Dan, I have gotten a hold of this book, I will dicuss with you more in depth in class, but the book does help in describing neuroscientific aspects in terms which are easier for the lay-man to grasp. Through this reading, "The Eyes of the Skin" and some others, I have noticed a common focus / paradox in dealing with emotion/experience and time or rather timelessness. In his introduction to Art and Illusion, Gombrich decribes the impossibility of defining the actual moment at which the "illusion" of art takes place, for one writer, it was stepping back from a valasquez painting and trying to see both the brush stroke and image at once.
I find this moment, something that is infinatly approachable yet ultimately unatainable, is a common thread in a syneasthetic episode, architecture, etc.
These ideas about the jewish mournig practice and the talmud also play to this, in the sense that time and place are intertwined deeply in ritual/ study practice. I do realize that these ideas remain vague and wide reaching.