This is the connection more people should be making. The placebo effect is a social effect. Somebody else whom you trust has given you something. More generally it is an expectation, but the double-blind nature of placebo studies means that it is also always a social transaction. The effect is boosted by the perceived authority of the prescriber (white coat, hospital, colored pill). The same mechanism probably underlies higher survival of religious-minded cancer patients.
Religious and mystic experiences work exactly the same way. When many other people around you do strange things they start to make sense.
So, basically, it is fooling of neural nets by giving strong cues or whatever you might call them.
In religion such strong cues are other people's facial expressions and body language.
The brain's neural networks recognize strong signals of "taking positive actions" or whatever.