The mechanics of mysticism?
Thanks to James McGrath for pointing me at this article, which sets out at least a partial neurological mechanism for mystical experience.
The question has to be, of course, does this in any way negate such experience? I think the answer has to be “no”; it is trivially obvious that mystical experience occurs in the brain of the person experiencing it, and so there are going to be neurological processes involved – and these researchers have, perhaps, pinpointed one of those. Indeed, though they don’t yet have an answer for why such experiences are ecstatic (“better than sex, drugs and rock & roll” as I tend to put it), sooner of later I expect an answer to that as well.
The mechanics of neurology are, however, never going to determine the content of such experience, any more than dissecting an eye tells you about what you see in front of you. Admittedly, the content which is capable of being communicated after the event is fairly small (and trying to communicate the content during the event is one of the surest ways I know of stopping it in it’s tracks), but I have to believe the powerful sense that there is a LOT more content than that, were my brain capable of reducing it to intelligible language.
OK, maybe that is a side-effect of the fact that the experience is hugely self-verifying, at least in it’s fullest expression. But what mechanism self-verifies experience? I am not, frankly, used to experiences which do that, being a confirmed sceptic…