Political Crossfire Forums

[eynon]

cap'n queasy wrote: eynon wrote: cap'n queasy wrote: eynon wrote: cap'n queasy wrote: I'm a big Eastwood fan.


:tu:


btw........it's like a Cap'n/Eynon forum right now.........don't you sleep? :)

Not much.

sorry man.....been there :(

Nothing to be sorry about. It doesn't bother me at all. :-D

k :-D always been a night owl myself....even as a sprout.......

[greeneye]

cap'n queasy wrote: greeneye wrote: cap'n queasy wrote: There's no way to "override" what we term reality.


Man's consciousness seems to override our reality. And currently, that's one of the areas that science has yet to really understand.

Key word there is "seems".

Well the word 'seems' has certainly generated an excited group for scientists and created an entire new field of science (neurotheology, "the study of the neurobiology of religion and spirituality") that I am sure will eventually connect the dots that are just waiting to be connected. Meanwhile more and more people continue to experience these different states of reality (or moments of enlightement) through prayer and meditation which uplifts their lives. I find this possitve.

Quote: Call it a mystical experience, a spiritual moment, even a religious epiphany, if you like--but Austin will not. Rather than interpret his instant of grace as proof of a reality beyond the comprehension of our senses, much less as proof of a deity, Austin took it as "proof of the existence of the brain." He isn''t being smart-alecky. As a neurologist, he accepts that all we see, hear, feel and think is mediated or created by the brain. Austin''s moment in the Underground therefore inspired him to explore the neurological underpinnings of spiritual and mystical experience. In order to feel that time, fear and self-consciousness have dissolved, he reasoned, certain brain circuits must be interrupted. Which ones? Activity in the amygdala, which monitors the environment for threats and registers fear, must be damped. Parietal-lobe circuits, which orient you in space and mark the sharp distinction between self and world, must go quiet. Frontal- and temporal-lobe circuits, which mark time and generate self-awareness, must disengage. When that happens, Austin concludes in a recent paper, "what we think of as our ''higher'' functions of selfhood appear briefly to "drop out,'' "dissolve,'' or be "deleted from consciousness''." When he spun out his theories in 1998, in the 844-page "Zen and the Brain," it was published not by some flaky New Age outfit but by MIT Press.

Since then, more and more scientists have flocked to "neurotheology," the study of the neurobiology of religion and spirituality. Last year the American Psychological Association published "Varieties of Anomalous Experience," covering enigmas from near-death experiences to mystical ones. At Columbia University''s new Center for the Study of Science and Religion, one program investigates how spiritual experiences reflect "peculiarly recurrent events in human brains." In December, the scholarly Journal of Consciousness Studies devoted its issue to religious moments ranging from "Christic visions" to "shamanic states of consciousness." In May the book "Religion in Mind," tackling subjects such as how religious practices act back on the brain''s frontal lobes to inspire optimism and even creativity, reaches stores. And in "Why God Won''t Go Away," published in April, Dr. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania and his late collaborator, Eugene d''Aquili, use brain-imaging data they collected from Tibetan Buddhists lost in meditation and from Franciscan nuns deep in prayer to ... well, what they do involves a lot of neuro-jargon about lobes and fissures. In a nutshell, though, they use the data to identify what seems to be the brain''s spirituality circuit, and to explain how it is that religious rituals have the power to move believers and nonbelievers alike.

OUTSIDE OF TIME AND SPACE - What all the new research shares is a passion for uncovering the neurological underpinnings of spiritual and mystical experiences--for discovering, in short, what happens in our brains when we sense that we "have encountered a reality different from--and, in some crucial sense, higher than--the reality of everyday experience," as psychologist David Wulff of Wheaton College in Massachusetts puts it. In neurotheology, psychologists and neurologists try to pinpoint which regions turn on, and which turn off, during experiences that seem to exist outside time and space. In this way it differs from the rudimentary research of the 1950s and 1960s that found, yeah, brain waves change when you meditate. But that research was silent on why brain waves change, or which specific regions in the brain lie behind the change. Neuroimaging of a living, working brain simply didn''t exist back then. In contrast, today''s studies try to identify the brain circuits that surge with activity when we think we have encountered the divine, and when we feel transported by intense prayer, an uplifting ritual or sacred music. Although the field is brand new and the answers only tentative, one thing is clear. Spiritual experiences are so consistent across cultures, across time and across faiths, says Wulff, that it "suggest[s] a common core that is likely a reflection of structures and processes in the human brain." There was a feeling of energy centered within me ... going out to infinite space and returning ... There was a relaxing of the dualistic mind, and an intense feeling of love. I felt a profound letting go of the boundaries around me, and a connection with some kind of energy and state of being that had a quality of clarity, transparency and joy. I felt a deep and profound sense of connection to everything, recognizing that there never was a true separation at all. That is how Dr. Michael J. Baime, a colleague of Andrew Newberg''s at Penn, describes what he feels at the moment of peak transcendence when he practices Tibetan Buddhist meditation, as he has since he was 14 in 1969. Baime offered his brain to Newberg, who, since childhood, had wondered about the mystery of God''s existence. At Penn, Newberg''s specialty is radiology, so he teamed with Eugene d''Aquili to use imaging techniques to detect which regions of the brain are active during spiritual experiences. The scientists recruited Baime and seven other Tibetan Buddhists, all skilled meditators. ...

That a religious experience is reflected in brain activity is not too surprising, actually. Everything we experience--from the sound of thunder to the sight of a poodle, the feeling of fear and the thought of a polka-dot castle--leaves a trace on the brain. Neurotheology is stalking bigger game than simply affirming that spiritual feelings leave neural footprints, too. By pinpointing the brain areas involved in spiritual experiences and tracing how such experiences arise, the scientists hope to learn whether anyone can have such experiences, and why spiritual experiences have the qualities they do. I could hear the singing of the planets, and wave after wave of light washed over me. But ... I was the light as well ... I no longer existed as a separate "I'' ... I saw into the structure of the universe. I had the impression of knowing beyond knowledge and being given glimpses into ALL. That was how author Sophy Burnham described her experience at Machu Picchu, in her 1997 book "The Ecstatic Journey." Although there was no scientist around to whisk her into a SPECT machine and confirm that her orientation area was AWOL, it was almost certainly quiescent. That said, just because an experience has a neural correlate does not mean that the experience exists "only" in the brain, or that it is a figment of brain activity with no independent reality. Think of what happens when you dig into an apple pie. The brain''s olfactory region registers the aroma of the cinnamon and fruit. The somatosensory cortex processes the feel of the flaky crust on the tongue and lips. The visual cortex registers the sight of the pie. Remembrances of pies past (Grandma''s kitchen, the corner bake shop ...) activate association cortices. A neuroscientist with too much time on his hands could undoubtedly produce a PET scan of "your brain on apple pie." But that does not negate the reality of the pie. "The fact that spiritual experiences can be associated with distinct neural activity does not necessarily mean that such experiences are mere neurological illusions," Newberg insists. "It''s no safer to say that spiritual urges and sensations are caused by brain activity than it is to say that the neurological changes through which we experience the pleasure of eating an apple cause the apple to exist." The bottom line, he says, is that "there is no way to determine whether the neurological changes associated with spiritual experience mean that the brain is causing those experiences ... or is instead perceiving a spiritual reality."