Zygon®
June 2, 2006
91 citations
Near-death experiences (NDEs) often include a sense of separation from the body, encounters with religious figures, and a feeling of cosmic unity. Although prior religious belief does not predict NDEs, the depth of the experience is strongly linked to religious change afterward. Experiencers typically report decreased fear of death, increased empathy, a shift from ego-centered to other-centered consciousness, and a deepened spiritual outlook. These changes meet the definition of spiritual transformation: a dramatic shift in belief, attitude, and behavior. NDEs do not favor any particular religious tradition but foster general spiritual growth in individuals and society.
Zygon®
March 1, 2004
Michael A. Winkelman
90 citations
Shamanic practices, found universally across hunter-gatherer societies worldwide and throughout history, reflect fundamental neurological processes and brain structures. The shamanic paradigm—including animism, totemism, soul flight, animal spirits, and death-and-rebirth experiences—arises from innate brain modules and neurognostic structures. This universal biopsychosocial framework can bridge scientific and religious perspectives by explaining the biological underpinnings of spiritual experiences, thereby providing a basis for neurotheology and evolutionary theology.
Zygon®
March 2, 2001
R. Joseph
83 citations
Religious and spiritual experiences have evolutionary neurological foundations rooted in the limbic system, particularly the amygdala, hippocampus, and temporal lobe. These brain structures are responsible for trancelike states, dreaming, near-death and out-of-body experiences, and hallucinations of supernatural beings. Historical religious figures such as Abraham, Moses, Muhammad, and Jesus Christ are described as displaying limbic system hyperactivity, and patients report similar phenomena when these areas are stimulated. The limbic and temporal lobe structures account for sexual and violent aspects of religious behavior and are proposed to serve as a "transmitter to God," with their evolution making spiritual experience possible.
Zygon®
March 1, 1989
G. Macdonald, John L. Cove, C. Laughlin et al.
30 citations
Portalling, a mystical experience of moving from one reality to another via a tunnel, door, or aperture, occurs across many cultures. This experience can be triggered by concentrating on devices like mirrors, mandalas, labyrinths, or pools of water in shamanistic and meditative practices. The authors argue that portalling is fundamental to the multiple reality cosmologies found in traditional cultures. They explain it as a radical re-entrainment of the brain's neurological systems that mediate experience. The paper reports phenomenological experiments using mirror portalling devices from both Tibetan and Tsimshian religious traditions.
Zygon®
September 2, 2001
K. Helmut Reich
23 citations
Spirituality is an essential part of being human, and a life based solely on materialism is impoverished. Han F. de Wit argues that spirituality cultivates courage, compassion, joy, clarity of mind, and wisdom. Stanislav Grof focuses on personal spiritual experiences gained through altered states of consciousness. Both authors draw on long-term personal experiences and those of others to define spirituality and describe approaches to spiritual development. They contend that third-person knowledge and judgments about humanness must be supplemented by appropriately derived first-person knowledge and judgments about humaneness.
Zygon®
August 18, 2017
Chris Letheby
18 citations
A pressing philosophical problem is how to respond to existential anxiety and disenchantment arising from a naturalistic worldview that rejects transcendent foundations for meaning. The popularization of neuroscience makes this disenchanted view of humans more vivid and widespread. The study of transformative experiences from classic psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin may reveal a practical solution. Although psychedelic transformation often involves nonnaturalistic metaphysical beliefs, research suggests key elements of psychedelic spirituality are consistent with naturalism. These include disruption of neurocognitive mechanisms underpinning the sense of self, leading to self-transcendence and decoupling of attention from personal concerns, which can broaden perspectives and foster wonder and appreciation for life.
Zygon®
August 26, 2014
G. William Barnard
18 citations
Drawing on William James and others, the essay proposes a nonphysicalistic view of the brain-consciousness relationship to argue that entheogenic visionary and mystical experiences are not hallucinations. It examines the Santo Daime tradition, a Brazilian religious movement from the early twentieth century, as a contemporary mystery school that uses ayahuasca in a disciplined context. The essay covers the religion's history, key theological assumptions, the central role of visionary experiences, the importance of healing and spiritual transformation, and the necessity of spiritual discipline within this entheogen-based faith.
