Tours of Heaven in Light of the Neuroscientific Study of Religious Experience
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jch.v2i1.30986Keywords:
Apocalypticism, Ascension of Isaiah, extra-corporeal experiences, flights, near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, qualia, sleep paralysis, subjective experience, tours of heavenAbstract
This article addresses the neuroscientific background of ancient tours of heaven. McNamara’s work on religious experience is used in the context of other philosophical, cognitive, and neuroscientific research. After discussing the definition and phenomenology of subjective experience, the article outlines three possible understandings of religious experience in the cognitive research tradition. The article then situates ancient tours of heaven in the context of flights and ascents in religious traditions and discusses how neuroscientific evidence sheds light on various aspects of such experiences. In particular, McNamara’s work is combined with Michael Marsh’s study of extracorporeal experiences to account for the twophase narrative sequence of the tours. The model is applied to the tour of heaven in the Ascension of Isaiah, followed by a brief discussion of other early Jewish and Christian apocalypses.
References
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Arias-Carrión, Oscar, Maria Stamelou, Eric Murillo-Rodríguez, Manuel Menéndez-González and Ernst Pöppel. 2010. “Dopaminergic Reward System: A Short Integrative Review”. International Archives of Medicine 3(1) (January): http://www.intarchmed.com/content/3/1/24.
Azari, Nina P., and Dieter Birnbacher. 2004. “The Role of Cognition and Feeling in Religious Experience”. Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science 39(4) (December): 901–17.
Azari, Nina P., Janpeter Nickel, Gilbert Wunderlich, Michael Niedeggen, Harald Hefter, Lutz Tellmann, Hans Herzog, Petra Stoerig, Dieter Birnbacher and Rüdiger J. Seitz. 2001. “Neural Correlates of Religious Experience”. European Journal of Neuroscience 13(8): 1649–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1046/j.0953-816x.2001.01527.x
Blanke, Olaf, Theodor Landis, Laurent Spinelli and Margitta Seeck. 2004. “Out-of-Body Experience and Autoscopy of Neurological Origin”. Brain 127(2) (February 1): 243–58.
Blanke, Olaf, Christine Mohr, Christoph M. Michel, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, Peter Brugger, Margitta Seeck, Theodor Landis and Gregor Thut. 2005. “Linking Out-of-Body Experience and Self Processing to Mental Own-Body Imagery at the Temporoparietal Junction”. The Journal of Neuroscience: The Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience 25(3) (January): 550–57.
Block, Ned. 2004. “Qualia”. In The Oxford Companion to the Mind, ed. Richard L. Gregory, 2nd edn, 785–89. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Braithwaite, Jason J., Dana Samson, Ian Apperly, Emma Broglia and Johan Hulleman. 2011. “Cognitive Correlates of the Spontaneous Out-of-Body Experience (OBE) in the Psychologically Normal Population: Evidence for an Increased Role of Temporal-Lobe Instability, Body-Distortion Processing, and Impairments in Own-Body Transformations”. Cortex 47(7) (July): 839–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2010.05.002
Bremmer, Jan N. 2013. “Descents to Hell and Ascents to Heaven in Apocalyptic Literature”. In Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature, ed. John J. Collins, 340–57. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bremmer, Jan N., and István Czachesz. 2003. The Apocalypse of Peter. Studies on Early Christian Apocrypha. Leuven: Peeters.
—2007. The Visio Pauli and the Gnostic Apocalypse of Paul: Studies on Early Christian Apocrypha, 9. Leuven; Dudley, MA: Peeters.
Bremmer, Jan N., T. R. Karmann and Tobias Nicklas. 2016. The Ascension of Isaiah, eds. Jan N. Bremmer, Thomas R. Karmann and Tobias Nicklas. Studies on Early Christian Apocrypha. Leuven: Peeters.
Brugger, Peter, and Christine Mohr. 2009. “Out of the Body, but Not Out of Mind”. Cortex 45(2) (February): 137–40.
