Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and Delusions of God

A few years ago I watched a BBC-documentary named ‘Phantoms in the Brain’ (The full documentary may be found here – Part 1 and Part2). The documentary based on the book by the same name, is a fascinating study on the capabilities of the human brain, mainly its ability for self-deception and the delusions it can produce in humans without us being aware of it. In this documentary, narrated by the author of the book V Ramachandran, some bizarre cases are explored and attempts made, to try and answer questions about our consciousness and the idea of “self” from the perspective of neuroscience.

Some fo the fascinating cases discussed are

• The Man who can feel his amputated arm.
• The Blind person who can see.
• The man who reaches out into the mirror to grab objects and the lady who thinks her left arm belongs to her husband.
• The person who cannot recognize simple objects or faces
• The guy who cannot recognize his parents and thinks they are impostors.

But, to me, the most curious of the cases is that of a man suffering from Temporal Lobe Epilepsy(TLE). This gentleman, due to the damage to his temporal lobes, was suffering from seizures. However, after his seizures calmed down he would feel an extraordinary significance in everything he observed. He felt some sort of a oneness with nature and sometimes claimed of being omnipotent, of being God himself. I found the experiences of this person eerily familiar to the religious experiences claimed by our prophets. Here are the videos for this fascinating case which may give us insights into religious beliefs of people and claims by people of actually seeing God.

 Part 1

 

Part 2 (this video ends abruptly but the last minute or so can be found in part2 of the full documentary above)

 

The video was eye-opening for me and I felt empathy towards the suffering of this guy. At one point he even says – …” I am so right in my head …i can just go out there and have people to follow me…the new generations of prophets..” After watching this documentary, I had a hunch - could many our prophets who have had similar experiences been afflicted by TLE?  One article by Dr. Ali Sina at faithfreedom international questions whether prophet Mohammed suffered from TLE. When I was devout theist, I used to read books on Ramakrishna Parahamsa and wondered why his followers claimed his epileptic fits as samadhi . Is it possible that Ramakrishna also suffered from TLE or was really a tantric trance? In autobiography of a Yogi, Swami Yogananda also makes similar claims about having visions (or what I would call delusions) and claims seeing his master/guru after his death. How about all the other prophets who made similar claims. Could they be TLE patients also?

 

When I was in undergrad, I remember distinctly, about meeting a young man at a religious gathering, who claimed of seeing Gods and human spirits around the house. This guy also had epileptic fits and at that time I wasn’t sure what it was. His mother would narrate stories of his running away from home to meditate in the woods and he claimed that on more than one occasion Lord Krishna/Vishnu visited him and blessed him. He was so convinced that Krishna visited him, that when his parents berated him for having delusions, he charged back at his parents and became livid with anger. I could see in his eyes and demeanor that he actually believed that he has seen God. He was absolutely convinced about it and wanted to spend his entire life in meditation. Different people opined that either he was mad or he was truly a prophet, with majority believing his stories about his visions of Krishna.  At that time I found the guy’s experinces strange but now having learnt about the brain and it’s capability of creating mischief, I understand his experiences a little better. Even until a century ago, when medical science was not so advanced, such experiences were called “God experience”, but now that we have a better understanding of the brain, can we still claim with conviction that these are ‘god experiences’ and not some neurological disorder ?