Neuroscience, Selflessness, and Spiritual Experience

The Neuroscience of Selflessness and Spiritual Transcendence conveys the manner by which selflessness serves as a neuropsychological and religious foundation for spiritually transcendent experiences. The book combines neurological case studies and neuroscience research with religious accounts of transcendence experiences from the perspective of both the neurosciences and the history of religions. Chapters cover the subjective experience of transcendence, an historical summary of different philosophical and religious perspectives, a review of the neuroscience research that describes the manner by which the brain processes and creates a self, and more.

The book presents a model that bridges the divide between neuroscience and religion, presenting a resource that will be critical reading for advanced students and researchers in both fields.

• Creates a common focus on selflessness as a reliable construct for use by all disciplines interested in the basis of spiritual experience
• Links neuroanatomical data with religious texts from multiple faith traditions to describe the necessity of selflessness for spiritual experience and transformation
• Highlights disorders in neurological functioning that result in disorders of the self

Advanced students and researchers in neuroscience, neurology, neuropsychology, and cognitive science, as well as advanced students and researchers in the humanities (such as religious studies and philosophy) studying the neurobiological underpinnings of spiritual experience

The Nature of Transcendence
1. Introduction
2. The Nature of Spiritual Transcendence

The “Self” and Selflessness
3. Disorders of the Self
4. Neuroscience of the Self
5. Neuropsychology of Spiritual Transcendence

Selflessness as the Key to Transcendence
6. Faith Traditions, Spiritual Transcendence, and Selflessness
7. Universal Neuropsychological Model of Spiritual Transcendence

Applications of selflessness
8. Building bridges between Neuroscience and the Humanities