Doctor Mike

It's like, I knew you didn't love me.

Zero oxytocin release.

So yeah, I mean, so there are neurobiological correlates to it, but the experience is fundamentally complex.

And by that, it means it's really, really hard to define, easy to understand, impossible to solve, and super multifactorial, unbelievably multifactorial.

And yet it's the most real thing in life.

Can you share some of them?

Yeah, I mean, I grew up in a religious family.

And so there's probably a genetic component to religious experience.

It's probably the case.

I mean, psychology is biology in a very real way.

And so we experience it, which does not, by the way, does not rule out the authenticity of religious experience.

Why wouldn't God put a receptor in your head?

I mean, for example, or, you know, there's...

If you believe in God, God created your brain.

And so I'm completely comfortable with the idea of a science-based and a faith-based world.

I think that iron sharpens iron in this way.

Creator and creation are understood in different ways, but they make each other better as far as I'm concerned.

So for me, as fundamentally a science-based person, I occasionally have emotional experiences of the divine, but I don't rely on that a lot.

For me, the most important thing with religious experiences, with metaphysics, is a practice where you open the door to them, a belief that structures them, and an occasional feeling of them.

Most people think about it in the other way.