Mysticism, Music, and your Brain
The Neurological Connections of Mysticism and Music Part 1: The Brain
Have you ever experienced God?
Whether it is through chants, hymns, or meditation, many people claim to have experienced God. It is said that there is a neurological basis for everything that we do and experience. So, what are the neurological foundations of mystical experiences? If indeed there are any.
In this two-part story, we will explore the brain’s role in mystical, and often religious, experiences and how music can help facilitate them.
Part 1: The Brain
Mystical Experience
Mystical experiences tend to have a negative connotation attached to them today. The phrase brings to mind everything from meditation to drug induced stupors; so we will begin by defining exactly what is meant by a mystical experience.
Mysticism is “a doctrine of an immediate spiritual intuition of truths believed to transcend ordinary understanding, or of a direct, intimate union of the soul with God through contemplation or ecstasy.” A mystical experience then is one that influences or imparts understanding of the transcendental. It often results in a feeling of “oneness” or “unity” with the universe or God.
Today though, mysticism is often used as a catch-all for what is considered religious weirdness. But research has shown that these experiences are perhaps more real than their reputation allows.
Far from the common belief that these are simply crude superstitions, there have been many documented cases of mystical experiences. Often times people say that their awareness expands and they lose their sense of “self” during these experiences. Dr. Michael Blain at the University Of Illinois Medical Center described his mystical experience as the “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 profound sense of connection to everything, recognizing that there never was a true separation at all.”
To clearly understand the topic of relaxing the dualistic mind, it helps to first understand that people have a conscious self and an unconscious self.
The Dualistic Mind
The conscious self is the part of the mind that has agency; it makes choices. It relies on rational thought and logical processes. The unconscious is defined as the mental processes of which a person is not aware. It appears as if this conscious self goes dormant during mystical experiences, allowing unconscious self to essentially take over the mind.
This concept of the “self” outside of or away from the outside world is an idea that has been developed and debated since Descartes. In studying mysticism, “neuroscience confirms what philosophers have long hypothesized: that reality is constructed by our brains, that what we see is only what our brains are capable of seeing.” Information is continually streaming into our brains from our senses about outside sources. It enters our minds as scattered bits of information, but this is not how we perceive our world. Instead, the brain creates order from the chaos.
The different hemispheres of the brain are responsible for the cohesive perception formed within the mind. There are two main hemispheres of the brain, the left and the right, and each specializes in different tasks. The left hemisphere focuses on details, while the right side tends to see the big picture.
V.S. Ramachadran, a doctor of neuroscience at University of California San Diego, has long specialized in helping people with afflictions of the brain, from phantom limbs, to hallucinations of cartoon characters. In his book, Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Mind, he writes about an experiment performed by Dr. Michael Persinger. In this experiment, Dr. Persinger used a transcanial magnetic stimulator, a giant magnet that is placed on your head. When turned on, it causes weak electric currents, allowing specific parts of the brain to be essentially turned on or off. Stimulating specific parts of his temporal lobe, Dr. Persinger found to his amazement that he experienced God.
Intrigued by this experiment, Ramachandran went on to apply the results in his own work with epileptic seizure patients. Numerous people who have epileptic seizures claim to have deeply moving religious experiences while they are having seizures, including the feeling of a divine presence or a sense that they are directly connected with God. This phenomena, linking mystic experiences with a neurological origin, is also found in people who are schizophrenic.
As more data has been amassed and further experiments have been designed, a definite link has been found between mysticism and brain activity in certain regions. Many studies have focused specifically on the right hemisphere’s role in mystical experiences since it is the creative region and processes a larger picture of the world outside of ones self.
Right Brain Dominance
The right side of the brain has long been thought to be the more “creative side”. While this is definitely an oversimplification, the right and left sides of the brain do have strengths is different areas, and right brain awareness may be a way to trigger a mystical experience. This would be possible because the right side of the brain is focused more on the big picture, while the left focuses more on the smaller details. By simply switching ones’ conscious thinking from the left side to the right, consciousness would change from focusing on the self to concentrating on the “larger picture”.
To test this hypothesis, people who claimed to have mystical experiences through meditation or prayer had their brains imaged while undergoing said activity. Meditation produced a reduction in activity levels of the posterior superior parietal lobe which is known for keeping the body orientated within space. If this sense of orientation is disrupted, it could explain the feeling of connection to the larger universe and letting go of boundaries, such as what was experienced by Dr. Blain.
