have you ever been in the zone?

[Yuzo]

I personally don't link it with religion. But there's definitely a zone in sports. I used to play baseball, and batting is given very much to "zones." That's where batting slumps come from (opposite of being in a zone)... or when you're on fire and seem to hit every pitch hard and for a base hit. Basketball, yeah. Shooting is totally prone to "zones." Usually teammates will just keep on feeding a guy who's in the "zone." Seems they could shoot it with their eyes closed, and make the basket. I've never boxed. But I imagine boxing has its own share of being in the zone.

there is an overlap between dopaminergic experience and religious experience. in the dopaminergic mind in human evolution and history, fred h. previc proposes that religion actually emerged from dopamine.

previc was a researcher for the united states air force where he was tasked to investigate spatial disorientation. what he found was that vergence shifts between upper and lower visual fields were causing pilot errors. for this he developed a model for the neuropsychology of 3-D space which puts forward that 3-D space is separated into sections which are managed by specific regions in the brain. specifically, extrapersonal space (which is described as distant, upward and outward space; a space for searching and discovering) and peripersonal space (which is described as nearby, downward and inward space; a space for inspection and tinkering) which we can experience whenever we reach out to grab something and then bring back the item to about nose level to lap level for analysis and review. but what he discovered was that the same regions in the brain that oversee extrapersonal space are the same regions that are involved in creating religious experience. specifically, the circuits in the brain that we use when we look out upon great distances are the very same circuits in the brain that we use to abstract heaven or eternity. you can read more about that in this paper.

whats tying the neuropsychology of 3-D space to the neuropsychology of religion mainly though is dopamine. consider that hyperreligiosity is often a feature of manic depression. during their manic phase (which according to previc "the ventromedial dopaminergic system" becomes "highly activated") manic depressives may think they are receiving divine messages. when we play sports the demand that we put onto the brain to process extrapersonal space may be at its greatest and therefore so too may be our ability to slip into the divine. when you are "in the zone" do you not feel that something is helping you?