EXAMINING THE STRUCTURE AND ROLE OF EMOTION: CONTRIBUTIONS OF NEUROBIOLOGY TO THE STUDY OF EMBODIED RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

The body and emotions are fundamental to how religious knowledge is transmitted and religious states develop. Recalled emotion is automatically refelt in the present, a universal process that allows emotions to be cultivated despite their culturally specific triggers. Religious traditions educate feeling and develop religious experience through sacred images, ritual posture, gesture, and repetition. Neuroscience illuminates the emotional processes involved when emotions are evoked, refelt, and developed, as neurobiological processing parallels lived experience. Keeping experience central enables a nonreductive integration of religion and neuroscience in studying spiritual experience.

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Abstract

Abstract. Certain properties of the body and emotions facilitate the transmission of religious knowledge and the development of religious states through particular qualities of perception and memory. The body, which is the ground of religious experience, can be understood as transformative: the characteristic that recalled emotion is “refelt” in the present enables emotion to be cultivated or developed. Emotions and the stimuli that evoke them are necessarily culturally specific, but the automatic nature of this process is universal. Religious traditions have made use of these processes to educate the feeling toward certain qualities and to develop religious experience, through the use of sacred images, ritual posture and gesture, and repetition of ritual acts. Neuroscience contributes to our understanding of the emotional processes that take place when emotions are evoked, refelt, and developed; the neurobiological processing of emotion parallels experience. Keeping experience central makes it possible to bring religion and neuroscience together in a nonreductive examination of spiritual experience.