The Mystic’s Brain: The Biology of Contemplative Practice
Embodied Brain: On Yoga, Neuroplasticity, and Science • 1h 25m
Current research on mystical experience in neuroscience, genetics, and evolutionary cognitive science has proven that mystical experience has a real and verifiable basis in our biology. Until recently, academic religion scholars tended to side with older schools of science that dismissed mystical consciousness as a merely private experience or as an illusion. Contemplatives had to struggle against strong cultural currents to defend the value of their life-altering experiences and insights. But with the help of recent advances in the biology of meditation, we now know that the recipe for mystical experience has been engraved like a rail upon our brains. It turns out that our brains are genetically coded for transcendence.
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