Animals And Spiritual Experiences

Share

From 2013, an article at the Discovery channel website discusses spiritual experiences in animals using science rather than faith as the starting point.

A neurologist and other scientists argue animals are capable of having spiritual experiences.

The researchers hold that spiritual experiences originate within primitive parts of the human brain, structures shared by animals.

This is a very interesting subject simply because of the gist of this site and my book, Living With Them. We know that our pets and wild animals show signs of higher awareness when they grieve for lost mates and offspring. Likewise we observe in our own lives connections with our domestic animals. Dogs seem to know when they’ve done something wrong, some pets know when we’re depressed, upset or ill.

Knowing that all mammals share certain brain structures, we can also assume as a starting point that there is also some sharing of experiences across species.

The trick, of course, lies in proving animals’ experiences.

“Since only humans are capable of language that can communicate the richness of spiritual experience, it is unlikely we will ever know with certainty what an animal subjectively experiences,” Kevin Nelson, a professor of neurology at the University of Kentucky, told Discovery News.

“Despite this limitation, it is still reasonable to conclude that since the most primitive areas of our brain happen to be the spiritual, then we can expect that animals are also capable of spiritual experiences,” added Nelson, author of the book “The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain,” which will be published in January 2011.

Among Nelson’s work is looking into whether or not animals have near death experiences like humans.

The Spiritual Doorway In The Brain

“In humans, we know that if we disrupt the (brain) region where vision, sense of motion, orientation in the Earth’s gravitational field, and knowing the position of our body all come together, then out-of-body experiences can be caused literally by the flip of a switch,” he said. “There is absolutely no reason to believe it is any different for a dog, cat, or primate’s brain.” Other mammals also probably have near-death experiences comparable to those reported by certain humans, he believes. Such people often say they saw a light and felt as though they were moving down a tunnel.

I find that to be incredible – that the disruption of parts of the brain can trigger an out of body experience. This points out how meditation can trigger out of body experiences and how near death experiences work from a scientific point of view.

Read the article at discover.com

Share