Deity yoga and illusory ownership: Explaining the state of identification with a supernatural being
Abstract
Deity yoga is a practice found in Tibetan Buddhism that involves visualization of becoming one with a divine being. During the practice, one can experience unification of one’s own body with the body of the deity. This paper offers a potential cognitive explanation of how such an experience is possible. Applying findings from cognitive science on the phenomenon of illusory ownership, we argue that the practice of deity yoga has the necessary means to cause an experience analogous to the famous “rubber hand illusion” in which one misattributes their ownership to a fake hand. Throughout the paper, we 1) introduce deity yoga and its key aspects; 2) discuss illusory ownership and its explanation embedded in predictive framework; 3) argue that visualization in deity yoga may induce the experience of illusory ownership; 4) conclude with a short discussion of the hypothesis’ limitations and of possible further directions of research. Overall, the paper suggests how the practice of visualization in deity yoga may lead to an experience of a transfer of identity onto an imagined supernatural agent.
Keywords: deity yoga; illusory ownership; religious experience; visualization; rubber hand �
Introduction
For almost 30 years, the study of religion(s) has been drawing on the findings of cognitive science to explore the relation between religion and the hard-wired functions of the human mind. Cognitive science of religion (henceforth: CSR) assumes that religious beliefs and behavior operate on (or even are produced by) our basic cognitive functions that evolved in response to the pressures of our natural habitat (Barrett, 2000). Recently, however, we have experienced a turn in that field, with more and more theories emphasizing the way religion influences our cognition. For example, Schjoedt et al. (2013) propose that rituals are structured in such a way that they exhaust the cognitive resources of a participant, rendering it impossible for them to process the ritual independently of a shared, collective pattern of interpretation. Andersen (2017), on the other hand, suggested that supernatural encounters – such as ghost sightings – might be explained in a predictive perspective as misperceptions governed by beliefs-driven expectations. Van Leeuwen and van Elk (2018) also propose an explanation for religious experiences embedded within a top-down cognitive framework, following earlier ideas by Barrett and Lanman (2008). In line with that trend, we believe that the CSR now has the best opportunity and potential to investigate a religious phenomenon that is explicitly about influencing one’s cognitive processes: yoga.
This paper will focus on the intriguing case of deity yoga, in which the practitioner strives to visualize themselves as a supernatural being and can, in effect, experience a state of identification with this being (Kozhevnikov et al., 2009). From the “classical” CSR perspective, the question would be what cognitive mechanisms are responsible for the emergence and spread of representations and actions involved in deity yoga (cf. Boyer, 2001). We however would like to ask what cognitive mechanism is exploited in the practice of deity yoga, rendering the experience of identification with a supernatural being possible. While this mechanism might also contribute to the cultural success of this practice, we will not consider that aspect here, focusing on finding an explanation of the discussed experience, rather than the rationale for its persistence in culture.
Applying findings from experimental studies on ownership, we propose that the practice of deity yoga has the necessary means to cause the experience of illusory ownership. Illusory ownership is usually associated with the famous “rubber hand illusion”, in which watching “a rubber hand being stroked synchronously with one’s own unseen hand causes the rubber hand to be attributed to one’s own body” (Tsakiris & Haggard, 2005, p. 80). Although in deity yoga no rubber hand is used, illusory ownership has been found to work in various other settings, such as virtual reality (Slater, 2009) or “body swapping” with the use of a camera (Petkova & Ehrsson, 2008). Evidence from visual imagery research suggests that a visualization of having an imaginary body might suffice to induce the effect of illusory ownership analogous to the rubber hand effect. Overall, this paper proposes that the cognitive mechanism of illusory ownership underlies deity yoga practitioners’ extraordinary experience.
On the following pages, we first introduce the practice of deity yoga, and after a short discussion of its general characteristics, elaborate on its substantial elements, namely visualization, the use of a mandala, automaticity, agency switch, and psychological aspects of the practice. Second, we discuss illusory ownership and its exemplifications in the studies, as well as its mechanism interpreted within a predictive processing framework. Third, we argue that the techniques of visualization found in deity yoga might be sufficient for the phenomenon of illusory ownership to occur. We conclude with a short discussion of our hypothesis’ limitations as well as possible further directions of research.
