Neurotheology Quotes

Abhijit Naskar

I am proud to say to you that, I am a scientist and I accept all religions to be biologically true and equal. My pursuit of understanding the human mind has taught me universal tolerance.

Abhijit Naskar

It is necessary for the future scientists interested in the field of Neurotheology, to have a bit naïve approach towards the whole idea of God and religion beyond the conventional labels of religion and atheism.

Abhijit Naskar

Qualia of God refers to the private subjective experience or conception of God in people.

Abhijit Naskar

You can reach the roof of your house by stone stairs, by wooden stairs, by bamboo steps or by a rope. Likewise, there are diverse ways of experiencing the Absolute Divinity – the Ultimate Oneness. In fact, in that blissful state of oneness, you and God are one and the same thing.

Abhijit Naskar

Regardless of the perpetual battle between believers and atheists, for me, religion is a tool of making friends, rather than making enemies.

Abhijit Naskar

God is created by the brain and can also be destroyed by the brain. But this way ‘Love’ doesn’t exist either, because it also is the result of molecular interaction within the brain. Love is a result of complex and mind-blowing interactions between neurotransmitters like Oxytocin, Dopamine, Serotonin, Endorphins and the reward center of the brain. Does this mean we should downright stop loving our family or friends? Since there is no existence of actual ‘Love’, should we just deny what our heart feels for our beloved ones? Whatever the answer is, the same goes for the faith upon divine existence. Only one thing to remember – Love gives life, so should faith.

Abhijit Naskar

Whatever may be the position of science, whatever may be the position of philosophy, as long as there is such a thing as death in the world, as long as there is such a thing as weakness in the human heart, as long as the human heart sheds a drop of tear in weakness, there shall be a faith in God and divinity.

Abhijit Naskar

Religion is not a book, it is a neurological sentiment.

Abhijit Naskar

As the neo-cortex of the brain keeps getting more complex through further evolution, eventually our far away progeny will born in a world where there will be no more religion to be endowed upon them.

Abhijit Naskar

Lastly I’d say this – true religion, as a part of Neuroscience – a study of the mind – is the greatest and healthiest exercise that the human mind has. In some form or other, it is an evolutionary necessity of the human mind, not a luxury.

Abhijit Naskar

It's been long since thinking humanity has learnt that love is a majestic creation of the brain, yet that knowledge hasn't made love be deemed any less glorious. Then why should it threaten the religious believer to learn that divinity as well is a natural creation of the brain?

Abhijit Naskar

Morality exists in the neurons as a natural sensation. Religion only tries to codify it.

Abhijit Naskar

There is no such thing as 'God given scripture', 'the messenger of God' or 'the Last Prophet'.

Abhijit Naskar

God is not an Almighty Being watching over life on earth. God is the Event Horizon of Human Consciousness.

Abhijit Naskar

The Kingdom of God is an earthly experience which manifests in an unearthly manner.

Abhijit Naskar

God is simply a magnificent state of the mind, where the finite turns infinite.

Abhijit Naskar

Each of the sapiens brains generates its own perception of God in uniquely different ways. Ergo, it imposes different qualities of meaning and value on God. You see God the way your brain wants you to see it. There is no right and wrong, or fact and fiction on this matter. It is all personal.

Abhijit Naskar

Various fascinating psychological elements are involved in the transcendental state of human consciousness. One may lose the ability to distinguish one’s self from the rest of the world in transcendence, but still it is the human brain that constructs that state of mind. Hence, even in that altered state of consciousness one is not totally devoid of one’s beliefs, conjectures, ideas and fantasies. In fact, these ideas fill up the transcendental experience with all kinds of fanatic stories that happen to be unique, based on the person’s inner urges and drives.

Abhijit Naskar

Meditation brings Nirvana, and Nirvana brings Buddhahood.

Abhijit Naskar

Most of Jesus’ life is told through the four Gospels of the New Testament, known as the Canonical gospels, written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These are not biographies in the modern sense but accounts with allegorical intent. They are written to engender faith in Jesus as the Messiah and the incarnation of God, and not to provide factual data about Jesus’s life. This left the door of exaggeration open. And through that door all kinds of mystical non-sense crept in and made place right alongside the good philosophical teachings of Jesus.

Abhijit Naskar

Through the sacred verses filled with violence and self-righteousness, the minds of the angry individuals find a way to get rid of all their misery. At that unstable state of consciousness, they are drawn to the description of the Holy War. They visualize a glimmer of hope. They feel absolutely immersed in it. Finally when they emerge as holy warriors, they are no longer humans, from the emotional perspective. They emerge as wild beasts, neurologically almost unable to feel human emotions, like empathy, love, kindness and compassion. Consequently the whole world faces the wrath of the most primitive of all human elements in the name of God’s judgment.

