How We Create Entities: The Neuroscience of the Divine

Have you ever been in a dream and felt it was stunningly clear—vivid, with a tangible body and a concrete sense of self? How is it that the brain can trick itself into believing in a wholly fantastical world, each time we go to bed?

Throughout evolutionary history, the vast majority of human cognitive functions have served a singular purpose: to help the human being cope with the experience of life and the changing environmental factors that threaten the species. For the conscious mind, there appears to be a lag between our perception of intellectually stimulating phenomena and the true embodiment of it.

For example, we might see the color red, but for us to learn that the red is appearing on a specific flower involves understanding what that flower is shaped like, and what it feels and smells like. We must consciously link the visual data to the olfactory data. Only once we condition our understanding of “red” and “flower” in this way does a rose appear in our mind spontaneously, as a complete concept, without conscious effort.

The Predictive Mind

As soon as we wake up in the morning, we are bombarded with phenomena. As adults, our predictive mental models are matured because of the objects that repeat themselves. A table is a table. Wood is wood. A mirror is a mirror. However, in our actual experience of the day, we are constantly experiencing minor variations.

For example, in a café, there are many round tables. However, each of those tables possesses a minor variation compared to those around it. In fact, beneath the surface, the table itself has changed from one day to the next due to the constant activity of the elements and microscopic life upon it. It is far from a static object.

The brain is constantly processing all aspects that it can be aware of. If you are a connoisseur of coffee, the slightest change in the tasting notes will be perceived because your awareness has attuned itself to those subtleties. In the same way, these minute changes and sometimes major new events (which we have never experienced previously) need to be integrated.

The Neurology of Integration

The process of integration is far from simple. It requires immense neural activity linking all the parts of the brain. While the body is functioning and receiving this information during the day, there simply isn’t enough metabolic energy or “bandwidth” to focus on deep integration while simultaneously navigating survival—what we often call the fight or flight mode.

Neuroscience tells us that during waking hours, the brain prioritizes sensory gating—filtering out “noise” to focus on immediate tasks. However, this creates a backlog of sensory data and emotional experiences. Hence, the brain unconsciously switches off. In the process of sleep, just like a computer, it backs up and reorganizes the new information it has gathered.

This occurs primarily during REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. Current research suggests a process called synaptic homeostasis. During the day, our synapses fire rapidly, building strong but chaotic connections. Sleep allows the brain to “prune” weak connections and consolidate important memories, moving them from the hippocampus (short-term storage) to the neocortex (long-term structural knowledge). This is where “associative processing” happens. The brain takes two unrelated concepts—a person you miss and a fear you held that day—and merges them. This neural cross-firing is the biological birth of the dream entity.

The Birth of the Entity

This process of integration is thoroughly fascinating. It doesn’t just look at objects in individuality, like how we tend to experience life—often hyper-focusing on one thing. It puts objects in context, relating them to each other and to the Self. In this way, integration is not something that happens when we isolate an object in our visualization. It is a process where multiple subtle, sometimes forgotten factors come together in a cohesive way. The dream is constantly changing; nothing is static, and this reflects the deeper, changing reality of the world.

When we talk about an “entity,” we talk about seeing something that isn’t really there—like in a dream. This stems from two things: the recognition that an object is changing, and the realization that beings are changing.

I remember the first time I thought I saw something out of the ordinary. I was looking at a statue of Hanuman—the monkey god from Indian stories who represents courage, strength, and loyalty—all qualities that I wished to see in the people around me but was having trouble recognizing. As I was staring at the statue one night, the face appeared to be looking at me. When I moved, its eyes seemed to follow. Its face would morph the longer I stared, provided I remained unblinking. To a 14-year-old, it seemed unreal, but I wanted to believe it was real. We want to believe that the things that appear in our brains are actually there.

Personifying the Unknown

At some level, our brains wish to recognize anything that resembles a human being as being real. Meanwhile, we sometimes look at other beings that don’t resemble us as being different—perhaps inferior in the case of animals, sea-life, and plants; or superior in the case of whatever we imagine to be above us.

We understand that on this planet, the “superior” figures are our guides in society—parents, teachers, and wise friends. When exaggerated by the imagination, these become all-powerful gods and divine beings with peerless attributes.Conversely, we also learn to be afraid of kidnappers, monsters, and predators. These fears mutate into entities that embody the viciousness of primal beings mixed with human intelligence, fueled by a deep underlying insecurity that we might not be at the top of the food chain.

