The “mystical stance” – the capacity to become immersed in the religious experience, to enter into trance states, arose as one of several mechanisms we developed to bond our relatively large social groups

Dunbar, RIM. 2019. “Religion, the Social Brain and the Mystical Stance.” Archive for Psychology of Religion. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:259dc012-8806-4ca6-92f2-2eaf1ff6c002

Abstract: This paper explores the implications of the social brain and the endorphin-based bonding mechanism that underpins it for the evolution of religion. I argue that religion evolved as one of the behavioural mechanisms designed to facilitate community bonding when humans first evolved the larger social groups of ~150 that now characterise our species. This is not a matter of facilitating cooperation, but of engineering social cohesion – a very different problem. Analysis of the size of C19th utopian communities suggests that a religious basis both allowed larger groups to form and greatly enhanced their longevity. I suggest that religion evolved in two stages: an early immersive form with no formal structure based on trance-dancing (a form still evident in the rituals and practices of many hunter-gatherers) and a later form which had more formal structures and gave rise to our modern doctrinal religions. I argue that the modern doctrinal religions did not replace ancestral immersive religions but rather that the doctrinal component was overlain on the ancient immersive form, thereby giving rise to the mystical stance that underlies all world religions. I suggest that it is this mystical stance that causes the constant upwelling of cults and sects within world religions.

Key words: community bonding, endorphins, trance, immersive religion


Conclusions

In this article, I have proposed an alternative view of the evolution of religion that combines the social brain hypothesis with the neurobiology of social bonding. I argue that the predominant focus on the cognitive and formal ritual aspects of religion overlooks what may, in fact, be by far the most important aspect of religion and the reason why people believe and behave religiously. This is the emotional “raw feels” component that arises from engaging in religious rituals. This phenomenon is what I refer to as the “mystical stance” – the capacity to become immersed in the religious experience, to enter into trance states. This arose, I suggest, as one of several mechanisms that humans developed to bond their relatively large social groups. I suggest that the doctrinal aspects of the modern world religions have simply been grafted onto this ancient substrate, and that this may explain some peculiar features of modern doctrinal religions such as their constant tendency to fragment into sects and cults. Doctrinal (or world) religions as we know them seem to date only from the Neolithic, even though the cognitive capacities that are necessary for modern religions (mentalising and language) long predate this. They seem to have arisen as a mechanism for bonding large numbers of people living in relatively cramped conditions. Although Neanderthals and other archaic humans may well have had both religion and language, the cognitive evidence unequivocally suggests that these would have been less sophisticated than those found in modern humans. This implies that religion as we know it (but still in its immersive, adoctrinal form) only arose with the appearance of modern humans around 200,000 years ago.