Abhijit Naskar

God is hardwired within the neural circuitry.

Abhijit Naskar

Religion is not a book, it is not an institution, and it is not even a person. True Religion is realization of the self.

Abhijit Naskar

It is the finding of neuroscience, in fact, that belief is at least in part a matter of emotion. Whatever we believe to be true lights up areas of our brain responsible for self-identification and the processing of feelings and sentiments. If we believe something, then, the object of our belief becomes an emotionally potent aspect of our own self-image. There is some common sense to this, too: the most passionate of believers and the most strident of New Atheists are palpably, visibly fired up and ready to defend their positions.

Steve Volk

Any thought sequence that minimizes anxiety would get reinforced over time. The sequence would be maintained during the person’s development and would be provoked in contexts where refutation of the belief might occur. So, any kind of refutation of a person’s religious beliefs makes the beliefs only stronger.

Abhijit Naskar

Pathology can indeed cause experiences of the Kingdom of God, but not all God experiences are caused by pathology.

Abhijit Naskar

All deities are external manifestation of humanity's internal divinity.

Abhijit Naskar

Even though the world hails Joan of Arc as some sort of hero, which she undoubtedly was, what pains me the most is that her pathological condition ultimately led to her demise at the age of only nineteen.

Abhijit Naskar

Belief is exclusively a matter of personal domain. It has nothing to do with reality.

Abhijit Naskar

When I am fully immersed in my work of nourishing humanity, it fills my head with all kinds of feel-good chemicals, such as endorphins, serotonin and dopamine. Problems occur during the brief intervals between the finishing of one work and the beginning of another. During these intervals, my biology starts to get filled with stress hormones cortisol and adrenalin, that worsens my OCD. That is why, I can’t sit still even a day after I finish writing a book. Because if I do, my OCD begins to suffocate me inside my head. Hence, as soon as I deliver a work, I have to start working on my next scientific literature.

Abhijit Naskar

I don’t make any pretence of knowing about the existence of a Supreme Entity, neither do I make any attempt to create any friction among religions. If anything, I have spared myself no pains in my endeavor to smoothen the ongoing friction among all religions of the world.

Abhijit Naskar

It is pretty simple - mind is a part of life - consciousness is a part of mind - God is a part of consciousness.

Abhijit Naskar

Meditation has also been proven scientifically to untangle and rewire the neurological pathways in the brain that make up the conditioned personality. Buddhist monks, for example, have had their brains scanned by scientists as they sat still in deep altered states of consciousness invoked by transcendental meditation and the scientists were amazed at what they beheld. The frontal lobes of the monks lit up as bright as the sun! They were in states of peace and happiness the scientists had never seen before. Meditation invokes that which is known in neuroscience as neuroplasticity; which is the loosening of the old nerve cells or hardwiring in the brain, to make space for the new to emerge. Meditation, in this sense, is a fire that burns away the old or conditioned self, in the Bhagavad Gita, this is known as the Yajna;“All karma or effects of actions are completely burned away from the liberated being who, free from attachment, with his physical mind enveloped in wisdom (the higher self), performs the true spiritual fire rite.

Craig Krishna

Humans are not simply higher than Gods, Gods are mere mystical representations of the humans themselves.

Abhijit Naskar

I realized the universe had consumed my whole entity with its divine sensation of eternal bliss. All I could consciously perceive in that state of mind was absolute oneness. I felt being one with the banyan tree, under which I was sitting. I felt one with the corns in the field. I felt one with the sky and the clouds in it. As if everything was me, and I was everything. I didn’t have any perception of time or space. All that there was, was an all- pervading eternity – a state of non-dualism.

Abhijit Naskar

The transcendental state of Absolute Oneness sets the human mind free.

Abhijit Naskar

Through Neurotheology, I and my fellow scientists of twenty-first century have already taken the first step from the side of Science, to diminish the gap between Science and Religion. Now it is time for Religion to do the same.

Abhijit Naskar

Once the lotus of your inner divinity gets full-blown and you reach the mental state where all the religious giants of human history experienced the all-encompassing sense of godliness, the exuberance of the human mind turns infinite. Awakening into that state makes all the perceptual limitations of the mind disappear, just like a bucket of muddy water turns crystal-clear once poured into the ocean.

