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The wisdom of nature is such that it produces nothing superfluous or useless.

- Nicolau Copérnico

Question to Atheists: Have you ever wondered, or did you think of the possibility that the emergence of religions was not merely a daydream or human delusion but something inherent in living things, something with purpose in the evolution and generation of an intelligent (human) mind?

Questions to religious: What if other religions and cults could bring you more answers? Or awaken from feeling and being? Would you allow yourself to expand your consciousness?

Religion and Science. Two greatnesses that throughout the history of the humanity in the perspective of the western world suffered with each other. Science neglected, demonized and persecuted and religion reduced, underestimated and ignored.

(image credit: https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/reasonable-faith-podcast/sam-harris-and-jerry-coyne-science-vs.-religion-part-2/ )

The science based on pragmatism distanced itself from religions to find its own truths based on the scientific method. For a long time these two universes had kept apart, and any attempt to join them bordered on pseudoscience or quackery.

However, since the taboo of neuroscience research on psychedelic drugs has been broken, a new window opens for the study of religions and cults (of which some are associated with these drugs [1-2]).

This window comes through neuroscience and will even be the topic of an important scientific journal: Neuroscience, Selflessness, and Spiritual Experience

But what does neuroscience have so much to tell us about it?

Firstly, any religious, mystical or spiritual event is possible to be detected in the brain and apparently are phenomena that only emerge under certain circumstances. The relation of brain activation is very complex, multifactorial, that is, several regions of the brain are activated to produce these experiences and are differentiated, some sensations only exist in Christianity, others in Hinduism or Buddhism, or in the Muslim and so on [3]. Just to exemplify, in the image below we have an example of a mystical experience known as "Carmelite nuns", in which it is characterized by Christians as a sense of being connected / united with God in which it causes in the individual the perception of timelessness , perception of the absence of space ("spacelessness"), union with the universe and humanity, generating feelings of positive affection, peace, joy and unconditional love.

Image extracted from [4]. The yellow dots are the activations in the brain about the effect of the Carmelite nuns phenomenon.

As the richness of mystical experiences are so many, to facilitate, we will make some divisions proposed by scientists [5] and previous research cited by them.

All experience is embedded in two agents, in which they are named spiritual or religious. In a simplified way, all spiritual experience is more tied to feeling, to affective while all religious experience is tied to action, to behavioral or cognitive changes and beliefs.

This may sound strange at first moment, but it is very useful as you delve deeper into the subject. For example, empathy can manifest affectively or cognitively. An easy way to understand their differences is to think in the phrase "I intelligibly understand your situation" in the case of cognitive empathy and affective empathy, "I feel your emotional pain."

 Making the hook in empathy, we begin to identify interesting attributes that religions empower people. Religious / spiritual / mystical persons develop the empathy and willingness to connect with others better [5].

This idea gives us the space to think that some experiences can be very beneficial to be understood and reproduced once it can translate into greater health and mental capacity.

Timeless - Abstract Painting, painted by Ismeta Gruenwald.

For example, imagine that experimenting the perception of timelessness and spacelessness in the Carmelite nuns experience maybe could help people to learn modern and complex concepts of physics where the abstraction of no time or no space is essential for understanding hypotheses or theories. Would it help them learn and produce better in these fields where consciousness about the universe needs to be expanded (transcended)?

One of the geniuses of mathematics was a religious Indian who had a lot of suffer of his theories to be understood until he could learn to transmit his mathematical ideas (religiously felt) through scientific and methodological languages. His story even became a movie: The man who saw the infinite.

Ramanujan, the mathematician.

Lost in the awe at the beauty around me, I must have slipped into a state of heightened awareness…It seemed to me, as I struggled afterward to recall the experience, that self was utterly absent: I and the chimpanzees, the earth and trees and air, seemed to merge, to become one with the spirit power of life itself…Never had I been so intensely aware of the shape, the color of the individual leaves, the varied patterns of the veins that made each one unique. It was almost overpowering.

— Jane Goodall, Reason for Hope

Cool alright ! What other experiences do we already know about neuroscience?

"Selflessness": It is a spiritual experience of transcendence of being. It is ultimately characterized by the loss of the sense of the self (“I”), of the existence of emptiness and connection with divine belief or divine aspects like nature, the universe. In this case the above quote from Jane Goodall characterizes selflessness [6].

Examples below from [7]:

"Connectedness": A spiritual experience of connecting easily with something or person and assuming its form or approach as a family, emotional, or self-bonding.

"Daily spiritual experience": Sensation of a greater power acting in the daily life (examples: "I feel the love of a greater power for me directly or through others", "I feel the presence of a greater power" or "I feel a greater power when I act on all my spirituality / being in my daily life ").

