Experiencing God

The Neurology of the Spiritual Experience

An essay in hypertext by Scott Bidstrup
"It is very difficult to explain this feeling to
anyone who is entirely without it. The
individual feels the nothingness of human
desires and aims and the sublimity and
marvelous order which reveal themselves
both in nature and the world of thought. He
[the experiencer] looks upon individual
existence as a sort of prison and wants to
experience the universe as a single, significant
whole"
--Albert Einstein

Why This Essay

I've had a lot of interesting experiences in my life. Among these are experiences of God.
I've had the experience of just knowing that Jesus is right beside me in times of great
trials. I've heard that still, small voice advising me about matters spiritual. I've had
dreams that were convincingly real, featuring dead relatives, explaining convincingly that
the spiritual path I was on was the right one, and to stay with it. I've had all the
experiences that often convince people to change their lives, to take up spiritual paths,
and that often change their very personalities. I've had life-changing spiritual experiences.
By rights, I should be a convert. I should be a deeply religious person, with an abiding
conviction in the reality of the unseen, the infinity of God, and the spiritual unity of man
with the universe.
But, as Einstein wasn't, I am not either.
I am not because I am also a rationalist. I believe in following the lines of reason and
logic as a more sure way of coming to the truth than following an emotional reaction to
an experience. For years, I puzzled over the meaning of my experiences, and whether
they were grounded in reality. I now believe that I have found the answer.
Hearing the Voice, Seeing the Vision
The experience of the 'infinite sublimity' as Einstein described it, is an old one. Rock
paintings in Australia, Africa, Europe and the Americas show clearly that the shamanic
experience of the mystical goes back to the earliest times in human history.
And the experience of the mystical is a common one. Millions of Americans can describe
'out-of-body' experiences, many more can describe 'near death' experiences. Many more
can talk about how, in a blinding flash of an all-consuming experience, they have felt,
even seen the presence of Jesus, the Virgin Mary or of any other particular religious
personality. They talk about how, in minutes, or hours, or even days, they had
experiences that convinced them that God is real, Jesus or whoever else is real, and that
there is no question but what there is a guiding presence in their lives.
With all that testimony, the testimony of millions, how could science doubt the reality of
the experience?
For many scientists, the whole question of the "god experience" was a matter they didn't
want to undertake - not because they feared the outcome, but because they feared the
difficulty of undertaking the research. With a reductionist view, trying to explain an
experience that was not reproducible in the laboratory made the whole investigation of
the spiritual experience to be one that was far too difficult to research, and one that was
unlikely to be reproducible to the extent that research could be published and verified.
In recent years, all that has changed.
Interest in the science of the mystical experience began with the observation that many of
the aspects of mystical experiences are a constant part of the everyday experience of the
world by persons with certain brain dysfunctions. For example, it was noted some years
ago that persons who have epileptic foci in the temporal lobes of their brains often have
hallucinations that have a mystical component to them. When the foci are destroyed
surgically, the siezures and the mystical experiences associated with them, go away.
It was also observed that persons whose parietal superior lobes were damaged or
destroyed, suffer an agonizing disability, in that they experience great difficulty in
distinguishing between themselves and the rest of the world. This condition makes it
difficult, for example, for the patient to walk, because he's unsure of where the floor ends
and his foot begins, or even to sit down, because he doesn't know where his body ends
and the chair begins. This is not unlike the mystical experience that is reported by deep
meditators, of being "at one" with the universe. For these patients, being "at one" with the
universe is such a constant experience, performing tasks that require the simple
differentiation between "self" and "world" become extraordinarily difficult.
Viola! Instant God Experience!
Dr. Michael Persinger, working at Laurentian University, in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada,
has pioneered a method for inducing the religious, spiritual experience of the shaman.
Without drugs, herbs, hypnosis or invasive surgery, he can quite literally flip a switch and
induce the experience of "god."
Using an ordinary striped yellow motorcycle helmet purchased at a sporting goods store,
which he has modified with electromagnetic coils, he can place the helmet on your head,
connect the wires to a device he has constructed that generates the proper signals, and
when the magnetic fields produced by the coils penetrate the skull and into the temporal
lobes of the brain, the result is the stimulation of those lobes and a religious experience
results.
In common with the Hindu view that a confrontation with God is a confrontation with the
self, the nine-hundred plus people who have undertaken the experience produced by Dr.
Persinger's helmet have had some very profound experiences. Four out of five say that
they've had experiences so profound they would be life-changing had they not understood
the mechanistic underpinnings of what they had experienced.
