Our goal is to understand the role of non-ordinary meaningful experiences in the lives of those who are spiritual but not religious (SBNR). We have assembled an interdisciplinary team of anthropologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers to use mixed methods to explore the following questions: 1) What kinds of experiences do SBNRs report? 2) Can these experiences be cultivated through spiritual practices? 2) What can neuroimaging tell us about the mechanisms underlying cultivation, among SBNRs? 4) How should SBNRs interpret such experiences, how much meaning can they reasonably find in them?
To answer these questions, we plan to do observational work to look at a series of non-religious groups: people not in a spiritual community who have unexpected and apparently unexplained experiences. We also plan to use large database survey work both to explore the kinds of experiences SBNRs report and to see whether the factors that predict spiritual experience among people of faith also predict spiritual experience among SBNRs.
In experimental work, we will deliberately “train” SBNRs in practices we know to be used in many faith communities, and explore the way this cultivation changes their lives. We plan to use neuroscientific paradigms to understand the neural and computational mechanisms of confidently perceiving stimuli that are not materially present.
The philosophers on this grant will ask: What is the most reasonable thing for a person to think, after having certain striking anomalous experiences, suggestive of a spiritual realm? What are the best “live options” for SBNRs?
We anticipate a series of high-impact articles and books as a result of this work which will shed light on the potential meanings of powerful and poorly understood experiences. We hope to deepen understanding of and increase respect for SBNRs, and also to expand the possible routes to spiritual growth available to non-religious people with spiritual yearnings.
