GETTING A HANDLE ON THE BIG QUESTIONS
In reviewing the material we’ve covered so far, we’ve seen that neurotheology can engage many aspects of religion and spirituality. The brain areas associated with experience, cognition, and emotions are all brought to bear on the human ability to hold religious and spiritual beliefs, perform rituals and practices, and have religious and spiritual experiences. But throughout all of this, there is a lingering idea of how the field of neurotheology might contribute to our epistemological understanding of reality. We considered how we seem to be forever trapped inside our brain so that it is almost impossible to make any definite epistemological claims about the world. The fundamental question is, how do we know what is really real? The answer to this question takes a strange, yet important, turn in the context of neurotheology.
If you recall, the premise of the fields of both cognitive neuroscience and neurotheology is that everything is interpreted and manipulated in some way by the brain. Even though we are trapped within the brain, we do our best to make inferences about the world. We must decide which pieces of information are accurate and thus represent something that exists externally versus information that is inaccurate and does not represent something that exists externally. On a mundane level, if we have a problem at work, we must determine whether it is an actual problem and, if so, which elements are most relevant, and then devise a plan to resolve it. When it comes to philosophical or theological questions, we must determine which concepts reflect the true reality, which questions or issues need to be addressed, and how we might best resolve them. We also have to consider how reality is constructed and how purportedly physical and nonphysical aspects interact. Physical aspects of reality pertain to the natural sciences of physics, chemistry, and biology. Nonphysical aspects include human feelings or consciousness and possibly supernatural entities such as spirits or God.
While the brain areas involved in making these determinations have not been fully identified, we might suggest that several areas of the brain, such as the thalamus, limbic system, and memory areas, are involved. But how do we even begin to think about whether something is real or not? And can we ever get outside of our brain to know if we are right?
In trying to determine what is real, we usually rely on several basic qualities of things. For example, a table feels real since we can touch it, we can smell it, and if we leave the room, we expect it will still be there when we get back (unless someone has moved it). These qualities, sometimes, referred to as qualia, of objects help us determine what is real.1 But why do any of these qualia seem real to our brain?
From a neurotheological perspective, there may be no solution to the problem of realness other than how real something, anything, feels to us.2 The sense of touch or smell, the sense of persistence through time, all of these qualities and many others eventually determine how real something feels to us. If you feel that the touch of a table is real, then that contributes to your sense that the table is real. If you put your hand out toward the table and it goes right through it, you will likely question its realness.
From a biological perspective, the psychiatrist and neuroscientist Shitij Kapur has suggested that dopamine helps us determine which things are important, converting various sensory information from the environment into things we should either avoid or engage.3 This is a fundamentally important process the brain uses to help us determine how we should approach reality. Kapur also suggests that when this system goes awry, a person can develop psychosis or hallucinations. But even this biological theory does not help us understand the subjective experience of reality and how we know that what our brain tells us is real actually is.
Even the existence of God is processed by the brain, perhaps based on our dopamine levels, so that some people feel God is undeniably real, whereas others find God to be undeniably unreal. Those who believe in God feel that God is always there and exists like anything else in the universe. They feel God’s presence like they would feel another person’s presence. Research studies have shown, for example, that people who pray to God in a conversational way have brain activity that is essentially the same as when they are talking to another person.4 And remember the study by Sam Harris that found similar brain function among people contemplating religious ideas versus everyday facts.
It seems that no matter how we slice up the qualia of anything, whether something is physically real or not is ultimately determined by how real it feels to us. However, it is absolutely essential to clarify that our feeling of something’s realness has no true bearing on whether it is actually, objectively real—unless, of course, we can find some outlandish way to truly get outside of our brain.
This is why mystical experiences are crucial for both neurotheology and our understanding of the true nature of the universe. As we will see, mystical experiences apparently feel the most real of any experiences that humans have. And they also occasionally have another unique element—mystical experiences sometimes make a person feel as if he or she has gone beyond his or her own brain—something we have previously defined as impossible, at least from a cognitive neuroscience perspective. So let’s use neurotheology to explore mystical experiences in more detail to see how far they might take us.
WHAT ARE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES?
