. Thus, even if our capacity to have mystical experiences is an adaptive feature, transcendent realists will argue that this is irrelevant to the issue of mystical claims’ truth-value. They will also argue that such explanations do not explain why we have the physiological capacity for mystical experiences to begin with. The same is true for aspects of mystical experiences other than the alleged insights. For example, does the bliss in mystical experiences mean that mystics are connected to a fundamental reality, or are mystics simply “blissed out” when the brain is not functioning properly because of the lack of differentiated content? Any scientific account of the brain events occurring during this sense of bliss will not help resolve this question.
More generally, how science could test the claim of an insight into transcendent realities is not at all clear since transcendent realities cannot be tested scientifically: such realities, if they exist, are not an object in the universe and thus cannot be presented for examination by others or even by oneself subjectively. It is certainly difficult to see how any possible scientific studies of consciousness could establish a metaphysical claim like Advaita’s that consciousness constitutes all of reality and is in fact the only reality. Producing measurable physiological effects in Advaita meditators does not confirm this claim—it is simply irrelevant to it. Nor is it clear how such studies could more generally determine one of the competing interpretations of the cognitive significance of the depth-mystical experience as superior to its alternatives. Establishing that mystical experiences are a distinct set of genuine neurological events does not settle, or even bear on, which understanding of their status is correct. Nor can research on the circuits of the brain that enable mystical experiences to occur tell us anything even in principle about transcendent realities, if that is indeed the cause, no matter how often research on the neural bases of mystical experiences and spirituality is called “neurotheology” or research on the neuropharmacology of psychotropic drugs is called “pharmatheology”—the sciences tell us nothing theological. Andrew Newberg envisions a broader neurotheology that is like a natural theology (2010: 45–46, 221–47), but the important point here is that the neuroscientific study of experiencers itself will not reveal anything theological. Nor is such research “bridging the gap between mysticism and science” or “uniting religion and science”—the two endeavors still involve distinct types of questions (as discussed in chapter 8). Of course, scientists may step out of their role as scientists and, qua philosophers, devise a metaphysics based on Advaita nonduality or some other belief-system. But nothing in the science itself requires any such interpretation: nothing in the science can establish anything about the nature of any possible transcendent reality or otherwise aid religious theorizing. Identifying objective physiological changes is simply not the basis for affirming or denying any transcendent claims.
The issue comes down to whether natural explanations account for all aspects of the experience or merely delineate the underlying physiological, psychological, and social forces also at work in the experiencers, or whether they can identify the sociocultural bases that experiencers employ as conceptualizations to make sense of the experience, and these issues remain unsettled by the natural explanations themselves. It is the philosophical question of substantive reductionism, not a scientific issue.34 In the end, advocates of mysticism will appeal to the principle of credulity discussed in the last chapter until mystical experiences have actually been demonstrated to be the result of the brain malfunctioning or a pathological state. Naturalists will counter that naturalism is the best explanation, given everything we know from science about how the world works. In addition, naturalists see the mystics’ incompatible truth-claims as evidence that mystical experiences do not convey any true knowledge at all: how could mystical experiences be a source of any knowledge if conflicting claims have persisted unresolved for millennia? To naturalists, this indicates that obviously mystical doctrinal claims must come from other sources.
In sum, merely identifying the bases in the body that permit mystical experiences will not determine whether the experiences are insights, and so it does not provide a stronger empirical case for either side of this philosophical dispute.35 Granted, if it turns out that people who have mystical experiences all have brain lesions or otherwise have defective or damaged brains or suffer from other pathologies, then the naturalists’ approach becomes a compelling argument that no mystical insight is involved, even if no one particular natural explanation has yet gained a consensus. It is hard to argue that a physically damaged brain can gain a new insight into reality that a healthy brain misses—that God, as it were, only discloses himself to people with defective brains. Despite William James’s argument concerning fever (1958: 30), it would be hard to imagine a severely damaged brain as a vehicle for insights into a reality. Thus, if a damaged brain produces these experiences, we should conclude that they are in all likelihood delusory. If, however, these experiences are common among people who are free of pathological conditions and have perfectly healthy brains, this argument fails. And there is no evidence that mystical experiences occur only to people with physiological damage. Instead, there is empirical evidence that mystical experiences are widespread among normal persons (Hardy 1983; Hay 1994; Hood 2006).36
Thus, the bottom line is that science cannot answer whether a mystical experience is a purely natural phenomenon. As discussed, merely establishing the nexus in the brain of the event and the neural circuits involved or finding some trigger that causes mystical experiences in a certain percentage of subjects is irrelevant to the issue of whether the stimulated area of the brain permits a mystical experience of a transcendent reality to occur or whether the experience is no more than an internal function of that mundane brain activity. It is not merely a matter of our current incomplete knowledge of the brain: even a complete mapping of the brain’s mechanisms will not enable us to address the philosophical issues. Finding a trigger may make the experience seem natural and ordinary, but it may only be setting up the neural correlates necessary for a genuine mystical experience.
Both a naturalist reduction or a transcendent realism can be equally grounded in the science. A depth-mystical experience may be an event internal to the brain alone or it may involve a natural capacity for an infusion of a transcendent reality. Again, scientists may be merely identifying the conditions that make a person receptive to the experience. Science cannot close the gap between understanding bases of the experiences and the epistemic judgment of their significance. Most scientists and academics reviewing neuroscientific studies of religious experiencers dismiss visions, arguing that they have been successfully reduced as either subjective delusions or mere interpretations of ordinary experiences. At most, there is a sense of presence (which naturalists may dismiss as based on some purely natural reaction that has evolved in us) that is structured by experiencers according to their beliefs. However, many scientists and others remain open on the issue of mystical insight. And it is not surprising, given what we now about brain chemistry, that after thirty-five years of interest in psychotropic drugs, Huston Smith was no closer to answering the central problem of whether psychotropic visions can be validated as true (2000: 127).
One may choose one option concerning what natural explanations can accomplish based on one’s prior commitment to a naturalist or religious metaphysics. Or one may try to remain open on the matter by being agnostic. The extent to which the commitment to a metaphysics determines what is accepted as true or reasonable or even possible will not be entered into here. The point for the issue at hand is simply that our choice regarding what natural explanations can, at least in principle, actually accomplish will turn on prior metaphysical commitments—the natural explanations themselves will not contribute to this choice. In short, being religious or antireligious is logically prior to one’s decision on the import of natural explanations concerning whether mystical experiences are an insight into reality.
Ultimately, one’s decision on such metaphysical matters may in turn depend on one’s intuitions of what in the final analysis is in fact real. But in any case, the conclusion for the issue at hand is this: the situation here is a case of conflicting metaphysical interpretations of the significance of empirical data. The scientific and sociocultural explanations themselves will not determine our choice regarding what they accomplish. Obviously something is going on in the brain during these experiences, but simply showing the neural grounding of these experiences cannot answer the question of whether they have some cognitive content. Science may show that mystical experiences are in fact genuine in the sense of involving genuine and unique neurological events that are distinct from other type of events, but scientific findings per se cannot resolve the metaphysical conflict unless there is a finding of pervasive pathology in mystics. Thus, accounts of the brain wiring and events or any physiological findings, no matter how complete, will remain neutral on the matter of the cognitive value of mystical experiences. We will have to determine the epistemic value of these experiences on other grounds.