http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/mind/Looking for a link to the case that really spotlighted the topic.
But here is a brief description.
One of Dr. Ramachandran's patients had suffered an accident which left them subject to intense frontal lobe brainstorms, seizures. This patient's father noted that the actual seizure was not really what they were dealing with, it was the after affects, the earthquake and aftershocks of the mind that had altered their lives so profoundly. As Dr. Ramachandran explored this situation he proposed some intriguing answers to what this patient was experiencing and why. He suggested that the normal activity of the mind washes across an 'emotional landscape' and makes hills and valleys as we relate emotion to our surroundings; when this patient had a seizure the activity of his mind accelerated and the mind no longer 'washed' across his emotional landscape but 'eroded' it at a much higher pace. He suggested that this type of accelerated mental activity also occurs when the mind is placed under trauma or stress. This 'eroded' landscape pushed the emotions outside of the range we would consider to be 'normal' and propelled the individual into extreme emotional and (transcendent) states. The patient within this actual event related everything within their perception of reality to be resonating with divine influences. The patient suggested that it was his belief that it was possible that all 'religious' messiah's noteworthy in human history may have been subjected to these or similar brain seizures which caused this emotional landscape to erode into much higher peaks and valleys propelling the mind into thoughts, ideas and experiences that the individual had never believed were even possible. It was interesting to note that this same patient had express a resounding 'lack' of religious or spiritual belief prior to his accident.