A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul

"Drawing on cutting edge research in brain imaging done on Carmelite nuns, neuroscientist Mario Beauregard examines how our brain processes religious, mystical and spiritual experiences. The evidence he presents flies in the face of conventional thinking and provides scientific documentation for the validity of mystical experiences, giving us a peek into our very souls."

The Spiritual Brain

THE SPIRITUAL BRAIN
A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul
By Mario Beauregard & Denyse O'Leary
Published by HarperOne
Hardcover / ISBN 978-0-06-085883-4 / $25.95 / 400 pages / September 2007

Here are some of the comments on The Spiritual Brain

"If you have a mind, you will find The Spiritual Brain a refreshing antidote to the strange arguments offered by some scientists who insist that their minds, and yours, are meaningless illusions."

Dean Radin, PhD, Senior Scientist, Institute of Noetic Sciences and author of The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds

"The Spiritual Brain is a wonderful and important book that provides new insights into our experience of religion and God. It offers a unique perspective to the ongoing dialogue between science and religion. This book is a necessary read for both the scientist and the religious person."

Andrew Newberg, M.D. Associate Professor of Radiology and Director of the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania. Co-author of Why We Believe What We Believe.

"The Spiritual Brain is a very important book. It clearly explains non-materialist neuroscience in simple terms appropriate for the lay reader, while building on and extending work that Sharon Begley and I began in The Mind and The Brain, and work that Mario and I collaborated on in academic publications."

Neuropsychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz, author of The Mind and the Brain

"I truly was bowled over by the book, ... In The Spiritual Brain neuroscientist Mario Beauregard and science writer Denyse O'Leary push back hard. First they debunk the most widely touted urban legends of impoverished materialism"

Michael Behe, author of Edge of Evolution

"I've just finished reading The Spiritual Brain (I was sent an advance copy). It's superb, and is a milestone in what I think is going to be a 'long twilight struggle' against materialist neuroscience."

Neurosurgeon Mike Egnor

http://mindfulhack.blogspot.com/2007/09/just-released-neuroscientists- case-for.html

Just released - a neuroscientist's case for the existence of ... the soul!
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 04, 2007

The belief that the mind does not exist apart from the brain dominated the twentieth century. But can we really dismiss our thoughts and feelings, or furthermore, our religious and spiritual experiences, as simply outcomes of the firing synapses of our brain? In THE SPIRITUAL BRAIN, authors Dr. Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary present the groundbreaking evidence that the mind cannot be simply reduced to physiological reactions in the brain.

Most neuroscientists are committed to the view that mystical experiences are simply the result of random neurons firing, or "delusions created by the brain." THE SPIRITUAL BRAIN takes another approach, powerfully arguing for what many in science are unwilling to consider—that people actually contact a reality outside themselves during intense spiritual experiences. Beauregard uses the most sophisticated technology to peer inside the brains of Carmelite nuns during a profound spiritual state. His results and a variety of other lines of evidence lead him to the surprising conclusion that spiritual experiences are not a figment of the mind or a delusion produced by a dysfunctional brain.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS – Mario Beauregard's work at the University of Montreal on the effects of consciousness and volition on the emotional brain, and the neurobiology of the mystical experience has received international media coverage. Dr. Beauregard was selected by the World Media Net to be one of the "One Hundred Pioneers of the Twenty-First Century." Denyse O'Leary is a Toronto-based journalist who specializes in faith and science issues and who has written for the Toronto Star and the Globe & Mail.

Do religious experiences come from God, or are they merely the random firing of neurons in the brain?

Drawing on cutting edge research in brain imaging done on Carmelite nuns, neuroscientist Mario Beauregard examines how our brain processes religious, mystical and spiritual experiences. The evidence he presents flies in the face of conventional thinking and provides scientific documentation for the validity of mystical experiences, giving us a peek into our very souls.

Do religious experiences come from God, or are they merely the random firing of neurons in the brain? Drawing on his own research with Carmelite nuns, neuroscientist Mario Beauregard shows that genuine, life-changing spiritual events can be documented. He offers compelling evidence that religious experiences have a nonmaterial origin, making a convincing case for what many in scientific fields are loath to consider--that it is God who creates our spiritual experiences, not the brain.