In the widest sense, the term yoga refers to “these technologies or disciplines of asceticism and meditation which are thought to lead to spiritual experience and profound understanding or insight into the nature of existence” (Flood, 1996, p. 94). This functional definition points out the universal goal of yoga practice, which can be achieved in various ways. While the most familiar yogic techniques involve controlling the body in yogic postures (āsanas), the earliest construals of yoga evoke restraining cognitive processes. The first known definition of yoga, found in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad and dating back to the third century BCE, is “firm restraint of the senses” (sthirā indriyadhāraṇā, cf. Mallinson and Singleton 2017, p. 111). The paradigmatic definition from the second sūtra of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra (5th-4th century CE) is citta vṛtti nirodha, “the suppression of the activities of the mind” (p. 114).
The techniques of cognitive restraint described in the Pātañjalayogaśāstra are meant to ultimately remove any objects from the practitioner’s experience. In the process of samādhi – the culmination of yogic practice – the object of meditative focus is gradually deconstructed until only the subject remains (see: Larson 2012, p. 81-88). However, later developments in yoga – including its assimilation by Tantric milieus – lead to subsuming under this term a wider variety of practices, including techniques of visualization of both internal processes and externalized deities (Saraogi, 2020; Mallinson 2011).
The concept of yoga made its way to Tibet as a result of a scholarly project of editing doxographies based on Buddhist and Tantric teachings imported from India. Between the 8th and the 12th century comprehensive collections were assembled that described, among others, a variety of introspective practices called naljor. The term naljor – Tibetan translation of Sanskrit yoga – may refer to systems of auxiliary contemplative techniques not unlike the eight-limbed yoga of Patañjali (e.g., Kālacakra’s six yogas) or to the stages of mental transformation resulting from practice (like the four yogas of Mahāmudrā). Systems of postural practice are also known, akin to Indian haṭhayoga. However, other forms of naljor are distinctly Tibetan – they include inner heat yoga as well as deity yoga, the latter involving visualizing oneself arising as a chosen deity (Worth, 2020).
Although deity yoga practice involves meticulous visualization of a divine being, its aim is in fact to undermine fixed notions of both the self and the divine. According to the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness, both humans and deities are void of any permanent qualities. At the same time, however, each human being carries a potential for divinity, in form of hidden Buddha-nature. Even ordinary human minds have a natural state tantamount to the mind of the Buddha and visualizing oneself as a deity is meant to enable the transcendence of conceptuality by equating one’s ordinary experience with the state of Buddhahood (Worth, 2020). In fact, the practitioner is intended to experience a “dissolution” of their physical form and reemergence as a fully enlightened Buddha (Gray, 2021).
The cognitive mechanisms underlying deity yoga practice are puzzling. How is it possible that a practitioner may perceive themselves as a supernatural being? While in normal conditions it seems hard to deeply envision somebody else’s body as one’s body, it has been known for over twenty years that under specific, conducive circumstances, this kind of displacement of body ownership is possible (Botvinick & Cohen, 1998). However, to see if that phenomenon, popularly called “illusory ownership”, has anything to do with deity yoga, we first need to investigate the practice itself. Here we will briefly discuss the most relevant aspects of deity yoga that relate to the cognitive processes involved.
Visualization of a deity
In deity yoga, identification with the visualized being occurs on different levels. The practitioner identifies not only with the divine body, but also with more abstract traits of the deity, such as wisdom or compassion (Worth, 2020). In fact, deity yoga can be viewed as a practice of complete transformation, during which the body, mind, and speech of the practitioner become the pure body, mind, and speech of the divine being (Powers, 1995). Gyatrul (1996) describes the visualization process as tripartite: one first visualizes the deity’s bodily features, then their pride and qualities, and finally, the deity’s bliss, clarity and emptiness. This can be done in a step-by-step manner or spontaneously. In the former case, one gradually generates an image, starting from the bottom up. Gyatrul advises to focus on the deity’s seat before moving to the feet, legs, and upper body, and finishing at the head, topped with a crown. The created image should be detailed and acute: the deity and all their characteristics must be seen “as clearly as the moon is reflected in a crystal clear pond on a clear night, or as clearly as the peach fuzz on a face is reflected in a really excellent mirror” (ibid., p. 83). As a result of such devoted practice, the practitioner is able to arise as the deity and to identify with them as clearly “as you now perceive your ordinary body” (ibid.). This suggests that the image generated in the practitioner’s mind can somehow replace their sense of self (Kozhevnikov et al., 2009).
