This book is vast, but all I am adding is quotes because a friend had asked me for them, and it took a long time to type them out.
"Dr. Andrew NewbergThis book is vast, but all I am adding is quotes because a friend had asked me for them, and it took a long time to type them out.
"Dr. Andrew Newberg is a neuroscientist who studies the relationship between brain function and various mental states. He is a pioneer in the neurological study of religious and spiritual experiences, a field known as “neurotheology.” His research includes taking brain scans of people in prayer, meditation, rituals, and trance states, in an attempt to better understand the nature of religious and spiritual practices and attitudes...
While some authors compare religious hallucinations caused by schizophrenia, and while there are similarities between them, further study shows that these states are profoundly different in specific ways.
Both states may be accompanied by religious visions, voices, and other unusual events. But mystics and psychotics respond to their experiences in dramatically different way. Mystics almost always describe their experiences as ecstatic and joyful, and the spiritual unity they claim to achieve is most often described using words such as “serenity,” “wholeness,” “transcendence,” and “love.” Psychotics, on the other hand, are often confused and terribly frightened by their religious hallucinations, which are often highly distressing in nature and often include the presence of an angry, reproachful God.
Psychotic states can last for years, and they inevitably drive their victims into progressively deeper states of social isolation. Mystics, on the other hand, are often among the most respected members of some societies.
Mystics and psychotics tend to have very different interpretations of the meaning of their experiences. Psychotics have feelings of grandiosity, for example, as emissaries from God…
Mystical experiences are also set apart, from all hallucinatory states, by the high degree of sensory complexity they usually involve. Hallucinations usually involve a single sensory system-a person may see a vision, hear a disembodied voice, or feel a sense of presence, but rarely are multiple senses simultaneous involved. Mystical experiences, on the other hand, tend to be rich, coherent, and deeply dimensioned sensory experiences…In the plainest terms, they simply feel very real.
Hallucinations, of course, also feel real while they persist, but when hallucinating individuals return to normal consciousness, they immediately recognize the fragmented and dreamlike nature of their hallucinatory interlude, and understand that is was all a mistake of the mind. Mystics, however, can never be persuaded that their experiences were not real. This sense of realness does not fade as they emerge from their mystical states, and it does not dissipate over time.
God visits the soul in a way that prevents it doubting when it comes to itself that it has been in God and God in it,” says Teresa of Avila, “ so firmly is it convince of this truth that, though years may pass before this state recurs, the soul can never forget it, to doubt its reality.”...more
“The further philosophical problem of there having been a beginning arises with the idea that the beginning of our universe marks the beginning of tim“The further philosophical problem of there having been a beginning arises with the idea that the beginning of our universe marks the beginning of time, space, and matter. Before our universe came into being, there is every scientific indication that time did not exist. Whatever brought the universe into existence must of course predate the universe, which in turn means that whatever brought the universe into existence must predate time. That which predates time is not bound by time. Not inside of time. In other words, it is eternal. If the laws of physics, or at least some aspect of the laws of physics, did the job of creation, those laws by necessity are eternal.”
“Wisdom, information, an idea, is the link between the metaphysical Creator and the physical creation. It is the hidden face of God.”
“The further philosophical problem of there having been a beginning arises with the idea that the beginning of our universe marks the beginning of time, space, and matter. Before our universe came into being, there is every scientific indication that time did not exist. Whatever brought the universe into existence must of course predate the universe, which in turn means that whatever brought the universe into existence must predate time. That which predates time is not bound by time. Not inside of time. In other words, it is eternal. If the laws of physics, or at least some aspect of the laws of physics, did the job of creation, those laws by necessity are eternal.” ...more
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