The God Spot in the brain: science of religious experiences

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ex-l

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The God Spot in the brain: science of religious experiences

Post23 Jun 2011

Many ex-BKs mention that despite leaving the Brahma Kumari religion, and not believing in either their god, teachings or leadership, they continue to have "religious" or even physical experiences, e.g. pressures on the forehead, feelings of lightness, "touchings" or the feelings of a closeness of "god", visions of "sparks of light" or even headaches when in the presence of BKs, in one case I remember. Active BKs might claim these are "proofs" of the veracity of the religion.

There has been plenty of discussion arising from scientific researchers looking into the brain functions of religious adherents, noting that the particular research was not intended to prove or disprove the existence of any god. As they say, "Regardless of whether God exists or not, religious beliefs do exist and can be experimentally studied, as shown in [their] study." Commentators talk of the need of a "proper theory of the psychology of religion". Perhaps one day we will be able to "scientifically" prove whether a religion or experience is true or false ... (although it still wont stop people believing in false ones!!!).

For me, the open questions are; did a supernatural god stimulate the brain or did stimulating the brain with religious ideas and practise create the imagined feeling of some supernatural being"? Are we taught and trained to believe that certain brain activity is "Godly" when all it is, is brain activity? And if there are the two, how to tell the difference between them? How far do we fool ourselves ... and how far are religious practices designed to help us fool ourselves, e.g. denying love and affection from human beings to induce states of mind which are then assigned to a supernatural god?

Having seen some of the most extraordinary things done by hypnotists, and looking at the highly obvious tendency towards emotional manias in human beings that any from religion to popstars and nationalism to furry animals, I'd say that we are hardly out of the Dark Ages understanding all this.

I always thought one of the weakness of the Brahma Kumari religion (and it may be the same with others, I don't know) was that there was little to no universality of experiences. That is to say, do this and this and this and you will ALL get that. There is no way to tell if everyone is having the same experience ... and, of course, what we also find when people leave the flock that they finally admit up to the fact that they were basically having no experiences at all.

The BKs, over the decades, have constructed excuses and explanations for these ("your karma", "your fruits of previous devotion", "Baba testing the soul", the "Honeymoon Period wearing off", "Maya") all of which really amount to the same thing ... which is "stick around, don't leave and keep doing more Yoga, service and donating" ... even beyond the point where the individual has given up the faith.

Just possibly, much of that "Yoga" is probably just uncontrolled self-hypnosis intended to induce a deeper state of commitment to the religion and organization.

The other thing I notice is how the leadership has become more liberal in its acceptance of a diversion of meditations to the point where they are largely unrecognisable to the original ... but yet are suppose to be producing exactly the same experiences or god connection. How would that work?

My guess this liberality is really just based on their financial security and confidence in the hold they have over a significant number of adherents. The "enslaved" being allowed to tell their own fairy stories to keep themselves entertained as long as they do not reach a point where they challenge or breakaway from the establishment.
'God spot' researchers see the light in MRI study by Ian Sample, science correspondent, The Guardian

Brain scans of nuns have revealed intricate neural circuits that flicker into life when they feel the presence of God. The images suggest that feelings of profound joy and union with a higher being that accompany religious experiences are the culmination of ramped-up electrical activity in parts of the brain.

The scans were taken as nuns relived intense religious experiences. They showed a surge in neural activity in regions of the brain that govern feelings of peace, happiness and self-awareness. Psychologists at the University of Montreal say the research, which appears in the journal Neuroscience Letters, was not intended to confirm or deny the existence of God, but set out to examine how the brain behaves during profound religious experiences.

Mario Beauregard and Vincent Paquette used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of 15 Carmelite nuns who were asked to remember the most intense mystical experience they had ever had.

When the scans were compared with others taken beforehand, the scientists found electrical activity and blood oxygen levels had surged in at least 12 regions of the brain. Some regions, such as the medial orbitofrontal cortex, are strongly associated with emotions, while activity in the right middle temporal cortex is believed to be responsible for the impression of contacting a spiritual entity. The scans showed different brain activity from those taken when the nuns were asked to remember intense emotional experiences that involved another person.

The findings contradict previous suggestions that human brains may have evolved with a "God spot" - a single region that lights up in response to deeply religious thoughts. "Rather than there being one spot that relates to mystical experiences, we've found a number of brain regions are involved," said Dr Beauregard.

bkti-pit

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Re: The God Spot in the brain: science of religious experiences

Post27 Jun 2011

I am reading Dr Beauregard's book right now and find it quite interesting: "The Spiritual Brain, A Neuroscientist's Case for the existence of the Soul", HarperCollins, 2007.

It is true that "spiritual" experiences vary greatly amongst BKs but on the other hand those experiences are not at all exclusive to the BKs. I know many Christians whose spiritual or mystical experiences were very similar to mine and I also know a number of BKs whose best and strongest experiences were prior to their coming in to BKism, sometimes decades earlier.

It is worth noticing also that these experiences were often unsought, that is they came to people who were not seeking God and/or had no inclination for meditation or spirituality. I know that such cases have been studied too and that common threads have been found.

When I had what I call my first experience with God, I was just beginning to experiment with BK meditation and was simply trying to focus on "I am a soul". I was not seeking God and had not been told about the BK concept of God. It was very clearly an experience of meeting someone. I felt like I was the long lost child coming back home after a life of exile and finding my mother waiting for me, taking me in her arms and flooding me with indescribable love. I immediately understood that to be an experience of God.

