When we talk about “realization” or “enlightenment” we find ourselves right in the heart of religion with all its political and cultural baggage. Really, though, we should be thinking psychology and practical philosophy. Here’s why.

Religions tend to follow a recognized cycle of development : a parabolic curve of usefulness and decay. Shakyamuni Buddha knew this and forecast that his Dharma (teachings) would last for 500 years, no more. Sure enough, at the 500 mark, “Buddhism” became “Mahayanaism”, and changed out of all recognition … though to be fair, the Mahayana did have many remarkable insights of its own.

The pattern of change is always relentless. The initial spark by an Enlightened individual is taken over by a conservative elite who wish to preserve it in all its literal aspects. Invariably this movement is led by a group of disciples who claim apostolic succession from the now deified founder.

Meanwhile a more adventurous group of young bloods want to adapt the message and make it relevant to changing circumstances … as they see it. This polarization results in a political auction of claim and counter claim, while truth suffers almost grotesque inflation from both sides. The newish “religion” reverses itself and adopts the very infrastructure and corruptive practices that the original movement sought to replace.

All our instituional religions have gone through this disheartening process and are looking distinctly threadbare and careworn in the 21st century.

It seems to me that what most Westerners are seeking today is not an alien culture imposed on them through an ancient apostolic religion, but a simple process of spiritualization : a technology of realization, or “extended mind” in the language of biologist Dr Rupert Sheldrake. The aim would be nothing less than the widening and deepening of our individual consciousness.

By “technology” I mean the artful implementation of a principle that has been proved workable under specific conditions. So it would utilize both art and science — mind and spirit — by acting on empirical data from productive fields of practice. If this sounds rather technical, it’s not. It’s just a way of creating a general definition of something like the Buddha’s “mindfulness” program of recollection. Other types of insight meditation (vipassana) are equally valid as Mind Technology.

Such a technology of realization, without the pressing burden of belief in human-made creeds and ensacredized worship, would remove the pedantry and inherent violence from our religious lives by concentrating our minds on actionable areas for the integration of our divided being.

The scientific journal Science is reporting the findings of neuroscientist Dr Henrik Ehrsson who has succeeded in simulating out of body experiences under laboratory conditions.

The experiments have a lot in common with those of Dr Rupert Sheldrake, whose concept of “extended mind” is one of the more interesting developments in biological research this century. The findings seem to reveal that the mind relies on the senses of sight and touch to locate itself inside the human body.

When the connection is disrupted, whether by illness, drugs or deliberate confusion, strange things begin to happen. The sensation arises that the mind has left the body.

Ehrsson used goggles, a video camera and rods to confuse the brain and create the effect. A sitting volunteer wore goggles linked to a video camera pointing to his back. Looking through the goggles, he saw an image of his back from the perspective of someone sitting around six feet behind him. A technician then touched his chest with a rod, which was unsighted to the camera behind. The split effect then took hold.

Dr Ehrsson tried the experiment out on himself, “You really feel that you are sitting in a different place in the room, and you’re looking at this thing in front of you that looks like yourself, and you know it’s yourself, but it doesn’t feel like yourself. This experiment suggests that the first-person visual perspective is critically important for the in-body experience. In other words, we feel our self is located where our eyes are.”

This has an uncanny resemblance to Sheldrake’s experiments on extended mind and certainly supports many people’s experience of being outside their body during sleep or at unusual moments in their lives.