Commenting to keep this thread open until I have time to reply. I’ve been bad about responding lately 
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There are some resources on The Faraday Institute’s website that I’ve been taking in to understand psychology a bit better… but I think I’m just confusing myself more. There are a lot of psychiatrists and neuroscientists that think consciousness is an epiphenomenon, and that religious experience is an illusion in the brain (contrary to what I said earlier about spiritual experiences not just being delusions). Some Christian scientists agree with this (and lean toward forms of monism)! I can understand their conclusions because of the way alterations to our brain affect us so much, and I can see how the Bible’s narrative is more in favor of emphasizing humanity’s bodily existence, but it is troubling to think about not being a spiritual entity. Perhaps it’s because I’ve thought for so long that I have a soul that communes with some other plane.
For this reason, I’m having a hard time understanding: If we are not dual beings but physical in both mind and body, how are we (who are physical) supposed to connect with or pray to God (who is, as I understand it, Spirit), and how would God communicate with us? I guess the idea of God being separate from the physical world but still being able to manipulate it confuses me.
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Communication does not necessarily demand a separate soul or spirit. This comment is not a claim that we do not have a soul, it just points to the fact that a lack of a separate soul or spirit would not prevent communication with God. I believe that God is able to communicate with all kinds of creatures that have some level of thinking.
We could think of the world as a work of art and God as the artist. Like an artist can change his work, so can God be involved with the creation.
And they would be talking nonsense.
No doubt a neuroscientist knows far more than me about the mechanics of religious experience. But when it comes to interpreting the data they are just as subject to world view issues as anyone else.
Suppose I am sitting at the beach watching the sunset, and I have a sudden burst of pleasure. Is that a real experience or a delusion? One thing is sure. The fact that the neuroscientist can point to particular neurons or synapses firing off proves nothing. Maybe he can even recreate my experience by triggering certain receptor cells in my brain. That only proves that the pathways for the real and false experience are the same. It cannot prove that there was never a real experience in the first place. That question must be decided by other criteria.
The starting point has to be whether the spiritual realm exists, and if so is it connected to the material world. If so, then any communication or experience by definition will be mediated to us by exactly the same pathways that mediate any other experience. Understanding those pathways will never by itself invalidate any experience.
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If you believe humans are holistic beings and their spirit/consciousness is not separate-able from mind/brain, you can still acknowledge that brains have some kind of transcendence. There is a whole branch of philosophy that says love is an epistemology. I think it was the Greeks that were all dualistic, the Hebrews had more a holistic construct that we were bodies with the breath of life in us, and they linked breath with spirit in certain ways. But it wasn’t physical=bad, spiritual=good like the Greeks.
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You might find N.T. Wright’s perspective on the whole dualistic thing freshing. I have run across bits and pieces of it in a number of much longer pieces. THis video sums up his view briefly. I asked Google Gemini to put together a transcript for you. It produced a really nice summary instead. It’s below.
Summary of Chapter 2: Spirit vs. Soul? ([02:38] - [09:42])
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The Problem of Terminology: Mike Bird introduces a question from a viewer regarding the distinction between psyche (commonly translated as “soul”) and pneuma (translated as “spirit”). The questioner notes that while psycheoften refers to a person’s life or vitality, the New Testament seems to use pneuma to describe the “inner being” in ways that modern readers often mistakenly attribute to the “soul” [03:13].
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The “Inner Person”: Tom Wright discusses the “slipperiness” of language regarding human interiority. He points out that in passages like Ephesians 3:16, Paul uses the phrase “the inner human” (eso anthropon) [04:18]. Wright suggests this may be a deliberate attempt to describe the core of a person without relying on the word “soul,” which carried heavy philosophical baggage in the ancient world [04:26].
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Divine and Human Spirit: Wright clarifies that in Ephesians, the “spirit” mentioned is often God’s Spirit providing strength to the human interior [04:45]. He explains that the human spirit is the deepest level of our reality, which then “joins up mysteriously” with God’s Spirit [05:41].
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Biblical Union: To illustrate this connection, Wright cites 1 Corinthians 6:17, which states that anyone joined to the Lord is “one spirit” with Him [06:01]. He also references Romans 8, where God’s Spirit bears witness with our own spirit that we are His children [06:46].
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Departure from Platonic Thought: A key distinction made is that the New Testament view is not “Platonic” [07:25]. In Platonism, the soul is a pre-existent entity that enters a body and then leaves it. In contrast, the New Testament describes God’s Spirit coming to dwell within and give life to our most inner being [08:21].
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Spirit at the Moment of Death: Wright notes that when biblical figures face death, they do not commend their “souls” to God; instead, they commend their “spirits” [08:51]. He cites the examples of Jesus on the cross and Stephen during his martyrdom as evidence that the “spirit” represents the deepest, most real part of a person [08:55].
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To be honest, I struggle to understand what Wright’s says about the chronology of events. I am alive and embodied now and not resurrected. When my body dies “in this world”, my body will be cremated and interred somewhere. I do not imagine that what’s left of my ashes will be used in my resurrection to become part of a physical body, although–for the record–I’m pretty sure that that is what my mother believed. On the other hand, I am not sure exactly what my father believed, I think I’ll ask my brothers if they remember him saying something about the eventual resurrection.