Zygon®
August 26, 2014
Ron Cole‐turner
11 citations
Psychedelic drugs like LSD and psilocybin reliably produce mystical experiences, enabling brain research during such states. Key questions remain: whether drug-occasioned mystical experiences are neurologically identical to traditional mystical states, and whether they differ phenomenologically and theologically. As research progresses and public awareness grows, religious scholars and science-and-religion experts will be needed to interpret the philosophical and theological presuppositions underlying this work and the meaning of its findings.
Zygon®
February 12, 2017
Ismael Apud
9 citations
The boundary between science and religion is not fixed but arises from how consciousness, intentionality, and spirituality relate to each other. Tracing this from the dawn of modern science through the nineteenth century and into the 1960s counterculture, new schools in psychology and anthropology emerged that reshaped the divide. The psychoactive Amazonian brew ayahuasca serves as a case study: first within the broader academic field of ayahuasca studies, then through three specific cases in Spain. The author argues that science is permeable to spiritual ontologies, drawing on social and cognitive sciences to show that the demarcation problem is historically contingent and interdisciplinary.
Zygon®
September 1, 2001
K. Peters
8 citations
The author questions whether neurotheology, as proposed by d'Aquili and Newberg, is comprehensive enough to address the moral and social dimensions of religion. An alternative is offered: evolutionary theology, grounded in biocultural evolution, which views ultimate reality as immanent in natural and human history. While evolutionary theology accounts for both neurology and culturally evolved religious ideas, it cannot explain the mystic experience of absolute unitary being. Neurotheology better accounts for this transcendent experience. Neither theology, however, explains how transcendent ultimate reality gives rise to the changing world of baseline reality.
Zygon®
June 1, 2014
S. Ruper
4 citations
Religious naturalism differs from supernatural religion mainly through metaphysical minimalism, but some versions are more minimalist than others, and a few reject metaphysics entirely. This paper compares the soteriology—the theory of salvation or spiritual transformation—of Jerome Stone's ontologically reticent Minimalist Vision with Donald Crosby's ontologically rich Religion of Nature. The analysis shows that for these two varieties of religious naturalism, metaphysics influences soteriology, metaphysical minimalism limits soteriological potential, and metaphysics enhances soteriological potential. These conclusions assert the relevance of metaphysics to religious function and urge further investigation into religious experience and quality as they may relate to metaphysics.
Zygon®
June 1, 2014
D. Stewart
2 citations
A robust theological anthropology requires genuine interdisciplinary dialogue, with depth psychology offering a particularly fruitful partner due to its focus on the totality of human experience, including unconscious aspects, and its ability to interpret archetypal symbols and mythological thinking. By arguing for a psycho-theological hermeneutic that recognizes depth psychology's view that origin myths are also about the emergence of human consciousness, the author demonstrates that Jungian archetypes in Genesis 1–3 allow a psychological reading without diminishing theological themes of exile and return. Such a reading suggests the narrative is about how consciousness emerged in human community, not about sin entering creation.
Zygon®
February 1, 2026
Michael James Winkelman, Andrew B. Newberg
The self is necessary for consciousness and central to spirituality. Downregulation of the right parietal lobe (rPL) is linked to spiritual experiences and meditative practices. The rPL supports the embodied self; its disturbance is associated with selflessness and spiritual experience. While many forms of self are incompatible with mystical experiences, the affective core self—the most ancient form—directly corresponds to many characteristics of such experiences. The affective core self and right-hemisphere processes in core spiritual features suggest a reversion to earlier self-representation, explaining the neurophenomenology of some spiritual experiences.
Zygon®
June 1, 2020
Christian Coseru
Buddhism can accommodate a meaningful conception of free will, but one that differs from Western incompatibilist notions of ultimate control or the freedom to do otherwise. The article argues that accounts of physical and neurobiological processes do not settle the free will debate; instead, the key issue is mental autonomy grounded in meditative cultivation. This conception of autonomy is compatible with the three cardinal Buddhist doctrines of momentariness, dependent arising, and no-self, because these doctrines do not eliminate agency but reframe it as a conditioned, self-correcting process. Buddhism thus has sufficient resources to account for personal agency, self-control, and moral responsibility, even within its antisubstantialist metaphysics.