Neurotheology
Over the last three decades researchers at a number of universities have studied meditators and people in prayer, or experiencing mystical experiences, and tried to pinpoint the region of the brain responsible for these experiences. Some researchers went as far as to suggest that there’s a specific region of the brain that’s responsible for direct communication with God, while others have been far more skeptical. One of my early teachers was convinced that mystical experiences were simply forms of temporal lobe epilepsy. I was just as convinced that he was wrong. But back then I was the student, and he the master. So I was put firmly in my place. Neuropsychologist Michael Persinger and his group at Laurentian University in Canada has reported that he can very precise magnetic fields to artificially stimulate regions within the temporal lobes to induce a state of “sensed presence.”
A new study conducted by Mario Beauregard and Vincent Paquette from Montreal has just been published in the journal Neuroscience Letters.
The investigators used functional MRI (fMRI) scanning in 15 Carmelite nuns to try to examine the brain processes underlying the Unio Mystica: the Christian notion of mystical union with God. This is the latest episode in a field that is becoming known as neurotheology.
The nuns were asked to relive a mystical experience rather than actually trying to achieve one. Rather than reveal a spiritual center in the brain – a “God spot,” as the popular press called it – the researchers found a dozen different regions of the brain were activated during the recall of the mystical experience. The experience was mediated by brain systems and regions that are normally implicated in emotion, self-awareness and body representation.
It is important to note that despite the title of the study – “Neural correlates of a mystical experience in Carmelite nuns” – this was actually an experiment on memory, and there were some technical objections to the study. There is a fine critique here.
There is also a point that I have brought up before: can we really try to reduce complex psychological and spiritual experiences to a groups or systems of neurons? My own view is that we are seeing necessary neurological correlates of an experience, but that these measurements tell us nothing at all about the key aspects of what the nuns remember: the sense of meaning, value and purpose that flow from the mystical experience.
Religion and Health
I have written and spoken about the association between spiritual and physical health in my books and CDs, and on this blog.
There is yet more confirmation of this link in a paper that just came across my desk. This was an analysis of the published data on religious activity and health.
This was what they concluded:
“Religious intervention such as intercessory prayer may improve success rates of in vitro fertilization, decrease length of hospital stay and duration of fever in septic patients, increase immune function, improve rheumatoid arthritis, and reduce anxiety. Frequent attendance at religious services likely improves health behaviors. Moreover, prayer may decrease adverse outcomes in patients with cardiac disease.”
Since they were looking only at religious interventions rather than spirituality in general, the investigators did not pick up a lot of research into psychiatric illnesses, pain and cancer. That does not detract in any way from this important publication.
As I’ve said before please don’t ever lose touch with your spirituality. It is essential to your health and well-being.
Miracles and Expectations
“I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are impossible.”
–William James (American Psychologist and Philosopher, 1842-1910)
There was a very interesting article published in the British Medical Journal in 1983. My old friend Peter Fenwick wrote a very interesting paper on prayer that cited this story.
Christian missionaries had gone to Ethiopia, but were required to leave by the Government in power at the time. They left behind some Gospels. When they returned some years later, they found not only a flourishing church, but also a community of believers amongst whom miracles like those mentioned in the New Testament happened every day. There had been no missionaries to teach them that such things were not supposed to be taken literally. They created miracles because they had never been told that they could not. There were no scientifically trained missionaries to tell them that miracles only occurred in the first century of the Church’s existence, or in special circumstances if a highly trained priest is present.
This sort of case – and there are many others – gets straight to the heart of the role of belief and expectation in our lives. Is there one fixed external reality, and we are no more than puppets dancing on cosmic strings? I’ve heard many people say that. Just recently the Editor of Psychology Today said that he felt that everything in human behavior could be reduced to genes, learning and reflexes. I must respectfully disagree. Free will is not an illusion, and our hopes and expectations have a massive impact on the structure of our lives and our reactions to the events that will come our way.
How many things are you failing to achieve because of fears or negative expectations?
Some people might describe the Ethiopians as unsophisticated. I would not: these good people can teach us something that many of us have forgotten.
Clean up and focus your expectations, ensure the purity of your intentions and see what happens in your life.
I’ve put just a few quotations below. I selected them for this reason: as you look at them, see how many are directly relevant to your life.