The practice of deity yoga is sometimes supported by mandalas. A mandala is a circular diagram depicting the deity and its surroundings: usually the heavenly palace, different worlds ruled by the deity and sometimes demons representing the obstacles on the path to enlightenment. Mandalas help practitioners to visualize the deity – not only its physical characteristics, but also its mental features, represented as parts of the entourage. The deity itself can represent enlightenment, while different parts of the deity’s palace symbolize aspects of their divine mind. Mandalas are typically very rich in details and the internal image generated by Buddhists probably reflects that complexity. It seems that one who practices deity yoga can start with a mandala and then gradually resign from this kind of meditative support as they achieve the ability to visualize the divine being in its fullness (Powers, 1995).
Automaticity and agency switch
The practice of deity yoga can become somewhat automatic over time: a seasoned practitioner does not have to meditate anymore to experience identification with a deity and, at some point, can visualize themselves as this deity even during everyday activities (Powers, 1995). Gyatrul (1996) describes the post-meditational stage as follows:
“When you are going here and there, sitting and moving, you will see all activity as the mudra of the deity. When you are eating and drinking, you will offer these substances as an inner fire offering as they are consumed by the body. Any of the desirable objects that you utilize become the play of the three awarenesses: the empty nature of subject, object and activity. This is called carrying the postmeditational experience as the path.” (p. 113-114)
It would then seem that the state achieved through the practice can persist. As Powers (1995) notes, adepts of tantric traditions often come to realize that they are no longer a part of the mundane world but are immersed in the reality of the deity instead, with their former companions turned into the cortege of the deity as well. Interestingly, when identity with the deity is achieved, the sense of agency can sometimes be reversed: it is not the practitioner who practices deity yoga, but rather “the deity is performing the exercises through them” (Worth, 2021, p. 11). This reversal implies that when the internalized deity does something, the practitioner is encouraged to perform that action in their mind. For example, “when the wrathful Avalokiteśvara raises his hand, practitioners are encouraged to think of one’s own hand emitting fire” (ibid.).
Psychological aspects
Despite numerous studies on cognitive aspects of meditative practices in general (see e.g. a meta-analysis on effects of mindfulness by Yakobi et al., 2021, or a special issue on cognitive enhancement via meditation edited by Crescentini et al., 2017), the field of psychology has not produced many interpretations of deity yoga so far. As a matter of fact, to our best knowledge, there is only one empirical study concerning deity yoga itself. In this study, Kozhevnikov et al. (2009) have shown that deity yoga meditation significantly enhances the practitioners’ cognitive skills. The study subjects’ performance on imagery tasks increased substantially after the practice, as compared to a control group and a group that practiced another meditation technique (Open Presence). According to the authors’ interpretation, deity yoga enables one to access more visuospatial resources in their working memory.
Kozhenvinov et al. (2009) characterize deity yoga as a practice involving a strong focus on an internal image of a deity and its environment. The image is rich and includes representations of the deity’s mental states and sensorimotor experience. Interestingly, these extremely complex representations and the state of identification with them can be sustained for hours. While an impressive feat by itself, this kind of mental exercise likely depletes the practitioner’s cognitive resources, impairing other cognitive functions (see: Schjoedt et al., 2013).
To sum up, deity yoga aims to achieve an internalized state of identification with a divine being. It is a practice that involves maintaining a complex mental representation of a deity and its surroundings in the form of a mandala. Buddhists believe that this technique grants them enlightenment, as they factually become one with the deity while visualizing this union. Interestingly, the sense of agency can sometimes be transferred, with the deity becoming the agent that transforms the practitioner’s self. All in all, practicing deity yoga implies equating oneself with a divine, enlightened being and this equation works on different levels, from the body (my hands are the deity’s hands) and cognitive processes (my mind is the mind of the deity) to more detached properties such as speech or moral ideals.