Chalmers, David J. 2007. “The Puzzle of Conscious Experience”. In Arguing About the Mind, eds. Brie Gertler and Lawrence Shapiro, 15–26. New York, NY: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
Cheyne, J. Allan, S. D. Rueffer, and I. R. Newby-Clark. 1999. “Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic Hallucinations during Sleep Paralysis: Neurological and Cultural Construction of the Night-Mare”. Consciousness and Cognition 8(3) (September): 319–37.
Chinta, Shankar J., and Julie K. Andersen. 2005. “Dopaminergic Neurons”. The International Journal of Biochemistry & Cell Biology 37(5) (May): 942–46.
Collins, John Joseph. 1998. The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to the Jewish Apocalyptic Literature. 2nd edn. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Crick, Francis, and Christof Koch. 2002. “Why Neuroscience May Be Able to Explain Consciousness”. Scientific American Special Edition 12(1): 94–95.
Czachesz, István. 2012. The Grotesque Body in Early Christian Discourse: Hell, Scatology, and Metamorphosis. Sheffield: Equinox Publishing.
—2013. “Jesus’ Religious Experience in the Gospels: Toward a Cognitive Neuroscience Approach”. In Jesus – Gestalt und Gestaltungen: Rezeptionen des Galiläers in Wissenschaft, Kirche und Gesellschaft: Festschrift für Gerd Theissen zum 70. Geburtstag, eds. Petra Gemünden, David G. Horrell and Max Küchler, 569–96. Go?ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
D’Aquili, Eugene G., and Andrew B. Newberg. 1999. The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
Davis, Ted, Don C. Donderi and Budd Hopkins. 2013. “The UFO Abduction Syndrome”. Journal of Scientific Exploration 27(1): 25–42.
Destro, Adriana, and Mauro Pesce. 2011. “The Heavenly Journey in Paul: Tradition of a Jewish Apocalyptic Literary Genre or Cultural Practice in a Hellenistic-Roman Context?” In Paul’s Jewish Matrix, eds. Thomas G. Casey, and Justin Taylor and Karl P. Donfried, 167–200. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press; Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press.
Flannery, Frances. 2008. “Introduction: Religious Experience, Past and Present”. In Experientia, Volume 1: Inquiry into Religious Experience in Early Judaism and Early Christianity, eds. Frances Flannery, Colleen Shantz and Rodney Alan Werline, 1–10. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature.
Flattery, David Stophlet, and Martin Schwartz. 1989. Haoma and Harmaline: The Botanical Identity of the Indo-Iranian Sacred Hallucinogen “Soma” and Its Legacy in Religion, Language, and Middle-Eastern Folklore. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Gazzaniga, Michael S., Richard B. Ivry, and G. R. Mangun. 2014. Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind. New York: W. W. Norton.
Greyson, Bruce. 2013. “Getting Comfortable with Near Death Experiences: An Overview of Near-Death Experiences”. Missouri Medicine 110(6) (December): 475–81.
Himmelfarb, Martha. 1993. Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses. Oxford and New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Holden, Katharine J., and Christopher C. French. 2002. “Alien Abduction Experiences: Some Clues from Neuropsychology and Neuropsychiatry”. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry 7(3) (August): 163–78.
Hoppál, Mihály. 1987. “Shamanism: An Archaic And/or Recent Belief System”. In Shamanism: An Expanded View of Reality, ed. Shirley J. Nicholson, 76–100. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Pub. House.
—2004. Beyond the Borders of the Mind (Trance in a Daur Shamanic Healing Ritual). Documentary. Budapest: Produced by M. Hoppál.
—2005. “Trance and Sacrifice in a Daur Shamanic Healing Rite”. Shaman 13(1-2): 61–78.
—2008. Sámánok Határok Nélkül. Documentary. Budapest: Produced by M. Hoppál and D. Somfai Kara.
—2010. Sámánok Világa. Budapest: Püski Kiadó.
Jacobs, David M. 2009. “A Brief History of Abduction Research”. Journal of Scientific Exploration 23(1): 69–77.
Jones, Mary E. 2013. “UFOs, ETs, and Alien Abductions: A Scientist Looks at the Evidence”. Library Journal 138(8) (May): 92.
