麻豆传媒

EINSTEIN felt it. It鈥檚 what draws people to church, prayer, meditation,
sacred dance and other rituals. Chances are you鈥檝e felt something like it
too鈥攊n the mountains, by the sea, or perhaps while listening to a piece of
music that鈥檚 especially close to your heart. In fact, more than half of people
report having had some sort of mystical or religious experience. For some, the
experience is so intense it changes their life forever.

But what is 鈥渋t鈥�? The presence of God? A glimpse of a higher plane of being?
Or just the mystical equivalent of d茅j脿 vu, a trick the brain
sometimes plays on your conscious self? At some level, of course, all our
thoughts and sensations鈥攈owever unusual鈥攎ust involve the brain.
Indeed, experiments on the brain have led neuroscientists to suggest that the
capacity for religion may somehow be hardwired into us. If so, why do people鈥檚
religious experiences differ so profoundly, moving some so deeply while leaving
others cold?

Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania in
Philadelphia, has been fascinated by the neurobiology of religion for more than
a decade. He admits it鈥檚 an awkward role for a scientist. 鈥淚 always get
concerned that people will say I鈥檓 a religious person who鈥檚 trying to prove that
God exists, or I鈥檓 a cynic who鈥檚 trying to prove that God doesn鈥檛 exist,鈥� he
says. 鈥淏ut we try to approach it without bias.鈥� Earlier this month he published
a book, which lays out the most complete theory to date of how mystical or
religious experiences can be generated in the brain.

Together with the now deceased Eugene d鈥橝quili, a colleague from Penn,
Newberg was keen to study the sensations that are unique to religious
experiences but shared by people of all faiths. One of these is the sense of
鈥渙neness with the Universe鈥� that enthralled Einstein. The other is the feeling
of awe that accompanies such revelations and makes them stand out as more
important, more highly charged, and in a way more real than our everyday
lives.

But Newberg realised that rare, fleeting revelations would be almost
impossible to study in the lab. It meant he had to ignore the one-off
experiences that strike out of the blue and focus instead on meditation and
prayer鈥攕edate, but at least reproducible.

Through a colleague who practised Tibetan Buddhism, Newberg and d鈥橝quili
managed to find eight skilled meditators who were willing to undergo brain
imaging. The volunteers came to the lab one at a time, and a technician inserted
an intravenous tube into one arm. Then the volunteer began to meditate as
normal, focusing intently on a single image, usually a religious symbol. The
goal was to feel their everyday sense of self begin to dissolve, so that they
became one with the image. 鈥淚t feels like a loss of boundary,鈥� says Michael
Baime, one of the meditators and also a researcher in the study. 鈥淚t鈥檚 as if the
film of your life broke and you were seeing the light that allowed the film to
be projected.鈥�

Hidden in the next room, Newberg and d鈥橝quili waited. When the meditator felt
the sense of oneness developing鈥攗sually after about an hour鈥攖hey
would tug on a string. This signalled the researchers to inject a radioactive
tracer through the intravenous line. Within minutes the tracer bound fast to the
brain in greater amounts where the blood flow, and hence brain activity, had
been higher. Later a scanner would measure the distribution of the tracer to
yield a snapshot of brain activity at the time of binding. The technique, called
Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography, or SPECT, allowed the subjects to
meditate in the relative peace of the lab rather than the claustrophobic whirr
of a scanner. Once the tests were completed, Newberg and d鈥橝quili compared the
activity of the subjects鈥� brains during meditation with scans taken when they
were simply at rest.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the researchers found intense activity in the parts
of the brain that regulate attention鈥攁 sign of the meditators鈥� deep
concentration. But they saw something else, too. During meditation, part of the
parietal lobe, towards the top and rear of the brain, was much less active than
when the volunteers were merely sitting still. With a thrill, Newberg and
d鈥橝quili realised that this was the exact region of the brain where the
distinction between self and other originates.

Broadly speaking, the left-hemisphere side of this region deals with the
individual鈥檚 sense of their own body image, while its right-hemisphere
equivalent handles its context鈥攖he space and time inhabited by the self.
Maybe, the researchers thought, as the meditators developed the feeling of
oneness, they gradually cut these areas off from the usual touch and position
signals that help create the body image.