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We’ll just hve to find out.
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Yes, do let us know Terry, won’t you? 
Interesting but the video’s audio was a little jarring. “psyche” pronounced as ‘su-kay’ seems so foreign given we don’t pronounce “psychology” as ‘suk-ology’ but rather as ‘si-ology’. So I’ve always heard psyche read as ‘si-key’. But no matter.
Trying to wrap one’s head around all the passages in the Bible which use these terms to garner insights into what these terms mean is also very foreign to me, but not helpful in my case.
Not surprisingly I look at it very differently.
This topic is interesting for so many reasons - I cannot provide a brief comment, so …. Transcendental is defined by philosophers (AI provides this). Often, it refers to something beyond. When we discuss God and the spirit, I am inclined to begin with questioning our language, and how we can discuss divine attributes – these are singular, whereas when we speak to each other regarding human attributes, the terms we use are always ‘that’ and ‘the opposite’. Eg, mercy and cruelty, good and evil, and so on. Devine simplicity would teach us that such language is inappropriate – we would say that God’s Mercy is specifically that (or is infinite). So, discussions of spirit would need to be carried with this in mind. Freedom is considered inseparable from what may be referred to as spirit- the term ‘spirit of freedom’ can have the same meaning as the term ‘spirit’, or ‘life’; a person’s spirit may, or may not, be ‘chained’ or conditioned to evil, and it may also be committed to good.
The essential belief is that life is given or created by God and in this way, freedom is inevitable - or when God created life, he created freedom in the same ‘act’, so that life, freedom, and the spirit of man are terms within the meaning of the term human or soul. Although this may infer that a meaning of freedom needs to be obtained from the meaning revealed by God, as noted previously, such a requirement would appear to prevent humanity from comprehending this meaning without intervention, or revelation, from God. Freedom, however, may be comprehended by the human intellect, as it is part of the spirit of humanity.
A question may be asked; is the human soul immortal, and if not, what is salvation of the soul? The human soul is poorly defined within Western thought. A coherent view may emerge by consideration of the ‘ultimate reality’ of Plato, and the indivisible and indestructible substance put forward in ancient philosophy. The Egyptian view of an after-life may also be applicable to this discussion. If one accepts an ultimate reality and an indivisible, indestructible substance, and this being is generally considered a human being, then logically that substance cannot be destroyed and is therefore immortal. Human life, and the dependence of reason on ‘being alive’, means that there cannot be some other ‘essence’ to a human being. This does not mean that human beings are without a ‘soul’, but such a soul is in fact the human, his/her life-awareness-self, the person’s spirit. This suggestion differs radically from Platonic thought, Egyptian mythology, and generally the non-Christian view. The discussion on revelation and faith is central to the thesis in this introduction. Eternal life from God, not an immortal soul, is the central theme. The total dependence on God is obvious, since He provides eternal life to whom He so determines. 
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- Having had a very brief FaceBook Messenger conversation with my three brothers, I conclude that they’re not going to be much help in figuring things out.
- My problem with “Wright-speak” is that he’s pretty insistent that: "“The point of Christianity is not that we should go to heaven. The point of Christianity is that heaven should come to us.”
- So if “heaven will come to us”, what’s that look like and when?
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It’s actually a topic he talks about fairly frequently, but secondary to other things. I hven’t found a book or article where he lays out a formal escatology, though. However I haven’t read that much or Wright.
People who are used to dispensationalism, with by the minute timetables, might feel Wright has a lot of work to do, filling things in.
Sometimes Wright is very clear that the Bible is not very clear about these things. They aren’t the point, anyway. The point is that the Church is doing the things that God values and talks a lot about in both the OT and the NT.
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Have you read his book: God’s Homecoming: The Forgotten Promise of Future Renewal?
I have not.
Is this by Wright?
Thanks.
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Just downloaded it from Bookshare.
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What’s that look like is a good question.
I agree with Wright that the biblical scriptures speak about the Lord coming here, rather than us going to a new planet or sphere. Yet, when the life in the future Kingdom of God on Earth is described, the descriptions seem to be symbolic rather than literal. We can get some idea from the texts but not a detailed description.
A focal point in the texts seems to be peaceful relationships between humans and with God. Something that should be visible in the churches today (Kingdom of God among us today). Unfortunately, the churches are not always places showing what the Kingdom of God among us is.
Descriptions of the environment in the future Kingdom are rare and may be just symbolic descriptions of the peaceful state. Destruction of the old world and the emergence of the new seem to be symbolic expressions stressing the fundamental change happening when the old rule is replaced by the new, not literal descriptions of the destruction of our globe. There are no descriptions of the removal of pollution or other environmental destruction, which leaves the question of how much is fixed in the transition open. One of my previous teachers, who teached the exegesis of the NT texts, believes that in the future Kingdom, we start to fix the damage done by humans, rather than God fixing every problem for us. Time will show if he is correct.
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Maybe a better question would be what does it feel like? If heaven is a state rather than a place then there would be no useful third person account of it as a thing apart from us.