IRAS 2025—Spiritual Experience

What if spiritual experience is a real human capacity waiting to be opened and not “just” a belief? Across science, philosophy, and theology, researchers are exploring how people encounter a deeper inner core that can transform awareness and meaning, and improve connection. In the 2025 IRAS conference “Spiritual Experience: A Scientific, Philosophical and Theological Retreat,” organized by Calvin Chatlos and Barbara Whittaker-Johns, perspectives on this topic from science, philosophy, and theology were brought together under a shared framework for discussion and practice. In the conference, we aimed to deepen understanding of how intentional spiritual opening can foster meaning, healing, awe, connection, and planetary well-being. In the December 2024 issue of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, you can find Calvin Chatlos’ programmatic article on his Framework of Spirituality, which was the driving concept of the conference, as well as three invited pre-conference commentaries from science (Michael Winkelman), philosophy (Nick Hedlund), and theology (Fraser Watts).

Five articles (based on two plenary talks and three contributed papers) are published in this collection following the conference. Michael Winkelman (plenary speaker) and Andy Newberg offer a neurophenomenological perspective on the self and spirituality, with a focus on the right parietal lobe; they claim that the “affective core self” (which can be linked with right-hemisphere processes) corresponds directly to many characteristics of mystical experiences. Andrew Davis (plenary speaker) provides a process philosophy approach to “exceptional experience”; drawing on Whitehead, he addresses the “wild(er)ness of non-sensory perception” and he adds that Iain McGilchrist’s hemisphere hypothesis provides neuroscientific support for Whitehead’s “dual theory of perception.” Chuck Fowler brings another perspective to mental health, with his emphasis on the embeddedness of mental health in systemic health; he argues that systemic thinking is essential for the health of the planet, and to recover from “Systemic Abnormality Disorder.” Lijo Peter Kannoth addresses an ontological hermeneutics of being; by placing the yogic discipline of breath control in dialogue with Meister Eckhart’s mystical theology, he argues that both traditions “converge in affirming that true freedom and peace emerge not from self-assertion but from radical self-emptying and openness to the divine.” Finally, Paul Carr analyzes near-death experiences (NDEs) as spiritual transformations; he concurs with the conviction of one the medical doctors describing NDEs that the current views on the relationship between the brain and consciousness held by most physicians, philosophers, and psychologists are too narrow for a proper understanding and that humans cannot be reduced to their constituent parts.

Guest edited by Calvin Chatlos