Hello
In many yogic texts, samadhi is described as the ultimate state of union—transcending the ego, mind, and body. 
But when we examine this state through the lens of science, questions arise: could samadhi be explained purely as a neurophysiological state, such as deep coherence in brain wave patterns or suppression of the default mode network? 
Or is it truly a metaphysical experience beyond the grasp of biology?
Modern neuroscience is beginning to document the brain activity of advanced meditators, showing unique patterns during deep absorption states. However, many yogis argue that samadhi is not just a mental state but a doorway to direct perception of truth, consciousness, or even divine reality 
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So how do we reconcile these views—are we witnessing the same phenomenon from two sides of the veil, or are they fundamentally different experiences being conflated?
I’d love to hear the community’s views on whether samadhi should be studied scientifically, or if it belongs solely in the realm of inner exploration and spiritual evolution.
Can the tools of logic, EEGs, and brain scans ever “see” what the yogi experiences—or does that miss the point entirely? 
Thank you!!
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Lalaxas, Welcome to the forum. I’ve been interested in these very questions for years. Many books are coming out now that take a deep dive into the neurophysiological changes seen in meditators. Neuroscience looks “under the hood” but is limited in its ability to capture the experience. States of samadhi are deeply meaningful and knowing which neurotransmitters are being released doesn’t change their significance. On the other hand we can deceive ourselves with false attribution. Chemicals like oxytocin or MDMA can make people feel differently towards others so we have to be careful in discerning the meaning of an experience. I think of these explorations as “subjective science”. Traditional science focuses on being objective, the yogic path is mostly a subjective experience. There is great risk of self deception. We each have to learn to trust our intuition as teachers like Yogani can share milestones but they can only point the way for brave folks who desire to venture down that inner path.
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Hi Lalaxas,
Welcome. I love to ponder such questions
And I’m pretty sure the answer to your thread’s title question is “both” 
There is very good empirical evidence that any experience relies on what physical stuff, in particular a nervous system, is doing. Even if experience were possible without physical stuff, there is very good evidence that through manipulating the nervous system one manipulates the experience.
The experience of samadhi brought about by external manipulation of the nervous system (e.g. through chemicals or other forms of entrainment) and through internal manipulation (e.g. Deep Meditation) can feel astonishingly similar. So I’m quite certain samadhi is a meaningful concept both from on objective and subjective perspective.
The correlates between subjective experience and body during meditation (e.g. spontaneous breath suspension and specific pattern visible in an EEG spectrogram) are so strong, that it might be possible to objectively determine whether a person sitting with closed eyes is in certain type of samadhi or not.
This a very coarse correspondence only, since experiences are only poorly captured by words, and the physical stuff is only measured very coarsely. But let’s assume for a moment that science might arrive at a stage were we could scan the body down to the subatomic level to capture everything relevant, and construct a language (mathematical or linguistic) that can encode every conceivable experience. Then we can imagine that we arrive at a one-to-one correspondence that maps every configuration of physical stuff to a unique experience and vice versa. But even then there would be no explanation for why experience exists in the first place. Furthermore there would be no way to convert that supposed fully encoded experience (a lengthy linguistic or mathematical structure) into an actual experience for someone else, except for carefully manipulating some person’s nervous system. So, we’re back at manipulating nervous systems to make an experience happen. It seems that even in this most optimistic scenario of what science and linguistic can achieve, the mystery why there are two sides of the veil will remain.
So, although samadhi might subjectively feel like something very special I believe the experience of samadhi is as metaphysical as any other experience.
What makes samadhi so interesting is that according to many traditions, it is the experience of samadhi that sheds light on this very duality (why there are two sides of veil) by dissolving it. In my fancy vision of scientific progress, I assumed that every experience can be put into words (using some dedicated language) or math. So I wonder then what that linguistic (or mathematical) object fully encoding the experience of Unity would tell us about the nature of reality. Would that object have interesting properties and could it be analyzed and understood by a smart enough reader like a mathematical theorem? Or would it be so complex that the only way of making sense of it was to translate it back into experience? In the latter case (and in the absence of the sci-fi technology I envisioned) the only sure way if finding out is to practice meditation…
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