We want to assert our power and control over the unknown. Moreover, we want to empower ourselves with some kind of higher calling—justifying our actions, forgiving us for the actions we feel guilty about, and bringing authority to our society.

The interesting thing is that once we open ourselves to divine beings, we also open ourselves to their counterpart. Because the imagination is open—and this is not a bad thing. In many instances, it is this very faith that allows humans to perform at their peak. However, the mind finds it difficult to perceive such figures as being temporary. Instead, it solidifies them. We wish to see our friends and family remain the same—no aging, no mortality—because if we believe things don’t pass away, then perhaps we won’t. We trick ourselves into seeing people not as they are, but through the jaded lens of our insecurity about death.

Beings all around

We tease ourselves with the idea that there are beings beyond us that inhabit our world beyond our visual sense, as we begin to personify the world through the only lens we know—the human identity. Suddenly, nature and animal spirits appear as human beings, or part-human. For example, to integrate the consciousness of plants, the mind projects a forest spirit.

However, this mechanism extends far beyond just nature. Throughout history, the collective human psyche has generated a vast pantheon of gods, demons, and spirits. These are not random inventions; they are functional tools of the mind. Each entity serves as a vessel to hold, process, and integrate a specific, intense aspect of reality that might otherwise be too overwhelming to process directly.

Here are a few examples of how mythology acts as a map for human integration:

• Nature Spirits (e.g., Yakshas, Dryads, Kodama):
  • The Projection: Beings that inhabit trees, rivers, and mountains, often guarding hidden treasures or reacting to human disrespect.
  • The Integration: These entities help us integrate the autonomous life force of the environment. They bridge the gap between “inert matter” and “living self,” forcing us to recognize that the world around us is alive, responsive, and demands a relationship of reciprocity rather than just extraction.
• Wrathful Deities (e.g., Kali, Sekhmet, Mahakala):
  • The Projection: Terrifying, destructive figures often adorned with skulls or weapons, representing time, death, and violence.
  • The Integration: These figures allow us to integrate the reality of mortality and entropy. By deifying destruction, the mind transforms primitive terror into reverence. We learn to accept that death is not a mistake, but a necessary function of the cosmos, essential for renewal.
• The Trickster (e.g., Loki, Coyote, Hermes):
  • The Projection: A chaotic, morally ambiguous figure who disrupts plans, breaks rules, and brings about unexpected change.
  • The Integration: The Trickster helps us integrate uncertainty and the failure of control. They remind the rigid, logical mind that chaos is a fundamental part of life. When plans fail, we can blame the Trickster, which allows us to cope with the unpredictability of the universe without losing our sanity.
• The Tempter/Demon (e.g., Mara, The Asuras):
  • The Projection: Malicious entities that distract, seduce, or attack the seeker, often representing greed, lust, or doubt.
  • The Integration: These represent the Shadow Self. The mind externalizes its own internal weaknesses—its greed, its laziness, its fears—so that the conscious self can “fight” them. It is easier to battle a demon named Mara than to confront the abstract concept of one’s own distracted mind.
• The Solar/Ordering God (e.g., Apollo, Vishnu, Ra):
  • The Projection: Beings of immense light, symmetry, law, and preservation.
  • The Integration: These fulfill the human need for order and structure. In a chaotic, dangerous world, these entities integrate our desire for safety, justice, and the belief that there is a logical, coherent pattern underlying the apparent madness of existence.

The Great Integration

This narrative exists because it serves a purpose: to integrate the realization that we are not separate from that which we perceive. All the gods and demons are not outside of us—they are projected by the mind.

That doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Just like in a dream, objects and images appear real, and the mind believes them to be so. If we were to just discard them as “unreal,” we wouldn’t be able to integrate them. The deeper aspect, however, involves understanding that while appearances are appearing, they are temporary and have no solid form in and of themselves. These appearances require you, the seer, to see them, hear them, and feel them. Without you, nothing can appear.

So tell your tales. Allow your imagination to explore what it wants to see, and allow it to explore the realms that it fears. It is a process of integrating with reality itself. Allow it to unfold, and ultimately realize that control implies we are still resisting.

Once we let go, everything can be realized as transient, and we gain a greater perspective that is beyond these fluctuations of integration. We come to the point where the constantly occurring integration is realized as an imagined need to integrate. After all, we are already whole, integrated, and unseparated from all the phenomena in the universe. And that, too, is passing just as quickly as it arose.

Sarva Mangalam, 
Amman