Back Transdisciplinarity and the Unity of Knowledge: Beyond the Science and Religion Dialogue


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Roy J. J. Pereira
Meditation and Beyond – Phenomena Beyond Materialism


Abstract

In this paper I examine neuroimaging studies on meditation and its effect on the brain; in particular, EEG studies of meditative states followed briefly by ERP and fMRI studies. I then point out paths for the future with respect to meditation studies. I offer this as one of the areas which cannot be explained by the “mind = brain” equation. Besides meditation we will also briefly examine other scientific research done on patients with OCD, patients with phobias, the placebo effect and the nocebo effect. We then look at how cultural influence on self-representation is accomplished in the human brain and finally on neuro-directed behavior and its effect on the brain. All these scientific studies put into question a wholly materialist understanding of the mind as put forward by some scientists and philosophers besides having caught the fancy of the public media as seen in this statement of Michael D. Lemonick in the July 1995 issue of Time:
Utterly contrary to common sense… and to the evidence gathered from our own introspection, consciousness may be nothing more than an evanescent by-product of more mundane, wholly physical processes.1

I then go on to analyze these studies and make use of Beauregard and O’Leary’s Psychoneural Translation Hypothesis (PTH) which posits that ‘the mind (the psychological world, the first person perspective) and the brain (which is part of the so-called “material” world, the third-person perspective) represent two epistemologically different domains that can interact because they are complementary aspects of the same transcendental reality.’ Mental processes such as volition, emotion, desire and beliefs are neurally located in the brain, but cannot be reduced to nor are identical with neuroelectric or neurochemical processes. This is because one can’t from merely researching the activity of the neurons come to know what a person is thinking. PTH holds that conscious and unconscious mental processes get converted automatically into neural processes at the various levels of brain organization (biophysical, molecular, chemical, neural networks). These are then translated into processes and events in other physiological systems, such as the immune and endocrine system.2

With the help of Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) the scientific discipline that investigates the relationships between the mind, brain, and immune system we can try to understand how the psychoneural translation mechanics works i.e. how the mental processes affect the brain and the body in positive and negative ways. 

Beauregard and O’Leary sketch out a number of conclusions. A purpose driven rather than a random biological evolution has enabled humans to consciously and voluntarily shape the functioning of our brains resulting in us being able to create new social and cultural environments. Ethical achievements according to the authors are the outcome of contact with a transcendental reality behind the universe and not simply the outcome of “selfish” neurons and genes. And, “[b]y virtue of the Psychoneural translation mechanism, moral values associated with a given spiritual worldview can help us to govern our emotional impulses and behave in a genuinely altruistic fashion.”3 The brain mediates but does not produce religious, spiritual, meditational experiences (RSMEs).  There is no scientific evidence showing that delusions or hallucinations produced by a dysfunctional brain can induce the kind of long-term positive changes and psychospiritual transformations that follow RSMEs. 

This paper does not claim to solve the mind body problem but my hope is that it has shed more light on this thorny issue which has plagued scientists for centuries and philosophers for much longer. If we have to really progress in our understanding of the total human person, we need an understanding that accounts for a greater number of human experiences. Confining ourselves only to the physical or material world limits this understanding. Hence the call for a new scientific paradigm which brings to the dialogue table, in the words of Beauregard and O’Leary “the inner and the outer, the subjective and the objective, first person perspective and third-person perspective.”4

Endnotes

1 In “Glimpses of the Mind,” Time, July 17, 1995.

2 Beauregard and O’Leary, The Spiritual Brain, HarperOne, 2007,p150-151.

3 The Spiritual Brain, p152.

4 The Spiritual Brain, p294.

Biography

Roy J. J. Pereira is a Jesuit priest working on his Ph.D. at the Philosophy Department of Boston College where he is also a Teaching Fellow. Prior to coming to Boston, he was teaching in the Chemistry Department of St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, India. His search for answers to the question of  “What is the human being?” bring together his three Masters degrees in Chemistry, Philosophy and Theology. His present research interests lie in the field of philosophy of the mind, in particular the consciousness issue as studied from both a neuroscience and a quantum perspective.  He also studies the effects of meditation and yoga on health outcomes. When not doing academic work or pastoral ministry, he relaxes on the piano.  He has released two albums of inspirational music.



 

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