Kalat, James W. 2007. Biological Psychology. 9th edn. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson.
Mahony, William K. 2005. “Flight”. In Encyclopedia of Religion, eds. Lindsay Jones, Mircea Eliade and Charles J. Adams, 2nd edn, 5:3126–30. Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA.
Marsh, Michael. 2010. Out-of-Body and Near-Death Experiences: Brain-State Phenomena or Glimpses of Immortality? Oxford; New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
McNamara, Patrick H. 2009. The Neuroscience of Religious Experience. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Mobbs, Dean, and Caroline Watt. 2011. “There Is Nothing Paranormal about Near-Death Experiences: How Neuroscience Can Explain Seeing Bright Lights, Meeting the Dead, or Being Convinced You Are One of Them”. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 15(10) (August): 447–49.
Newberg, Andrew B., and Eugene G. d’Aquili. 2000. “The Creative Brain/the Creative Mind”. Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science 35(1): 53–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/0591-2385.00259
Newberg, Andrew B., Michael Pourdehnad, Abass Alavi and Eugene G. d’Aquili. 2003. “Cerebral Blood Flow during Meditative Prayer: Preliminary Findings and Methodological Issues”. Perceptual & Motor Skills 97(2): 625–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.2466/pms.2003.97.2.625
Nicklas, Tobias. 2013. “Ascension of Isaiah”. In The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, eds. Roger S. Bagnall, Kai Brodersen, Craige B. Champion, Andrew Erskine and Sabine R. Huebner. Vol. 2. Oxford: Blackwell.
O’Meara, Dominic J. 1993. Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads. Oxford; New York, NY: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press.
Previc, Fred H. 2006. “The Role of the Extrapersonal Brain Systems in Religious Activity”. Consciousness and Cognition 15(3): 500–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2005.09.009
Puig, M. Victoria, and Allan T. Gulledge. 2011. “Serotonin and Prefrontal Cortex Function: Neurons, Networks, and Circuits”. Molecular Neurobiology 44(3) (December): 449–64.
Revonsuo, Antti, and James Newman. 1999. “Binding and Consciousness”. Consciousness and Cognition 8(2): 123–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/ccog.1999.0393
Roig Lanzillotta, Lautaro. 2003. “Does Justice Reward the Righteous? The Justice Pattern Underlying the Apocalypse of Peter”. In The Apocalypse of Peter, eds. Jan N. Bremmer and István Czachesz, 127–57. Leuven: Peeters.
Schjoedt, Uffe. 2009. “The Religious Brain: A General Introduction to the Experimental Neuroscience of Religion”. Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 21(3) (September): 310–39.
Segal, Alan F. 2004. Life after Death: A History of the Afterlife in the Religions of the West. New York, NY: Doubleday.
Shantz, Colleen. 2012. “Opening the Black Box: Prospects for Analyzing Religious Experience”. In Shantz Intro Experientia, Volume 2: Linking Text and Experience, eds. Colleen Shantz and Rodney Alan Werline, 1–15. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature.
Sytsma, Justin, and Edouard Machery. 2010. “Two Conceptions of Subjective Experience”. Philosophical Studies 151(2): 299–327. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9439-x
Taves, Ann. 2005. “Religious Experience”. In Encyclopedia of Religion, eds. Lindsay Jones, Mircea Eliade and Charles J. Adams, 2nd edn, 12:7736–50. Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA.
—2008. “Ascription, Attribution, and Cognition in the Study of Experiences Deemed Religious”. Religion 38(2): 125–40.
—2009. Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.religion.2008.01.005
Theissen, Gerd. 2007. Erleben Und Verhalten Der Ersten Christen: Eine Psychologie Des Urchristentums. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus.
Tommasi, Chiara Ombretta. 2005. “Ascension”. In Encyclopedia of Religion, eds. Lindsay Jones, Mircea Eliade and Charles J. Adams, 2nd edn, 1:518–26. Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA.