While establishing a clear hierarchy of religious and spiritual experiences is difficult, those experiences described as mystical seem to reside at the extreme end of the spectrum. Mystical experiences appear to represent the most intense form of religious and spiritual experiences, both in terms of the inherent elements of the experience itself and the transformational aspects of the experience. Determining the subjective nature of mystical experiences is the first step in understanding them and assessing whether they might help us with the larger epistemological questions.
In evaluating some of the most common elements of mystical experiences, we can use neurotheology to construct a neurophysiological model of such experiences. To that end, we can begin with several historical analyses of the mystical experience.
In his classic The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James described a mystical experience as having the following characteristics5:
Ineffability or indescribability
A noetic quality in that the state carries a sense of higher knowledge
Transiency, as these states are not sustained for a long period of time
Passivity in which the person feels “as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power”
The noted scholar of mysticism Evelyn Underhill defined mystical experiences as follows:6
Mystical experiences are “active and practical, not passive and theoretical. Furthermore, mystical experiences are an organic life process, a something the whole self does.”
The aims of the mystical experience are transcendental and spiritual as compared to other experiences of the material universe.
The object or being experienced is not “merely the Reality of all that is, but also a living and personal Object of Love, never an object of exploration.”
The experience is representative of a “living union” with this Oneness, which is an enhanced form of life.
The historian of Buddhism Robert Gimello has also defined the mystical experience:
A mystical experience is a state of mind, achieved commonly through some sort of self-cultivation, of which the following are usually or often the salient, but not necessarily the only, features:
• A feeling of oneness or unity, variously defined.
• A strong confidence in the “reality” or “objectivity” of the experience, i.e., a conviction that it is somehow revelatory of “the truth.”
• A sense of the final inapplicability to the experience of conventional language, i.e., a sense that the experience is ineffable.
• A cessation of normal intellectual operations (e.g., deduction, discrimination, ratiocination, speculation, etc.) or the substitution for them of some “higher” or qualitatively different mode of intellect (e.g., intuition).
• A sense of the coincidence of opposites, of various kinds (paradoxically).
• An extraordinarily strong affective tone, again of various kinds (e.g., sublime joy, utter serenity, great fear, incomparable pleasure, etc.—often an unusual combination of such as these).7
In “Language and Mystical Awareness,” the religion scholar Frederick Streng noted, “the term mysticism has been used to refer to a variety of phenomena including occult experience, trance, a vague sense of unaccountable uneasiness, sudden extraordinary visions and words of divine beings, or aesthetic sensitivity.”8
The secular religious studies scholar Ninian Smart tried to differentiate mystical experiences that arose in traditions such as Buddhism or Hinduism, which are associated with internal experiences of universal consciousness, from mystical experiences in monotheistic traditions, which are associated with the experience of a divine other. This other is usually ascribed to God or some supernatural being. Smart defined experiences of a divine other as “numinous” in contrast to experiences of a universal awareness or consciousness, which he referred to as mystical.
The philosophy scholar W. B. Stace delineated the characteristics of mystical experiences as either extrovertive or introvertive.9 Stace defined extrovertive mystical experiences as consisting of the following feelings:
1. The Unifying Vision—all things are one
2. The more concrete apprehension of the One as an inner subjectivity, or life, in all things
3. Objectivity or reality
4. Blessedness or peace
5. The holy, sacred, or divine
6. Paradoxicality
7. Alleged by mystics to be ineffable
Introvertive mystical experiences were considered to consist of feelings of the following:
1. The Unitary Consciousness; the One, the Void; pure consciousness
2. Nonspatial, nontemporal
3. Objectivity or reality
4. Blessedness or peace
5. The holy, sacred, or divine
6. Paradoxicality
7. Alleged by mystics to be ineffable
Stace argued that characteristics 3 through 7 are identical in the two lists since these are universal characteristics; they exist regardless of culture or tradition. However, it is in characteristics 1 and 2 that the distinction in his typology is made between extrovertive and introvertive mystical experiences. One can easily see a similarity between Stace’s extrovertive and introvertive mystical experiences and Smart’s numinous and mystical experiences.
In a critique of both Smart’s and Stace’s typologies, the philosophy scholar Steven Katz maintains that mystical experiences can have unique elements depending on the culture in which they occur and how an individual describes them using available language.10 In fact, it may be that the experience is affected by the cultural starting point. At this time, there has not been enough research to clearly delineate the different characteristics of mystical experiences as they relate to various types of individuals and cultural or spiritual backgrounds.
