Spirituality and the Brain (Identity)

by dhw, Monday, February 15, 2010, 08:50 (5394 days ago) @ George Jelliss

My thanks to George, who has referred us to an article on brain damage that modulates human spirituality. The research has started to make "the complex mental processes associated with religion and spirituality more accessible." -Dr Cosimo Urgesi, the lead author, writes: "Damage to posterior parietal areas induced unusually fast changes of a stable personality dimension related to transcendental self-referential awareness." Mention of "damage", "mental illness" and "personality disorders" could be taken to suggest that self-transcendence ... "a decreased sense of self and an ability to identify oneself as an integral part of the universe as a whole" ... is a kind of mental aberration. Dr Urgesi does not say this explicitly, however, and I'm impressed by George's self-restraint, as it must have been tempting for him to associate religious experience with brain disorder!-None of us would deny that certain areas of the brain are associated with particular perceptions and activities, and the fact is that some spheres are more developed than others in different people. Hence their greater mathematical / scientific / artistic / practical / intellectual gifts. A dog has more than 220 million olfactory receptors in its nose (we have about 5 million) and an additional olfactory chamber called a vomeronasal organ. But although we can't smell what the dog can smell, it would never occur to us that the dog imagines scents that aren't there. Well, maybe (I'm only speculating) there are some human brains with a more highly developed network of frontal, parietal and temporal connections that sharpen awareness of realities beyond the material world as most of us know it. -Our brain is an instrument both of perception and of imagination. Of course it can be influenced by drugs or illness or accident, but not all religious or "paranormal" experiences can be attributed to these. In many cases, we don't know whether the areas of the brain involved are perceiving or imagining (though we'll use our subjective judgement as to whether a case is to be taken seriously or not). Just as a dog smells things we can't smell, perhaps certain people may perceive sounds, visions, wavelengths beyond the range of others with a "normal" network. This would be what enables them to sense a form of life that transcends their own individuality, or to obtain information to which they apparently cannot have had direct access (as reported, for instance by BBella and David and countless others down through the centuries).-Dr Urgesi says that "information on the causative link between such a network and spirituality is lacking." The question remains open, then, as to whether the network of physical connections creates spiritual experiences or perceives them.