a universalistic biopsychosocial framework for Spiritual experience
Putting up a quote from the writings of Michael Winkleman, Ph.D., who was interviewed extensively in my film...just to give a taste of the complexities at issue and the reveals that are important — for ourselves and for our civilization...
FROM NEURONS TO NIRVANA: THE GREAT MEDICINES
"Cross-cultural studies establish the universality of shamanic practices in hunter-gatherer societies around the world and across time. These universal principles of shamanism reflect underlying neurological processes and provide a basis for an evolutionary theology. The shamanic paradigm involves basic brain processes, neurognostic structures, and innate brain modules. This approach reveals that universals of shamanism such as animism, totemism, soul flight, animal spirits, and death-and-rebirth experiences reflect fundamental brain operations and structures of consciousness. The shamanic paradigm can contribute to a reconciliation of scientific and religious perspectives by providing a universalistic biopsychosocial framework that explicates the biological underpinnings of spiritual experiences and practices and provides a basis for neurotheology and evolutionary theology approaches."
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Funding Unsuccessful This project reached the deadline without achieving its funding goal on September 23, 2011.
Funding period
Jul 25, 2011 -
Sep 23, 2011
(60 days)
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- Website: neuronirvana.net
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Comments
Creator Oliver Hockenhull on September 20, 2011
Thanks Michael for the telegraphic / concise note. Recently finished reading this book
— The Hummingbird's Journey to God: Perspectives on San Pedro; the Cactus of Vision
http://www.amazon.com/Hummingbirds-Journey-God-Perspectives-Cactus/dp/184694242X/ref=sr_1_1…
Which reflects in some ways of the autopoieis experience ... as does this text from Huxley — a very long text to reply to your wonderfully short one!
Aldous Huxley, Prevision, 1944
Awareness not of a name or person, not of things present, not of memories of the past, not even of here or there - for there was no place, only an existence whose single dimension was this knowledge of being ownerless and without possessions and alone.
The awareness knew only itself, and itself only as the absence of something else.
Knowledge reached out into the absence that was its object. Reached out into the darkness, further and further. Reached out into the silence. Illimitable. There were no bounds.
The knowledge knew itself as a boundless absence within another boundless absence, which was not even aware.
It was the knowledge of an absence ever more total, more excruciatingly a privation. And it was aware with a kind of growing hunger, but a hunger for something that did not exist; for the knowledge was only of absence, of pure and absolute absence.
Absence endured through ever-lengthening durations. Durations of restlessness. Durations of hunger. Durations that expanded and expanded as the frenzy of insatiability became more and more intense, and lengthened out into eternities of despair.
Eternities of the insatiable, despairing knowledge of absence within absence, everywhere, always, in an existence of only one dimension...
And then abruptly there was another dimension, and the everlasting ceased to be the everlasting.
That within which the awareness of absence knew itself, that by which it was included and interpenetrated, was no longer an absence, but had become the presence of another awareness. The awareness of absence knew itself known.
In the dark silence, in the void of all sensation, something began to know it. Very dimly at first, from immeasurably far away. But gradually the presence approached. The dimness of that other knowledge grew brighter. And suddenly the awareness had become an awareness of light. The light of the knowledge by which it was known.
In the awareness that there was something other than absence the anxiety found appeasement, the hunger found satisfaction.
Instead of privation there was this light. There was this knowledge of being known. And this knowledge of being known was a satisfied, even a joyful knowledge.
Yes, there was joy in being known, in being thus included within a shining presence, in thus being interpenetrated by a shining presence.
And because the awareness was included by it, interpenetrated by it, there was identification with it. The awareness was not only known by it but knew with its knowledge.
Knew, not absence, but the luminous denial of absence, not privation, but bliss...
Creator Michael Gordon on September 20, 2011
thot it wld be interesting to follow the pratices that revealed 'an explaination' in the, and our, society.
*see autopoiesis