A NEUROTHEOLOGICAL APPROACH TO MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES
These more classic definitions of mystical experiences and their elements were based primarily on historical descriptions of such experiences. However, a more recent reworking of our understanding of these experiences may help to better link them to brain processes.
In my own study of various religious and spiritual practices, I realized how critical it would be to have better information about the phenomenological characteristics of these experiences to ascertain whether there were similarities and differences across individuals and across traditions. More importantly, I felt that we needed data not just from the mystics of history but from ordinary people as well. This was the impetus for the online survey I have previously described in which people provided information about themselves and about their most intense spiritual experiences. We also asked people about the circumstances surrounding their experiences. We felt there could be very important information regarding the moment of, and events leading up to, their spiritual experiences. A mystical experience associated with a near-death state might be vastly different from one associated with meditation. Further, since any medical or psychological issue can contribute to changes in the brain’s physiology, I felt that as thorough an understanding as possible was warranted for each of these individuals.
The centerpiece of the online survey was the narrative space we provided for people to describe their experiences in detail. My colleagues and I debated for some time about the best way to even ask the question because we wanted it to be open-ended enough that people would feel free to write whatever was most relevant to them, but not so broad that we would end up receiving information that was not useful. We settled on the following: “Please describe in as much detail as possible your most intense spiritual experience.”
The inherent uncertainty of whether all experiences described by the survey participants represented true mystical experiences or some other type of spiritual experience should be noted. A fascinating question in this regard is whether there is a “quantum leap” that occurs between one type of spiritual experience and another. Certainly a spiritual experience a person has while participating in a standard church service is markedly distinct from a mystical experience. However, some intense spiritual experiences may have a great deal of overlap with experiences typically regarded as mystical. On one hand, based in part on phenomenological assessments as well as an understanding of the underlying biology, we would expect a continuum of experiences. We would expect spiritual experiences to become more and more intense as specific brain activity patterns are altered throughout the process.
The notion of a continuum is based in part on previous work with my colleague Eugene d’Aquili. We had proposed a “unitary continuum” in which people experience a progressive sense of connectedness or oneness with the world. One can see how this continuum arises in a variety of common experiences. In our everyday life, we tend to experience the world in a separated fashion. We recognize ourselves and how our self is distinct from other people and other objects in the world. We may feel a sense of connection with a good friend with whom we feel a strong degree of interpersonal resonance. Another nodal point along the way may be a feeling of romantic love we have toward a spouse or partner, resulting in a deep sense of connection. The next nodal point might be a feeling of connectedness with all people within a spiritual community, especially within the context of rituals. As we proceed along the unitary continuum, we may feel a strong sense of connection with God, and ultimately we may no longer be able to use the word connection because we feel there is nothing to be connected to. Everything becomes a singular oneness. This absolute unitary state is the most profound sense of unity along the continuum. It is also the state described by scholars of mystical experiences. In the state of absolute unity, there is no individual organism, object, or any distinctiveness to anything in the universe. The question remains whether there is an identifiable leap between these different states, both subjectively and physiologically, or whether they lie along a continuum. This was a question we hoped would be answerable to some extent through our online survey.
In trying to evaluate the broad array of experiences our respondents described, we realized that people likely focused on the features that were relevant to them and may have omitted other characteristics that, while relevant, may not have been the most prominent for them. For example, if a woman felt an incredible sense of love during a mystical experience, she might focus on that feeling of love. She might describe how loved she felt, the source of the love, and how the love made her feel throughout her entire body. She might exclude from her description the experience of a sense of unity with God because even though she felt it, that was not the most prominent aspect of the experience for her. We experience a similar phenomenon in the medical field all the time. When asking a patient how he or she is feeling, the usual initial response is “Pretty good.” Only after we start asking specific questions about their symptoms or condition do we out how the person is truly feeling. So we wanted to combine a general question about the spiritual experience with specific questions about the characteristics of the experience. Such questions included the following:
When you had the experience, how did it compare to your usual sense of reality?
What emotional feelings did you have during the experience?
What visions or sounds did you experience before, during, or after this experience?
What, if any, unusual abilities did you have during or after this experience?
