Contribution of Religiousness in the Prediction and Interpretation of Mystical Experiences in a Sensory Deprivation Context: Activation of Religious Schemas

M. A. Persinger (2002) claimed that transcranial magnetic stimulation with weak, complex magnetic fields evokes mystical experiences. However, in a double-blind experiment, P. Granqvist, M. Fredrikson, P. Unge, A. Hagenfeldt, S. Valind., et al. (2005) found no effects of field exposure on mystical experiences (N = 89), though a minority of participants reported spontaneous mystical experiences. Following the conclusion of null effects from magnetic field exposure, the setup of this experiment, including pre-experimental assessments of religiousness and sensory deprivation, can be viewed as a prime/setting for such experiences. The authors analyzed subsets of experimental data from P. Granqvist and colleagues with emphasis on the contribution of religiousness in the prediction and interpretation of mystical experiences. They found that a higher degree of religiousness predicted a higher occurrence of mystical experiences with a religious quality, but not of mystical experiences without such a quality. The authors discuss findings in terms of the experimental setup serving as a prime/setting activating the religious schemas of religious participants.     

Contribution of religiousness in the prediction and interpretation of mystical experiences in a sensory deprivation context: activation of religious schemas

M. A. Persinger (2002) claimed that transcranial magnetic stimulation with weak, complex magnetic fields evokes mystical experiences. However, in a double-blind experiment, P. Granqvist, M. Fredrikson, P. Unge, A. Hagenfeldt, S. Valind., et al. (2005) found no effects of field exposure on mystical experiences (N = 89), though a minority of participants reported spontaneous mystical experiences. Following the conclusion of null effects from magnetic field exposure, the setup of this experiment, including pre-experimental assessments of religiousness and sensory deprivation, can be viewed as a prime/setting for such experiences. The authors analyzed subsets of experimental data from P. Granqvist and colleagues with emphasis on the contribution of religiousness in the prediction and interpretation of mystical experiences. They found that a higher degree of religiousness predicted a higher occurrence of mystical experiences with a religious quality, but not of mystical experiences without such a quality. The authors discuss findings in terms of the experimental setup serving as a prime/setting activating the religious schemas of religious participants.     

The Limbic System and the Soul: Evolution and the Neuroanatomy of Religious Experience

The evolutionary neurological foundations of religious experience are detailed. Human beings have been burying and preparing their dead for the Hereafter for more than 100,000 years. These behaviors and beliefs are related to activation of the amygdala, hippocampus, and temporal lobe, which are responsible for religious, spiritual, and mystical trancelike states, dreaming, astral projection, near-death and out-of-body experiences, and the hallucination of ghosts, demons, angels, and gods. Abraham, Moses, Muhammad, and Jesus Christ, and others who have communed with angels or gods display limbic system hyperactivity, whereas patients report religious hallucinations or out-of-body experiences when limbic structures are stimulated or excessively activated. It is postulated that limbic and temporal lobe structures account for the sexual and violent aspects of religious behavior and also serve as a "transmitter to God," and that the evolution of these structures made spiritual experience possible.     

Nibbanic (or Pure) Consciousness and Beyond

Pike’s phenomenology of mystical experiences articulates sharply where theological content may enter the structure of Christian mystics’ experiences (as characterized in their own words). Here we look to Buddhist (and other) accounts of “pure” or “nibbanic” consciousness attained in experiences of deep meditation. A contemporary “modal” model of inner awareness is considered whereby a form of pure consciousness underlies and embraces further content in various forms of consciousness, including mystical experiences in different traditions and experiences of “full union” (with God).     

Meditation has stronger relationships with mindfulness,kundalini, and mystical experiences than yoga or prayer

Contemplative practices can have profound effects on mindfulness and on physical and sensory and mystical experiences. Individuals who self-reported meditation, yoga, contemplative prayer, or a combination of practices and their patterns of practice were compared for mindfulness, kundalini effects, and mystical experiences. The results suggest that the amount of practice but not the pattern and social conditions of practice influences mindfulness and possibly mystical experiences. Meditation, yoga, contemplative prayer, or a combination of practices all were found to be associated with enhancements of mindfulness, kundalini effects, and mystical experiences, but meditation had particularly strong associations and may be the basis of the associations of yoga and prayer with these outcomes. The results further suggest that the primary association of contemplative practices is with the real time awareness and appreciation of sensory and perceptual experiences which may be the intermediary between disparate practices and mindfulness, kundalini effects, and mystical experiences.     

