Neurocosmological Neurotheology

This collection of articles began with the realization that my childhood dream of following Einstein’s path toward knowing God’s thoughts had led me to a crossroads. His road to truth reached an impasse beyond which very small things become “unreal.” The other road paradoxically travels back to the mists of history and to the frontiers of science. It converges on the question of whether ancient mystics possessed lost knowledge about the brain’s capacity for suprasensory perceptions of transcendent realities beyond physics’ impasse. Specifically do Yoga’s description of subtle channels along the central axis of the central nervous system correspond to actual neuroanatomical structures? For nearly two years I investigated the fluid filled central passageways and chambers of the brain and spinal cord. But I did not find what I was looking for. Then as I was about to abandon my quixotic quest a serendipitous encounter with an article about an enigmatic threadlike structure that travels through the center of the central nervous system called Reissner’s fiber ignited my imagination. These articles are snapshots of my journey along the strange loops of Reissner’s fiber. This collection of articles began with the realization that my childhood dream of following Einstein’s path toward knowing God’s thoughts had led me to a crossroads. His road to truth reached an impasse beyond which very small things become “unreal.” The other road paradoxically travels back to the mists of history and to the frontiers of science. It converges on the question of whether ancient mystics possessed lost knowledge about the brain’s capacity for suprasensory perceptions of transcendent realities beyond physics’ impasse. Specifically do Yoga’s description of subtle channels along the central axis of the central nervous system correspond to actual neuroanatomical structures? For nearly two years I investigated the fluid filled central passageways and chambers of the brain and spinal cord. But I did not find what I was looking for. Then as I was about to abandon my quixotic quest a serendipitous encounter with an article about an enigmatic threadlike structure that travels through the center of the central nervous system called Reissner’s fiber ignited my imagination. These articles are snapshots of my journey along the strange loops of Reissner’s fiber.