Mapping the Boundaries between Science and Religion

Abstract

In contemporary religious landscapes, entanglements between the field of religion and the field of psychology and psychiatry are manifold. In this paper, the psychological school of “Transpersonal Psychology” (TP) and specifically the work of the psychiatrist and LSD researcher Stanislav Grof is introduced in order to illuminate the inter-ferences between psychological or therapeutic discourses and religious discourses. Of particular interest are psychological approaches to Near-Death Experiences (NDE) and the way in which they become productive of religious imaginary. In this way, this paper will outline the boundaries between science and religion, or rather the fluidity of such boundaries, using the example of a specific discourse as manifested in schol-arly approaches to Near-Death Experiences in Transpersonal Psychology. “Mostly, they are considered abstract representations of an object. But, like all representations, they are neither simple nor adequate in themselves. They distort, unfix, and inflect the object. [...] In fact, concepts are, or rather do, much more. If well thought through, they offer miniature theories, and in that guise, help in the analysis of objects, situations, states, and other theories. [...] They travel—between disciplines, between individual scholars, between historical periods, and between geographically dispersed academic communities. Between disciplines, their meaning, reach, and op-erational value differ.” (Bal 2009: 11–12) has been our clinical impression that the most dramatic therapeutic changes followed sessions in which the patient experienced an intense psychedelic peak experience, the phenomenological description of which corresponded to the categories of (1) unity, (2) transcendence of time and space, (3) objectivity and reality, (4) sense of sacredness, (5) deeply felt positive mood and (6) ineffability […] Profound experiences of this kind were described by approximately 25% of the patients in this study. These patients were often those who seemed most completely free of a fear of death following their sessions.” (Richards et al. 1972: typical COEX system consists of many layers of unconscious material that share similar emotions or physical sensations; the contributions to a COEX system come from different levels of the psyche. More superficial and easier available layers contain memories of emotional or physical traumas from infancy, childhood, and later life. On a deeper level, each COEX system is typically connected to a certain aspect of the memory of birth, a specific BPM; the choice of this matrix depends on the nature of the emotional and physical feelings involved. […] The deepest roots of COEX systems underlying emotional and psychosomatic disorders reach into the transpersonal domain of the psyche.” independently of the body and of the physical senses. This evidence comes from par-apsychology, anthropology, LSD research, experiential psychotherapy, thanatology, and the study of spontaneously occurring holotropic states of consciousness. All these disciplines have amassed impressive data demonstrating clearly that human consciousness is capable of doing many things that the brain (as understood by mainstream science) could not possibly do and that it is a primary and further irreducible aspect of existence.” (Grof 145–146)