Illusory ownership
Rubber hand illusion is a perceptual illusion discovered by Botvinick and Cohen (1998) that has become a flagship of ownership research in cognitive science. During the rubber hand illusion, subjects tend to experience a fake rubber hand as if it were a part of their own body (Kalckert & Ehrsson, 2014). This shows that the body schema used to identify body parts can be manipulated if sensory cues stemming from different sensory modalities are integrated (Christ & Reiner, 2014). The integration is possible due to the structure of the experiment designed to evoke the rubber hand illusion:
a person sits on a chair with one hand lying on the table in front of them, but hidden from their view behind a barrier;
they only see a rubber hand, placed in a way that mimics the position of the real hand;
both the rubber hand and the real hand are touched with an identical object, but the subject only sees the rubber hand being touched.
What results from this setting is that the subject starts to experience the rubber hand as their real hand (Botvinick & Cohen, 1998) – a phenomenon dubbed illusory ownership.
To this day, this phenomenon has been studied in numerous experimental settings and it has become clear that it can have an immense impact on our experience. First, it has been found that when illusory ownership is induced, “hurting” the rubber hand can evoke physiological symptoms of being in danger (e.g. Armel & Ramachandran, 2003; Riemer et al., 2015). There have also been successful attempts to reproduce the illusory ownership effect for larger parts of the body. In one setting, a camera was placed on the head of a mannequin and the subject could see the world from the mannequin’s point of view with the use of a connected helmet. Such arrangement produced an illusory ownership effect with respect to whole body (Petkova & Ehrsson, 2008). A year later, in a similar experiment, Slater (2009) showed that illusory ownership works in virtual reality, too, with the virtual body “put” in the place of the real body. This effect is popularly used in various virtual reality games, adding to the sensed immersion into the world of the game. Further studies were focused on more specific aspects of the phenomenon. For example, Banakou et al. (2013) proved that attribution of ownership to a child’s body in virtual reality makes subjects overestimate object sizes, which shows the immense influence the perceived ownership has on cognition. More and more emerging studies prove that our sense of body ownership is by no means stable.
The basic cognitive mechanism underlying illusory ownership has been explained as
“a result of the elimination of the initial conflict between visual and somatosensory representations of the hand and the integration of visual, tactile and proprioceptive signals, that leads to a coherent multisensory perception of the model hand as one’s own hand receiving the touches (…).” (Kalckert and Ehrsson 2014, p. 117).
This means that for illusory ownership to work, the “fake” body must be arranged in a way that mimics the position of the real body (integration of proprioceptive and visual signals) and sensory experience in visual and tactile modalities must correspond with each other (integration of visual and tactile signals). As a result, the brain decides that the “fake” body must be the real body, because this is the best hypothesis concerning ownership.
This explanation is quite neat, but Apps and Tsakiris (2014) propose to embed it in a wider understanding of how the brain works, namely, the theory of predictive processing (or predictive coding; henceforth: PP), which assumes that the brain is a prediction-testing machine that approximately follows the probabilistic rules of Bayesian inference (Hohwy, 2020). According to PP, perception is hierarchical: at its lower level we receive the input from the world, while at the higher level we make sense of this input in the context of what we already know about the world. Namely, our mind constantly generates predictions about the incoming data from the lower level and tests them against that data, accepting those that are correct and discarding those that are wrong. While a correct prediction becomes the internal representation of the world, wrong predictions cause an error-signal, which is sent to the higher levels of the hierarchy so that the internal model of the world can be updated accordingly. All predictions are based on that internal model, often referred to as “prior beliefs” or “prior knowledge” (Hohwy, 2013). The “Bayesian” part of this model is that our mind’s logic of prediction-testing is said to be approximately based on Bayes’ theorem, which provides a rule of updating our knowledge based on new data and prior beliefs. That rule can be summarized as follows: probability of a prediction h given that data d occurred must be calculated with respect to probability of h prior to any considerations (“prior probability”) and probability of d given that h is correct (“likelihood”).
