Sex, God, and the Brain

"In Sex, God and the Brain, neuroscientist Andrew Newberg, M.D. argues that our religious and spiritual experiences derive directly from our sexual being. While others have speculated on a connection between religion and sex, Newberg is the first to demonstrate - with groundbreaking brain scan research - that the underlying biological mechanism of religious, spiritual, and sexual experiences are identical. In fact, many religions, especially in the Judeo-Christian tradition, have an apparent fear of sexuality. Newberg's explanation of the problem is that both religion and sex compete for the same brain networks. So, sex is a potential threat to any religious system unless it can resolve the conflict within its doctrinal concepts. That is what some mystical sects do, relying on sexual activity as a means of achieving spiritual communion rather than preventing it.In his latest research, he has scanned the brains of women as they achieve spiritual orgasm in a process called Orgasmic Meditation. In this ecstatic experience obtained through sexual stimulation, self, other and the universe converge on a unity experience similar to states of enlightenment described in spiritual texts - and revealed in brain scans of people in heightened states of religious experience"--