ABSTRACT

This chapter provides a grounding for experiences of the supernatural in the perspectives of biogenetic structuralism that propose understandings of supernatural phenomena in the neurobiological foundations of cognition and experience. Biogenetic structural approaches provide a theoretical system for linking neurophysiological processes to individual and cultural experiences of the supernatural. This provides a framework for the exploration of their neurophenomenology, how their phenomenal features reflect activation of specific brain function. Laughlin addresses the underlying reasons for common features of perceptual invisibility attributed to many supernatural phenomena. Laughlin elaborates on the phenomenology of the invisible through a review of Merleau-Ponty’s concept of “perceptual faith.” He proposes that the human mind and brain adapts to the inherent limits of human perception and the often-invisible nature of causality through the postulation of supernatural dimensions as responsible for unseen causal forces that determine the form of the phenomenal world.