Why Scientists Who Dismiss All Spiritual Experience Might Be Bad Scientists

I'm going to make a claim that will annoy some of my colleagues: if you're a scientist who categorically dismisses all spiritual or mystical experiences as delusion, hallucination, or primitive thinking, you might be violating the very principles of scientific inquiry you claim to uphold.

Not because spiritual experiences prove anything supernatural. Not because science and spirituality are secretly the same thing.

But because good science requires intellectual humility, openness to evidence, and willingness to investigate phenomena even when they don't fit your current models. And blanket dismissal of an entire category of human experience, reported across all cultures and throughout history, isn't scientific skepticism. It's dogmatism.

Let me explain.

The Data We're Ignoring

Here are some facts that any scientist should find interesting:

Fact 1: Mystical and spiritual experiences are reported across every human culture, in every historical period, by people of wildly different backgrounds, education levels, and belief systems.

Fact 2: These experiences show remarkable consistency in their phenomenology, such as dissolution of subject-object boundaries, sense of unity with reality, encounters with seemingly autonomous presences, profound meaning and insight, ineffability.

Fact 3: They often produce lasting positive changes in people's lives, such as reduced anxiety and depression, increased well-being, shifts in values toward compassion and meaning over material success.

Fact 4: They occur in both religious and secular contexts, can be spontaneous or induced through specific practices, and happen to skeptics and believers alike.

Fact 5: Modern neuroscience has identified specific neural correlates of mystical experiences and can even reliably induce them through various means (meditation, psychedelics, brain stimulation).

Now, as a scientist, when you encounter a phenomenon that is:

• Universal across human populations

• Phenomenologically consistent

• Causally efficacious (produces measurable effects)

• Neurologically tractable

• Experimentally reproducible

  
  

...your response should be: "This is interesting. We should study this carefully and try to understand it."

Instead, many scientists respond with: "This is obviously not real. Moving on."

That's not science. That's prior commitment to a philosophical position masquerading as scientific rigour.

The Difference Between Methodology and Metaphysics

Here's where the confusion lies: many scientists conflate methodological naturalism (which is essential to science) with philosophical materialism (which is a metaphysical assumption).

Methodological naturalism says: "When doing science, we look for natural explanations and do not invoke supernatural causes." This is absolutely correct and necessary. You can't do good science by saying "God did it" or "it's magic" whenever you encounter something puzzling.

Philosophical materialism says: "Only physical matter is fundamentally real. Consciousness, meaning, and subjective experience are just byproducts of material processes. Anything that can't be explained in purely physical terms is either illusion or will eventually be explained away."

The first is a methodological constraint that makes science possible. The second is a metaphysical claim that goes far beyond what science can actually establish.

When a scientist dismisses spiritual experiences as "just brain chemistry" or "nothing but neurons firing," they're not making a scientific statement. They're making a philosophical claim that the subjective character of experience doesn't matter, that first-person phenomenology is somehow less real than third-person measurement.

But that's not a scientific conclusion. It's a philosophical assumption they brought to the investigation.

What "It's Just Brain Chemistry" Actually Means

Let's examine this common dismissal more carefully.

When someone has a profound mystical experience and a scientist says, "That's just your brain chemistry," what exactly are they claiming?

Yes, we can identify neural correlates of mystical experiences. We can see which brain regions are active, which neurotransmitters are involved, which networks are engaged or suppressed. But here's the thing: we can do the same for every experience you have.

When you see the colour red, there's brain chemistry involved. When you fall in love, there's brain chemistry involved. When you make a logical deduction, there's brain chemistry involved. When you decide that evidence matters and you value truth, there's brain chemistry involved.

Does that mean love is "just" brain chemistry? That logic is "just" neurons firing? That your commitment to scientific truth is "nothing but" neurological activity?

If you say yes, you've just undermined your own position, because now your belief in materialism is also "just" brain chemistry, with no privileged access to truth.

If you say no, you're acknowledging that there's something about conscious experience, the felt quality of it, the meaning of it, what it's like to have it, that isn't captured by reducing it to physical processes.

And if that's true for ordinary experience, why would it be different for spiritual experience?

