Ian’s vault had never been a religious
person he never really thought about God
but scarring from brain surgery brought
on a series of visions that made him
question everything has carried him for
about three or four weeks but now often
every day everything every morning I
felt like I was being so transported and
being revealed fundamental truths about
the nature of reality one of which is
that all inanimate objects are conscious
all beings are consciousness including
which seemed very counterintuitive to me
I mean who you know how can you have
consciousness without brain the other
thing that seemed to be happening was
that everything is bound together in one
and there was this huge wave of emotion
that came with this experience which was
really powerful and uplifting are you
religious I wasn’t a ghost ik I didn’t
know how to understand it I don’t know
if it was God you don’t know that it
wasn’t I don’t know that it wasn’t I
Ian wanted to find out whether his
visions had a medical cause so he joined
the Cambridge University study conducted
by dr. Joseph Tennant it was searching
for a connection between epilepsy and
mystical experiences
that’s the scan of the tumour that was
the cause of the seizures I was having
so I mean as you can see in this game
the growth from the skull with the left
temporal lobe and so this is pushing up
against the ins brain and so they had to
cut all that section away but obviously
when you do that you lead a bit of
scarring on the left temporal lobe so it
seems something about the temporal lobe
is potentially capable of producing
spiritual experiences you have not come
to any sort of conclusions yet on it
we can’t induce a seizure on someone of
a mystical nature and hope that we can
get a good scan of it under an MRI we
don’t know when the seizures are
happening to come to some sort of
conclusion behind that I mean right god
is this John the bark st. Bernadette do
you think that there is a possibility
that they experienced this sort of
epilepsy
it is possible so there was a
neurological paper that speculated that
Paul’s vision on the road to Damascus
was epilepsy but I mean so what
because the thing that occurred
afterwards was Paul was moved to go
preach and become st. Paul right as a
scientist I can’t tell you whether these
are metaphysical or not the thing we can
look at is to say that something in the
brain is capable of producing religious
experience and can do so even when it’s
not intending to all right here’s the
$64 question how has it changed you well
I think you know it did remove any sense
of that I had that the universe is a
meaningless cold place I think it gave a
kind of foundation of meaning for me and
I think if the idea of was it a
revelation or was it just a an
aberration in the brain I’ve come to the
conclusion it doesn’t really matter
because the thing that really sticks
with me
is that feeling of endless unconditional
love and I don’t think that really
matters where it came from a divine
force or from my damaged brain [Music]
person he never really thought about God
but scarring from brain surgery brought
on a series of visions that made him
question everything has carried him for
about three or four weeks but now often
every day everything every morning I
felt like I was being so transported and
being revealed fundamental truths about
the nature of reality one of which is
that all inanimate objects are conscious
all beings are consciousness including
which seemed very counterintuitive to me
I mean who you know how can you have
consciousness without brain the other
thing that seemed to be happening was
that everything is bound together in one
and there was this huge wave of emotion
that came with this experience which was
really powerful and uplifting are you
religious I wasn’t a ghost ik I didn’t
know how to understand it I don’t know
if it was God you don’t know that it
wasn’t I don’t know that it wasn’t I
Ian wanted to find out whether his
visions had a medical cause so he joined
the Cambridge University study conducted
by dr. Joseph Tennant it was searching
for a connection between epilepsy and
mystical experiences
that’s the scan of the tumour that was
the cause of the seizures I was having
so I mean as you can see in this game
the growth from the skull with the left
temporal lobe and so this is pushing up
against the ins brain and so they had to
cut all that section away but obviously
when you do that you lead a bit of
scarring on the left temporal lobe so it
seems something about the temporal lobe
is potentially capable of producing
spiritual experiences you have not come
to any sort of conclusions yet on it
we can’t induce a seizure on someone of
a mystical nature and hope that we can
get a good scan of it under an MRI we
don’t know when the seizures are
happening to come to some sort of
conclusion behind that I mean right god
is this John the bark st. Bernadette do
you think that there is a possibility
that they experienced this sort of
epilepsy
it is possible so there was a
neurological paper that speculated that
Paul’s vision on the road to Damascus
was epilepsy but I mean so what
because the thing that occurred
afterwards was Paul was moved to go
preach and become st. Paul right as a
scientist I can’t tell you whether these
are metaphysical or not the thing we can
look at is to say that something in the
brain is capable of producing religious
experience and can do so even when it’s
not intending to all right here’s the
$64 question how has it changed you well
I think you know it did remove any sense
of that I had that the universe is a
meaningless cold place I think it gave a
kind of foundation of meaning for me and
I think if the idea of was it a
revelation or was it just a an
aberration in the brain I’ve come to the
conclusion it doesn’t really matter
because the thing that really sticks
with me
is that feeling of endless unconditional
love and I don’t think that really
matters where it came from a divine
force or from my damaged brain [Music]
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