Do any of them give you ideas about managing your own life? If not, you may like to have a look at/listen to Healing, Meaning and Purpose or the articles and podcasts that I shall be posting this month.
“Men are probably nearer the central truth in their superstitions than in their science.”
–Henry David Thoreau (American Essayist and Philosopher, 1817-1862)
“Perhaps the only limits to the human mind are those we believe in.”
–Willis Harman (American Scientist and Late President of the Institute of Noetic Sciences; 1920-1997)
“It is one of the most common of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive.”
C.W. Leadbeater (English Clergyman and Theosophical Writer, 1854-1934)
“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”
–Arthur C. Clarke (English-born Writer, 1917-)
“Only if you reach the boundary will the boundary recede before you. And if you don’t, if you confine your efforts, the boundary will shrink to accommodate itself to your efforts. And you can only expand your capacities by working to the very limit.”
–Hugh Nibley (American Scholar in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1910-2005)
“Know from whence you came. If you know whence you
came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.”
–James Baldwin (African-American Writer, 1924-1987)
“Give yourself the freedom to explore the possibility of life without limits. Goals are dreams with deadlines, a means to an end but not the ultimate purpose of life.”
–Glynis Nunn (Australian Heptathlete, 1960-)
“Imposing limitations on yourself is cowardly because it protects you from having to try, and perhaps failing.”
–Vladimir Zworykin (Russian-born American Physicist and, in 1923, the inventor of the “Iconoscope:” the first television camera, 1889-1982)
“Divine wisdom is inexhaustible; the limitation is only in the receptive faculty of the form.”
–Henricus Madathanus (German Philosopher, Alchemist and Co-Founder of the Fraternity Rosae Crucis, 1575-1639)
Manifesting and Prayer
“All will happen as you want it, provided you really want it.”
–Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (Indian Spiritual Teacher and Exponent of Jnana Yoga and Advaita Doctrine, 1897-1981)
“The spirit is life. The mind is the builder. The physical realm is the result.”
–Edgar Cayce (American Healer, Mystic and Psychic, 1877-1945)
In Healing, Meaning and Purpose, we discuss manifesting: the art of flowing with the Universe to achieve your perfect outcomes. We talked about the limiting beliefs that can prevent us from fulfilling our potential. Do not try and put limits on the help that may come to you. Too often people tell me that they are not seeing any meaningful coincidences or that their prayers are not being answered. The problem is usually that they have decided on the form in which the sign will appear, or of the way in which help will arrive, instead of having an open mind, and remembering that “God works in mysterious ways.”
I have the privilege of delivering hundred of speeches, lectures and workshops each year, but earlier today I was in the unusual position of being in the audience for a really great speech. I was reminded of an old story that appears in Chapter 11 of my forthcoming book Sacred Cycles:
A priest is stranded in his house as the waters of a nearby river are rising rapidly. He can still see out of his first floor window when a rescue boat rows up to his house.
“Get in says the rescuer.”
“No” says the priest, “I’m praying and waiting for God to save me.”
As the floodwaters rise, he moves to the second floor, when he hears the sound of a motorboat containing two rescuers.
“Get in, they say, it is getting worse.”
“No” says the priest, “I’m praying and waiting for God to save me.”
Finally the waters have driven him onto the roof of his house when he sees a helicopter hovering above him.
“Let us winch you to safety,” says the winch man.
“No” says the priest, “I’m praying and waiting for God to save me.”
Finally the helicopter is forced to leave and sadly the priest perishes.
When he arrives in the next world he is angry with God, and says,
“Why didn’t you save me? I prayed with all my might!”
To which he hears this response: “Three times I tried to save you: I sent a rowboat, a motorboat and a helicopter, and you rejected all the help that I sent to you.”
Please do not ever make that mistake. I have had more than one person feel guilty about seeing a physician and taking medications, feeling that they should have been healed by faith alone. Then they have realized that their prayers may indeed have been answered by the provision of medications and a person with the skills to use them.
Before asking for Divine assistance, ask yourself what you can do to help yourself and others: rather than trying to command God and the Universe to do your bidding, try reporting for duty!
“God manifests himself in what is hidden.”
–Thomas Merton (French-born American Trappist Monk and Writer, 1915-1968)
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