This right brain dominance can be brought about by repetitive tasks such as chanting, drumming, dancing, or intense concentrated attention such as with meditation. A more bizarre mystical experience though, is one that is experienced by people who spontaneously switch to right brain consciousness. “This suggests that in some people, left-hemisphere dominance is less well established, enabling them to switch easily between these two modes of perception” (The Dalhouse Review). The sudden switch suggests not only a less well established left brain dominance, but also that everyone is capable of having a mystical experience.
Interruptions
Mystical experiences are not always as simple as switching from left to right though. There are other regions that control where the conscious self ends and the rest of the world begins. These regions can be “turned off” by a decrease in blood flow.
Multiple brain circuits, which are neuron-to-neuron connections, must be inhibited in order to feel that “time, fear and self-consciousness have dissolved…” Rituals can focus the mind to blocks out sensory perceptions, including those that are used to figure out the boundaries of the self.
There are several regions that must be interrupted for these experiences to take place:
- The amygdala, which monitors the environment for threats as well are registers fear.
- Parietal-lobe circuits which help orientate one’s self and create a distinction between self and the world. It does this by integrating sensory information from different parts of the brain, particularly those concerned with special sense and navigation. Thus to create a mystical experience these circuits must also be dampened.
- Frontal and temporal-lobe circuits must be quieted in order to dissolve the self and awareness of time. When parietal lobes quiet, a person can feel one with the universe.
Disassociation and Heightening
This region specific dampening is not the only way to produce mystical experiences. Two other ways are disassociation and the heightening of certain areas of the brain.
In dissociation, the areas of the brain that normally work together no longer recognize each other as being active. This produces dissociation from one’s self and leads one to experience unconscious thought. Just how this disassociation works is still a mystery.
The heightening of activity in specific brain areas is a much more documented and understood way of undergoing a mystical experience. For example, through electroencephalogram, a test that measures and records the electrical activity of the brain, it has been found that the frontal lobe, which is linked to concentration, is not always quieted during meditation. Instead, it can receive an excess of blood flow, meaning that its function is heightened.
Another important region that is excited in mystical experiences is the limbic system. The limbic system is a collection of structures in the brain that work to produce such things as emotion and behavior. In Dr. Ramachandran’s experiments, he found that the limbic system mediates emotion through a back-and-forth connection with the frontal-lobe. If this connection is intensified by increased frontal-lobe activity, then a person’s emotions are also intensified, similar to what is experienced in mysticism.
The power of the ritual comes into play in the heightening of emotions. Drumming, dancing, and incantations all focus attention to a single source of sensory stimuli, which seems to be the key to mysticism. This intense focus blocks out other stimuli, which in turn dampens the function of certain areas of the brain and heightens other areas that deal with emotion. The hippocampus (the part of the brain that maintains this equilibrium) is interrupted during rituals. When the hippocampus is interrupted, it inhibits signaling between neurons preventing communication to different parts of the brain.
Clearly, mysticism is not simply a religious experience, but also a physical one.
Part 2: Music coming soon
Bibliography and Further reading
Begley, Sharon. “Religion and the Brain.” Newsweek Magazine. 7 May 2001. www.american-buddha.com
Begley, Sharon. “Searching for the God Within.” Newsweek Magazine. 29 Jan. 2001.
Dorfman, Andrea. “Music on the Brain.” Science. 5 June 2000. www.psych.mcgill.ca
Harris, Keith Ph.D. “Review of the Conscious Mind.” Metapsychology Online Reviews. Volume 10, Issue 11. 14 March 2010. http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net.
Hunt, Harry. “Dark Nights of the Soul: Phenomenology and Neurocognition of Spiritual Suffering in Mysticism and Psychosis.” Review of General Psycology. American Psychological Association Vol 11.No.3. 2007.
John A. Bargh and EzequielMorsella. “The Unconscious Mind.” Perspectives On Psychological Science. Jan2008, Vol. 3 Issue 1
Khan, HazratInayat. The Mysticism of Sound and Music. Shanbhala.Boston, 1996.
Krumhansl, Carl. “Music: A Link Between Congntion and Emotion.” Psychological Science. Vol 11. No. 2. April 2002.
Levitin, Daniel J. This is Your Brain On Music. Plume.NY, 2006.
Logan, John. “Music and the Mind.” The Free Press. NY, 1992.
Virginia Woolf’s Brain: Mysticism, Literature and Neuroscience. The Dalhouse Review.
V.S. Ramachadran. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Mind. Quill Willim Morrow. NY, 1998.
