From: "Santosh Helekar" <[email protected]>
I would like to correct the misinformation regarding Neuroscience and
Physics in Fr. Ivo's post below.
Mental processes, thoughts, emotions, volition, consciousness, love,
empathy, mystical states and experiences, hallucinations, illusions,
delusions and figments of mind are real physical natural phenomena. That
is why Science, which deals only with natural phenomena, studies them.
Neuroscience has amassed evidence that these phenomena are critically
dependent of the activity of the brain. They vanish completely when
certain parts of the brain are missing or dead. They can be induced simply
by electrically stimulating the relevant parts of the brain. Therefore,
these phenomena, which are part of the natural physical reality, emerge
from, and are produced by, matter and energy.
***Dr.Santosh should point out clearly where is "misinformation" regarding
Neuroscience in my posting.I have not referred to the phenomena described by
him.
*Let me correct his statement by giving a fuller version of
neuroscientific experiments and precising the terminology.
Are all mental processes "real physical phenomena" like the realities?
Or are they representations of realities on neural basis?
Neuroscience can study all of them, including the mystical experiences.
We can show that these mystical experiences are real, they trigger neural
processes and circuits.
They are representations of neural changes induced by
the reality outside the brain.(This is another epistemological blunder,
often repeated by Dr.Santosh).
*They cannot be clubbed together indistinctly, they are different
representations of different realities and processes.
Neuroscience deals with the neuronal changes, yes, but it also interprets
and uses
different approaches, like therapeutic or integrative approach.
For example, neuroscience has to interpret the mystical phenomena. They are
not "illusions".
*Dr Santosh does not answer the questions we are facing, but is trying to
divert to some other
points. The problem is not with triggering or blocking parts of the brain
mechanically. The mystical experiences
which the Carmelite sisters are having show that they are triggered from
outside, the neuronal representations are in the brain but not
from the brain. These changes show that the mystical experiences are not
delusions or
hallucinations. But they are triggered by the reality outside the brain.
Regards.
Fr.Ivo