In an attempt to explain illusory ownership, Apps and Tsakiris (2014) propose that our self-recognition also heavily depends on the probabilistic processes of PP. According to the authors, the mind does not possess a stable sense of ownership, but rather calculates the most probable version of where the ownership currently lies. Because we usually attribute the ownership to our body, the prediction that, for example, the percept of our own face is indeed our own face has an extremely high prior probability. However, sometimes the likelihood of a prediction can change – for example, when there is a new correspondence between our visual, tactile and proprioceptive data. Seeing a stranger’s face in place of our own face when both faces are being stabbed with a needle challenges our prior belief about our face ownership. Due to extremely high likelihood of the stranger’s face being our own, we correct our predictions, thus experiencing the effect of illusory ownership.
Deity yoga and illusory ownership
The phenomenon of illusory ownership shows that our self-identification heavily depends on the correspondence between visual, tactile and proprioceptive data. Is it possible that the experience of identification in deity yoga is an example of illusory ownership effect, just like the rubber hand illusion?
In this section, we will argue that the techniques of deity yoga are sufficient for the phenomenon of illusory ownership to occur. The first, most obvious problem to solve is that deity yoga involves neither visual signals (except for when a mandala is in use) nor an actual foreign body to which the practitioner’s tactile or proprioceptive experience could correspond. Since one only visualizes a body corresponding to one’s own body, the tactile and proprioceptive data can be integrated only with an image sustained in the visuospatial working memory. One can imagine that something is touching the deity’s hand when one senses something touching one’s own hand and then visualize the deity’s hand in place of one’s own. This kind of integration can be profound especially in the postmeditational phase, when correspondence is experienced not only between the practitioner’s and the deity’s body, but also between their respective environments and actions, sometimes to the extent that the sensed agency switches to the deity. Nevertheless, since the deity’s body is merely imagined, there is no input from the visual modality to be integrated with other sensory data.
Fortunately, a solution to this problem might be at hand, as a great deal of findings in cognitive neuroscience proves that visual imagery is not so distant from actual vision. For example, studies have shown that imagining can cause the same aftereffect as a perceptual stimulus does (Mohr et al., 2011) and that visual images can cause the same physiological reactions as perception, as when pupils adjust to imaginary light (Laeng & Sulutvedt, 2014). Perhaps even more importantly, there is evidence that visual imagery and perception to a great extent exploit the same neural machinery (Ganis et al., 2004) and some visual areas of the brain, namely area V1, are activated when one visualizes something, even in the absence of a visual signal (see: Pearson & Kosslyn, 2015). This activity is so representative of the content of imagery, that we are now able to tech an algorithm to tell us what one visualizes based on V1 neuroimaging scans (ibid.). That and other findings have brought Pearson et al. (2015) to a conclusion that visual mental imagery can be understood as a weak form of perception. That said, we believe that an imaginary body in the practice of deity yoga can serve an analogous role to a perceived fake body in the rubber hand experiment.
Hence, our hypothesis is that the experience in deity yoga is based on the phenomenon of illusory ownership, with visual imagery (as “weak” visual perception) serving the role of a visual stimulus. This holds especially if we consider the findings by Kozhenvinov et al. (2009), suggesting that visuospatial abilities of deity yoga practitioners are above average, and Gyatrul’s (1996) imperative that one must see the deity as if it was clearly present. In a sense, deity yoga meditation is a means to generate a “virtual reality” in which every instance of rubber hand illusion can occur unhindered.