Using an approach called content analysis, which explores how often different words are used and how these words are connected to each other, we could explore in far more detail the nature and various elements of these experiences. And I was always hoping that we might ultimately correlate the subjective elements with specific brain processes as part of our neurotheological approach. From a neurotheological perspective, another problematic issue is that observing neurophysiological changes during mystical experiences is very difficult. Mystical experiences are unpredictable. Further, these experiences are so powerful and intense that it is difficult to interrupt them in order to study them. One cannot tap someone on the shoulder to determine whether or not they’ve hit Nirvana, but rather must wait until after the experience is over to find out how the individual experienced it. This “after-the-fact” requirement for determining whether a mystical experience has in fact occurred makes any neurotheological study more difficult. So at the moment, we have only the retrospective accounts provided by our survey respondents to use as data to try to relate aspects of spiritual experiences to specific brain processes.
In the end, we were able to categorize the elements of these experiences into five core components11:
1. A sense of intensity
2. A sense of clarity
3. A sense of unity
4. A sense of surrender
5. A transformational effect
Overall, these five core elements generally align with many descriptions of mystical experiences provided by scholars of mysticism. An advantage of these core elements is that there is a deeper empirical basis to support them. However, it is always important for evolving theories to incorporate previous work. In addition to advancing these earlier characterizations of mystical experiences, another advantage of considering the current core elements is that they are easier to tie into neurophysiological processes. From a neurotheological perspective, this is important because it will allow us to tie all the different types of religious and spiritual experiences into an overarching framework. That we can help determine the core elements of the most intense spiritual experience, the mystical or enlightenment experience, is another testament to the possibilities of neurotheology as a unique and valuable field of study.
Let’s now consider the core elements in detail, starting with a sense of intensity. Descriptions of mystical experiences, both historical as well as from our survey, almost always describe something so intense that it defies description. For the individual, the experience is the most powerful, most beautiful, most emotional experience ever imagined. A forty-six-year-old man from our survey provided the following description:
I, as an un-namable but individual being, was travelling down an infinite rollercoaster like waves of pure white ecstatic light. The ecstasy was overwhelming and rose and fell in intensity with the waves of light. The light path seemed infinitely long in both directions. The sense of the being and the light was INFINITELY MORE REAL than anything I had ever experienced.
You can see in the description the use of words such as pure, ecstatic, and overwhelming used to describe the incredible intensity of the experience. Whether a person experiences love, God, or infinite consciousness, the experience is always so intense that its description seems to be beyond the capability of words. The intensity of the experience is part of what defines it as a profoundly important experience. From a brain perspective, intense experiences are frequently associated with changes of activity in the limbic system. As we have discussed, the amygdala is the part of the brain that becomes active when something of motivational importance occurs, and brain scan studies have shown the amygdala is involved with the intensity of various experiences.12 Thus, the connection between amygdala activity and the intensity of a mystical experience is likely a fundamental part of this neurotheological link.
One other corollary is the intensity of the realness of the experience, as highlighted in the quote from the survey respondent. The capital letters used for “INFINITELY MORE REAL” were used to help emphasize the intensity of the experience. Virtually everyone who has had such an experience describes it as being as real, if not more real, than everyday experiences. What does it mean to be “more real”? A common example is waking up from a dream. No matter how real the dream feels, when we wake up, we immediately relegate the dream to an inferior state of realness. Our awake state is more real than the dream state. But for the person who has a mystical experience, it is like waking up again. The difference is that our usual, everyday reality is now relegated as inferior (i.e., everyday reality is considered to be as unreal as a dream-like state), and the mystical state represents the true reality.
The notion of realness is not well understood from the perspective of the human brain. Very few data have been obtained to help identify areas of the brain involved in our ability to assess how real something feels. One possibility is that it is an integrated process that centrally involves the thalamus. Remember that the thalamus is a key relay station in the brain that takes information from the sensory organs and integrates it with many other areas of the cortex. In doing so, the thalamus helps us establish our perception of reality. Thus, the thalamus, along with its interconnections with other brain areas, may be a key regulator with respect to our perception of reality. In support of this possibility, brain scan studies have demonstrated changes in thalamic activity during intense spiritual practices and experiences.13 In fact, we have seen thalamic activity change as the result of performing a simple meditation program for only twelve minutes a day for eight weeks.14 You can imagine the types of changes that might be observed after performing a spiritual practice for many years or being transformed by a mystical experience.