Prior to that, although I had been raised as a Catholic, I was not a believer. But had I not been exposed to a concept of God beforehand, how would I have interpreted my experience? As I see it now, although I can not deny the reality of my experience, I am inclined to believe that there is no such external being but that it is only a creation of our mind.

Mike26

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Re: The God Spot in the brain: science of religious experiences

Post30 Jun 2011

This is an excellent posting on a very interesting topic.

Both before being a BK and after leaving I studied psycho-spiritual experiences especially Western and eastern mysticism. The excellent but aged test by Evelyn Underhill 'Mysticism' draws attention not only to the similarity of religious experiences among diverse cultures around the world but also points to the 'realness' of them, that is, that something psychologically and neurologically is occuring in them.

Hildergard of Bergen when reporting visions of stars of light falling into an ocean during her meditations as a nun has been interpreted by psychologists of modern day as evidence of Scotoma, an brain episode which effects vision in this way. For there is far more to it than that. The 'Varieties of Religious Experience' by William James was one of the first attempts to both document and investigate religious experiences.

With regard to the BKs, I too continued to experience the usual range of phenomena when I left such as seeing points of light, pressure in the forehead, episodes of feeling bodiless and the like. It caused confusion to begin with but I think ex-l has made some good points by way of explanation.

The BK teachings are essentially based on brain training and hypnotism. Even new neural pathways are able to develop as a consequnce of systematic mind training in this way. Beliefs about Baba and the so called knowledge can be 'projected' outwards in the form of these experiences. What we are often seeing is the firing off of neurons along the optic nerves nothing more.

In my view, these experiences are hypnotically induced in the first place and reinforced with the strategies of mind control used thereafter.

It's interesting to note that similar phenomena has been induced through sensory deprivation experiments and the literature of Western mysticism provides examples of how heightened emotional states can facilitate these experiences. Those mystics who chose the path of solitude in the past would often describe going through a period in which the mind would project out into the environment as though real, a host of strange experiences including hallucinations of real people with whom they would converse.
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ex-l

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Re: The God Spot in the brain: science of religious experiences

Post30 Jun 2011

Mike26 wrote:In my view, these experiences are hypnotically induced in the first place and reinforced with the strategies of mind control used thereafter.

I think by far the most audacious of these are the so called "Trance Lights"; the bigger than life-sized, backlit images of Lekhraj Kirpalani that BKs are meant to stare at for 45 minutes a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year and are told it is an image of the "angel" into which God comes to meat and speak with them. What surprise is it that individuals then go on to see visions and dreams of it later? But, having said that, some individuals claim to have seen him before ...

I have to admit, I keep an open book as to what all this stuff is, simply because there has so many different phenomena all over the world and for all time some of which I think science is stumbling to explain.

If at one end of the spectrum we have the mystic "everything is one and everything is an illusion" camp, and at the other end we have the scientific materialists, "almost nothing exists that we don't understand and it does not exist if we cannot cut into bits" camp; then I belong in neither. I don't buy the first, and weird and wonderful stuff does exist that no one has any clue about how it works. Yes, without a doubt some of the stuff that goes on can be explain simply. Some cannot.

I tend to think there is science and the wonders of the brain, and then there is some weird and wonderful psychic stuff going on ... just not as much as the adherents think.

In my opinion, the Brahma Kumaris really do not have a clue nor a care what they do to individuals' brains as long as the net result is dollars in Baba's box.

In the past we have written about BK adherents having mental breakdowns and psychotic incidents which, depending on where you are geographically, have even been assumed by the Brahma Kumaris to be "spirit possessions".

To my mind, there is no doubt the practises do lead some to do so, and the leadership has not got a clue who or why, or how to fit it.

There was one case in Australia at a retreat, documented on this forum, where an individual completely flipped out and was walking around as high as a kite telling everyone they were an angel. Another individual recounted going up to BK Charlie and offering help only to receive a frosty glare and told in essence to get lost unless they were a psychiatrist as he wheeled the victim out of the public eye. No one heard what happened to them afterwards. Another case in Japan where a BK follower flipped and the family because furious ... because, naturally to the BKs, they were left with the medical bills and carrying for the individual ... but the Senior Sister in charge had not a clue what to do and, basically, shrug their shoulders and shirked responsibility. I am sure there are many more we do not know about ... all the way down to the suicides.

In the story of the Brahma Kumaris, it was said in the early days that the family thought Lekhraj Kirpalani was having a mental breakdown. I suspect he was but that he was also experiencing something weird and wonderful too. A non-BK Sindhi also reported that in the early days, the seances were far more dramatic than the BKs tell, with women screaming and hollering.

The whole hypnosis equation was really introduced by Eromain who wrote the child abuse report. Having looked at it, I have to say that there are a surprising number of similarities. And, yes, self-denial leads the mind to compensate in all sorts of extraordinary ways as everyone from prisoners to monks to starving or dying individuals recount.

I am not sure that scotomas explain ALL the "stars of light" effects BK see, only because I know of non-BKs who have also seen weird and wonderful things ... scintillating stars metamorphosing into spirals of light which became archetypal angels etc (and, no, they were not on drugs, they were a kid at the time).

When I starting going to the so called "Spiritual University", I thought they would be into questioning all this stuff and coming up with answers ... what a joke that was.


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