ENTHEOGENS,MYSTICISM, AND NEUROSCIENCE

Entheogens or psychedelic drugs such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybin are associated with mystical states of experience. Drug laws currently limit research, but important new work is under way at major biomedical research facilities showing that entheogens reliably occasion mystical experiences and thereby allow research into brain states during these experiences. Are drug‐occasioned mystical experiences neurologically the same as more traditional mystical states? Are there phenomenological and theological differences? As this research goes forward and the public becomes more widely aware of its achievements, religious scholars and experts in science and religion will be called upon to interpret the philosophical and theological presuppositions that underpin this research and the significance of the findings that flow from it.     

Congruence Between Near-Death and Mystical Experience

Near-death experiences, altered states during a brush with death, may include mystical features like a sense of sacredness and divine union, timelessness/spacelessness, positive mood, noetic quality, and ineffability. We quantified mystical elements in near-death experience by comparing responses on the Mysticism Scale of 292 near-death experiencers and 34 persons who had come close to death without near-death experiences. Two thirds of near-death experiencers reported mystical experiences during their brush with death, compared to none of the comparison survivors. Near-death experiencers scored higher on the Mysticism Scale than did nonexperiencers; they endorsed noetic quality, positive affect, and unity most often and ego loss, timelessness/spacelessness, and ineffability least often. Depth of near-death experience was correlated highly with scores on the Mysticism Scale, but factor analysis of features during the brush with death yielded two distinct factors representing mystical and near-death elements, suggesting that near-death experiences have commonalities with, but can be differentiated from, mystical experience.     

A Rasch scaling validation of a ‘core’ near‐death experience

For those with true near‐death experiences (NDEs), Greyson's (1983, 1990) NDE Scale satisfactorily fits the Rasch rating scale model, thus yielding a unidimensional measure with interval‐level scaling properties. With increasing intensity, NDEs reflect peace, joy and harmony, followed by insight and mystical or religious experiences, while the most intense NDEs involve an awareness of things occurring in a different place or time. The semantics of this variable are invariant across True‐NDErs' gender, current age, age at time of NDE, and latency and intensity of the NDE, thus identifying NDEs as ‘core’ experiences whose meaning is unaffected by external variables, regardless of variations in NDEs' intensity. Significant qualitative and quantitative differences were observed between True‐NDErs and other respondent groups, mostly revolving around the differential emphasis on paranormal/mystical/religious experiences vs. standard reactions to threat. The findings further suggest that False‐Positive respondents reinterpret other profound psychological states as NDEs. Accordingly, the Rasch validation of the typology proposed by Greyson (1983) also provides new insights into previous research, including the possibility of embellishment over time (as indicated by the finding of positive, as well as negative, latency effects) and the potential roles of religious affiliation and religiosity (as indicated by the qualitative differences surrounding paranormal/mystical/religious issues).     

The Horizon Model Continued: Incorporating the Somatic Mysticism of Pre-history,and Some Further Theoretical Issues

The paper continues the model I began in a previous issue of Sophia. It is argued that the predominance of purely ascending or ‘top down’ forms of spirituality which stemmed largely from the axial period and have been carried forward into modern, transpersonal theories of evolutionary spirituality is a mistake and that there exists a lost or largely ignored form of spirituality—which I name somatic—which was the predominant domain of early Neolithic and Palaeolithic experience. Aspects of what I call somatic mystical experiences have certainly been acknowledged at times to a limited degree, though they have rarely been fully explored, and have usually been considered as basic to other kinds of mystical experience, rather than fully developed forms in their own right. This article offers a fuller exploration and places such states more accurately within a detailed developmental framework than has previously been the case. Other issues relating to the horizon model across the two papers are also expanded.     

THINKING ABOUT RELIGION AND EXPERIENCING THE BRAIN: EUGENE D'AQUILI'S BIOGENETIC STRUCTURAL THEORY OF ABSOLUTE UNITARY BEING

Abstract. Religious experiences, including mystical states and experience of the divine, are the ultimate reality of human existence that demand an account. Eugene d'Aquili weaves together that account using paradigms of thought which historically have made mutually exclusive claims about the nature of religious experience. While pointing out the deficiencies of the theory from a narrowly scientific point of view, this paper recognizes that neuroscience, or any other solitary discipline, is incompetent to explain religion. This paper emphasizes the significance and truth of d'Aquili's holistic theory, a religious vision which itself explains science and philosophy.     

