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Stuart Revercomb

Stuart Revercomb is a marketing consultant and joyously married father of four children. He seems to remember someone once telling him he ought to be a writer. "The Unseen Here and Now" -- Thursdays.

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May 10, 2001

"God and The Brain"

God is "hot" these days.

According to the people that keep up with book statistics and televison statistics and all the other numbers that track what mainstream America is interested in, our Heavenly Father is rating pretty high.

I wonder what he thinks about that.

Last weeks cover of Newsweek would have surprised me a couple of years ago, but not in the midst of the pop-spiritual frenzy we presently find ourselves in. The headline was :

"GOD AND THE BRAIN - How We Are Wired For Spirituality."

These words were superimposed over a picture of a mannequin-like woman with close cropped blonde hair and sky blue eyes whose hands are poised in front of her in an "opening" position as though she's just dropped a loaf of bread. A stream of bright light seems to be flowing upward from her, widening until it meets the top of the page where it serves as a back drop for one of the second tier stories : "Bush - Inside The First 100 Days".

I could be wrong, but I don't think George minds playing second fiddle to the Almighty, even when he, (God), is represented from a rather "New Age" perspective on the cover of Newsweek.

I really had no idea what to expect from the article. As a Religious Studies Major at UVA I had also taken a fair amount of science courses, one of which was Psychobiology. This new area of "Neurotheology" as it is called, is said to, "seek the biological basis of spirituality". While I certainly didn't take the course in conjunction with my major to discover the "biological basis of spirituality", I was somehow feeling a little ahead of my time.

I could only hope that some of the radically fundamental "Maranathas" that barked their stern warnings about my "outside classes", were now subscribers to Newsweek. I wondered if they thought of the guy with the long brown hair who encouraged them to enroll in "Cosmology 201".

After tucking the children in last night, I settled into my chair with my copy of Newsweek. I was not without preconception and suspicion of what lay ahead, but such pictures and bold headlines promise at least the possibility that an epiphany is waiting inside. As a bare minimum I was looking forward to reading / hearing some new and challenging ideas. But the symbolism of the light appearing to flow upward from the girl on the cover said it all - the inspiration seemed more human than divine.

The long and short of the article was to say that scientists are now able to take highly prayer-centered and meditative individuals, and by means of injecting radioactive dye into their veins, while they are experiencing "peak spiritual intensity", measure which parts of the brain are functioning more actively than others. Or "non-actively" as the case may be.

For as it turns out certain areas of the brain "shut down" during periods of high spiritual awareness - namely the "orientation areas of the superior parietal lobe". So everyone from your Minister to the Buddha to that wise old Janitor in High School had it right all along. You really do, "have to get yourself out of the way".

Quite literally in fact.

Relying heavily on Dr. Andrew Newburg of the University of Pennsylvania and his book "Why God Won't Go Away," Newsweek reports, " that with no information from the senses arriving, the left orientation area cannot find any boundary between the self and the world. As a result the brain seems to have no choice but ‘to perceive the self as endless and intimately interwoven with everyone and everything.'"

"The brain seems to have no choice but to....?"

Now there's some Science for you.

But Newburg does well in clarifying the results of his work, which are solid and quantifiable from a laboratory perspective, regardless of his or anyone else's inability to give an ultimate answer as to the "why"of his findings :

"What the meditators experience were neither mistakes nor wishful thinking. They reflect real biological events in the brain... and the fact that spiritual experiences can be associated with distinct neural activities does not necessarily mean that such experiences are mere neurological illusions... 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."

So I suppose the earth shattering news worthy of the cover of Newsweek is that our brains are apparently involved, or a little less involved as the case may be, when we sense the presence of the divine. Much like when we taste a red ripe strawberry with sugar on top or take in a vast expansive view for the first time. Our brains react.

Imagine that.

Perhaps of more interest to many readers was a bit of information buried deep within the articles 10,000 plus words. According to Newsweek, "Gallup polls found that 53 percent of American adults said that they had had a ‘moment of sudden religious awakening or insight'. These reports increased with education, income and age and it was indicated that people in their 40's and 50's are most likely to have them.

That was great news to me. For the record I consider myself blessed to be in that majority. And while I'm not so sure about my education and income, that 40th birthday next month is starting to look a whole lot better.