Sensing the divine : influences of near-death, out-of-body & cognate neurology in shaping early religious behaviours / Michael N. Marsh.
Marsh, Michael N.
2021
BL535 .M37 2021eb
Available Online

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Title Sensing the divine : influences of near-death, out-of-body & cognate neurology in shaping early religious behaviours / Michael N. Marsh.
Author Marsh, Michael N.
ISBN 9783030673260 (electronic bk.)
303067326X (electronic bk.)
3030673251
9783030673253
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67326-0
Published Cham, Switzerland : Springer, 2021.
Copyright ©2021
Language English
Description 1 online resource (ix, 216 pages)
Item Number 10.1007/978-3-030-67326-0 doi
Call Number BL535 .M37 2021eb
Dewey Decimal Classification 202/.3
Summary This book proposes another unique basis for the origins of religion from disturbances in brain function. It proposes the novel idea that near-death and out-of-body experiences (ND/OBE) engendered "a sense of the divine" in ancient man. As the author points out, key aspects of ND/OBE are thematic of all later established religions. These include journeys to heaven, sightings of brightly-lit godlike figures, and dead people now alive. Thus, ND/OBE could be the originating source of these spiritual motifs. To this, the author adds a fourth factor: various brain influences contribute to or modulate ND/OBE. Such cognate neurological disorders include REM-sleep intrusions, sleep paralysis, narcolepsy, and the Guillain-Barre syndrome. Errors due to aberrant switching between key neural control centers disrupt critical state-boundaries between consciousness and dreaming. This may induce NDE. Thus, in this state, subjects temporarily fail to understand where they are, undergo loss of self, and detached from the world. They imagine a "union with Gods." Here, then, is the biological basis of ineffability. Ancient humans gained beliefs about the "supernatural" through day-to-day existence. This book argues that near death experiences and cognate neurological conditions, some genetically-determined, could have facilitated, even augmented such beliefs. Hence, in configuring another realm of spiritual experience beyond the known environment, these neurological possibilities offer effective traction
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
Series New approaches to the scientific study of religion.
Available in Other Form Print version: 9783030673253
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Introduction
Part I: Anthropological Perspectives
Tracing Our Origins
Evolving Man, Evolving Social Animal
Part II: Near-Death/Out-of-Body Experiences and Cognate Neurological Aberrations
The Phenomenology of the Near-Death Experience
Pathological Dream-States: Comparisons with ND/OBE
The Neurophysiology & Phenomenology of the Out-of-Body Experience
Upwards & Onwards: Flight as an Ancient Connection to the Divine
The Post-experiential Subject
Part III: The Origins of Spirituality and Religion
The post-experiential subject
Developmental "hows" of the spiritual dimension
Resume.

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