Creativity,Schizotypicality, and Mystical Experience: An Empirical Study

This study examined the commonalities and the differences between creativity and the schizophrenia spectrum. The variables measured were creativity, schizotypy, absorption, mystical experiences, spatial ability, balance, positive and negative presence, and neuroticism. Three community groups were recruited: 31 artists, 10 people with schizophrenia, and 31 comparisons matched for gender and age with the artists. A larger student group, consisting of 102 students, was also recruited to examine the correlations among the same variables within a larger, more normative, group. The largest commonality between the artist and the schizophrenic groups was the propensity to mystical experiences. The greatest differences between them were that the artists were higher in creativity, had better spatial ability, had better balance, had more positive states of presence, and were lower in neuroticism. In the student group, creativity was positively correlated with positive schizotypy, impulsive nonconformity, spatial ability, positive presence, absorption, and mystical experiences, although in the student group, the relation between creativity and mystical experiences was completely mediated by absorption.     

Crossmodal integration in the identification of consonant segments

Although speechreading can be facilitated by auditory or tactile supplements, the process that integrates cues across modalities is not well understood. This paper describes two “optimal processing” models for the types of integration that can be used in speechreading consonant segments and compares their predictions with those of the Fuzzy Logical Model of Perception (FLMP, Massaro, 1987). In “pre-labelling” integration, continuous sensory data is combined across modalities before response labels are assigned. In “post-labelling” integration, the responses that would be made under unimodal conditions are combined, and a joint response is derived from the pair. To describe pre-labelling integration, confusion matrices are characterized by a multidimensional decision model that allows performance to be described by a subject's sensitivity and bias in using continuous-valued cues. The cue space is characterized by the locations of stimulus and response centres. The distance between a pair of stimulus centres determines how well two stimuli can be distinguished in a given experiment. In the multimodal case, the cue space is assumed to be the product space of the cue spaces corresponding to the stimulation modes. Measurements of multimodal accuracy in five modern studies of consonant identification are more consistent with the predictions of the pre-labelling integration model than the FLMP or the post-labelling model.     

LIMITATIONS ON THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF DRUG‐ENABLED MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES

Scientific interest in drug‐induced mystical experiences reemerged in the 1990s. This warrants reexamining the philosophical issues surrounding such studies: Do psychedelic drugs cause mystical experiences? Are drug‐induced experiences the same in nature as other mystical experiences? Does the fact that mystical experiences can be induced by drugs invalidate or validate mystical cognitive claims? Those questions will be examined here. An overview of the scientific examination of drug‐induced mystical experiences is included, as is a brief overview of the history of the use of psychedelic drugs in religion.     

HERE AND NOW: DISCOVERING THE SACRED WITH ENTHEOGENS

Renewed research with entheogens (psychedelic substances) has been able to facilitate the occurrence of mystical forms of consciousness in healthy volunteers with a high degree of reliability. This article explores the potential significance of this development for religious scholars, especially those interested in the study of mysticism. The definition of “mystical consciousness” employed in this research is presented and differentiated from visionary/archetypal and other types of alternative mental states. The ways in which entheogens may be employed with skill and maximum safety are discussed. Implications for clarifying confusion in the study of mysticism are considered, along with suggestions for future religious research on this frontier of knowledge.     

Identification of a cortical site for stress-induced cardiovascular dysfunction

The evidence indicating that the insular cortex is a likely candidate to mediate stress-induced cardiovascular responses is reviewed. Both neuroanatomical and electrophysiological investigations demonstrate that the insular cortex receives an organized representation of visceral information. In addition, the insular cortex also receives highly processed association cortex information. The insular cortex is also highly interconnected with many subcortical limbic and autonomic regions. This combination of sensory input and limbic/autonomic connectivity would be necessary to permit the insular cortex to be a critical site for the integration of emotional and autonomic responses. Stimulation of the insular cortex elicits specific cardiovascular and autonomic responses from discrete sites. Phasic stimulation entrained to the cardiac cycle is even capable of causing severe arrhythmias. The efferent pathways and some of the neurotransmitter mechanisms have determined. It appears that the lateral hypothalamic area is the primary site of synapse for autonomic responses originating in the insular cortex and this information is relayed by NMDA glutamatergic receptors and modulated by neuropeptides including neuropeptide Y, neurotensin, leu-enkephalin and dynorphin. Finally, a rat stroke model, which includes the insular cortex in the infarct region indicates that disruption of the insula can produce substantial cardiac and autonomic abnormalities, which might be similar to those produced by stress. Some of the chronic neurochemical changes, including increases in opioids, neuropeptide Y and neurotensin in the central nucleus of the amygdala, which might be mediating these cardiovascular disturbances, have been determined.     

