(code fractured) " There's also the fact that people of all religions experience them. And what are "spiritual" experiences anyways? Aren't they just some form of high, like when you take drugs?"
They indeed are, you should research DMT, I did a school report on it last summer as a final. DMT is DiMethylTryptamine and it may very well be the most important chemical that we have studied in relation to human consciousness. DMT can be made in the brain quite easily, but our brain has defenses that keep that from happening. You see we have a gland in our brains called the Pineal gland (so called because it resembles a pine cone, it is the only part of the brain that is singular and does not have a part for each half of the brain) which produces melatonin. Melatonin is released when there is a perceived absence of light and causes somnolence, drop in body temperature, and at extreme doses mild hallucination (hallucination from sleep deprivation is more caused by exhaustion than by the continued release of this chemical.)
To form DMT all you need is two melatonin molecules to bind together (melatonin being acetyl5-methoxytryptamine) and the conditions for this bonding is superb within the human brain. But like I said our brain has defenses against the accidental production of DMT. Now I wish I was at home (I'm at work) so I could pull out a couple of sources I have (DMT:the spirit molecule is an excellent read and I reccommend it to everyone who has attended the discussion in this thread) but I'm not so I can't delve into the specifics about the defenses.
However I can describe the effects of DMT. It is a powerful psychedelic drug (yes a powerful psychedelic drug can be easily made within your own brain, shocking I know), in fact it can be easily considered the most powerful of all psychedelics. DMT in America is commonly smoked or eaten, but when eaten it must be consumed with an MAOI (monoamine oxidase inihibitor) or else these enzymes will break it down before it reaches the brain (I believe they're the same enzymes that are used as a defense in the brain but not totally sure.) Outside of the US/EU shamans having been using it ritualistically for millenia in the form of Ayahuasca and Yage (these are drinks that contain both an MAOI and DMT, some cultures also include psilocybin mushrooms.) The effects of smoking or injecting (which I've only heard of being done in test subjects) are a rapid onset occurring within 30 seconds a peak at 5 minutes and a return to normal after 30. The experience is highly spiritual (thus it's classification as an entheogen) usually involves the vision of a diety or perfect being, oftentimes visions of creatures from distant worlds who will even engage in conversations. Time becomes altered and subjects often report feeling as if they had spent an hour or even a couple where they were when in reality it lasted not more than 5-10 minutes and everyone who has done it has reported feeling a freedom from fear of death (even if that fear was not prevalent before hand.)
It's quite clear to me that these religious experiences are the product of accident DMT production within the human brain, DMT relieves anxiety (the definition of an anxiety attack is an overwhelming sense of impending doom) and stress, we know now that DMT releases when we sleep. Thus sleep, and DMT release, is necessary for a healthy human psyche. Large doses of DMT causes memory to stop being recorded during it's effects, this is why we don't remember our trip to the stars we take every night, just the lingering after effect of a dream. So from the observed data we can understand why we have DMT, why it is important enough to our species for evolution to have kept it within our genetic structure, and now we not only have a plausible solution to the question of 'why is there religion?' we have the answer to 'where do religious experiences come from?'
I also did another report on the correlation of DMT release and glossolalia (which through some effort I was able to induce in myself.)
.jpg/200px-Nautilus_pompilius_(head).jpg)