How does Dr. Persinger's helmet work? It works by inducing very small electrical signals
with tiny magnetically induced mechanical vibrations in the brain cells of the temporal
lobes and other selected areas of the brain, located in the skull just above and forward of
the ears. These lobes are the portions of the brain that produce the "Forty Hertz
Component" of the brainwaves detected in electroencephalograms. These mysterious
"forty hertz components" are present whenever you are awake or when you are in REM
sleep. They are absent during deep, dreamless sleep. What the "forty hertz component"
does is not well understood, but we know that it is always present during the experience
of "self." We cannot have a "me" experience without the forty hertz component being
present.
What this means is that the forty hertz component is essential to our experience of self.
We cannot experience our sense of individuality without it. It stands to reason, then, that
if the forty hertz component could somehow be suppressed, the sense of individuality
would be suppressed with it, and indeed, this is what Dr. Persinger's helmet does. It turns
off the forty hertz component and with it the sense of individuality which your brain uses
to define "self" as opposed to "rest of the world."
When the brain is deprived of the self stimulation and sensory input that is required for it
to define itself as being distinct from the rest of the world, the brain 'defaults' to a sense
of infinity. The sense of self expands to fill whatever the brain can sense, and what it
senses is the world, so the experience of the self simply expands to fill the perception of
the world itself. One experiences becoming "one with the universe."
But What About the God Experience?
There are two temporal lobes in the brain, one on each side. The one on the left, in most
people, is the dominant one, responsible for language, which becomes dominant when we
first learn language as children. The one on the right, non-dominant, contributes to the
sense of self with constant communication with its opposite colleague. But being on the
far side of the brain, sometimes the communications get out of whack, often as a result of
stress or disease, and the forty hertz component falls out of sync. When this happens, the
result is that the normally silent right-hand sense of self becomes experienced as a
separate presence by the left-hand sense of self.
This is the experience of the God presence. There is an overwhelming sense of presence,
an inescapable feeling that someone is there. But when the forty hertz component is
deeply attenuated or entirely absent from, say, the left side, and there's no "self"
experience occurring, the feeling of unity with infinity is occuring with a sense of an
overwhelming presence resulting from the continued operation of the right hand side,
there is no way to describe it other than feeling that one has experienced the "infinite
presence." Hence the God experience.
All of this has been verified not only experimentally with Dr. Persinger's helmet, but by
use of high-tech brain scanning machines similar to the CAT and MRI scanners that
many of us have experienced.
And The Sense of Timelessness and Spacelessness in Prayer and Meditation?
Many deeply experienced meditators feel, when deep in meditation, an experience of
transcendance of the here and now. They feel a sense of being outside of time and space.
How is this experience produced?
Two researchers, Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili, have taken a particular interest
in these experiences. Through the use of a brain-scanning technique called SPECT
(Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography), they have determined how these
experiences arise. The researchers have produced images of the brains of Tibetan
Buddhists who undergo deep, profound meditative experiences as the result of years of
practice. They have done the same with a Catholic Franciscan nun, who, after 45 minutes
of deep prayer, had her brain scanned to determine what centers were active and what
centers were not.
The results show that in both cases, the pre-frontal cortex, which controls attention, is
highly stimulated. This is not surprising - meditation requires a great deal of
concentration. The subjects are clearly deeply attentive to their task. But the superior
parietal lobe, the center that processes information about space, time and the orientation
of the body in space, is suppressed, and is almost totally quiet. The result is that any sense
of time, space or being in the world is suppressed along with the activity in the superior
parietal lobe. And not feeling "in the world" leads to an "other-worldly" experience. So it
is not surprising that those who have this experience describe it as being in the "spiritual
realm." Persinger has been able to reproduce this by electrically supressing activity in the
superior parietal lobe using his helmet - and when he performs this experiment on
Tibetan monks and the Franciscan nun, they all report that the experience is identical to
what they experience in their own meditative practice.
What About The Near-Death Experience?
The near-death experience that is described by many patients who have been revived
from life-threatening events contain elements of all of these and a few more.
We have seen how the presence of the "god" feeling arises from the result of the shutting
down of communications between the temporal lobes. And we have seen how the sense
of timelessness and infinite space arise through the supression of activity in the superior
parietal lobe. But what about the vision of the tunnel with the light at the end? And the
sense of rising out of the body?
