Episode 47: Speaking in Tongues: w/Josh Brahinsky
Episode 47 of M3CS’s Contemplative Science Podcast saw Josh Brahinsky come on to the show to talk about his research into speaking in tongues - dissecting the phenomenology and digging into the ways spiritual practice affects our view of ourselves and the world.
For the full podcast, check out the episode here.
In this episode, we cover...
How the ‘psychedelic renaissance’ is allowing new research on speaking in tongues.
The phenomenology of speaking in tongues and how it differs across religions.
Intersections of neuroscience and spirituality: “the perennialists vs the particularists”.
Josh Brahinsky is a researcher at UC Berkeley in the Berkeley Social Interaction Laboratory and a teaching faculty at UC Santa Cruz. His work links anthropological and neuroscientific methods to explore the ways contemplation invites and shapes sensory capacity and experience.
Here are some of the key insights from the conversation...
Josh is at the forefront of new research on speaking in tongues, alongside previous guest Dr Michael Lifshitz.
”And so now that there’s a psychedelic renaissance that’s happening... where people are reawakening to the possibility that you can do things to your brain that make it more flexible and that can be healthy... and the story is being told in a way that has a lot more possibility for self-change and personal growth... we have a chance to look at speaking in tongues again.”
A lot of his work centres on the experiences of evangelicals.
”There's a bunch of places in the world where you are merging with just one entity and I imagine that's different than merging with everything. And actually the people that I work with (evangelicals) really don't like the language around mysticism. So when I say to them, do you blend with the world? They're like, no, that's mystic. We're not Mystics. We don't lose ourselves. We gain ourselves in our relationship to God, and we blend with God and ourselves become stronger.”
Imagination, frameworks, prayer...
”Frameworks are things that bind you or things that constrain you... but frameworks are also things that give your imagination space to play. And if you're thinking in the Buddhist vein where imagination is all just excess and not part of the real... and your job is to really get rid of it, then those imaginary things become a problem... And then the other way is: we're going to use this imagination to get ourselves to a mountain in our minds. There's so many imaginative forms of prayer and of meditation in the world that could be wonderful and interesting and exciting and get you to different places. So I think part of the argument that comes out of this is: can we be open to these multiple versions of using our minds to shape our bodies and not just using our minds to empty them?”
The best place to find Josh is here.
See you next week!