Thalamic activity may also be associated with the second core component of the mystical experience, a sense of clarity. Virtually all people describe a profound sense of understanding and wisdom arising from a mystical experience. Put in lay terms, the person “gets it” for the first time. He or she feels that he or she now has a full understanding of how the universe works, a sense of meaning and purpose in life, and an understanding of any relationship he or she may have with the divine or supernatural. This sense of clarity likely also derives from activity in the thalamus since it integrates with other areas of the brain. In a mystical experience, old ideas and beliefs systems are no longer considered valid and are replaced with a new system that finds its origin in the intensity of the experience. The higher-order areas of the brain are also responsible for integrating the experience into the person’s belief system. Ideas related to causality, symbolism, emotions, and realness are brought to bear on this experience and how it relates to the person’s religious and spiritual beliefs.
The next of the core elements is unity. In chapter 13, we discussed the morality, or unitary, continuum of which one extreme end represents a feeling of absolute unity in which everything is perceived to become one. Eugene d’Aquili and I used to refer to this experience as “absolute unitary being.” Perhaps this was a slight misnomer since we did not mean to imply the presence of an actual being, but rather a state of being in which a person experiences everything in existence as an absolute oneness. The person’s sense of self dissolves, and all things, including the self, become one. Since the person experiences becoming part of a greater oneness, the person no longer feels tied to the body or brain. The person experiences moving beyond the ego-self to become part of a larger, universal self. In addition, since there is no distinction between any kind of inner subjective experience and an outer objective perspective, the person also perceives the experience of going beyond both objective and subjective perspectives of the world.
With regard to such a unifying experience, Albert Einstein wrote,
It is very difficult to explain this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it. The individual feels the nothingness of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in Nature and in the world of thought. He looks upon individual existence as a sort of prison and wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole.15
William James had the following to say about mystical experiences:
In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, we find the same recurring note.16
And from one of our survey participants, a 43-year-old woman from India, we have the following description with the words capitalized as she wrote them:
During my peak meditation experience, tears were streaming down my cheeks, when I experienced the feeling of “ONENESS” with all beings. My body felt very light. Rather, there was no separation between me and other external reality. There was no sense of “SELF.” It was very unique.
In these quotes, we see similarities in the description of the sense of oneness that is a central component of mystical experiences.
We have also considered where the unitary experience may arise within the human brain. The parietal lobe seems to play an important role in unitary experiences. Decreased activity in the parietal lobe, which may reflect the blocking of activity entering it, has been observed in numerous brain scan studies of religious and spiritual practices.17 The parietal lobe normally functions by taking sensory information from the body to create our sense of self and a three-dimensional representation of space. As input into this area decreases, it no longer has the information from which to generate the sense of self and space. And it is precisely this loss of sense of self and space that is described in mystical experiences.
Another fascinating point relates back to our discussion in chapter 13 on morality and ethics. Since everything is considered to be at one during a mystical experience, we have a new understanding about moral action from this mystical, absolute-unity perspective. All things are understood to be both positive and negative with regard to morality. Any act necessarily causes some prior pattern to move away from unity in order for another pattern to move toward unity. On a profound level, no matter what we do, some harm will arise from it. However, at the level of absolute unitary being, not only can there be no true sense of morality, neither can there be any action that is purely moral or immoral. Every action can be considered from both perspectives to determine which aspects are moral and which are immoral to find a way between the two. Take the example of running across a field of grass to save a child from a burning car. Most would consider the morality of saving the child to far outweigh the immorality of destroying a few blades of grass and a few insects. Interestingly, that may depend on the given perspective, since a person experiencing absolute unitary being will deeply sympathize with the blades of grass and the insects as well. In that regard, the action is not purely moral or immoral but has components of both. Someone experiencing absolute unitary being may be able to evaluate the absolute moral perspective of the entire universe with regard to any given event.