Beauregard and O'Leary explore recent attempts to locate a "God gene" in some of us and claims that our brains are "hardwired" for religion— even the strange case of one neuroscientist who allegedly invented an electromagnetic "God helmet" that could produce a mystical experience in anyone who wore it. The authors argue that these attempts are misguided and narrow-minded, because they reduce spiritual experiences to material phenomena.

THE SPIRITUAL BRAIN: A Neuroscientist's Case For The Existence Of The Soul
Mario Beauregard, Ph.D. & Denyse O'Leary
Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: HarperOne; 1 edition (September 4, 2007) ISBN-13: 978-0060858834

The Spiritual Brain: How Neuroscience is Revealing the Existence of God by Mario Beauregard, Denyse O'Leary

Most scientists today would answer the latter. To them, physical reality is the only reality. Absolutely everything else -- including thought, feeling, mind, and will -- can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena, leaving no room for the possibility that religious and spiritual experiences are anything but illusions. But neuroscientist Mario Beauregard does not approach his work with such materialist presumptions. So when he first began studying the spiritual experiences of Carmelite nuns at the University of Montreal, he didn't doubt in principle that a contemplative might contact a reality outside herself during a mystical experience. Now, in The Spiritual Brain: How Neuroscience is Revealing the Existence of God, Beauregard (with co-author Denyse O'Leary) offers compelling evidence from his research that religious experiences have a nonmaterial origin -- and that may indeed be God who creates our spiritual experiences, not the brain.

The Spiritual Brain reveals:

- Why religious experiences can't be dismissed as illusions just because they are associated with brain activity -- and more than thoughts and feelings can be;

- How the areas of brain activation associated with contemplative prayer are quite distinct from those associated with hallucinations, autosuggestion, or states of intense emotional arousal -- resembling instead how the brain processes real experiences;

- Scientific evidence that individuals who have religious experiences contact an objectively real "force" that exists outside themselves;

- Extraordinary evidence that such experiences can occur even when clinical criteria of death have been reached and the brain is no longer functioning -- and why this suggests that such experiences are not illusory;

- Are religious experiences pathological? How studies show that people reporting religious experiences score lower on psychopathology measures and higher on psychological well-being scales than people who don't report them;

- Why the high incidence of religious experiences in the American adult population also indicates that such experiences should be considered normal, not pathological;

- How the transformation that often follows religious experiences can involve changes in thoughts, emotions, attitudes, core beliefs, and behaviors;

- How there is absolutely no scientific evidence showing that delusions or hallucinations produce by a dysfunctional brain can induce the kind of long-term positive changes that often follow spiritual experiences;

- How evolutionary psychology errs in attempting to ground spiritual experience in the qualities that animal nature requires in order to survive -- providing no explanation for the most significant evidence regarding spirituality;

- How materialist presuppositions restrict the areas scientists are permitted to research to narrow, unproductive paths -- shutting the door to truth;

- Why materialist neuroscientists have not succeeded in providing a satisfactory explanation of how religious experiences arise from the interaction between various brain regions, neural circuits and neurotransmitters -- and why their effort to so is doomed to failure;

Beauregard and O'Leary also take on recent theories about a "God gene" and that brains are "hardwired" for religion. Such misguided and narrow-minded attempts to reduce spiritual experiences to material phenomena, they argue, amount to knee-jerk scientific materialism that cannot account for the many irrefutable accounts of mind over matter, of intuition, willpower, and leaps of faith, of the "placebo effect" in medicine, of near-death experiences on the operating table, and of psychic premonitions of a loved one in crisis, to say nothing of the occasional sense of oneness with nature and mystical experiences in meditation or prayer. Traditional science explains away these and other occurrences as delusions or misunderstandings, but by exploring the latest neurological research on phenomena such as these, The Spiritual Brain gets to their real source.

"A lively introduction to a field where neuroscience, philosophy, and secular/spiritual cultural wars are unavoidably intermingled." -- Publishers Weekly

www.hebookservice.com/products/BookPage.asp?prod_cd=c7123

Jesus Christ as existing in Kingdom of God

Correct image of Shri Jesus Christ
existing in the Kingdom of God
according to Shri Mataji, Kashwinder,
Arwinder and Lalita.

The Christmas Day of 1993 turned out to be the most special ever

Then came 1993.

The Christmas Day of 1993, just weeks after Kash had met the Holy Spirit of the Almighty Creator, turned out to be the most special ever. He was told to request Shri Adhiparasakthi Devi if it was possible to visit Shri Jesus and wish Him a Merry Christmas.