The sense of orientation is lost when the superior parietal lobe shuts down. The 'self' no
longer feels anchored to the body, because the sense of self being in the body is lost, and
one often seems to be rising to 'heaven.' We now know that the vision of the tunnel is
produced by the visual cortex being disconnected from sensory input, and beginning to
shut down. Same with the light at the end of the tunnel, which is an artifact of the brain's
visual cortex 'looking' for sensory input it cannot 'see.' The visions of a beautiful summer
garden or lovely mountain landscapes are the result of the memory centers acting on the
centers of the brain that organize visual input into things we recognize, which is
operating in the near-total absense of sensory input. All of these brain activities together
produce the familiar being of light at the end of a tunnel, and the entrance into the
beautiful summer garden.
These experiences have a deep, even profound feeling of reality to them. This is simply
because the centers of the brain that are producing the experience are cut completely off
from sensory that would dilute the 'realness' of the experience - those centers that analyse
experience for us in real time and allow us to evaluate it for its correspondence to reality -
in other words, the centers of the brain that enable us to discern the difference between
dreaming and wakefulness, real versus imagined. Hence, the subjects who report these
experiences describe them as being so real they were not at all like a dream. Indeed, they
weren't - they were dreams undiluted from sensory reality checks and the evaluation of
sensory data for its validity.
But What About "Brain-Dead" Patients And Their Near-death Experiences?
What is now understood is that these phenomena can occur with very minute amounts of
electrical activity in the brain. Most of the brain can be shut down and these phenomena
are still possible - with electrical activity so small it is not possible to measure it through
external devices. Remember, our brains don't come with "diagnostic ports" like a modern
automobile's engine computer - what we measure with our electroencephalograms is the
"leakage." It's like trying to discern what's happening inside a computer by listening to
the static it creates in a radio sitting next to it. A lot can be happening without making
enough noise to hear it on the "radio."
What Does All This Mean?
It is clear that the meaning of the understanding of these phenomena are easily explained
in detail through well-understood neurological processes in the brain. What are widely
regarded as evidence for the existence of a spiritual realm can easily be explained by the
material, the mundane. So in the light of that reality, what does the religionist have to
say?
Those who have communicated their interpretations to me say that they remain
unconvinced that this means any new. I disagree. For most who write to me regarding my
essays about the reality of a metaphysical universe, I have but one thing to say: your most
powerful, persuasive evidence, namely your own powerful, personal experience, can now
be easily and rationally explained, in all its features. No metaphysical explanation is
necessary. Because no metaphysical explanation is required to explain your experience,
your "evidence" is no longer evidence of anything metaphysical.
So now, religionist, how do you prove your case?
Books I recommend (which, if you wish, you can buy from Amazon.com by pursuing the
links here):
The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience Eugene G. D'Aquili
and Andrew B. Newberg. This book is one of the more comprehensive books on the
subject. A complete and thorough explanation, it does not get lost in the arcanities of
neurophysiology. If you can read Scientific American, you'll be able to comprehend this
book. It's one of the best around.
Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief, by Andrew
Newberg M.D., Eugene G. D'Aquili Ph.D., Vince Rause. This book is a great explanation
of the biology in this essay. Frequently cited by both religionists and atheists alike, this
book explains the physical basis of the 'god' experience, without being a polemic against
religion. At the same time, it also undermines the position that the experience of God is a
purely spiritual phenomenon, without a physical basis. While some of the book is wasted
in philosophical musings, the explanation for the biology of religious experience is there,
and is reasonably complete.
The Biology of Belief: How Our Biology Biases Our Beliefs And Perceptions, by Joseph
Giovannoli. This excellent, highly readable book discusses how our neurobiology has
interacted with our belief systems to create the meme complexes we call religion.
The Demon Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark is Carl Sagan's last book,
and in it, he predicts the outcome of the research outlined in the books above years before
the work was done. Its prescience is classic Carl Sagan.

A mystical union
Mar 4th 2004
From The Economist print edition
A small band of pioneers is exploring the neurology of religious experience
The renowned French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot once scribbled some notes
while under the influence of the psychedelic drug mescaline. Colleagues were puzzled
because among the scribbles was the incongruous statement, written in English, "I love
you Jennifer". Still more puzzling was the question: who was Jennifer? That was not the
name of his wife nor of anyone else they thought he knew. Despite the mystery, Dr
Charcot's colleagues never thought to question the scientific value of the experiment.
The same cannot be said of Mario Beauregard, a brain-imager from the University of
Montreal, who has also experimented with mescaline. But that is because Dr
Beauregard is interested in one particular, and far more contentious, aspect of the
mescaline experience - the capacity of the drug to inspire feelings of spirituality or
closeness to God. It was experiments of the type carried out by Charcot that opened up
the possibility of investigating spirituality in a scientific manner, by showing that it could
be manipulated. Dr Beauregard is following up on these by trying to discover where in
the brain religious experience is actually experienced.
