Even the most spiritual experiences can now be scientifically explained (Review on BBC documentary: The Brain Story ep.1)

          Until recently, people believed that spiritual or religious experiences cannot be explained through Science. However, what would you say if the mystery about why and how people go through spiritual experiences are solved by contemporary neuroscientists?
           Symptoms of people who are afflicted with temporal lobe epilepsy, has played a key role in proving even the most spiritual experiences could be deriving from brain activities. Reen Carter is a patient with temporal epilepsy. Ever since she was young, she was different from others. To her eyes, colors and even the gradations of colors were very vividly shown. She even recollects that when she was young, she used to go to the library, not to read books but to ride an elevator. She was mesmerized in the colors and lights the arrows of the elevator door's buttons reflected. She also claims that she often sees the sign of God, and as a result she is a very religious person. Do not think she is a crazy person. It had been found out that temporal epilepsy causes patients to see the world with extreme focus on colors, shapes and silhouette. Most of all, many patients have been reported to experience spiritual experiences, just like that of Reen Carter's. For instance, they would see the silhouette of God, have contact with the superior being. At this point, I wondered if people hearing God's voice, seeing his vision, can generally be explained as an abnormal activity of  their temporal lobe. Moreover, I feel curious regarding whether Psychics, those people who claims to be capable of seeing ghosts and talking to them, show somewhat different temporal lobe activities.
           The famous artist of all time, Vincent van Gogh(1853~1890) is also known to have suffered from the epilepsy. Dr. Shahram Khoshbin from Harvard medical school has been researching on the effect that (temporal) epilepsy would have had on Vincent's artistic performance and his life. In fact, Vincent Van Gogh is famous for creating most of his artistic works only during ten-years of time before his death(suicide). Moreover, the period during which his vigorous artistic activity surged up exactly coincides with the period he started to suffer from epilepsy. Dr. Khoshbin suggests that the epilepsy would have affected Vincent with symptoms similar to that of Reed Carter's. Since the attack of first epilepsy, Vincent started to have remarkable creativities and sensitivities in seeing the world, and expressing them on the canvas. Another record that Vincent had studied to become a pastor, although he could not make it, since he was too religious(!)(He used to say he is the holy God, so he got expelled orfrom the church.), even more strongly supports that epilepsy or abnomal activities in temporal lobe can make a person go through spiritual experiences and to gain great artistic creativity and sensibility.

Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh

            Does it mean that if we stimualte temporal lobe of the brain, we can go through such spiritual experiences? In fact, Yes! Dr. Michael Persinger from Laurentian University have been conducting a very interesting experiment on the issue. In the experiment, he stimulates the temporal lobe of random applicants and observes what they experience. Surprisingly, when he stimulated the temporal lobe, the subjects commonly experienced illusions like 'Big hell', 'Going through a tunnel', 'Bright light', 'Out-of-body experience.' This experiment proved that even the most spiritual experiences, which were previously thought as scientifically unexplainable, could clearly be explained through scientific researches, such as they are also caused by brain! From this, I could infer that near-death experience could also one form of temporal lobe activity. When our body falls into a critical condition, temporal lobe of our brain must be activated in a rather anomalous way, since people who went through near-death experience commonly insists that they experienced going through a tunnel, meeting dead people(hallucination), or experienceing Out-of-body experience.  In the future, even the most abstract concepts would be able to be explained by the physical activities of brain.To add some comments, I wonder if Huh Kyung Young is suffering from some sort of temporal lobe disorder. Seeing Huh Kyung Young advertising himself to be godly figure, capable of going through out-of-body experience whenever he wants, and meeting people before they die, definitely makes me become suspicious!
             In the future, there would definitely come a time when even the most abstract and paranomal mental experiences people go through, become explained as a physical activities of brain.