Tye, Michael. 2008. “Qualia (Fall 2008)”. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, accessed 20 March 2015, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/qualia.
Walsh, Roger. 1989. “The Shamanic Journey: Experiences, Origins, and Analogues”. ReVision 12(2): 25–32.
Young, Simon N., and Marco Leyton. 2002. “The Role of Serotonin in Human Mood and Social Interaction”. Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior 71(4) (April): 857–65.
Arias-Carrión, Oscar, Maria Stamelou, Eric Murillo-Rodríguez, Manuel Menéndez-González and Ernst Pöppel. 2010. “Dopaminergic Reward System: A Short Integrative Review”. International Archives of Medicine 3(1) (January): http://www.intarchmed.com/content/3/1/24.
Azari, Nina P., and Dieter Birnbacher. 2004. “The Role of Cognition and Feeling in Religious Experience”. Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science 39(4) (December): 901–17.
Azari, Nina P., Janpeter Nickel, Gilbert Wunderlich, Michael Niedeggen, Harald Hefter, Lutz Tellmann, Hans Herzog, Petra Stoerig, Dieter Birnbacher and Rüdiger J. Seitz. 2001. “Neural Correlates of Religious Experience”. European Journal of Neuroscience 13(8): 1649–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1046/j.0953-816x.2001.01527.x
Blanke, Olaf, Theodor Landis, Laurent Spinelli and Margitta Seeck. 2004. “Out-of-Body Experience and Autoscopy of Neurological Origin”. Brain 127(2) (February 1): 243–58.
Blanke, Olaf, Christine Mohr, Christoph M. Michel, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, Peter Brugger, Margitta Seeck, Theodor Landis and Gregor Thut. 2005. “Linking Out-of-Body Experience and Self Processing to Mental Own-Body Imagery at the Temporoparietal Junction”. The Journal of Neuroscience: The Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience 25(3) (January): 550–57.
Block, Ned. 2004. “Qualia”. In The Oxford Companion to the Mind, ed. Richard L. Gregory, 2nd edn, 785–89. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Braithwaite, Jason J., Dana Samson, Ian Apperly, Emma Broglia and Johan Hulleman. 2011. “Cognitive Correlates of the Spontaneous Out-of-Body Experience (OBE) in the Psychologically Normal Population: Evidence for an Increased Role of Temporal-Lobe Instability, Body-Distortion Processing, and Impairments in Own-Body Transformations”. Cortex 47(7) (July): 839–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2010.05.002
Bremmer, Jan N. 2013. “Descents to Hell and Ascents to Heaven in Apocalyptic Literature”. In Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature, ed. John J. Collins, 340–57. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bremmer, Jan N., and István Czachesz. 2003. The Apocalypse of Peter. Studies on Early Christian Apocrypha. Leuven: Peeters.
—2007. The Visio Pauli and the Gnostic Apocalypse of Paul: Studies on Early Christian Apocrypha, 9. Leuven; Dudley, MA: Peeters.
Bremmer, Jan N., T. R. Karmann and Tobias Nicklas. 2016. The Ascension of Isaiah, eds. Jan N. Bremmer, Thomas R. Karmann and Tobias Nicklas. Studies on Early Christian Apocrypha. Leuven: Peeters.
Brugger, Peter, and Christine Mohr. 2009. “Out of the Body, but Not Out of Mind”. Cortex 45(2) (February): 137–40.
Chalmers, David J. 2007. “The Puzzle of Conscious Experience”. In Arguing About the Mind, eds. Brie Gertler and Lawrence Shapiro, 15–26. New York, NY: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
Cheyne, J. Allan, S. D. Rueffer, and I. R. Newby-Clark. 1999. “Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic Hallucinations during Sleep Paralysis: Neurological and Cultural Construction of the Night-Mare”. Consciousness and Cognition 8(3) (September): 319–37.
Chinta, Shankar J., and Julie K. Andersen. 2005. “Dopaminergic Neurons”. The International Journal of Biochemistry & Cell Biology 37(5) (May): 942–46.
