science, psychology, brainConnie Barlow teaches science to children, including Sunday Schools. She uses the scientific fact that our bodies are made of the remnants of stars to get their interest, introduce to them to the wonder of nature, and then moves on to talk about the chemistry. She is a Unitarian and is not averse to using woowoo language. She says she is careful to use language has been verified by science recently even though it may have been used by spiritual teachers throughout the ages.
One of those ideas is that the universe is one, that everything is connected. Mystics made this claim long before the Big Bang theory or our current understanding of how particles formed and elements were created in the first couple billion years of the known physical universe. Obviously mystics got a lot wrong too, but then Isaac Newton dabbled in alchemy and Einstein just made up the cosmological constant so his equations would work.
Recently, a neuroscientist, Jill Bolte-Taylor experienced this “oneness with the universe” when she had a stroke. This could be viewed as something abnormal, a dysfunction, but she does not see it that way. She is well versed on the workings of the brain and understands that her experience was insight into those workings. Her stroke temporarily shut down her logical hemisphere and gave her the experience that those mystics have reported. Unfortunately she could not control the experience and had to work to get back to being able to explain it in logical terms. Fortunately she has done a good job of that.
As a student at Oxford, Susan Blackmore had an out of body experience. She spent years as a parapsychologist, looking for ghosts and such. She eventually switched to debunking ghost hunters, but having had the OBE, she is very aware of how real that experience is to the individual. She does not consider herself sick, or that she had a break with reality. She considers experiences such as these part of what it is to be human. She is also very aware of the problems that occur when people add on explanations of these experiences that are pure fantasy. She is also aware of the problems that occur when people are ridiculed for reporting these experiences, or told that they need medical attention.
I was going to title this question, “is the universe one” but it is really, should atheists deny that people can have an experience of feeling connected, to their family, their heritage, their neighborhood, their environment, their world or the universe? Should we deny them the right to celebrate that feeling? I agree that we should deny them the right to teach children they spoke to Jesus, and not give them any special privileges because they claim to have had a vision, that is a different matter. But some go so far as to claim these experiences are dysfunctional and should be treated and suppressed. Doesn’t that do more harm to the movement toward rationalism than good? Doesn’t that shut down dialog when dialog is what is most needed?
As I understand it, that feeling of “oneness with the universe” is literally and physiologically caused by part of the brain being shut down — the part which helps you define where “you,” your “self,” ends, and everything else begins. You can temporarily shut that part off with certain rituals like meditation, chanting, and kinds of drumming.
So I wouldn’t label that dysfunctional, particularly if it helps people to behave better, but let’s recognize it for what it is. It’s not connecting with Jesus or hearing the music of the spheres. It’s a subjective, psychological experience, brought on by changes in brain state (possibly anoxia), and what these people experienced was the brain trying to make sense of altered input.
No better and no worse, psychologically speaking, than an acid trip or a powerful dream. As long as we recognize it’s not super-natural or outside reality, there’s no harm in it.
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