From the PP perspective, discussed in the previous section, the mind constantly chooses between different hypotheses concerning body ownership. Most of the time, the hypothesis that “wins the competition” is the one with high prior probability: that what we know to be our body is indeed our body. However, during the rubber hand experiment the likelihood of the rubber hand being our own increases due to the integration of visual, tactile and proprioceptive data. We believe that the same thing happens during deity yoga practice. The visuospatial representation of the deity’s body provides a visual input which integrates with proprioceptive and tactile data. Furthermore, the body is visualized as acting and receiving stimuli respectively to one’s real body. As Kozhenvinov et al. (2009) note, the image of a deity’s body is “rich and multimodal, requiring generation of a colorful three-dimensional image (…) as well as representations of sensorimotor body schema, feelings, and emotions of the deity” (p. 646). All this information integrated from the three sources causes the likelihood of ownership to change. Hence, the predictive mind chooses a new hypothesis concerning its body: it begins to attribute ownership to the imagery body of a deity, rendering the experience of identification.
Additional aspects of deity yoga that ought to be considered from the illusory ownership perspective are the automaticity of visualization and agency switch. Practicing deity yoga can sometimes become so automatic that the practitioner starts to visualize and identify with the deity spontaneously, even during most prosaic daily activities. At the same time, they might feel that their actions are controlled by the deity, and not by themselves. The question here would be if anything similar happens in known cases of illusory ownership, such as the rubber hand experiment.
Regarding automaticity, the effect of illusion in a laboratory setting is indeed profound, to the extent that threatening the fake hand provokes physiological response (Armel & Ramachandran, 2003; Riemer et al., 2015) and brain activity typical for negative affect (Ehrsson et al., 2007). Additionally, during popularizing renditions of the experiment, subjects have been documented to involuntarily move their own hand away when the fake hand was struck with a hammer (Science Channel, 2015). All this supports the claim that illusory ownership is cognitively impenetrable (i.e. it does not respond to our high-order beliefs; see e.g. Stokes, 2013) and while we know that the fake hand is not our hand, our non-reflexive cognitive processes start to work as if it really was. This corresponds to the deliberateness of identification in deity yoga: in the postmeditational stage a seasoned practitioner is able to visualize the deity spontaneously and the illusory ownership follows automatically.
As for agency switch, it has been shown that the sense of agency – the feeling that an action is one’s own – can be a parallel factor in identifying one’s own body. In one of the experiments, the subjects’ sense of ownership of and agency over a glove-controlled virtual robotic arm was found to depend on the over-time integration of their own actions with the actions of the virtual arm (Ismail & Shimada, 2016). In other words, as the subjects gained mastery over the virtual arm’s movement, they felt that the arm was indeed their own and that they were moving it themselves. In a different experiment, it was shown that agency may be experienced even without a causal relation between the foreign body’s movement and the subject’s activity. Banakou and Slater (2014) have found that seeing a virtual body that speaks, combined with synchronous vibrotactile stimulation of the larynx, was enough to make the subject misattribute the voice to themselves. In deity yoga, the situation is somewhat different, as the practitioner attributes agency over their own body to an external subject rather than feeling like an agent moving an external body. We do not currently know of any study that would investigate precisely such a case, but empirical evidence of a reverse effect supports the idea that agency switch in deity yoga can be understood as a specific aspect of illusory ownership.
Yet another aspect of deity yoga worth examining is its potential to deplete cognitive resources. According to Schjoedt et al. (2013), executive functions – such as decision-making and conflict monitoring – recruit the same brain areas as attention, which means that a common pool of cognitive resources is used for different purposes. If a cognitive load “jams” either of the processes, this pool may be depleted, compromising the efficiency of both processes. Although the processing of ownership during illusory ownership experiments requires minimal cognitive effort (Fahey et al., 2018), the case could be very different during deity yoga practice, when a rich, complex image is maintained in one’s working memory sometimes for hours at a time. Maintaining a multimodal representation of a deity, including its sensorimotor schemas, surroundings and other substantial aspects, might cause a load in attention that could temporarily impair the practitioner’s executive functions.
Schjoedt et al. (2013) argue that cognitive overload might be an important result of religious rituals, making it impossible for ritual participants to interpret their experience independently. This would make them reliant on the interpretations provided by religious authorities, such as shamans or priests. Analogously, in case of deity yoga, a practitioner short of cognitive resources could be more inclined towards interpretations convergent with Buddhist teachings, i.e. that they are actually becoming a deity. This could be especially true for inexperienced practitioners, who have not yet developed heightened visuospatial abilities as a result of prolonged practice. Of course, it is for those very practitioners that accepting the yet unfamiliar doctrine would be crucial, as it could motivate them to keep up the practice. Whether cognitive resources depletion indeed occurs in deity yoga (or in other forms of yoga or meditation), and whether it might be a factor influencing long-term commitment to the practice, calls for further research.
Finally, a question arises whether there is any connection between the use of mandalas in deity yoga and the effect of illusory ownership. In a mandala, the deity and its surroundings are depicted, providing visual support on which inexperienced practitioners can later base their inner representations of the deity. This support can probably render the illusory ownership effect stronger, as recalling a complex image from memory might be easier that creating one from the scratch. However, specific studies are needed to explain how exactly, if at all, mandalas influence the experience in deity yoga.
Discussion & Conclusions
Limitations
The most obvious concern regarding our hypothesis is that it barely touches the richness of the phenomenon it aims to explain. In other words, the explanation here 1) does not deliver any answers about deity yoga as a whole and 2) probably overlooks many substantial aspects of this practice. While these concerns are valid, we neither promised to deliver a holistic explanation of deity yoga practice, nor do we believe that such explanation is even possible – especially from cognitive perspective alone. As White (2021) notices, cognitive explanations rarely aim at saying something about religion as a whole. On the contrary, CSR usually investigates only small selections from the variety of items that we call religious. In line with that methodology, we do not aspire to explain deity yoga thoroughly. To avoid informational overload, we have intentionally skipped some findings on deity yoga (i.e. ethnographic), focusing on those that are relevant for the present inquiry. As a result, we have offered an explanation that links a particular religious experience to a more general cognitive mechanism. We hope that his resolves both possible objections.
A more substantial concern is that our discussion has not taken into consideration the practitioner’s sense of unity with the deity’s mental states. We have claimed that in deity yoga one can experience not only identification with the deity’s body, but also with their thoughts, desires, emotions and even personality traits. While there must be a separate mechanism responsible for this experience, the existence of such a mechanism does not falsify the illusory ownership hypothesis, but only entails that a complete explanation is yet to be established. At this point, we would only like to share our intuition that the mental identification in deity yoga could be related to the theory of mind understood as a simulation of the other’s mental states (see e.g. Gallese, 1998; Goldman, 2006). In short, the simulation model postulates that a subject recognizes a mental state of another by inducing the same state in themselves. Deity yoga might be a case for the so-called “reverse simulation” model (Goldman, 2006, p. 125-127), which assumes than an emotion is first visualized (as an appropriate facial expression or gesture), then performed (by activating appropriate muscles), then experienced as a result of this performance and, finally, attributed to another. Perhaps visualizing (or even enacting) the deity’s behavior corresponding to its imagined mental states facilitates experiencing these mental states and attributing them to the deity. The heightened cognitive abilities of long-time practitioners might make this process even easier.
Luhrmann (2012) has shown in her studies on the Vineyard Church that religious training may influence our default theory of mind so that it allows for attributing one’s own thoughts to an external source (in this case, God). Whether a similar phenomenon occurs during deity yoga practice and what mechanisms govern it seem like worthwhile questions to be answered by further studies.
Further directions of research
We have already suggested some directions for further research throughout this paper. Here we would only like to propose that a fine way to empirically investigate our hypothesis would be to test if visualization suffices for the illusory ownership effect to occur. Finding no effect with use of an imaginary body would be a direct strike to our explanation and could also shed a new light on the research on visual imagery and perception, which so far supports our idea. Finding an effect, on the other hand, would be a premise to develop the studies and investigate the deity yoga experience more thoroughly as a case of illusory ownership.
In this paper, we proposed that the state of identification with a deity, experienced by tantric Buddhists, might be a specific case of the illusory ownership phenomenon, most famously found in the rubber hand illusion. This explanation contributes to the recent trend of research on how religion exploits and influences our ordinary cognitive processes. Our proposition entails that some religious experiences – such as being one with a supernatural being – might be possible via the sole cognitive powers of visualization.
Disclosure statement
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. The authors have no known conflict of interest to disclose.
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