The next core element of mystical experiences is a sense of surrender. People having a mystical experience feel that the experience is happening to them, not as though they are purposefully making it happen. However, the experience is not an inherently passive one, as the person is highly engaged; it is just that the person feels that he or she is letting it happen to them—they surrender to it. A sense of surrender has been described in many different spiritual experiences, both historically and in our survey. The classic example is from the tradition of Islam. The name Islam itself means to surrender, and people who follow the tradition are supposed to surrender to God. Similarly, when we did our study of people speaking in tongues, we found that they did not perceive themselves as making the speaking in tongues happen. I said to one study participant that during one of the brain scans, she would be instructed to begin speaking in tongues, but she immediately corrected me: “No, no, no, we cannot purposely speak in tongues; rather we can put ourselves into the mindset that allows us to access speaking in tongues.” Even though virtually everyone in our study was able to speak in tongues during the study, they adhered to the notion that it was not something they could purposefully make happen. They could only prepare themselves for the experience and hope that it happened.
A sense of surrender also has to do with another modern concept referred to as agency. When people have mystical experiences, they tend to attribute the cause of the experience to an outside agent, which could be Buddha, God, universal consciousness, or the universe itself. That a person can experience something or someone else making the mystical experience happen contributes to its importance in the context of religious thought. After all, if God is inducing an enlightenment experience within someone, then God surely must exist, and exist in a way compatible with the mystical experience.
Take, for example, this description from a 48-year-old Catholic woman who completed our survey:
I was in anguish. I was lost, and I had no sense of God’s direction. I cried out, but nothing came to me. Suddenly I had the experience of God asking me if I would do anything. This was not an audible voice, rather a knowing inside. I said yes but was met with silence. Another day passed, and then He asked if I would be willing to give up everything for Him, even my religious faith and salvation. That took me aback. I couldn’t believe He would ask that of me. So I waited and tried to discern if it was God who was asking me that or some other spirit. I prayed for another couple of days, and the anguish increased. Finally, I surrendered everything, including my faith and my salvation, and only for one reason. I loved God so much that I would truly give up everything to be connected with Him. I said yes, and in an instant, God returned everything to me, transformed. He liberated me. From that day forward, a new relationship existed between God and me. It is ever present: no distance, no separation. It is! How has it changed? I am not attached to doctrine, dogmas, or rituals. I see God’s action all around me.
The notion of surrender also has interesting implications for understanding biologically how meditation and prayer practices help bring about enlightenment or intense mystical experiences. The research to date suggests that most meditative practices, particularly those that involve willful concentration, are associated with increased frontal lobe activity.18 This is consistent with what is involved with any attention-focusing task. The more we concentrate on something, the more our frontal lobe activity increases to control and regulate the various brain processes involved in the task. But something else can happen during intense meditation or prayer practices. When a mystical experience begins, people feel that concentration can no longer be sustained. They feel as if they have surrendered their willfulness to the process. Brain imaging studies show that during practices that elicit a feeling of surrender, frontal lobe activity decreases (particularly in the prefrontal cortex). Our brain scan studies of speaking in tongues and Islamic prayer, which are both associated with a feeling of surrender, showed decreased frontal lobe activity during the practice. Other scholars have suggested that decreased frontal lobe activity, also called hypofrontality, is associated with powerful flow experiences, spiritual experiences, and even enlightenment.
My colleague Mark Waldman and I have argued that it was not just the decrease in frontal lobe activity that is important with respect to the feeling of surrender, but also the magnitude of the decrease.19 If frontal lobe activity increases dramatically during meditation and then drops to levels well below normal, the magnitude of that drop is substantial and could result in powerful feelings of surrender and intense mystical experiences.
One of the best analogies I have used to explain the importance of this magnitude has to do with what happens when you jump off a step. If you climb up two steps and jump down, not much happens. If you climb up a ladder so that you are ten feet off the ground, when you jump you will feel something very different, and you might break a bone. If you then climbed ten feet off the ground and jumped into an empty swimming pool that was ten feet deep, the total jump would be twenty feet and could seriously injure or kill you. The point here is that the magnitude of the drop is crucial in terms of the magnitude of the experience. Likewise, in the brain, a simple decrease in frontal lobe activity may be associated with a mild experience of surrender, perhaps while listening to some beautiful music. But taking the frontal lobe activity to a heightened state during a practice like meditation, and then experiencing a substantial drop could result in the kind of dramatic change that one might expect to be associated with mystical experiences. This helps us to understand why spiritual practices such as meditation are so useful for inducing mystical experiences. They help prime the brain for the substantial changes that underlie these powerful experiences.
