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| List of figures | |
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| Preface | |
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| Acknowledgements | |
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| Exploring a strange yet familiar landscape: a strategy for interpreting religious and spiritual experiences | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Motivating concerns | |
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| Theoretical issues | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Spirituality and the brain: a revolutionary scientific approach to religious and spiritual experiences | |
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| Introduction | |
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| History of thought about spirituality and the brain | |
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| Evidence for the neural mediation hypothesis | |
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| Problems facing the neuroscience of religious and spiritual experiences | |
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| Creative responses | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| A smorgasbord of dangers and delights: the phenomenology of religious and spiritual experiences | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Mapping the terrain of religious and spiritual experiences | |
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| Basic distinctions in the map | |
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| Exploring shared territory in more detail | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Gateway to ultimacy: the importance of intense experiences | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Immediate responses to intense experiences | |
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| Five core features of intense experiences | |
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| The faces, functions, and cognitive value of intense experiences | |
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| Evolution and the neurology of intense experiences | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Can you trust your instincts? The cognitive reliability of religious and spiritual experiences | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Deepening the reliability question | |
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| The perception analogy | |
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| An ecological-semiotic theory of dynamic engagement | |
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| The reliability of religious perceptual engagement | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| The brain-group nexus: the social power of religious and spiritual experiences | |
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| Introduction | |
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| A dynamical systems approach to the brain-group nexus | |
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| Describing all equilibrium social arrangements since the Neolithic | |
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| Evolutionary origins of the pre-Neolithic equilibrium | |
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| Behind the ideological curtain | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Make it start, make it stop! Religious and spiritual experiences in the future | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Past technologies, transformed in the present, hurtling into the future | |
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| Unprecedented technologies | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Brains in bodies, persons in groups, and religion in nature: an integrative interpretation of religious and spiritual experiences | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Five key controversies | |
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| Five key affirmations | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Glossary of key terms | |
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| References | |
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| Index | |