Answer To: Research Paper (25%): You will be asked to submit a research paper by week-10 Friday, 11.59pm. It...
Akansha answered on Oct 03 2020
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Are Neuropsychological Perspectives on Mysticism Required?
Introduction
Mysticism is the belief that eventually, due to prayer, the devotee shall become one with the deity whom they are praying too. It is a religious phenomenon. It is a conscious experience that is felt when the boundaries of consciousness are lifted from the individual. Mysticism is present in every religion, whether it be the Sufi saints in Islam, Meerabai in Hinduism, or St Theresa in Christianity. The prominent belief is that Mysticism is large connect with religion, and only religious people would have mystical experiences that connect them with God in a major way. However, there has been a significant amount of research that has been done which looks at the mysticism in a neuropsychological perspective and aims to look at the scientific approach to mysticism. This has raised some arguments from researchers whether it is religious belief of scientific phenomenon. Identifying the need for research the essay presented here will look into various aspects of neuropsychological perspectives and its relation with Mysticism. Also, it will look at the connection between mysticism, epilepsy and brain damage.
Are Neuropsychological Perspectives on Mysticism Required
Mysticism is a prominent belief amongst many religions, but majorly it is taken as a tie with the God and religion and there is no other way to approach it. With the different researches and increasing innovation people have started looking mysticism with a scientific point of view. Scientifically looking at mysticism has generally been frowned upon, and this has resulted in a large amount of damage to the communities and their beliefs. The main question that is being addressed in the following essay is if neuropsychological approaches to mysticism are required or not.
The first argument signifies the need for any form of scientific research on mysticism, which is an element of religion, such as tradition or rituals would result in having an increasing scientific knowledge and affecting the brain. Research has suggested that the religious delusions could be considered as the subtypes to other delusional experiences, such as depression, schizophrenia and mania and with science getting involved, mysticism is also being associated with it (Markovsky and Frederick, 2015). Though, the researches done on the topic is relatively very limited. It basically looks at the neuropsychological causes of delusions that are related to the supernatural (Barrett and Griffiths, 2017). The other form of research that has been done looks at the causal contributions of the mysticism that are related to the change in brain structures that help in determining mystical experiences. This research has proven that mystical experiences are the result of altered brain structures. This could be due to drugs, brain diseases, changes in the structure of the brain due to other causes, or due to some unknown reasons. The research has described majorly two main hypotheses those are involved in the experience people go through. The first one is the temporal involvement hypothesis, which suggests that mystical experiences are related to the changes in emotion of a human being. The second hypothesis, which is the Executive Inhibition Hypothesis, suggests that executive down-regulation that comes in response to the authoritative suggestions are the reasons behind mystical experiences on the whole (Cristofori, Bulbulia, et al., 2016).
The main regions of the brain that are associated with mysticism have been known to...