The final core component of mystical experiences, the transformational effect, is not so much related to the experience itself, but to its impact or aftereffect. Part of what distinguishes mystical experiences from other spiritual states is that the transformative element has long-lasting effects on virtually every part of a person’s life. In our online survey, we asked people to rate how various aspects of life changed after their experience, and more than 90 percent stated that these domains were changed for the better as the result of their experience. Improvements were experienced in their sense of spirituality and, to a lesser extent, their religiousness. For these individuals, these experiences feel radically different and more profound than more traditional experiences based on the dogmas or beliefs of a given religious tradition. The intensity and power of the experience take them into a realm that feels spiritual rather than tied to a specific religious belief system.
In addition to the sense of spirituality, people also describe significant improvements in their sense of meaning and purpose in life. As a result of the clarity of the experience, they now feel they know what they need to do to live in a sacred way. For some, this even becomes a kind of calling with the goal of living according to the ideals expressed and perceived within their mystical experience.20 As a result of all these changes, people also tend to feel that their psychological and even physical health improve. They feel better about their lives, and because there are reductions in feelings of depression and anxiety, they experience an overall improvement in their sense of well-being. People even describe improvements in how they perceive their interpersonal relationships. People often describe a greater sense of compassion, forgiveness, and empathy toward others, which improves the quality of their relationships. In our survey, women in particular reported a link between the mystical states they experienced and a stronger sense of family and community. And if relationships and life perspective are changed, people typically also feel that they now work more effectively and enjoy their jobs more.
The transformative aspect of mystical states, regardless of whether they arise from a religious ritual, spiritual practice, entheogen, or any other cause, is unique. The way we typically understand the brain is that it changes slowly over time. As we go through the educational system, we learn mathematics every day and every year and develop a comprehensive sense of how to engage the quantitative areas of our brain. We don’t suddenly flip a switch in order to understand algebra or geometry. Mystical experiences, on the other hand, seem to have a completely different kind of effect. These experiences, which last just seconds to minutes, seem to rewire the brain completely in this very short period of time. It is remarkable that all the different ways a person thinks about the world can radically shift from a singular moment of mystical enlightenment.
Neurophysiologically, there would seem to be two possible explanations. One is that the beliefs and behaviors associated with mystical transformation always have existed within the brain and yet somehow were unable to be accessed in the person’s everyday life. The implication is that the mystical mind is a built-in component of the human brain. For some reason, as we grow up, we lose the ability to connect with the mystical part of ourselves. We become bogged down in the minutiae of our lives and the materialism of society. From this perspective, it takes a mystical experience to unlock this area of the brain and its functions. It is not unlike videogames that require you to achieve a certain score in order to unlock a new level or character.
One scholar who would support this perspective is Jill Bolte Taylor, who wrote about her own mystical experience in the book My Stroke of Insight.21 Bolte Taylor was a rising neuroscientist who, in her thirties, experienced a stroke as a result of a ruptured cerebral aneurysm. The stroke substantially damaged the left side of her brain. But during the stroke, she had a mystical experience in which she felt intimately interconnected with all things in the universe. She argues, on the basis of her experience as well as her unique pathology, that the left side of her brain, the scientific side, had always been preventing the right side of her brain from expressing these deep feelings of connection and intuitiveness. When the stroke damaged the left side of her brain, it released the right side of her brain so that she was able to have the powerful mystical experiences that she continues to be able to evoke. Bolte Taylor believes that the mystical elements always existed within her brain; it was merely a matter of releasing them. In her case, the release occurred as the result of a pathological situation. For many others, the release may result from drug-induced experiences, near-death experiences, meditative or prayer practices, or one of the many other experiences people have reported.
The second possible explanation for the transformative effect of mystical experiences is that the brain is capable of rewiring itself in a very short period of time. The neural connections that exist within the brain are constantly changing, and perhaps with a sudden surge of activity, a variety of changes and connections between neurons can shift dramatically so that the entire pattern and network of the brain’s activity shifts as well. We do know that each neuron can connect to thousands of other neurons. Not all those connections are fully functional, so there are many connections basically just waiting in the wings. It is possible, then, that a mystical experience occurs as a result of some extreme level of physiological functioning that also rapidly creates a wholly new set of neural connections.