鈥淲hen you look at people in meditation, they really do turn off their
sensations to the outside world. Sights and sounds don鈥檛 disturb them any more.
That may be why the parietal lobe gets no input,鈥� says Newberg. Deprived of
their usual grist, these regions no longer function normally, and the person
feels the boundary between self and other begin to dissolve. And as the spatial
and temporal context also disappears, the person feels a sense of infinite space
and eternity.

More recently, Newberg has repeated the experiment with Franciscan nuns in
prayer. The nuns鈥攚hose prayer centres on words, rather than
images鈥攕howed activation of the language areas of the brain. But they,
too, shut down the same self regions of the brain that the meditators did as
their sense of oneness reached its peak.

This sense of unity with the Universe isn鈥檛 the only characteristic of
intense religious experiences. They also carry a hefty emotional charge, a
feeling of awe and deep significance. Neuroscientists generally agree that this
sensation originates in a region of the brain distinct from the parietal lobe:
the 鈥渆motional brain鈥�, or limbic system, lying deep within the temporal lobes on
the sides of the brain.

The limbic system is a part of the brain that dates from way back in our
evolution. Its function nowadays is to monitor our experiences and label
especially significant events, such as the sight of your child鈥檚 face, with
emotional tags to say 鈥渢his is important鈥�. During an intense religious
experience, researchers believe that the limbic system becomes unusually active,
tagging everything with special significance.

This could explain why people who have had such experiences find them so
difficult to describe to others. 鈥淭he contents of the experience鈥攖he
visual components, the sensory components鈥攁re just the same as everyone
experiences all the time,鈥� says Jeffrey Saver, a neurologist at the University
of California, Los Angeles. 鈥淚nstead, the temporolimbic system is stamping these
moments as being intensely important to the individual, as being characterised
by great joy and harmony. When the experience is reported to someone else, only
the contents and the sense that it鈥檚 different can be communicated. The visceral
sensation can鈥檛.鈥�

Plenty of evidence supports the idea that the limbic system is important in
religious experiences. Most famously, people who suffer epileptic seizures
restricted to the limbic system, or the temporal lobes in general, sometimes
report having profound experiences during their seizures. 鈥淭his is similar to
people undergoing religious conversion, who have a sense of seeing through their
hollow selves or superficial reality to a deeper reality,鈥� says Saver. As a
result, he says, epileptics have historically tended to be the people with the
great mystical experiences.

The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, for example, wrote of 鈥渢ouching God鈥�
during epileptic seizures. Other religious figures from the past who may have
been epileptic include St Paul, Joan of Arc, St Theresa of Avila and Emanuel
Swedenborg, the 18th-century founder of the New Jerusalem Church.

Similarly, neurosurgeons who stimulate the limbic system during open-brain
surgery say their patients occasionally report experiencing religious
sensations. And Alzheimer鈥檚 disease, which is often marked by a loss of
religious interest, tends to cripple the limbic system early on, says Saver.

The richness that limbic stimulation brings to experience may explain why
religions rely so heavily on ritual, claims Newberg. The deliberate, stylised
motions of ceremony differentiate them from everyday actions, he says, and help
the brain flag them as significant. Music, too, can affect the limbic system,
Japanese researchers reported in 1997, driving it towards either arousal or
serene bliss. Chanting or ritual movements may do the same. Meditation has also
been shown to induce both arousal and relaxation, often at the same time.
鈥淪ometimes people refer to it as an active bliss,鈥� says Newberg. That marriage
of opposites, he thinks, adds to the intensity of the experience.

Even if these feelings of oneness and awe fall short of the personal
experiences of God that many people report, anyone who still doubts the brain鈥檚
ability to generate religious experiences need only visit neuroscientist Michael
Persinger at Laurentian University in the bleak nickel-mining town of Sudbury,
Ontario. He claims almost anyone can meet God, just by wearing his special
helmet.

For several years, Persinger has been using a technique called transcranial
magnetic stimulation to induce all sorts of surreal experiences in ordinary
people (麻豆传媒, 19 November 1994, p 29). Through trial and error and a
bit of educated guesswork, he鈥檚 found that a weak magnetic field鈥�1
microtesla, which is roughly that generated by a computer monitor鈥攔otating
anticlockwise in a complex pattern about the temporal lobes will cause four out
of five people to feel a spectral presence in the room with them.

