Overview
- Presents a unique view on the origin of religion from disturbed brain function
- Studies the influence of cognate neurological disorders on near-death experiences
- Details how key aspects of near death experiences are themes in established religions
Part of the book series: New Approaches to the Scientific Study of Religion (NASR, volume 9)
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Table of contents (10 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Anthropological Perspectives
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Front Matter
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Near-Death/Out-of-Body Experiences and Cognate Neurological Aberrations
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Front Matter
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The Origins of Spirituality and Religion
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
- Being Out-of-Body
- Brain Pathology
- Brain & Consciousness
- Dreaming, Sleeping & Awakening
- Eschatology and Out of Body Experience
- Genes & Religious Belief
- Mysticism & Ascensions Heavenward
- Near-Death Experience
- Origins of “Religious States of Mind”
- Spirituality: Divine-Human Contact
- Near-death experience and spirituality
- Phenomenology of Being Out of Body
- Phenomenology of near-death Experience
About this book
This book proposes another unique basis for the origins of religion from disturbances in brain function. It proposes the novel idea that near-death and out-of-body experiences (ND/OBE) engendered “a sense of the divine” in ancient man.
As the author points out, key aspects of ND/OBE are thematic of all later established religions. These include journeys to heaven, sightings of brightly-lit godlike figures, and dead people now alive. Thus, ND/OBE could be the originating source of these spiritual motifs. To this, the author adds a fourth factor: various brain influences contribute to or modulate ND/OBE. Such cognate neurological disorders include REM-sleep intrusions, sleep paralysis, narcolepsy, and the Guillain-Barré syndrome. Errors due to aberrant switching between key neural control centers disrupt critical state-boundaries between consciousness and dreaming. This may induce NDE. Thus, in this state, subjects temporarily fail to understand where they are, undergo loss of self, and detached from the world. They imagine a “union with Gods.” Here, then, is the biological basis of ineffability.
Ancient humans gained beliefs about the "supernatural" through day-to-day existence. This book argues that near death experiences and cognate neurological conditions, some genetically-determined, could have facilitated, even augmented such beliefs. Hence, in configuring another realm of “spiritual” experience beyond the known environment, these neurological possibilities offer effective traction.Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Sensing the Divine
Book Subtitle: Influences of Near-Death, Out-of-Body & Cognate Neurology in Shaping Early Religious Behaviours
Authors: Michael N. Marsh
Series Title: New Approaches to the Scientific Study of Religion
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67326-0
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-67325-3Published: 11 August 2021
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-67328-4Published: 12 August 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-67326-0Published: 10 August 2021
Series ISSN: 2367-3494
Series E-ISSN: 2367-3508
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: IX, 216
Topics: Spirituality, Biological and Physical Anthropology, Phenomenology