Bridging Science and Spirit

By sister-initiate Pamela Millar, San Jose, California, USA
(originally in English)

Quan Yin practitioners and many religious individuals are not alien to wonderful experiences such as “entering samadhi,” or being “one with Heaven” and “one with all of Creation.” However, such phenomena related to religions and spiritual practice remain inexplicable myths to scientists. Nonetheless, in recent years, more and more scientists are seeking to find the truth underlying such experiences by utilizing many advanced technological devices.

These researchers have finally decided that religion merits serious study after all. In a new field called “neurotheology,” serious scientific studies are tracing the physical changes that occur in the brain during religious and spiritual experiences. The May 7, 2001 issue of Newsweek covered this fascinating new topic in an article entitled “Religion and the Brain.” The author, Kenneth L. Woodward, cited numerous books and controlled studies by medical researchers offering evidence of how spiritual and religious inspiration produces specific neurological reactions in the brain.

These “neurotheologists” are attempting to use the data they gather to show that the brain is wired for spirituality, and to determine what differentiates people who have deep spiritual experiences from those who have little or no spiritual inclination at all. Their research is attempting to determine what mystical experience can tell us about consciousness overall, and whether there is a specific physical or mental propensity that leads some individuals to a more spiritually inspired existence.

The Newsweek article cited many examples of studies yielding similar results, including experiments with groups of Tibetan Buddhists, Franciscan nuns and a woman who had an epiphany at Machu Picchu in Peru. Researcher David Wulff, who is cited in the article, says that the consistency of “spiritual experiences across cultures, across time and across faiths suggests a common core that is likely a reflection of structures and processes in the human brain.”

Specifically, through spectral imaging techniques, researchers have been able to demonstrate repeatable experiments showing common activity in certain regions of the brain during various types of religious experience. For example, the frontal lobe is active during times of intense meditative concentration, the middle temporal lobe is linked to emotional aspects of experience (such as joy and awe), the lower temporal lobe interprets images such as crosses or statues, the juncture of these three lobes is where response to language is governed and associations are formed, and when the parietal lobes are completely quieted, a person can feel at one with the universe.

The latter finding is of special interest to scientists. There is a region in the parietal lobe toward the top and back of the brain called the “orientation association area” that seems to go completely dark when subjects experience their deepest sense of unity with the universe. This part of the brain seems to govern the sense of self in time and space. Specifically, the left orientation area governs the notion of a physically delimited body, and the right association area creates a sense of physical space where the body exists. One neurotheological researcher, Andrew Newberg, in his book “Why God Won’t Go Away,” describes the effect as follows: If you block this region, as you do during the intense concentration of meditation, you prevent the brain from distinguishing between self and not-self.” This could lead, then, to the impression of being ONE with the universe.

Another theory holds that heightened electrical activity in the temporal lobes may induce mystical experience and produce visions. This view even suggests that the great spiritual inspiration reached by historical figures such as Joan of Arc, Dostoyevsky, Proust, Saint Paul and Saint Teresa of Avila simply may have been caused by “temporal lobe epilepsy,” which consists of abnormal surges of electrical activity in the brain’s temporal regions. As this is the area that governs language and association, the theory is that mini electrical storms can cause a heightened experience of visions and interpretative images, such as visions of God. The left lobe is supposed to govern the sense of self. If the right lobe is completely quieted, while the left lobe is stimulated, the brain interprets a limitless sense of self, or union with God. This is how the “voices” heard by Joan of Arc and the visions of Saint Paul can be explained.

While all of this may seem like reductionist science attempting to provide rational explanations for phenomena it does not understand, there is acknowledgement by some that neural activity alone is not proof of these experiences being “imagined” by the brain. Newberg admits that “there is no way to determine whether the neurological changes associated with spiritual experience mean that the brain is causing those experiences…or is instead perceiving a spiritual reality”. What these types of studies may do, however, is open science to a greater way of understanding the nature of human consciousness, one of the greatest mysteries of life. This bridging between the fields of science and religion may well lead to new breakthroughs in human understanding.

For more details, please refer to the following URL:
http://www.passig.com/pic/Religion&TheBrain.htm