Which of these two possible explanations is correct? More data are required to fully understand how mystical experiences can result in a transformative effect in such a short period of time. This is an important challenge for future neurotheological research. We should also consider other possibilities based on how we understand the brain’s ability to change. The field of neuroplasticity may help elucidate these kinds of changes. And, as I have argued, neurotheology may be able to teach neuroscience something because of the rapid transformation that seems to occur in a rather unorthodox way during these mystical experiences.
A final point with regard to the transformative aspect of mystical experiences brings us back to the changes occurring in the frontal lobe. The frontal lobe, with its executive functions, typically allows our brain to hold different beliefs in its respective “containers.” Essentially, the frontal lobe helps us organize our belief systems. It might be thought of as a large filing cabinet with multiple folders that represent the specific domains of belief we hold; for example, relationship beliefs, job beliefs, moral beliefs, and religious beliefs. The frontal lobe keeps all of these beliefs well organized. So what happens when frontal lobe activity suddenly experiences a dramatic, rapid drop? The significant decrease in frontal lobe activity experienced during a mystical experience is akin to taking all those folders out of the cabinet, throwing them up in the air, and then quickly stuffing them all back into the cabinet. This is a transformative moment, a reorganization of everything a person previously believed. In going back to our two possible explanations, both could be explained on the basis of this analogy. On one hand, the “files” were already there; they are just rearranged now. On the other hand, it is also possible that not only are the files rearranged, but new files are also added in a very short period of time.
While a greater understanding of the neurophysiological processes associated with mystical experiences has provided us with a more thorough explanation of how these experiences work and have an impact on us, there is still much to learn. This is where neurotheology can help: by providing a framework for conceptualizing and studying mystical experiences. Neurotheology may even take a crack at the most critical question: whether mystical experiences are nothing more than a manifestation of the brain’s function, or whether the brain enables humans to access some more fundamental level of reality, which we call mystical. Put another way from a more religious perspective, we might ponder whether the experience of a mystical union with God is driven by the brain or driven by God.
MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES AND ESCAPING THE BRAIN
Now that we have discussed mystical experiences, the question is whether they may be able to help us resolve the fundamental problem of escaping our brain. This was the question that got me into neurotheology in the first place. As a child, I had always wanted to figure out a way to know what was really real. An answer to this epistemological question could benefit humanity in virtually every possible way: physically, psychologically, morally, politically, spiritually, and religiously. In my pursuits, I started by exploring how the brain helps us perceive reality. But this led me only to the notion of being trapped within our brain. Since I kept trying to determine how we might be able to get outside our brain, I wondered if there were any other approaches that one could take. Could philosophical or theological arguments help get us closer to an answer? It seemed that virtually every one of these religious or theological perspectives was also related to brain processes. The next step was to see if there were any particular experiences humans have that even suggest the possibility of getting outside the brain.
As we have discussed, one feature of mystical experiences is a loss of the sense of self and a sense of absolute unity. But if you lose yourself and become intimately connected to the universe or God, is it possible that you are actually outside yourself, outside your brain? Another characteristic of mystical experiences is the notion of going beyond subjective and objective perspectives on the world. Again, in absolute unity, there is no differentiation between the self and other or between objective and subjective. Since everything is one, people having these experiences at least feel as if they have gone beyond the brain—the experience referred to as self-transcendence.
Whether we can get outside our brain is still a question that remains to be answered. However, as I like to say to my students and audiences, mystical experiences are the only states I know of in which people at least say they have gone outside the brain. And because of that description, it seems essential to try to understand these experiences as fully as possible. In addition, since these experiences are not only subjective, but appear to have a variety of observable brain mechanisms associated with them, neurotheology may be the ultimate approach toward a solution to the knotty problem of knowing what is really real. Perhaps, by combining the personal experience of going beyond the brain with the scientific knowledge of what is happening in the brain, we might find an epistemological solution to our experience of reality. We might find a way of determining if what we subjectively experience matches what is objectively real. To know what is really real is an aspiration akin to (and related to) a unified field theory and a worthy aim for a neurotheological approach to mystical experiences.