Let us see high states of consciousness, including spiritual or transcendental states, in terms of the brain's functioning. First let us understand that that virtually every sense-perception, as well as bodily sensation, is mediated by the nervous system. This means that all of this requires a certain amount of neural activity to be dedicated to it. Let us consider the individual's neural capacity to be fixed. The primary factor I am going to be discussing is the potential of consciousness being largely determined by dividing total capacity by the amount of neurons required to mediate perceptions. Regardless, all perceptions and bodily sensations are mediated by neural activity, as I stated previously. The more sensations you experience, and the more neurons directed towards mediating them, the less capacity you have for experiencing expanded states of consciousness. John Lily devised a brilliant device for dealing with this fact, and allowing expanded states of consciousness to be accessed more easily; I am speaking of the isolation tank. Here virtually all perceptions and bodily sensations cease to be. All of your neural potential that would have been directed towards these perceptions, is now freed for new activity. Because of this, your potential for experiencing expanded states of consciousness is greatly increased. This is the basic principle behind meditation, as well as the monk-lifestyle. Through meditation, or leaving the societal life altogether to live in a monastery, or a cave, or whatever, this same basic principle is applied. (CONTINUED IN POST BELOW)
A technique for addressing this specific problem is meditation with what are called asanas. This is where you pick a position in which to put your body, and during the time of meditation you do not move your body AT ALL. Perhaps slowing the mind would be good as well, but that is not the primary purpose of this mediation. The purpose is to keep your body absolutely still throughout the meditation. You cannot itch, you cannot address any discomfort, you cannot move at all. Now, your nervous system/brain works largely through feedback loops. This means that feedback is a cue for persistence of the existing processes. If you address the itch, or do any movement in response to some physical sensation, you are giving your brain a cue to continue these sensations. Through absolutely ignoring them, keeping your body absolutely still in the asana no matter what, your brain can learn to basically close these bodily feedback loops down. This is the attainment of the asana. If you can accomplish this, your nervous system will basically cease sending signals to your body, and there will be no distractions while you are in the asana. Because of this, intense physical bliss is possible. Also because of this, high states of consciousness, and intense spiritual or transcendental experiences become possible. These states come by your brain not being distracted by routine functions. The more these distractions are removed, the more of your brain’s power can be directed towards intense experiences in consciousness. Looking deeper yet, detaching from conceptual or emotional responses can close down deeper feedback loops in your cognitive functioning, which can open up even deeper states of consciousness, even more transcendental experiences. Note that in this view, spirituality and science are reconciled. Spiritual experiences are seen as being legitimate functions of the brain, which can be induced by specific techniques, and that our knowledge of all of this can be expanded through scientific analysis.
When you speak to another individual, A part of your brain goes off. When you pray to a "god" if you are religious the same neurological effect happens in the brain. So, when someone says they have spoken to god, you can not say they did not because neurologically its true.
But during a conversation, your partner(s) speaks by causing vibrations in the air, your ear picks up the vibrations and the inner ear converts them into electrical impulses which go to your wernicke's area in the brain where they're processed and broken down into a format which you can understand. While speaking to "god" none of this back and forth occurs. So you could say they're speaking to something, but that something is not speaking back. It's no different than speaking to a rock. So, I say they did not speak to "god", because neurologically it's not true. TheJourney: Everything you said makes sense. It makes me wonder if you could train yourself to increase mental capacity by sensory stimulation and then take advantage of the extra capacity by also training yourself to meditate deeply enough to make use of it. Or perhaps training in stimulation prevents someone from attaining deep concentration. I'm just not yet convinced that living a monk lifestyle is required to reach deeper levels. I think a combination of technology (sensory deprivation chamber, binaural tones, and personal eegs, drugs, mastery of the neuroscience field) combined with mastery of many styles of meditation is the optimal way forward. Technology provides a way to measure progress and practicing different techniques could reveal the best parts of each technique through monitoring tools (eegs). I'm not saying you believe we should all live like monks, I get the feeling you're in favor in a science/meditation approach as well, but I think a lot of people believe we should go the 100% spirituality route. I think that route is no longer fruitful.
I think that some form of sensory isolation, let's just say meditation, increases depth of brain-activity registered by your conscious mind. It increases sensitivity to more subtle things, which therefore increases the amount of 'excitement' evoked from a given sensation. I think that, particularly with all the technology we have available to us today, this could perhaps be used in tandem with sensory stimulation, which seems to be what you're suggesting. The levels of sensitivity and depth which are attained through things such as meditation would be attempted to be brought into various forms of sensory stimulation, which would increase the amount of signals you are able to take in while maintaining the same state, which could then be further transcended through techniques like meditation, and on and on. This would be a subtle and individual process... I think the full on monk lifestyle has its advantages, but it's certainly not my path. I do not believe it is necessary, and I think part of the purpose of this modern age is bringing those benefits into the world, and combining it with all of the various other advances taking place in the world right now. Interesting you mention binaural beats...someone else just mentioned them too...I've never really gave them much of a try, but it does seem kind of interesting...maybe I should give it more of a chance.
I like the hemi-sync series. It's a guided meditation which teaches a lot of techniques and emphasizes exploration. Edit: Also there are hours and hours of tracks in the series, really good stuff. Highly recommend.
I agree with what you are saying, but how can someone say they are not speaking back? Have you ever spoken to god? Perception is reality my friend and if someone believes they are speaking to another individual they are. Words are meaningless, we as humans have created words to better communicate and evolve in such a way I can type this right now. The "beings" people talk to are on a such a high level of consciousness words are not needed. So are words even used at all?
Have you ever monitored a believer speaking to god while hooked up to an eeg? Electroencephalography - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In any case, unless you can prove a god exists, anyone "speaking to "god"" is talking to themselves. It may be that people perceive them as beings because they can't imagine anything intelligent or wise coming from themselves, but any wisdom is coming from their own mind.
As someone who grew up religious, I'm fairly accustomed to the mindset and how when you pray, you honestly think that your talking to someone. Placebo can be a crazy phenomenon.
I just tried my first binaural beat meditation. I had, I think, the best meditation experience I've had since I've recently got back into it. Interesting stuff...I'm gonna stick with it...