What happens to us when we pray, meditate? Results of scientific researches and comments of neurophysiologists.
Science requires proof, but faith, by definition, does not. And yet it is thanks to science that we can learn more about what happens to us in moments of mystical experiences.
The idea of the relationship between science and religion for many comes down to the famous “Gagarin flew into space, he did not see God.” However, back in the 1920s, Valentin Feliksovich Voino-Yasenetsky, an outstanding surgeon and no less outstanding archbishop, convincingly answered such arguments: “I operated on the brain a lot and, opening the cranium, I never saw the mind there. And there was no conscience either. Does that mean they don’t exist?”
Prayer for science
From time to time, the laboratory of magnetic resonance scanning of the brain in Philadelphia (USA) takes on a rather exotic look: silent women in monastic vestments sit in the waiting room, sorting out the rosary, next to them, covering their eyes, are shaven-headed men in orange robes. Since the mid-1990s, neuroscientist Andrew Newberg has been investigating the relationship between spiritual practices and specific electrical activity in the brain. The participants in his experiments do in the laboratory exactly what they know how to do better than many: they pray and meditate, achieving the maximum intensity of spiritual experiences. Here is how one of the Buddhist volunteers described his experience of meditation in the laboratory: “There was a feeling of energy, the center of which was in me – it either moved away into infinite space, then returned again. Deep feeling of love. Feeling that the boundaries around me were dissolving; that there was a connection with energy and that state of being that radiates with clarity, radiance and joy. In many ways, the story of a nun who prayed fervently for 45 minutes is similar: “I felt a merger with the world, peace, openness. The feeling that I either find myself in absolute silence and emptiness, or I am filled with the presence of God, as if he pervades my entire being. At the peak of the experience, the participants in the experiment pressed a button, giving a signal to start scanning their brains.
faith healing
Before the advent of antibiotics, it was believed that the patient’s belief in a successful outcome played a crucial role in treatment. In the 70th century, the French physician Armand Trousseau instructed his disciples: “Heal as many patients as possible with new medicines until they lose their effectiveness,” meaning “until the sick lose faith in them.” Today it is known that the placebo effect (improvement as a result of taking a “pacifier”) occurs in about 12% of cases. If we talk not just about trust, but about religious faith, then it also improves health. Believers are less prone to depression and hypertension, they have a slightly higher life expectancy. Jung also advised the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous to include in their famous “XNUMX Stages” the recognition of the existence of a higher power. However, faith in God sometimes limits the ability to use the achievements of medicine. Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example, refuse blood transfusions, and vaccinations are prohibited in many Old Believer communities. And the feeling of guilt provoked by many religious teachings is not always conducive to mental health.
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- Go on a pilgrimage
anomalous activity
The results of the study are very interesting*. Many volunteers had a characteristic neurological picture: deactivation of the posterior superior parts of the parietal lobe of the brain. This area is necessary for orientation in space and is important for our ability to measure, correlate ourselves with other people and with the world in general. Perhaps an intense focus on prayer or meditation deprives this area of external stimuli, as if turning it off. This may well explain the feeling of dissolving oneself in the world and in time, described both by the participants in the study and by many mystics throughout human history.
Neuropsychologist Michael Persinger has been studying activity in the temporal cortex for over 20 years. These areas are associated with speech, but are also partly responsible for emotions. Persinger’s experiments showed that the abnormal electrical activity in the temporal lobes, which is often observed during spiritual experiences, resembles the pattern characteristic of mild epileptic seizures. But this disease has long been associated with mystical experience. It is believed that the apostle Paul was subject to epilepsy attacks (it was even called the “disease of St. Paul”). She is credited with the insights of Joan of Arc. A directly connected Dostoevsky’s religious and moral quest with the fact that he was an epileptic**. The tendency of patients suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy to religiosity has been described so many times that this connection can be considered something clearly more than just a hypothesis.
“The appearance of hallucinatory images, a sound aura has long been noted with abnormal activity of the temporal lobes of the brain,” comments psychophysiologist Alexander Kaplan. “It is not surprising that artificial electrical stimulation of these areas can lead to similar phenomena.” This is confirmed by the study of Persinger using an electromagnetic helmet – a stimulator of the temporal lobes. Many volunteers experienced strange and even “supernatural” feelings. For example, the feeling that they are leaving their body and watching themselves from the outside, or the feeling of “the tangible presence of something divine.” The scientist sees this as evidence that spiritual experiences are the result of temporary brain dysfunction caused by stress, lack of oxygen, hypoglycemia, or simply fatigue. It sounds convincing, especially considering that many rituals (from self-flagellation to long meditations) use a combination of these factors.
The brain – creator or creation?
“It is quite natural that in borderline conditions, especially such as clinical death, the perception and emotional sphere of a person react with “painful” plots that are far from reality,” notes Alexander Kaplan. – This is the simplest hypothesis when discussing the causes of such unusual states of consciousness. After all, if the picture starts to double on the TV and the sound rattles, it does not occur to you that the TV is possessed by evil spirits. You will decide that the reason for this is the “disorder” of the electronic board.
Does this mean that spiritual life is reduced to weak electrical discharges? That God and everything supernatural is a creation of the brain of Homo sapiens, a hallucination to which our neurons are susceptible? The conclusion is tempting, if you remain within the framework of science, which refuses to recognize the existence of what devices cannot yet fix.
But this line of thought is self-defeating. We know that stimulation of the visual cortex produces visual images, stimulation of the auditory cortex produces sounds, and stimulation of the limbic system produces emotions. Does this call into question the reality of the very things that are seen, the sounds that are heard, or the events that cause feelings? Yes, in the human brain there are, apparently, special areas that can be “responsible for mystical experience.” But this absolutely does not prove that the primary source of this experience is inside a person, and not outside him. “Scientific professionalism consists in explaining phenomena without involving inexplicable entities,” emphasizes Alexander Kaplan. – However, a scientist can still remain deeply religious. After all, science and faith are two equal, but completely non-intersecting paths of comprehension of nature.
Back in the early 1980s, Nobel laureates David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel established that areas of the brain that we don’t use atrophy over time, like muscles when not exercised. Perhaps such a fate befell the zones of spiritual susceptibility. But even if we “train” these zones with all our might, the main mystery – whether the brain created God, whom it tends to perceive, or whether God created the brain to receive his signals, will probably remain unsolved.
* A. Newberg, M. Waldman «How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist» (Ballantine Books, 2009).
** Z. Freud “Dostoevsky and parricide” (in “Interest in Psychoanalysis”, Potpourri, 2009).