Discovery of the God Module Results in New Field of Science: Neurotheology
Saturday, April 19, 2008 by: Barbara L. Minton
(NaturalNews) During the concentration of prayer, the encompassing peace as we draw near death, a mystical revelation, or the sense that God is talking to us, we experience the most intense experiences of our lives. Since the beginning of time, people have imbued such experiences with religious significance. But in recent years, scientists have begun to explore this spiritual realm, asking their own questions about what goes on in our brains during these extraordinary events. They have been coming up with some fascinating answers that have given birth to a new field of brain science: neurotheology, the cognitive neuroscience of religious experience and spirituality.
Early Studies and Results
In a vanguard experiment on the physical sources of spiritual consciousness, Michael Persinger, Ph.D., professor of neuroscience and psychology at Laurentian University in Canada, isolated an area of neurons in the brain's temporal lobes that repeatedly fire bursts of electrical activity when one contemplates God or has feelings of spirituality. Attempting to try to stimulate these bursts, Persinger isolated an area near the front of these temporal lobes, the amygdala, an almond shaped organ that infuses events with intense emotion and a sense of meaningfulness.
He then passed a controlled electrical current through coils on the head of his 80 subjects, creating a magnetic field that mimicked the firing patterns of the neurons in the temporal lobes. This resulted in an induced spiritual experience. The subjects reported an "opiate-like effect with a substantial decrease in anxiety, a heightened sense of well-being" that gave them the sense of not being alone. This sense was described by some as a religious experience.
At the same time While Persinger conducted his experiments, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Ph.D., director of the Brain and Perception Laboratory at the University of California at San Diego, also tuned in to the cosmic consciousness. He announced that he had discovered the 'God Module' in the brain which could be responsible for man's evolutionary instinct to believe in religion.
Ramachandran and his team studied the brains of people with an unusual type of epilepsy that affects the brain's temporal lobes. The study compared epileptic patients with normal people and a group who said they were intensely religious. Electrical monitors on their skin, a standard test of activity in the brain's temporal lobes, showed that the epileptics and the deeply religious displayed a similar response when shown words invoking spiritual belief.
According to the Ramachandran led research team, the most intriguing explanation is that the seizures cause an over-stimulation of the nerves in a part of the brain dubbed the God module. "There may be dedicated neural machinery in the temporal lobes concerned with religion. This may have evolved to impose order and stability on society." The results indicate that whether a person believes in a religion or even in God may depend on how enhanced is this part of the brain's electrical circuitry.
The idea of a single God module is regarded by most scientists, including Ramachandran, as too simplistic. A Canadian researcher, Mario Beauregard, and his student used a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the brain activity of Carmelite nuns while they were reliving the experience of unio mystica, an intense sensation in which they report feeling the presence of God.
With fMRI imaging, changes in blood flow in the brain may be monitored in almost real time. This allows researchers to see which regions of the brain become more or less active in different conditions. Beauregard observed that the nuns' ecstatic state was associated with a distinct pattern of activity in several areas of the brain. The researchers concluded that "mystical experiences are mediated by several brain regions and systems".
Other researchers have probed the experiences of people with temporal lobe epilepsy with interesting results. In Switzerland, Olaf Blanke and his colleagues found that electric stimulation of specific brain regions can trigger repeated out-of-body experiences. Although these experiences are somewhat common, they were not rigorously studied until Blanke came upon a case of a woman he was treating for epilepsy.
A part of the woman's brain near the junction point of the temporal and parietal lobes was stimulated with an electrode, producing the experience. Every time that part of her brain was stimulated, she described the experience as floating above her own body and watching herself.
Brain Mechanisms and Religious Experience
Shahar Arzy, a colleague of Blanke's, purposed that the junction between the temporal and parietal lobes may have played a part in some of the pivotal events in world religions. As Arzy and co-authors pointed out, many of the world's religions feature revelation experiences that take place on mountains. Many non-religious, non-mystic mountaineers have also had similar experiences while in the mountains. Time spent at high altitudes may affect the brain, according to Arzy, and "facilitate the experience of a revelation".
Arzy suggests mechanisms that could be involved in this experience. High altitudes have a significantly reduced level of oxygen which can affect the temporo-parietal junction. Stays at high altitude, particularly in solitude, might lead to low resistance to stress and loss of inhibition.
History is full of charismatic religious figures. Could any of them have been epileptics? Were the visions of Bible characters like Moses or Saint Paul reflective of temporal lobe epilepsy? There is no way to know.