Kash meditated and the Power of the Holy Spirit (Mother Kundalini) coiled in his sacrum bone snaked up the Tree of Life into the Kingdom of God (Sahasrara Chakra). The Everlasting Light shone ever so dazzlingly from above the Golden Throne of the Great Holy Spirit as Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi sat in Bliss and Joy.

After the customary greetings he asked if She could fulfill his wish of visiting Shri Jesus.

The Holy Spirit replied that of course She would and got down from Her Throne. She then stretched Her Hands, with palms facing upwards, towards him and requested him put his palms, turned downwards, over them.

He followed Her instructions. Immediately he found himself being lifted a few inches above the carpet of clouds on which he had been standing earlier. Both then started traveling at super-warp speed into the Universe.

Upon reaching Shri Jesus' place they stopped at a short distance away. The whole area was glowing softly, as if charged by a Divine presence.

Shri Jesus, who knew that visitors had arrived, started walking on the soft clouds towards them to greet them.

He was wearing a long, whitish-gray robe that reached His ankles. Another piece of cloth was draped across His right shoulder and diagonally down the left waist. He was tall, big boned and muscular. He had a beard, with wavy hair cascading into curly locks. The eyes were either dark brown or black. Kash noticed that His skin was light brown, and was of ethereal form. Jesus Christ looked very fresh and youthful, as if He had just stepped out of a shower and groomed Himself.

They then walked back to His place and sat down to meditate. Kash clearly noticed the immense size and strength of Shri Jesus as in that squatting position His biceps and thighs really stretched the fabric taut. There was no doubt that Shri Jesus was physically a very strong person, a towering hunk of massive masculinity.

All raised their Kundalinis and went into meditation.

When finished Kash bowed with folded hands to the Universal Savior in obeisance, again wishing Him a 'Merry Christmas,' and left with the Spirit of the Living God to Her abode.

He (Kash) then requested to return to Earth, and was given permission. As he closed the eyes of his spiritual body he left the Templum Spiritus Sanctus within and returned to this world of insatiable greed and wanton consumption.

Note: According to Kash all the Universal Beings always look very fresh, clean and neat, as if they had just taken a bath and groomed themselves. Immaculate cleanliness is one of the many distinguishing characteristics of the Heavenly Hosts. The sight, neatness and radiance of Shri Jesus especially impressed Kash. On his first encounter this radiating cleanliness was overwhelmingly evident.

FIRST SIGHT OF CHRIST

BUT PAPA, HE'S HUGE!

YES! THAT IS JESUS!

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PERSON?

Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity

Jesus goes on to explain that creation "in the image" refers to our original, spiritual nature, hidden deep within

"So even though Jesus has already told Judas that he is able to reach the immortal realm (Judas 2:27), the disciple still doesn't understand fully Jesus' most central teaching – that for human beings to gain eternal life, they have to perceive the deeper vision of God that emerges from within. That is why Jesus began by challenging the disciples "to bring forth the perfect human." Those who do so discover that they have within them spiritual resources of which they were unaware.

For in the process of bringing forth the perfect human, one becomes aware of the deeper meaning of the 'Genesis' account, which tells how God created humankind:

Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness..." So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them" (Genesis 1:26- 27).

If human beings are created in the image of the divine, why is this image so hard to perceive and why does it take such courage to discover? Here Jesus goes on to explain that creation "in the image" refers to our original, spiritual nature, hidden deep within what we seem to be as ordinary men and women...

Why, then, does Jesus speak of 'two' kinds of human races? Why is it that not everyone automatically understands the spiritual nature? To help Judas understand, Jesus tells him that Saklas was the one who decreed that human beings should only live for a short time and then perish. People have been led astray and polluted with the foolish "wisdom" of the world (Judas 8:7), because the rulers of chaos and oblivion "lord it over them." They've come to believe that this life of the flesh, our present life in this world, is all that really exists. When they try to imagine eternal life, they imagine it only as living on forever in the flesh, just as Justin, Irenaeus, and Tertullian say. But Jesus insists they are wrong. Although the 'Gospel of Judas', like the New Testament gospels, says that Jesus' teaching offers a path to eternal life, the key to that path is not what happens to the physical body; it is understanding humanity's spiritual connection to God. Those who understand the deeper secrets of creation, aware that they are created "in the image" of the divine source, may come to dwell above in the realm of the Spirit.