"Meaning": Religious sense of meaning in life (examples: "I have a sense of mission in my life" or "The events in my life unfold according to a divine plan"). This feeling is very interesting because even institutions empower it to put purpose in the work of their employees, which greatly matches the next religious experience below.

"Values / Beliefs": Religious experience of giving value or raising a belief (eg "I feel a deep responsibility to reduce the pain and suffering of the world"). It is clear that any mental aspect can be used for good as the above case, but can be used for evil, something like: "I believe in flat earth and we fight for everyone knows the truth. We know that this was underestimated hypotheses because the illuminati or powerful global groups do not want to tell us the truth about the universe". Becoming aware of these processes is important so that you direct attention more intelligently or think more about what manipulates your thoughts and consequently your actions.

"Forgiveness": A religious feeling of forgiving yourself and others more easily.

"Religious or Spiritual Dealing": Religious or spiritual experience of coping strategies (examples: "I work together with a greater power as partners", "I seek this greater power and I extract strength, support, guidance and balance").

"Mysticism": Sensation of relation to the divine / nature or degrees of motivation by extrasensory perception.

"Transpersonal identification": Deep and emotional feeling of all-embracing (animate or inanimate) in the universe (examples: "I usually feel a strong spiritual and emotional connection with all the people around me", "I feel connected with nature and all its parts seem to become part of one living organism ").

"Self-Forgetfulness": Ability to become absorbed, concentrated, or lost the sense of time (example: "I usually become so fascinated with what I am doing that I lose myself in the moment, as if I were moving away from time") .

We can citer either (to not overextend) Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness (open to new experiences, imaginations, ideas and values), Agreeableness (Trust, altruism, tenderness and etc.), Mindfulness and Conscientiousness.

One important thing is that some factors of spiritual / religious measurements / experiences closely resemble constructions / religifications of personal aspects (as emotional) that naturally exist and can be expanded or awakened.

Some studies show that spiritual and religious phenomena are highly linked with the limbic / sexual system and critical thinking (pre-frontal). Faced with this there are some hypotheses that religion broadened the human senses of empathy and redirected sexual pleasure to religious / spiritual experiences to the point of being evolutionarily positive for survival. It is speculated in the literature that the high sense of empathy facilitated the formation of more organized human groups that turn out better in a natural selection of societies [9-10].

Concluding ...

 The study of neuroscience on these aspects is very recent, about two and a half decades and still many things will be clarified or discovered.

 The field is interesting for new forms of psychological development, mental health, and expansion / transcendence of first-person consciousness to be developed and expanded.

“The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.” -Lao Tzu

References:

[1] Ayahuasca: what mental health professionals need to know, Rafael Guimarães dos Santos et al., Arch. Clin. Psychiatry (São Paulo) vol.44 no.4 São Paulo July/Aug; 2017.

[2] Antidepressant effects of a single dose of ayahuasca in patients with recurrent depression: A preliminary report. Osório Fde, L., Sanches, R. F., Macedo, L. R., Santos, R. G., Maia-de-Oliveira, J. P., Wichert-Ana, L., … , Hallak, J. E. ; 2015.

[3] Selflessness as a universal neuropsychological foundation of spiritual transcendence: validation with Christian, Hindu, and Muslim traditions; Brick Johnstone et al; Mental Health, Religion & Culture; 2017.

[4]Neural correlates of a mystical experience in Carmelite nuns; Mario Beauregard, Vincent Paquette;  Neuroscience Letters; Volume 405, Issue 3; 2006.

[5] Affect as a foundational psychological process for spirituality and empathy; Brick Johnstone et al; Mental Health, Religion & Culture; 2018.

[6] Selflessness as a universal neuropsychological foundation of spiritual transcendence: validation with Christian, Hindu, and Muslim traditions; Mental Health Religion & Culture; 2017.

[7] Convergent/Divergent Validity of the Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiouness/Spirituality: Empirical Support for Emotional Connectedness as a “Spiritual” Construct; Brick Johnstone et al; J. Relig Health; 2011.

[8]  Relations Among Spirituality, Religious Practices, Personality Factors, and Health for Five Different Faith Traditions, Brick Johnstone el at; J Relig Health; 2012.

[9] Darwinian selection and religion: emic and etic contrasts; Loriliai Biernacki; Commentaries; Religion, Brain & Behavior; 2018.

[10] Changing brains: from primal horde to nuclear family to religion; Daniel Cohen; Commentaries; Religion, Brain & Behavior; 2018.