Absorption and spiritual experience: A review of evidence and potential mechanisms

Some people seem to have a ‘talent’ for spiritual experience: they readily sense the presence of supernatural beings, receive special messages from God, and report intense feelings of self-transcendence, awe and wonder. Here we review converging strands of evidence to argue that the trait of 'absorption' captures a general proclivity for having spiritual experiences. Participants scoring highly on the Tellegen Absorption Scale report vivid experiences of hearing God's voice during prayer, intense mystical experiences in response to psychedelics or placebo brain-stimulation, and strong feelings of presence and transcendence when confronted with natural beauty, virtual reality, or music. Several mechanisms may help to explain the relationship between absorption and spiritual experience. We suggest that absorption captures an experiential mindset that intensifies inner and outer sensory experience in ways that reflect both prior expectation and novel sensory engagement. It seems to enable that which must be imagined to feel more real.     

Measuring the executive regulation of emotion with self-rating scales in a nonclinical population

Prefrontal systems play an important role in the regulation of emotion as evidenced by clinical neuroimaging studies. Both subjective and objective neuropsychological tests provide functional evidence of executive dysfunction in emotional deregulation. The present authors evaluated these relationships here in a nonclinical community sample using the Frontal Systems Behavior Scale, Profile of Mood States (POMS), and Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS). Positive correlations uniformly emerged between prefrontal system dysfunction and negative emotional states (anger, depression, anxiety, stress, confusion, and fatigue), whereas positive emotion (vigor) showed a modest inverse correlation with prefrontal system dysfunction, even after control for demographic influences. These relationships may result from cognitive strategies for managing emotion mediated by reciprocal connections between prefrontal systems and the limbic system. The findings corroborated those of other methodologies, supporting the Frontal Systems Behavior Scale (FrSBe) as a valid tool to measure prefrontal function in nonclinical populations.     

Sitting through the emptiness

This article explores clinical encounters with experiences of the ‘empty ego’ which arise from early relational trauma. The ego’s emptiness is held in repetitious complexes and arises out of affectively charged experiences between self and other which remain split-off from awareness. This kind of consciousness is viewed as dualistic, separating non-dual subjectivity from its dualistic objects of consciousness. In contrast, what I am calling healing void states of non-dualistic consciousness, when admitted to awareness, allow the individual to dis-identify from the traumatizing representations of self and other through an experience of non-duality. In contrast to an objectified, dualistic emptiness of the ego, healing void states come about in moments of non-dual, unified consciousness. These states occur in the ego-Self relationship by linking the ego’s dualistic awareness in chronic subject/object splits to ones of non-dual pure consciousness. The healing void state is always incipiently present and potentially able to bridge the ego-Self connection in bogged-down treatment. The paper explores potential integrations with non-dual models of consciousness such as Vedantic and Kashmir Shaivism, among other mystical traditions. A combined Vedantic-Jungian understanding can provide a transcendent bridge that integrates Eastern concepts of non-duality in treating emptiness.     

Protestantism and Mysticism from the Perspective of Neuroscience

Abstract

Protestantism has always been suspicious about a mystical encounter with the Divine. Although the early Luther was influenced by mystical writers like Johannes Tauler the subsequent dogmatic evaluation of mystical forms of religiosity remained ambiguous. Nevertheless the real nature of mystical experience is still unclear and therefore the dogmatic judgments about mystical encounters with the Divine are based on unsound arguments like self-salvation. In this article we want to show that modern neuroscience can help to understand the nature of mystical experiences better and based on this we come to a new dogmatic appreciation of mysticism.     

AESTHETICS,CREATIVITY, AND MYSTICISM: AN INVESTIGATION OF THREE MODES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

This essay explores the universal nature of aesthetic, creative, and mystical experience, tracing some essential interrelations among the three. Enlarging upon the work of anthropologist Jacques Maquet, I speculate that “sensory fixedness” is both necessary and sufficient to achieve aesthetic experience, and that the unification of mind engendered by sensory fixedness is the essential source of aesthetic power. Therefore, the role of the aesthetic object (construed broadly) is either as an arbitrary sensory focusing mechanism, or as the physical embodiment of a gestalt facilitating fixedness; the first category is merely attractive, while the second contains all that is truly great in art (visual and auditory). I suggest further that as both creative inspiration and mystical experience result from fixedness, both are related to aesthetic experience. However, while aesthetic experience is rooted in sensation, mystical and creative experience, though often prepared by sensory fixedness, may transcend the sensory domain altogether toward more abstract forms of mental fixedness.