Collins, John Joseph. 1998. The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to the Jewish Apocalyptic Literature. 2nd edn. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Crick, Francis, and Christof Koch. 2002. “Why Neuroscience May Be Able to Explain Consciousness”. Scientific American Special Edition 12(1): 94–95.
Czachesz, István. 2012. The Grotesque Body in Early Christian Discourse: Hell, Scatology, and Metamorphosis. Sheffield: Equinox Publishing.
—2013. “Jesus’ Religious Experience in the Gospels: Toward a Cognitive Neuroscience Approach”. In Jesus – Gestalt und Gestaltungen: Rezeptionen des Galiläers in Wissenschaft, Kirche und Gesellschaft: Festschrift für Gerd Theissen zum 70. Geburtstag, eds. Petra Gemünden, David G. Horrell and Max Küchler, 569–96. Go?ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
D’Aquili, Eugene G., and Andrew B. Newberg. 1999. The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
Davis, Ted, Don C. Donderi and Budd Hopkins. 2013. “The UFO Abduction Syndrome”. Journal of Scientific Exploration 27(1): 25–42.
Destro, Adriana, and Mauro Pesce. 2011. “The Heavenly Journey in Paul: Tradition of a Jewish Apocalyptic Literary Genre or Cultural Practice in a Hellenistic-Roman Context?” In Paul’s Jewish Matrix, eds. Thomas G. Casey, and Justin Taylor and Karl P. Donfried, 167–200. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press; Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press.
Flannery, Frances. 2008. “Introduction: Religious Experience, Past and Present”. In Experientia, Volume 1: Inquiry into Religious Experience in Early Judaism and Early Christianity, eds. Frances Flannery, Colleen Shantz and Rodney Alan Werline, 1–10. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature.
Flattery, David Stophlet, and Martin Schwartz. 1989. Haoma and Harmaline: The Botanical Identity of the Indo-Iranian Sacred Hallucinogen “Soma” and Its Legacy in Religion, Language, and Middle-Eastern Folklore. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Gazzaniga, Michael S., Richard B. Ivry, and G. R. Mangun. 2014. Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind. New York: W. W. Norton.
Greyson, Bruce. 2013. “Getting Comfortable with Near Death Experiences: An Overview of Near-Death Experiences”. Missouri Medicine 110(6) (December): 475–81.
Himmelfarb, Martha. 1993. Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses. Oxford and New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Holden, Katharine J., and Christopher C. French. 2002. “Alien Abduction Experiences: Some Clues from Neuropsychology and Neuropsychiatry”. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry 7(3) (August): 163–78.
Hoppál, Mihály. 1987. “Shamanism: An Archaic And/or Recent Belief System”. In Shamanism: An Expanded View of Reality, ed. Shirley J. Nicholson, 76–100. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Pub. House.
—2004. Beyond the Borders of the Mind (Trance in a Daur Shamanic Healing Ritual). Documentary. Budapest: Produced by M. Hoppál.
—2005. “Trance and Sacrifice in a Daur Shamanic Healing Rite”. Shaman 13(1-2): 61–78.
—2008. Sámánok Határok Nélkül. Documentary. Budapest: Produced by M. Hoppál and D. Somfai Kara.
—2010. Sámánok Világa. Budapest: Püski Kiadó.
Jacobs, David M. 2009. “A Brief History of Abduction Research”. Journal of Scientific Exploration 23(1): 69–77.
Jones, Mary E. 2013. “UFOs, ETs, and Alien Abductions: A Scientist Looks at the Evidence”. Library Journal 138(8) (May): 92.
Kalat, James W. 2007. Biological Psychology. 9th edn. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson.
Mahony, William K. 2005. “Flight”. In Encyclopedia of Religion, eds. Lindsay Jones, Mircea Eliade and Charles J. Adams, 2nd edn, 5:3126–30. Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA.
Marsh, Michael. 2010. Out-of-Body and Near-Death Experiences: Brain-State Phenomena or Glimpses of Immortality? Oxford; New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
McNamara, Patrick H. 2009. The Neuroscience of Religious Experience. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Mobbs, Dean, and Caroline Watt. 2011. “There Is Nothing Paranormal about Near-Death Experiences: How Neuroscience Can Explain Seeing Bright Lights, Meeting the Dead, or Being Convinced You Are One of Them”. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 15(10) (August): 447–49.