What people make of that presence depends on their own biases and beliefs. If
a loved one has recently died, they may feel that person has returned to see
them. Religious types often identify the presence as God. 鈥淭his is all in the
laboratory, so you can imagine what would happen if the person is alone in their
bed at night or in a church, where the context is so important,鈥� he says.
Persinger has donned the helmet himself and felt the presence, though he says
the richness of the experience is diminished because he knows what鈥檚 going
on.

Not everyone accepts that Persinger鈥檚 apparitions could equal what religious
devotees experience. 鈥淭hat is quite detached from anything that鈥檚 a genuine
religious experience, in the same way that psychoactive drugs can affect mood,
but not in a legitimate way,鈥� says Julian Shindler, a spokesman for the Chief
Rabbi鈥檚 office in London. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not the genuine article, somehow.鈥�

Whatever their validity, Persinger鈥檚 experiments show that mystical
experiences consist of not only what we perceive, but also how we interpret it.
鈥淲e fit it into a niche, a pigeonhole,鈥� says Persinger. 鈥淭he label that is then
used to categorise the experience will influence how the person remembers it.
And that will happen within a few seconds.鈥� There鈥檚 a third aspect, too: the
reinforcement that humans, as social animals, get from sharing religious rituals
with others.

鈥淩eligion is all three of those, and all three are hardwired into the brain,鈥�
says Persinger. 鈥淲e are hardwired to have experiences from time to time that
give us a sense of a presence, and as primates we鈥檙e hardwired to categorise our
experiences. And we crave social interaction and spatial proximity with others
that are the same. What鈥檚 not hardwired is the content. If you have a God
experience and the belief is that you have to kill someone who doesn鈥檛 believe
as you do, you can see why the content from the culture is the really dangerous
辫补谤迟.鈥�

So where does all this leave us? For whatever reason鈥攏atural or
supernatural鈥攐ur big, powerful brains clearly allow a novel sort of
experience that we call religion. But it鈥檚 difficult to say much more than that.
鈥淚n a sense, biology evolving has discovered something new about the Universe,鈥�
says Charles Harper, executive director of the Templeton Foundation, a private
institution that explores the interaction between religion and science. 鈥淎lmost
all cultures have this religious sense,鈥� he says. 鈥淒oes that offer any insight
for understanding the grain of the Universe? That鈥檚 a haunting question.鈥�

Sceptics of religion are quick to claim that the brain鈥檚 hardwiring proves
that God has no real existence, that it鈥檚 all in the brain. 鈥淭he real common
denominator here is brain activity, not anything else,鈥� says Ron Barrier, a
spokesman for American Atheists based in Cranford, New Jersey. 鈥淭here is nothing
to indicate that this is externally imposed or that you are somehow tapping into
a divine entity.鈥�

But Newberg isn鈥檛 so sure. 鈥淲e can鈥檛 say they鈥檙e wrong,鈥� he says. 鈥淥n the
other hand, if you鈥檙e a religious person, it makes sense that the brain can do
this, because if there is a God, it makes sense to design the brain so that we
can have some sort of interaction. And we can鈥檛 say that鈥檚 wrong, either. The
problem is that all of our experiences are equal, in that they are all in the
brain. Our experience of reality, our experience of science, our mystical
experiences are all in the brain.鈥�

In fact, he goes on, practically the only way we can judge the reality of an
experience is by how real it feels: 鈥淵ou can have a dream and it feels real at
the time, but you wake up and it no longer feels as real. The problem is, when
people have a mystical experience, they think that is more real than baseline
reality鈥攅ven when they come back to baseline reality. That turns
everything around.鈥� To Newberg, it means that reductionist science, powerful as
it is, has its limitations.

Religious experts agree. 鈥淵ou could say Shakespeare鈥檚 sonnets are nothing but
a combination of pencil lead and cellulose,鈥� says Harper. 鈥淏ut you could also
say this is the outflow of a great soul, and that would also be true.鈥� He says
there are different levels of explanation which are each true at their own
level, but which don鈥檛 offer a comprehensive explanation.

Just as physicists cannot fully understand the electron as either a particle
or a wave, but only as both at once, says Newberg, so we need both science and a
more subjective, spiritual understanding in order to grasp the full nature of
reality.