The medieval German mystic Meister Eckhart lived hundreds of years before the science of neurology was born. Yet it seems he had intuitively gasped one of the fundamental principles of the discipline: What we think of as reality in only rendition of reality that is created by brain

Our modern understanding of the brain's perpetual power bears him out. Nothing enters consciousness whole. There is no direct, objective experience of reality. All the things the mind perceives -- all thoughts, feelings, hunches, memoirs, insights, desires, and revelations -- have been assembled piece b piece by the processing powers of the brain from the swirl of neural blips, sensory perceptions, and scattered cognitions dwelling in its structures any neural pathways.

The idea of our experience of rality -- all our experiences, for that matter -- are only "secondhand" depictions of what may or may not be objectively real, raises some profound questions about the most basic truths of human existence and the neurological nature of spiritual experience. For example, our experiment with Tibetan medicators and Franciscan nuns showed that the events they considered spiritual were, in fact, associated with observable neurological activity. In a reductionist sense, this could support the argument that religious experience is only imagined neurologically, that God is physically "all in your mind." But a full understanding of the way in which the brain and mind assemble and experience reality suggests a very different view.

Imagine, for insance, that ou are the subject of a brain imaging study. As part of this study, you have been asked to eat a generous slice of homemade apple pie. As you enjoy the pie, the brain scan capture images of the neurological activity in the various processing areas of the brain where input from your senses is being turned into the specific neural perceptions that add up to the experience of eating the pie. ...... The SPECT brain scan would show all this activity in the same way that the revealed the brain activity of the Buddhists and the nuns, as blotches of bright colors on the scanner's computer screen. In a literal sense, the experience of eating the pie is all in your mind, but that doesn't mean the pie is not real, or that it is not delicious.

Similarly, tracing spiritual experience to neurological behavior does not disprove its realness. If God does exist, for example and if He appeared to you in some incarnation, you would have no way to experience His presence, except as a part of neurologically generated rendition of reality. You would need auditory processing to hear His voice, visual processing to see His face, and cognitive processing to make sense of His message. Even if He spoke to you mystically, without words, you would need cognitive functions to comprehend His meaning, and input from the brain's emotional centers to fill you with rapture and awe. Neurology makes it clear; There's no other way for God to get into your head except through the brain's neural pathways.

Correspondingly, God cannot exist as a concept or as reality any place else but in your mind. In this sense, both spiritual experiences of a more ordinary material nature are made real to the mind in the very same way -- though the processing powers of the brain and the cognitive functions of the mind. Whatever the ultimate nature of spiritual experience might be -- whether it is in fact a perception of actual spiritual reality, or merely a interpretation of sheer neurological function -- all that is meaningful in human spirituality happens in the mind. In other words, the mind is mystical by default. We can't definitely say why such capabilities have evolved, but we can find traces of their neurological roots in some basic structures and functions, primarily the autonomic nervous system, the limbic system, and in the brain's complex analytical functions.