Newberg, Andrew B., and Eugene G. d’Aquili. 2000. “The Creative Brain/the Creative Mind”. Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science 35(1): 53–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/0591-2385.00259
Newberg, Andrew B., Michael Pourdehnad, Abass Alavi and Eugene G. d’Aquili. 2003. “Cerebral Blood Flow during Meditative Prayer: Preliminary Findings and Methodological Issues”. Perceptual & Motor Skills 97(2): 625–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.2466/pms.2003.97.2.625
Nicklas, Tobias. 2013. “Ascension of Isaiah”. In The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, eds. Roger S. Bagnall, Kai Brodersen, Craige B. Champion, Andrew Erskine and Sabine R. Huebner. Vol. 2. Oxford: Blackwell.
O’Meara, Dominic J. 1993. Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads. Oxford; New York, NY: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press.
Previc, Fred H. 2006. “The Role of the Extrapersonal Brain Systems in Religious Activity”. Consciousness and Cognition 15(3): 500–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2005.09.009
Puig, M. Victoria, and Allan T. Gulledge. 2011. “Serotonin and Prefrontal Cortex Function: Neurons, Networks, and Circuits”. Molecular Neurobiology 44(3) (December): 449–64.
Revonsuo, Antti, and James Newman. 1999. “Binding and Consciousness”. Consciousness and Cognition 8(2): 123–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/ccog.1999.0393
Roig Lanzillotta, Lautaro. 2003. “Does Justice Reward the Righteous? The Justice Pattern Underlying the Apocalypse of Peter”. In The Apocalypse of Peter, eds. Jan N. Bremmer and István Czachesz, 127–57. Leuven: Peeters.
Schjoedt, Uffe. 2009. “The Religious Brain: A General Introduction to the Experimental Neuroscience of Religion”. Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 21(3) (September): 310–39.
Segal, Alan F. 2004. Life after Death: A History of the Afterlife in the Religions of the West. New York, NY: Doubleday.
Shantz, Colleen. 2012. “Opening the Black Box: Prospects for Analyzing Religious Experience”. In Shantz Intro Experientia, Volume 2: Linking Text and Experience, eds. Colleen Shantz and Rodney Alan Werline, 1–15. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature.
Sytsma, Justin, and Edouard Machery. 2010. “Two Conceptions of Subjective Experience”. Philosophical Studies 151(2): 299–327. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9439-x
Taves, Ann. 2005. “Religious Experience”. In Encyclopedia of Religion, eds. Lindsay Jones, Mircea Eliade and Charles J. Adams, 2nd edn, 12:7736–50. Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA.
—2008. “Ascription, Attribution, and Cognition in the Study of Experiences Deemed Religious”. Religion 38(2): 125–40.
—2009. Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.religion.2008.01.005
Theissen, Gerd. 2007. Erleben Und Verhalten Der Ersten Christen: Eine Psychologie Des Urchristentums. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus.
Tommasi, Chiara Ombretta. 2005. “Ascension”. In Encyclopedia of Religion, eds. Lindsay Jones, Mircea Eliade and Charles J. Adams, 2nd edn, 1:518–26. Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA.
Tye, Michael. 2008. “Qualia (Fall 2008)”. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, accessed 20 March 2015, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/qualia.
Walsh, Roger. 1989. “The Shamanic Journey: Experiences, Origins, and Analogues”. ReVision 12(2): 25–32.
Young, Simon N., and Marco Leyton. 2002. “The Role of Serotonin in Human Mood and Social Interaction”. Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior 71(4) (April): 857–65.
Published
2016-06-10
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Czachesz, I. (2016). Tours of Heaven in Light of the Neuroscientific Study of Religious Experience. Journal of Cognitive Historiography, 2(1), 33-52. https://doi.org/10.1558/jch.v2i1.30986