Researchers suggest that these issues may have played a part in one of the mystical phenomena of ancient times, the oracle of Delphi. George Papatheodorou, an emeritus professor of geology at Patras University, and his colleagues examined the narrow cave where the Delphic priestesses were believed to have delivered their messages. They found high levels of methane, ethanol and carbon dioxide in the cave's air. "The site lies on a fault where gases leak out. These gases cause an oxygen reduction that induces a mild hypnotic state that could well produce hallucinations," he told the Greek Kathimerini newspaper.
Brain Mechanisms and Near-Death Experiences
Neurophysiologist Kevin Nelson, a researcher at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, is exploring the powerful spiritual phenomena of the near-death experience. His results have led him to believe that these experiences may be dream-like states triggered by stress and a common sleep disorder known as sleep paralysis. When people with this condition begin to awake, part of their brain stays in the random eye movement (REM) phase of sleep. They experience inability to move, resulting in frightening hallucinations.
Nelson studied 55 people who experienced near-death phenomena in a range of circumstances, including heart attacks, traffic accidents, and fainting spells. He found that about 60 percent of them reported symptoms of sleep paralysis. In a matched group of 55 healthy volunteers with no near-death experiences, only 24 percent had symptoms of sleep paralysis. Nelson concluded that his findings "anticipate that under circumstances of peril, a near-death experience is more likely in those with previous REM intrusion".
Possible Conclusions
According to the Ramachandran team, it is not clear why such dedicated neural machinery for religion may have evolved. One possibility they saw was the encouragement of tribal loyalty or reinforcement of kinship ties and the stability of closely knit clans. These scientists emphasized that their findings in no way suggest that religion is simply a matter of brain chemistry. "These studies do not in any way negate the validity of the religious experience of God," the team cautioned. "They merely provide an explanation in terms of brain regions that may be involved."
As Ramachandran has said, "We are only starting to look at this. The exciting thing is that you can even begin to contemplate scientific experiments on the neural basis of religion and God."
NEW YORK (ABP)—If science asserts that prayer is more neurological than metaphysical, will it cause the believers to abandon their faith? It’s highly unlikely, experts in the field of neurotheology agree.
Neurotheology is the study of the correlation between neurological and spiritual activity. Its aim is to find a neurological basis for belief-based experiences like trances, perceived oneness with the universe and altered states of consciousness. Proponents say it can also help explain the daily habits of religious life, namely prayer, meditation and senses of the presence of God.
“The ordinary person who attends church will dismiss this as a minor blip on the screen,” said Paul Simmons, a clinical professor of family and community medicine at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. “It will make them angry at the world of science in a way that they should not be, but it’s understandable.”
Despite the disapproval of some, neurotheology pioneer Brian Alston said he is hopeful for the future of the discipline he has devoted himself to forming. Neurotheology will help scientists and theologians alike navigate through a world that is increasingly becoming a single community, “a backyard,” he said.
A large component of the field is the impact it can have on ideas, and when Christians study their ideas, they can better understand other religions, he said. Eastern psychologists and religions traditionally have encouraged the study of meditation and mind-body wholeness, Alston continued, citing the success of a book by the Dali Lama about Buddhism and the brain.
Among intellectuals, some scientists will give up what they call “infantile” beliefs in favor of believing that religion is fabricated by chemicals in the brain, but other scientists will continue “an emotional attachment” to religion, Simmons said.
That’s fine by him. Good theology always stays in touch with the insights of science, but it never simply accepts the conclusions some scientists reach in religious matters, Simmons said. And it never tells people what to think or believe.
Neurotheology, for instance, can help determine the difference between someone who is mentally unstable and someone who is a visionary, Simmons said. Joan of Arc heard God, or at least she thought she did. But there are too many bizarre things in her life to think she had a direct line to God, he added.
“We cannot just say, ‘Now you’ve got the answer, sure.’ No. The same activity that gives one person a religious experience gives someone else a breakdown,” he said.
On the other hand, Martin Luther King Jr. never claimed to have a vision from God, Simmons pointed out. He never claimed “direct insight into God. He had a strong God-consciousness but never made claims to the bizarre or the unusual, as you get with some people who claim to be prophets,” Simmons said.
Simmons, who wrote Freedom of Conscience: A Baptist/Humanist Dialogue in 2000, said his first reaction to someone who says they have “a direct word from God” is “extreme skepticism and maybe cynicism.”
He noted that Jesus warned that some people would make claims about being the savior, so “someone has to stand up and say, ‘Wait a minute, we know too much about the brain’s chemistry to be taken in by charlatans.’”
“Those are dangerous people,” he added. “Sincere? Well, yes. But sincerity is no test for truth.”
New field of neurotheology opens door for scientific study of belief
By Hannah Elliott Published August 8, 2007
NEW YORK (ABP) -- If scientists could chart physical changes that happen in the brain during prayer, would it mean that prayer is something that happens only in the mind? And if brain scans show unique molecular activity during meditation, does that mean all religious belief is imaginary?
