OK, my spellchecker bad. But he is still a proponent of dualism.
What is dualism?
If he ends up in a ward with Nurse Ratched giving him pills for the next 10 years because he “is still there” is it still a spiritual experience. If not, a what point did it stop being spiritual and start to have a natural explanation?
There is a lot we still do not understand about the brain. Neurosciences in the beginning stages of understanding how to piece these things together. There is a communication between the two hemispheres of the brain, and when this is damaged or altered, that can produce hallucinations. You might call the damage to the brain the physical aspect of what is actually wrong with the brain. Drugs use can produce lasting affects like this…
But there is also something else there that’s happening that we don’t quite understand. I have seen examples of people who have gone on retreats such as this, and through the process learned something deeper about themselves. This is the part that I think a spiritual. There is both the physical and the spiritual aspect to it.
You could take the example of prayer also. On the physical side of things, maybe it helps you become calm, lowers your blood pressure, gives you a dopamine kick….But then there is also the aspect of prayer that actually helps people. You hear stories of people who have their prayers answered and truly believe it. You can either dismiss it or you don’t, but nobody has any proof either way. There are some very compelling stories of prayers being answered. You could say that’s all just physical, or you can say there’s also a spiritual aspect to that….