The Explanatory Gap

This gets at a fundamental problem in philosophy of mind called the "hard problem of consciousness" or the "explanatory gap."

We can explain the correlates of consciousness in which brain processes correspond to which experiences. We can explain the functions of consciousness and what evolutionary advantages it might provide. We can explain the mechanisms, the neural architectures that support it.

But we cannot explain the experience itself. We cannot explain why there's "something it's like" to be conscious, why subjective experience exists at all rather than everything just happening in the dark.

The philosopher, David Chalmers, has argued persuasively that this isn't a gap we'll close with more neuroscience. It's a fundamental limitation of the physicalist framework. You cannot derive first-person subjective experience from third-person objective description, no matter how detailed your description gets.

And if that's true, then dismissing spiritual experiences because we can identify their neural correlates is simply a category error. You're explaining one thing (the physical substrate) and claiming you've explained something else (the phenomenological character and potential meaning of the experience).

The Arrogance of Certainty

Here's what bothers me most: the certainty.

I work with plasma physics and quantum entanglement. The deeper I go into fundamental physics, the weirder reality gets. Non-locality, superposition, the measurement problem, and the role of the observer show that reality at the quantum level violates every intuition we have from everyday experience.

This work has taught me that reality is far stranger than our commonsense assumptions suggest and that the universe doesn't organise itself according to categories that feel comfortable to us. Being certain about the nature of reality is probably a sign you haven't looked closely enough.

Yet, I meet scientists, often in fields far removed from fundamental physics, who are absolutely certain that consciousness is just computation, that subjective experience is an illusion, that spiritual experiences are simply misfiring neurons, that anyone who takes these phenomena seriously is being unscientific.

Where does this certainty come from?

Not from the data. The data on consciousness, mystical experience, and the relationship between mind and matter is profoundly puzzling and nowhere near resolved. It comes from a prior commitment to materialism. From an assumption that was locked in before the investigation even began.

That's not scientific thinking. That's ideology.

What Good Science Actually Looks Like

Good science is characterised by:

Intellectual humility - Acknowledging what we don't know and remaining open to being wrong

Empirical grounding - Following the data wherever it leads, even if it's uncomfortable

Methodological rigour - Being careful and precise about what you can and can't conclude

Openness to anomaly - Taking seriously phenomena that do not fit current models

Willingness to revise - Updating your theories when evidence demands it

When it comes to spiritual and mystical experiences, good science would:

• Study them carefully without prejudging their significance

• Acknowledge that subjective reports are data, even if they're not the only kind of data

• Recognise the limits of current materialist frameworks in explaining consciousness

• Remain agnostic about metaphysical questions that go beyond empirical investigation

• Distinguish between explaining correlates and explaining the phenomenon itself

Instead, what we often get is:

• Dismissal without investigation

• Reduction of first-person reports to "mere" subjective experience (as if objective observation weren't also processed through subjective consciousness)

• Overconfidence in materialist explanations that haven't actually explained anything

• Confusion of methodological naturalism with metaphysical materialism

• Stigmatisation of anyone who takes these experiences seriously

  
  

The Personal Cost of Dogmatism in Ignoring Spiritual Experience

I've seen brilliant researchers dismiss potentially important lines of inquiry because they involved consciousness, meditation, or anything that smelled "spiritual." Not because the methodology was bad or the data was weak, but because it violated their prior commitment to materialism.

I've watched scientists ridicule colleagues who had spiritual experiences, as if having such experiences disqualified someone from serious intellectual work. I've seen entire domains of human experience excluded from serious investigation because they don't fit comfortably within a reductionist framework.

This isn't just philosophically unjustified. It's hampering scientific progress.

Some of the most interesting questions about consciousness, meaning, well-being, and the nature of reality require us to take subjective experience seriously, to study altered states rigourously, to consider the possibility that our current models might be incomplete.

But if your starting position is that all such experiences are necessarily illusory or reducible to physical processes we already understand, you've foreclosed investigation before it begins.

