[Avodah] Kabbalah and Neuroscience

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 01:54:10PM +0300, Moshe Feldman pointed us to
<http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/992347.html>, "Visions of wondrous
things" by a neurologist, Dr Shahar Arzy. In it, he writes:
: Activation of the brain

: Electrical neuroimaging revealed that different brain activities correlate
: to these tasks. While in the first task (embodied self-location),
: activation was found in the left extrastriate body area (EBA) of the
: brain, the second task (disembodied self-location) was associated with
: activity in the right temporoparietal junction. These findings are
: compatible with the role of these brain mechanisms...

: Into these neuro-cognitive structures they poured their beliefs - beliefs
: that stemmed from their varied spiritual world, in which a very important
: part was ecstatic states and their achievement.

He presumes his conclusion. Dr Arzy believes that the physical phenomenon
is the cause, and the religious content a post-facto explanation given
for the resulting ecstatic experience.

However, the data described in the article is equally consistent with
the notion that the religious experience is real, and the *effect* is
the brain activity. That the brain has the structures to support such
altered states because it is the seat of a soul capable of producing them.

Since he's discussing mequbalim... I would think the Qabbalistic
description of the soul-brain relationship isn't a duality of soul vs
brain in which one causes events in the other. And so neither causality
is entirely true. Rather they are linked in that the soul resides in
higher olamos than the brain. That the tzurah of the activity in the
brain, the process as physically manifest, is the same column of Or as
it impacts olam haasiyah.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Spirituality is like a bird: if you tighten
micha at aishdas.org        your grip on it, it chokes; slacken your grip,
http://www.aishdas.org   and it flies away.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                            - Rav Yisrael Salanter