the timboucher experience

Last night I did a lot of reading about the neurobiological basis for religious experience. It’s very interesting stuff, and I find that once you start delving into it tends to ask more questions than it does answer. A lot of good points were raised by people in the comments to that post, so I won’t try to rehash them here. But I would like to articulate an idea I had last night.

One of the theories as to why scientists like Persinger’s experiments “work” is that they play upon what’s called the bicameral mind. Bicameral simply means “two chambered.” It comes from the same Latin root that the word “camera” does. The chambers refer to what is more commonly called the hemispheres in the mind. Persinger’s theory goes, in simplified form:

[...] the right hemisphere of the brain, the seat of emotion, is stimulated in the cerebral region presumed to control notions of self, and then the left hemisphere, the seat of language, is called upon to make sense of this nonexistent entity [...]

Then, while reading another article on the topic, I found this interesting personal testimony of someone who took part in the neurotheology experiments:

There was a relaxing of the dualistic mind, and an intense feeling of love. I felt a profound letting go of the boundaries around me, and a connection with some kind of energy and state of being that had a quality of clarity, transparency and joy.

I felt a deep and profound sense of connection to everything, recognizing that there never was a true separation at all.

It’s wild how explicitly this person’s testimony highlights the whole bicameral mind issue. I don’t know why I never considered the possibility before, but it makes me wonder if duality in religion either springs from or is connected to the duality inside of our heads: the two brain hemispheres, the bicameral mind. Like what if good vs. bad is “simply” a byproduct of a mind which is not good at communicating across the hemispheres, and therefore tries to villify the products of the other half?

Also noteworthy is that this person above says that they felt boundaries dissolve, and an intense feeling of love. Perhaps this feeling of love relates to more effective communication across brain hemispheres. There is something called the corpus callosum which connects the two sides of the mind. Perhaps, in this experience, that bridge is turbo-charged or something. I once read an esoteric explanation of the “dove” symbol as relating to the corpus callosum. It’s body was the physical bridge and it’s outstretched wings indicated that the nerve impulse between the two sides of the brain were activated and unified. Which brings me to the story of Jesus. He was baptized in the River Jordan by John the Baptist, and during this event, the dove of the Holy Spirit descended and filled him up. Thenceforth, he went on to teach a radical message of boundary dissolving love. Love God, love thy neighbor, love thy enemy.

We could also look at the early Church argument on the nature of Jesus in a new way. When they said Jesus was “Fully God” and “Fully Man”, maybe they meant that he was fully unified in his mind. The God side representing the non-rational right hemisphere and the Man side being the left.

Jesus also said something about being “the fulfillment of the Law,” and thereby is credited with having freed us from the strictures of Hebrew Mosaic Old Testament laws. This is perhaps amplified by the following quote about rule following and hemisphere dominance:

Left brain people want to know the rules and follow them. In fact, if there are no rules for situations, they will probably make up rules to follow! Left brain students know the consequences of not turning in papers on time or of failing a test.

In that quote, they go on to say that right brained people do basically the opposite, changing the environment and the rules to suit them. Whether you attribute these differences in behavior to one or the other brain hemisphere or to advanced communication between them is not terribly important in my eyes. Although maybe “cosmic consciousness” or what they call “Christ consciousness” makes a better descriptive word for the phenomenon described by the dove symbol. Who knows. I often complain about reductionist explanations though, so I’d prefer to stay flexible with using this as a metaphor, rather than as a solution or a final answer. The truth, I’m sure is a lot more complex than this, but it’s an interesting theory to entertain whether or not you adopt it.

• Julian Jaynes
• Left brain bias
• Neurotheology
• Cults and the Bicameral Mind
• Sleepy Brain