What I'm Not Saying

Let me be very clear about what I'm NOT arguing:

• I'm NOT saying spiritual experiences prove the existence of God, spirits, or supernatural realms

• I'm NOT saying we should abandon scientific methodology

• I'm NOT saying all interpretations of mystical experiences are equally valid

• I'm NOT arguing for "anything goes" epistemology

• I'm NOT claiming that science and spirituality are the same thing

What I AM saying:

• Spiritual experiences are real phenomena that deserve serious scientific investigation

• Dismissing them a priori is not scientifically justified

• Our current models of consciousness are incomplete and possibly fundamentally limited

• Materialist metaphysics is not scientifically required; it's a philosophical add-on

• Good science requires more humility about what we don't understand

  
  

The Scientists Who Got It Right

Many of the greatest scientists in history have taken spiritual and mystical dimensions of reality seriously:

Albert Einstein spoke of a "cosmic religious feeling" and said, "The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious."

Werner Heisenberg, quantum mechanics pioneer, engaged seriously with questions of consciousness and reality that went beyond physics.

Wolfgang Pauli worked with Carl Jung on the relationship between physics and psychology, taking synchronicity seriously.

Erwin Schrödinger studied Vedanta philosophy and wrote about consciousness as fundamental to reality.

David Bohm developed theories about implicate order that bridged physics and consciousness.

Were these bad scientists? Were they being irrational? Or were they being more thoroughly scientific by remaining open to aspects of reality that didn't fit comfortable materialist assumptions?

My Own Experience

As a researcher at Cambridge studying plasma physics and quantum entanglement, I'm deeply committed to scientific rigour. I value evidence, logical thinking, and empirical investigation.

I'm also a trained shamanic practitioner who regularly enters altered states of consciousness, journeys to non-ordinary reality, and works with what I experience as autonomous spiritual entities.

These aren't contradictory positions. They're complementary modes of investigation into different aspects of reality.

When I do physics, I use the methods appropriate to physics: mathematics, experimentation, peer review.

When I do shamanic work, I use the methods appropriate to that domain: altered states, symbolic engagement, direct experience.

I don't confuse the two. I don't claim shamanic journeys prove quantum theories or that physics validates spiritual experiences.

But I also don't assume that physics has jurisdiction over all of reality, or that anything not captured by current scientific models is therefore illusory.

That kind of epistemic humility - recognising the limits of our frameworks - is what good science requires.

The Path Forward

If you're a scientist who has been categorically dismissive of spiritual experience, I'm not asking you to believe in anything.

I'm asking you to:

1. Recognise your assumptions - Notice where you've moved from methodology to metaphysics

2. Take the data seriously - Mystical experiences are real phenomena with real effects

3. Acknowledge the limits of current models - We don't have a complete theory of consciousness

4. Remain open - The universe has surprised us before and will again

5. Study before dismissing - Investigation should precede conclusion, not follow it

   
   

This doesn't mean abandoning rigour. It means applying rigour more thoroughly, including to our own unexamined assumptions.

The most unscientific position is certainty about matters that remain fundamentally mysterious. The most scientific position is: "This is interesting. We should investigate carefully. And we should be humble about what we can claim to know."

An Invitation

Science at its best is about curiosity, wonder, and fearless investigation of reality. It's about following the evidence even when it leads somewhere uncomfortable. It's about revising our theories when they prove inadequate.

Spiritual and mystical experiences represent a massive body of data about human consciousness and our relationship to reality. Dismissing that data because it doesn't fit our preferred metaphysical framework isn't scientific.

It's the opposite.

Good science requires us to be more curious, more humble, and more willing to investigate what we don't understand, even when that investigation takes us into territories that feel uncomfortable or unfamiliar.

If you're a scientist, that's what I'm asking of you. Not to believe anything. Just to look carefully before dismissing.

The universe is stranger than we imagine. Perhaps stranger than we can imagine.

That's not a reason for less rigour. It's a reason for more wonder.

I'm Kathy Postelle Rixon, researcher at Cambridge, Chair of The Philosophical Society: Oxford, and shamanic practitioner. I work at the intersection of rigourous scientific thinking and direct spiritual experience. If this resonates, reach out at kathy@magicinharmony.com or visit www.magicinharmony.com.

Are you a scientist who has had experiences that don't fit the materialist paradigm? Or someone who struggles to reconcile scientific thinking with spiritual experiences? I'd genuinely love to hear your story.