Jesus explains to Judas that God did not abandon humanity to the lower angels but made sure that Adam and those with him learned that the image of God they carry deep within makes them superior to the rulers of chaos (Judas 13:16-17). Judas is astonished when he hears this. At first he can't believe it is true, but gradually he comes to understand what it means. Jesus explains that because everyone received a divine spirit, everyone can worship God truly. Those who do so free themselves from the power of the lower angels, so that when their physical bodies die, their souls – now joined with spirits of the great and holy race above – ascend to the heavenly realm above (Judas 8:2-4; 9:22; 13:12-15). Judas finally understands Jesus' teaching, so that this time he does not turn his eyes away, but he lifts up his eyes so that he sees the cloud of light, and he enters into it (Judas 15:15-19).

Yet the 'Gospel of Judas', like the New Testament gospels, shows that Jesus' teaching is not limited to words; he also teaches through what he does. What he reveals is not complete when he finishes speaking – but only when he dies. His death demonstrates that the death of the body is not the end of life, but only a step into the infinite."

Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity
Pg. 79-82
Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King
Penguin Group – London, England
ISBN 978-0-713-99984-6

i explained to him i want to know if he met Her in his physical body, soul or something else. He replied, "As my spirit".

Dear devotees of the Divine,

Namaskaar – I bow to the Holy Spirit who exists within you,

After many years i wish to say something that i had always believed to be true. That is the reason a few minutes ago i questioned my children Arwinder, Lalita and Kash for the first time ever regarding this belief.

At 12.40 pm today September 9, 2007 i asked Arwinder what form was he when he used to meet Shri Mataji since 1995. i explained to him i want to know if he met Her in his physical body, soul or something else. He replied, "As my spirit". i then asked him if spirit is the same as soul. He replied that it is the same thing.

Arwinder was told to remember this fact for the rest of his life.

i then called Lalita and asked her the same question, but first informing her about Arwinder's answer that he met Shri Mataji as spirit or soul. Lalita answered rhetorically, "What's the difference?", implying that there is no difference between "spirit" or "soul" and that it is one and the same thing. Lalita replied that her answer is the same too, and that it was her soul who used to meet the Adi Shakti (Holy Spirit).

i also told Lalita to remember that fact for the rest of her life.

When asked where is her soul, she replied "Within me."

Nearly an hour later Kash was questioned the same but he had no knowledge that his siblings were questioned earlier. i asked him what he was when he used to meet Shri Mataji in his Sahasrara (Kingdom of God).

He replied "Myself".
I asked him to clarify what he meant.
He replied, "As spirit".
I asked, "What you mean?"
Kash replied spontaneously, "As soul".

There is another reason for my questioning them. A few days ago on August 31st, 2007 i purchased THE SPIRITUAL BRAIN: A Neuroscientist's Case For The Existence Of The Soul. Kash (now 26 years-old), Arwinder (17 years-old) and Lalita (13 years-old) have collectively experienced their own souls thousands of times over the years. They have given immense, unprecedented, and irrefutable evidence of Jesus' Kingdom of God within themselves into which their souls entered daily.

As i have said before, "Time is on Her side .... and ours too!"

warmest regards,

jagbir

“Those who have spiritual enlightenment tell us that the basic cause of fear of death is our metaphysical or spiritual ignorance, which lies in the identification of the spirit with the body. As long as we are not aware of our true spiritual essence, of the reality of the spirit or the true self within us, it is natural that we are subjected to this fear of death. The body is subject to the laws of nature. It is born, it grows, it attains maturity, it declines and it perishes. When we identify with this body and we have no understanding of our spiritual essence, naturally we feel that decline and eventual disintegration of the body mean our decline and destruction. So in all religions, the great spiritual geniuses have declared unequivocally that the more we know of our true spiritual essence of our being, the more we overcome the fear of death. We take a deeper perspective. We realize destruction of the body does not involve destruction of our spiritual nature, which is immortal and imperishable in character. Therefore, it is evident that the best way to conquer and overcome this fear of death is to sharpen our spiritual understanding and experience...

As the great philosopher Spinoza said, the essence of spiritual wisdom is to be able to behold life under the aspect of eternity.”

Dr. Haridas Chaudhuri, The Essence of Spiritual Philosophy
Thorsons Publishing Group, UK, 1990, p. 133-6.

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