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HomeShop at BookSurgeReligionReligion & ScienceMeditation & Light Visions: A Neurological Analysis |
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3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
A bold attempt to understand the neurology of mystic visions Mar 25, 2010
By Steve Wilson
Philip Nicholson tackles a question that has generated great interest in the last decades: How can we understand the visions of the mystics? In Meditation & Light Visions Nicholson does not attempt to address the meta issues of what is a mystical vision and how can we understand its impact on the culture. Rather he addresses a more limited question of how can we use the tools of neurology to understand how light visions develop and what brain processes might be involved. His careful study of these neurological processes might well be a valuable resource for those who want to address the larger questions.
The book is strongly interdisciplinary. In academia there is much rhetoric extolling the virtues of interdisciplinary. Here is a book that can serve as an example of how multiple disciplines (neurology and religious studies) might inform each other.
Nicholson is daring in his use of scientific approaches that are not quite in vogue. Disciplined introspection used to be a mainstay of classic scientific work. For example, we all reaped the benefit of Sigmund Freud's careful documentation of his own mental processes. Contemporary mainstream science is suspicious of introspection because of the dangers of losing objectivity. Some critics of science suggest that careful qualitative self-study has an important role to play even in contemporary science.
Nicholson has spent many years carefully documenting the details of his own mental processes that produce light visions akin to those reported by mystics. He conducted mini-experiments of himself and noted the results. The attempt at rigor and scientific restraint gives one great faith in the reports. The documentation of himself as a case study is a valuable resource for neurologists. The book includes many step-by-step records of what he saw, felt, and experienced with documentations of diagrams, times and distances where possible.
Nicholson also introduces the unique approach of mining religious texts for information about the mental processes and experiences of the mystics. Nicholson is obviously well read in many different religious traditions. His range is impressive. He attempts the difficult process of mapping the mystics' reports with possible neurological processes. Some of the sections are amazing in the ways the writing of mystics provide documentation of neurological processes even though that obviously was not their intention. There were a few places where the attempted match seemed a bit of a stretch but generally that was not a problem. Readers who come from neurology will most likely not be acquainted with this religious literature. Nicholson introduces them to a rich resource that might be quite useful in the future.
I strongly recommend the book to anyone interested in the visions of the mystics from a variety of disciplines. It raises much bigger questions that are critical in our age. How does this new knowledge about the mental processes that perhaps underlay the visions of the mystics affect how we think about the integrity of these visions? Even more globally - how can work at the frontiers of science be reconciled with long religious traditions that have been at the core of human culture?
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