In the first of what he hopes will be a series of experiments, Dr Beauregard and his
doctoral student Vincent Paquette are recording electrical activity in the brains of seven
Carmelite nuns through electrodes attached to their scalps. Their aim is to identify the
brain processes underlying the Unio Mystica - the Christian notion of mystical union with
God. The nuns (the researchers hope to recruit 15 in all) will also have their brains
scanned using positron-emission tomography and functional magnetic-resonance
imaging, the most powerful brain-imaging tools available.
The study has met with scepticism from both subjects and scientists. Dr Beauregard
had first to convince the nuns that he was not trying to prove or disprove the existence
of God. Scientific critics, meanwhile, have accused him of being too reductionist - of
pretending to pinpoint the soul in the brain in the same way that the Victorians played
phrenology as a parlour game by feeling the contours of each others' skulls to find a
bulge of secretiveness or a missing patch of generosity.
Dr Beauregard does not, in fact, believe there is a neurological "God centre". Rather,
his preliminary data implicate a network of brain regions in the Unio Mystica, including
those associated with emotion processing and the spatial representation of self. But that
leads to another criticism, which he may find harder to rebut. This is that he is not really
measuring a mystical experience at all—merely an intense emotional one.
This is because the nuns are, so to speak, faking it. They believe that the Unio Mystica
is a gift of God and cannot be summoned at will. Most of them have only experienced it
once or twice, typically in their 20s. To get around this, Dr Beauregard has drawn on
previous experiments he carried out with actors, which showed that remembering an
intense emotional experience activates the same brain networks as actually having that
experience. In effect, he has asked the nuns to method act, and they are happy to
comply.
God and the gaps
Andrew Newberg, a radiologist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in
Philadelphia, who has scanned the brains of Buddhists and Franciscan nuns in
meditation or at prayer, is familiar with such criticism. He says that, because religious
experience is not readily accessible, unusually high standards of experimental rigour
are demanded of this kind of research. "We have frequently argued that many aspects
of spiritual experiences are built upon the brain machinery that is used for other
purposes such as emotions," he says. "Very careful research will need to be done to
delineate these issues."
But that is not a reason for shying away from them, says Olaf Blanke of the University
Hospital of Geneva, Switzerland, whose paper in the February edition of Brain
describes how the brain generates out-of-body experiences. He points out that plenty of
research has been done into another kind of bodily illusion, phantom limbs. This has
identified the brain mechanisms responsible, and even suggested treatments for these
disabling 'appendages'. The same cannot be said of out-of-body experiences, which
can also be disturbing, but occupy a neglected position between neurobiology and
mysticism.
Having subjected six brain-damaged patients to a battery of neuro-imaging techniques,
Dr Blanke's group concludes that damage at the junction of two lobes of the brain - the
temporal and parietal - causes a breakdown of a person's perception of his own body.
The boundary between personal and extrapersonal space becomes blurred, and he
sees his body occupying positions that do not coincide with the position he feels it to be
in.
Some patients give this a mystical interpretation, some do not. What is interesting is that
several of the patients suffered from temporal-lobe epilepsy. An association between
this kind of epilepsy and religiosity is well-documented, notably in a classic series of
neurological papers written by Norman Geschwind in the 1960s and 1970s. Dr Blanke
argues that all the lobes of the brain play a part in something as complex as religious
experience, but that the temporo-parietal junction is a prime node of that network.
The parietal lobe is thought to be responsible for orienting a person in time and space,
and Dr Newberg also found a change in parietal activation at the height of the
meditative experience, when his volunteers reported sensing a greater
interconnectedness of things. At the end of each recording session, Dr Beauregard asks
the nuns to complete a questionnaire which gauges not only feelings of love and
closeness to God, but also distortions of time and space. "The more intense the
experience, the more intense the disorganisation from a spatio-temporal point of view,"
he says. Typically, time slows down, and the self appears to dissolve into some larger
entity that the nuns describe as God.
Whether the Unio Mystica has anything in common with out-of-body experiences, or
even phantom limbs, remains to be seen - though all are certainly mediated by the
brain. According to Dr Blanke, this is only just starting to become an accepted topic of
research in neuroscience. Perhaps its acceptance will depend ultimately on how the
knowledge is used. Dr Beauregard may have done himself a disservice by arguing that
mystical union should not be reserved for the spiritual few, but should be made
available to everyone, for the benefit of society. Perhaps, like Charcot, he should stick
to describing it, however incongruous the result may be.