Neurotheology Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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. ~ 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

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

Religion is not a book, it is a neurological sentiment. ~ Abhijit Naskar

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

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

Meditation is the brain's way to exercise. ~ Abhijit Naskar

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

The Lord is in you and only in you. Without the human mind to construct an over-exaggerated idea of the Lord, there is no actual Lord of humanity except for humanity itself. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The kingdom of God is within the Self, for there is no God besides the Self. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Lack of insight into each other's private qualia of God, results in a never-ending argument between two people with vastly different conceptions of the term God. ~ 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

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

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

A man woke up at midnight and wanted to smoke. Therefore he looked for some fire, for which he went to a neighbor's house and knocked at the door. The neighbor opened the door and asked him what he wanted. The man said, I wish to smoke. Can you give me a little fire? The neighbor replied, O.M.G.! What the heck is wrong with you? You have taken so much trouble to come and wake us up at the middle of the night, while in your own hand you have a lantern! The God that human beings so keenly seek, lives within the human biology, yet they wander hitherto searching for it. ~ Abhijit Naskar

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

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

Ever since the rise of fear in the hominid psyche, one way or another, the grounds for an ever-active anti-fear mechanism was being prepared in the soft soil of consciousness by the process of natural selection. It is a process that deems survival potential as the only measure for existence. And by this measure, the anti-fear, anti-anxiety, anti-depressant mechanism, which later humans named "God", proved to be extremely effective. It delivered solace to the scared psyche of the early humans in their times of utter distress. In the midst of darkness, this one imaginative idea gave them light and hope. ~ Abhijit Naskar

A prayer/meditation a day, keeps the Doctor away. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Usually, when people hear the term Yoga, many of them associate it with various physical exercises where they need to twist, turn and stretch their body in complex ways that are known as Asanas, but this is only one type of Yoga, called "Hatha-Yoga". In reality, Yoga is an umbrella term for various physical and mental exercises that lead to the overall well-being of a person.
By origin, Yoga has mainly five forms:
1.Raja Yoga - The realization of divinity through intense meditation
2.Karma Yoga – The realization of divine bliss through your own daily activities and duties
3.Hatha Yoga – The realization of divine well-being through various physical exercises
4.Jyana Yoga – The realization of inexplicable bliss in the pursuit of knowledge
5.Bhakti Yoga – The realization of ecstasy through love and devotion for your Personal God
The purpose of all Yogas is to set your consciousness lose into the vast domain of the unknown, where your brain circuits simulate various fascinating mental states that are usually unimaginable and unattainable in your everyday consciousness. But the whole yoga thing has nothing to do with God or something of that sort. It is all about various states of the human mind. ~ Abhijit Naskar

In modern neurotheology we examine the physical bases to spiritual, religious and mystical experiences and beliefs, that implicitly appear to reduce this rich phenomenology to only neuronal functions. So, the thing is, there was no divine intervention necessary in the evolution of spirituality and religiosity. "Human Brain is the true God of all beliefs". ~ 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

My experience of that liberation, what Buddha had called Nirvana, set me off in the path of scientific investigation of that Oneness, the thing people call, meeting with God. And that meeting triggered an unquenchable thirst in me to develop a proper scientific method to understand and further explore that apparently bizarre domain of Universal Consciousness. ~ Abhijit Naskar