"In Sex, God and the Brain, neuroscientist Andrew Newberg, M.D. argues that our religious and spiritual experiences derive directly from our sexual being. While others have speculated on a connection between religion and sex, Newberg is the first to demonstrate - with groundbreaking brain scan research - that the underlying biological mechanism of religious, spiritual, and sexual experiences are identical. In fact, many religions, especially in the Judeo-Christian tradition, have an apparent fear of sexuality. Newberg's explanation of the problem is that both religion and sex compete for the same brain networks. So, sex is a potential threat to any religious system unless it can resolve the conflict within its doctrinal concepts. That is what some mystical sects do, relying on sexual activity as a means of achieving spiritual communion rather than preventing it.In his latest research, he has scanned the brains of women as they achieve spiritual orgasm in a process called Orgasmic Meditation. In this ecstatic experience obtained through sexual stimulation, self, other and the universe converge on a unity experience similar to states of enlightenment described in spiritual texts - and revealed in brain scans of people in heightened states of religious experience"--