Abhijit Naskar

Once you attain the state of Absolute Oneness or Non-Duality, you become one of those spiritual legends that humanity so gloriously venerates as the founding fathers of religion.

Abhijit Naskar

Christ attained the ultimate spiritual oneness through prayer and devotion, Moses and Mohammed through prayer, Buddha and all the Indian sages through intense meditation and so did I. And so can you.

Abhijit Naskar

There has been more bloodshed in the name of God than for any other cause. And it is all because people never attempt to reach the fountain-head. They are content only to comply with the customs of their forefathers and instructions on some books, and want others to do the same. But, to explain God after merely reading the scriptures is like explaining the city of New York after seeing it only in a map.

Abhijit Naskar

Just like love becomes consummated upon the attainment of orgasm, all the faith and divinity in the world reach their ultimate existential potential upon the attainment of Absolute Unitary Qualia or simply Absolute Godliness.

Abhijit Naskar

Once you emerge from the state of absolute divinity, the self within you becomes Christ – it becomes Buddha – it becomes Moses – it becomes Krishna. The sage who emerges from the state of non-duality begins to perceive the self as Christ, not Christ as Christ – the self as Moses, not Moses as Moses – the self as Mohammed, not Mohammed as Mohammed – the self as Krishna, not Krishna as Krishna.

Abhijit Naskar

The religion I am talking about here is plain everyday humanism. That’s exactly what the person named Jesus attempted to spread, but due to innate psychological reasons, his pupils ended up constructing yet another orthodox circle with its own distinct beliefs, ideals and fantasies.

Abhijit Naskar

He (Jesus) gave up his life not because of the so-called sins of humanity, but because he was too adamant to give in to orthodox monstrosity.

Abhijit Naskar

I am like the H2O in a lake. Some drink it at one place and call it “water”, others at another place and call it “jal”, and some others at a third place and call it “pani”. The Christians call it “water”, the Hindus “jal”, and the Muslims ”pani”. But it is one and the same thing. I am not tied to the doctrines of any church, synagogue, temple or mosque, yet I am the reason of their birth.

Abhijit Naskar

Your spiritual goals can be as numerous as there are stars in the sky. And so can be your religions. But in all your vivid and diverse paths of practicing religion and spirituality, there is one very common and simple element that knows no bounds. That element is the eternal bliss that enables you to attain unimaginable feats of excellence. It is not tied to any scripture of yours, yet it is in every scripture of yours.

Abhijit Naskar

There can never be a conflict between science and religion, once you understand the spiritual knack of the human brain circuits.

Abhijit Naskar

I (God) am only a part of your own human consciousness, but a really bizarre part.

Abhijit Naskar

A true religious person should not think that “my religion alone is the right path and other religions are false.” Other religions are also so many paths leading to the same domain of transcendental bliss. Likewise, no person should think “my perception of the reality is the only absolute reality, and all others’ are false”, because each human brain has its own unique way of perceiving the reality.

Abhijit Naskar

Spirituality is to Religion, what Love is to Marriage. Spirituality is an emotional state of the mind, just like Love, while Religion on the other hand, is a social construct, quite like Marriage.

Abhijit Naskar

Religion doesn’t mean obeying some textual rules from books that were written hundreds or thousands of years ago. Religion means realization of the self.

Abhijit Naskar

Religions began as realization of the self, but ended up being retaliation against each other.

Abhijit Naskar

There is no secret in attaining God. In the path of Enlightenment, any theoretical mystery-mongering preacher that weakens the mind, should be rejected at once. Science has no secrets. The very purpose of it is to unravel the secrets of Nature and the Universe. That is why it is so beautiful. And so should be the path of Enlightenment.

Abhijit Naskar

Religious faith as a whole induces various health benefits in the general population through complex biological processes.

Abhijit Naskar

The purpose of Neurotheology shall be to ease human sufferings with a deeper understanding of the neurobiological substrates of spirituality and divinity.

Abhijit Naskar

Through the newly emerged field of Neurotheology, Scientists such as Andrew Newberg, Michael Persinger, myself and a few others have already taken the first step from the side of Science, to diminish the gap between Science and Religion. Now it is time for Religion to do the same. And the moment any religion does that, the eternal battle between Science and Religion would slowly start to disperse.

Abhijit Naskar

Current research in any field of Science has not yet reached the point where we could start exploring the existential question regarding God as a Supreme Entity driving causality in the universe. However, as modern Neuroscience progresses further and gets more advanced, we shall get to dive deeper into the physiological processes underneath the Qualia of God in human mind.

Abhijit Naskar

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Neurotheology Quotes

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