Scientists Try to Measure Mystic Experience

In this 15 minute video, you will hear about what happened with the scientists who went to study people experiencing mystical events that other people could not see or hear.

 Scientists are always looking to prove or disprove measurable events. Brains can be assessed while responding to stimuli. In this way, scientists can measure which parts of the brain are stimulated during specific types of activities.

Imagine the brain in the act of schizophrenic visual or auditory hallucination. There is a heightened degree of visual or auditory stimulus in specific areas of the brain that are related to vision and hearing. Those areas of the brain (receiving visual and/or auditory stimulus) light up with activity far beyond that of normal activity. The heightened brain activity in these areas are directly correlated with the person who is responding to their schizophrenia. The person's own brain's creation of sights and sounds do not exist beyond the brain. The belief is that an imbalance in the brain stimulates extreme auditory or visual stimuli causing people suffering from schizophrenia to become confused, and frightened, by what they are experiencing. They believe that their experiences are "really happening" when in fact they do not exist in anyone's reality except the one suffering from the stimuli.

Mystical experiences were believed to be measurable in the same way as schizophrenia. The video above explains the story of a group of scientists who went to measure the brains of people experiencing mystical events. From what they learned, it appears that scientists still have not been able to capture heightened or unusual levels of brain activity in the visual or auditory parts of the brain with people experiencing mystical events. Instead, the people who were having visions and communications with The Virgin Mary appeared to have perfectly normal brain patterns. How this affected the scientists is very interesting!