Immersion, Absorption, and Spiritual Experience: Some Preliminary Findings.

Joseph Glicksohn,Tal Dotan Ben-Soussan

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02118

Abstract

Many traditions have utilized silent environments to induce altered states of consciousness and spiritual experiences. Neurocognitive explorations of spiritual experience can aid in understanding the underlying mechanism, but these are surprisingly rare. We present the verbal report and the electroencephalographic (EEG) alpha profile of a female participant scoring a maximal 34 on the Absorption Scale, recorded before and while she was immersed in a whole-body perceptual deprivation (WBPD) tank. We analyze her trancelike experience in terms of the imagery reported: a spaceship, corridors, doors, a man dressed in white, speaking to God, the sun, supernova, concentric images, and an out-of-body experience. Her report is indicative of a spiritual experience, given that she felt that she was “meeting God” in the laboratory. She exhibited both frontal and parietal left > right alpha power asymmetry at baseline, whereas in the WBPD condition, there was a global increase in alpha power and especially a sharp increase in right-frontal alpha power. Her verbal report and EEG alpha profile were compared to those of another female participant, also scoring high on absorption, whose verbal report was also indicative of a trancelike experience. For further comparison, we present the data for two participants scoring low on absorption. Spiritual experience that can be verbalized might be associated with a marked increase in right-frontal alpha power, as reported here. In contrast, a mystical experience characterized by ineffability would be indicated by a marked increase in left-frontal alpha power.

Highlights

Many traditions have utilized silent environments to induce altered states of consciousness and spiritual experiences (Ustinova, 2017)
We found that spiritual experience that can be verbalized might be associated with a marked increase in right frontal (RF) alpha power (P2), and this is worthy of further study
While there is a global increase in alpha for P2 reporting a spiritual experience, note from Table 2 the very large effect size for RF in particular

Summary

Introduction

Many traditions have utilized silent environments to induce altered states of consciousness and spiritual experiences (Ustinova, 2017). The individual’s ability to fully engage attention in an experience, is a primary predictor of such spiritual or religious experience (Hunt, 2000; Luhrmann et al, 2010; Luhrmann, 2017; Lifshitz et al, 2019), in the same manner that this trait predisposes for affiliated experiences, such as hallucinations (Glicksohn, 2004), sensed presence (Granqvist et al, 2005), and altered states of consciousness (Glicksohn and Avnon, 1997–1998; Glicksohn, 2019). This is especially so when coupled with generated states of heightened. As reported in that study, participants scoring 29+ comprised 5.6% of our normative sample; the verbal reports of those participants in the present study who score between 29 and 34 are of primary interest for our investigation of spiritual experience

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion