While it cannot be proved retrospectively that any experience of
possession, conversion, revelation, or divine ecstasy was merely an
epileptic discharge, we must ask how one differentiates "real
transcendence" from neuropathies that produce the same extreme realness,
profundity, ineffability, and sense of cosmic unity. When accounts of
sudden religious conversions in TLEs [temporal-lobe epileptics] are laid
alongside the epiphanous revelations of the religious tradition, the
parallels are striking. The same is true of the recent spate of alleged
UFO abductees. Parsimony alone argues against invoking spirits, demons,
or extraterrestrials when natural causes will suffice.
-- Barry L. Beyerstein, "Neuropathology and the Legacy
of Spiritual Possession",
The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 3, pg. 255
