Title : The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain:
A Neurologist's Search
for the God Experience
Author : Kevin Nelson
Pages : 336
Publisher: Dutton Adult
Price : $ 26.95
ISBN : 10:0525951881
If Buddha had been in an MRI machine and not under the Bodhi tree when he attained enlightenment, what would we have seen on the monitor? Dr. Kevin Nelson offers an answer to that question that is beyond whatany scientist has previously encountered on the borderlands of consciousness. In his cutting-edge research, Nelson has discovered that spiritual experiences take place in one of the most primitive areas of the brain. In this eloquent, inspired, and reverent book, he relates the moving stories of patients and research subjects, brain scan analysis, evolutionary biology, and beautiful examples of transcendence from literature to reveal the machinery in our heads that enables us to perceive miracles-whether you are an atheist, Buddhist, or the most devout Catholic.
The patients and people Nelson discuss have had an extremely diverse set of spiritual experiences, from arguing with the devil sitting at the foot of their hospital bed to seeing the universe synchronize around the bouncing of the ball in a pinball machine. However, the bizarre experiences don't make the people seem like freaks; they seem strangely very much like us, in surprising ways. Ultimately Nelson makes clear that spiritual experiences are not the exception in human life, but rather an inescapable and precious part of every one of us.
In our most sublime moments, reaching the spiritual is sometimes within our grasp. Many varieties of spiritual experience can be realized, each sharing the quality of touching the divine. And the passions, so crucial to these brief but hallowed occasions, sweep a vast domain: elation, reverence, inspiration, grace, mercy, acceptance, joy, relief, awe, fear, love, forgiveness and power-are just a few. Although these sentiments are vital to what is an extraordinary event, by themselves they are not uniquely spiritual. These feelings most often find expression, perhaps more faintly, when we are removed from the spiritual during our ordinary everyday lives. Previously we found that even the dramatic out-of-body experience does not always possess a spiritual essence.
Yet there exists one variety of spiritual experience that is made supreme by the fact that it is always and exclusively spiritual. W. T. Stace at Princeton elaborated on the mystical nature and identified that the core feeling of oneness could be expressed in two forms. The extrovertive mystical experience, looks out-ward to the world through the physical senses and finds unity. On the other hand, the introvertive mystical experience turns inward, shuttering out the senses and transcending into a "pure" consciousness.
Some psychologists believe that these experiences were universal to humans. In other words there are no Judeo-Christian, Islamic, Hindu or Buddhist mystical experiences. Instead there are Judeo-Christian, Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist interpretations of mystical experience. And why can't there be pre-historical interpretations too? The trail leading us to the mystical essence within our brain begins with ancient rituals, and eventually brings us on a path cleared by the latest neuroscience technology that points to our primal brain.
Today neuroscience uses hallucinogens like mescal, psilocybin, and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) as probes, with the precision of a molecular scalpel, to identify brain regions and processes essential to mystical experience. And just what are these things in the brain? One of the most crucial is the neurochemical serotonin, known to most people for its role in depression. Serotonin is the foundation of a great neurochemical system important not only for depression but for many other brain functions including fear, memory and the regulation of consciousness itself.
Mystical oneness expresses its transforming power through a special quality of serotonin neurochemistry, specifically the serotonin-2a portion. If we chemically block serotonin-2a in the brain we also block the mystical effect of psilocybin. The limbic system is where our emotional brain resides; be they spiritual or be they ordinary emotions. And if parts of the limbic system containing serotonin-2a nerves are surgically removed, so too is the mystical effect of LSD.
Someone can rightly ask: Are mystical experiences authentic when they are brought on by intentionally manipulating serotonin-2a neurochemistry? Absolutely according to James, who made clear that it is "By their fruits ye shall know them, not by their roots"-as he said for all spiritual experiences. Using modern psychological tools like Hood's mystical scale, we know that psilocybin causes mystical experiences indistinguishable from spontaneous ones like Reed's. Frank's life altering experience was brought out by psilocybin.
Fear, the primal survival emotion and the prime limbic emotion, often accompanies mystical experience. Reed felt terror with his extrovertive mystical experience. Frank felt a similar terror when he became "a point of consciousness", because soon he found himself being pulled into a "center of being" that brought "...a great fear that I would be lost if I reached the heart of this unbearably bright light." If serotonin-2a is directly engaged, as with psilocybin, then some form of fear typically results. But even though the fear can be terrorizing, the experience is usually overshadowed by the power of sensing mystical oneness.
So it should not be surprising to find that fear and mystical experience are intertwined in the limbic system through the workings of serotonin-2a. For example, the medial prefrontal brain is a limbic area that governs the visceral response to things that frighten us. Serotoin-2a may help this area regulate our brain's survival "fight-or-flight" response. Mystical experience is inextricably bound to our primal brain down to the molecular level. If we were to know what each brain molecule does during these experiences, would the mystery of spirituality live on? We can't escape from this question as it stands before us. So lets next explore the mystery, and see if we can find out what it means to have a spiritual doorway in the brain.
Kevin Nelson, M.D. has over three decades of experience examining the processes of spiritual sensation, in the last 26 years as a professor of neurology at the University of Kentucky. In University of Kentucky he practiced clinical neurology and neurophysiology for more than 25 years, and published in scientific journals that include Muscle and Nerve, Neurology, and the New England Journal of Medicine. "The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain" was released December 30th, 2010. If you wish to confidentially share your spiritual experience, Dr. Nelson can be contacted by email: kevin@thespiritualdoorway.org.
More information can be obtained at thespiritualdoorway.org.
Review Text Courtesy: http://booksellers.penguin.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780525951889,00.html, http://www.amazon.com/
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-spiritual-doorway-in-the-brain/201011/the-supreme-spiritual-experience
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