Religious and spiritual experiences from a neuroscientific and complex systems perspective

The emergence of spiritual and religious practices can be seen as a major cognitive transition in the evolution of biological organisms. Spiritual and religious experiences are closely linked to evolved complex brain structures, as well as their dynamics and plasticity. In this review, we will focus on the neural mechanisms that make such experiences possible. We will also address the methodological, neurophilosophical and neurotheological questions concerning the extent to which religious and spiritual experiences can be neurobiologically explained. We will summarise the rapidly expanding knowledge about the neuroscience of meditation and prayer, near-death experiences, ecstatic epilepsy, psychedelic experiences, and changes in spirituality associated with brain lesions. Additionally, we will discuss the validity of suggestions, based on predictive processing theory, that ecstatic states may represent a pathology of the mind and brain in the form of impaired prediction. Finally, we will describe the beneficial and therapeutic effects of spiritual and religious routines and practices and put them in the context of evolutionary medicine. Overall, we will argue that ‘neurospirituality’ research can be fruitful if it avoids both excessive reductionism as well as dualism. Instead, it should be based on limited reductionism, balanced by more integrative, non-localisationist approaches, including dynamical systems, complex systems and network theory.