Mapping the mystical union
The Unio Mystica--mystical union with God--has long been a goal of particular forms of Christian piety. Now it's a scientific goal as well.Using Carmelite nuns as subjects, a Canadian brain-imager is seeking to discover what parts of the brain are involved in experiences of mystical union--not, he says, to prove the brain has a "God center," but to map the neurological processes beneath this mystical experience.
"Preliminary data," writes The Economist in a column titled "spiritual neurology," "implicate a network of brain regions in the Unio Mystica, including those associated with emotion processing and the spatial representation of self."
This preliminary data, however, leads to a traditional criticism of the psychology of religion: that experiments are "not really measuring a mystical experience at all—merely an intense emotional one."
.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Friday, March 05, 2004
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