Scientists -- and some theologians -- are studying those questions using neurotheology, an emerging discipline that addresses the correlation between neurological and spiritual activity.
Some say neurotheology proves that God created the brain. Others believe "the brain created the god." At the root of the debate, some say, is the threat that faith could be reduced to nothing more than chemical reactions in the brain.
The coupling of science and belief has become increasingly prominent in popular media. Time and Newsweek magazines have both recently run long stories exploring the newly recognized discipline. And current studies at Wheaton College, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania are using neuroimaging to locate brain regions activated during emotional or spiritual events.
The quest is to find a neurological basis for out-of-body or enlightenment experiences, including trances, time perception, oneness with the universe and altered states of consciousness. But neurotheology can also help explain the more mundane habits of a religious life: prayer, beliefs, meditation and senses of the presence of the supernatural.
Paul Simmons, a clinical professor of family and community medicine at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, said the brain is intimately related to relationships with and perceptions of God -- so neurotheology is a good way to help theologians use all of their capacities to study God. The underlying question, the former pastor and ethics professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary said, is whether that experience is "just a mental state or have you gotten in touch with a transcendence?"
"Our brain is basic to all that we are, all that we understand, all that we perceive," Simmons said. "We can't avoid that in theology any longer. At least, we must be aware of the fact that many of our claims made about religion are actually based on science."
Theories about correlations between the brain and beliefs are nothing new. Historians have speculated that figures like Joan of Arc, Saint Teresa of Avila, Fedor Dostoevsky and Marcel Proust had aliments like epilepsy, which in turn led to their obsessions with the spiritual world.
Modern scientists differentiate between the brain and mind by defining the brain as physical and chemical, while the mind has to do with thoughts and ideas.
Plato's ideas focused on both the brain and the mind. Aristotle argued that God is pure mind, and since people have a brain they can think "God thoughts," Simmons said. "Aristotle thought you could think pure thoughts and thus get right in touch with God."
Beginning in the 1950s, scientists used electroencephalograms, or EEGs, to record electrical activity in the brain. By placing electrodes on the scalp, they could study brain waves concurring with elevated states of consciousness. In the 1980s, they stimulated different areas of the brain with a magnetic field, causing subjects to claim senses of ethereal presences in the room.
The first modern book published on the subject came in 1994. Called Neurotheology: Virtual Religion in the 21st Century, it was promoted in a theological journal called Zygon. And Newsweek recently citied a 1998 book -- published by MIT Press, no less -- called Zen and the Brain. Since then, scholarly journals have devoted issues to religion and the mind, including studies using data from meditating Buddhist monks and praying Franciscan nuns.
The reason for the renewed interest, according to neurotheology pioneer Brian Alston, is that the people writing about it have changed the terms of the field. This popular type of neurotheology focuses on beliefs, he said.
Studies since the 1960s have consistently reported that between 30 percent and 40 percent of people have felt "very close to a powerful, spiritual force that seemed to lift you out of yourself," Newsweek reported. According to the Gallup Poll, 53 percent of Americans say they have experienced a "sudden religious awakening or insight" at least once.
But has the fascination with the brain and belief come from an oversimplified version of neurotheology? Some have criticized Time's article as equating science with Darwinism and religion with God -- over-generalized definitions for such complex subjects.
"It's oversimplified, but at the same time, there's a large kernel of truth in there," Simmons said. "The issue is whether a religious experience is a matter of brain circuits or God. Religiously inclined people will say, 'Well, that's God using our brain manifesting [itself] in brain activity.'"
Alston, who wrote What is Neurotheology?, said popular writing has certainly oversimplified the dialogue between science and theology. Theology does not just deal with the religious and the spiritual -- it has much broader implications, he said.
The word "neurobelief" -- instead of "neurotheology" -- is a better way to characterize the discipline, Alston said. Neurotheology should represent beliefs that are broader than just religious and spiritual, he added. It should represent beliefs that are cultural and political as well.
"What neurotheology tries to do is say, 'Look, here are ways that all this works together. Instead of seeing these things as enemies, let's look at these as things that can relate,'" he said. Part of the issue, he said, is that, "in the Western world, we have created a dichotomy between what we consider to be physical and what we consider to be spiritual."
That divide has been implicated in some of the criticisms of neurotheology. The key problem with neurotheology is its attempt to unify two strikingly different perspectives on human beings within one discipline, Alston wrote in a paper presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association last year.
Some critics believe that even if neuroscience and theology are brought together within the discipline of neurotheology, the differences will inevitably lead to one discipline -- namely theology -- dominating the other, Alston wrote.
David Wulf, a psychologist at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, has written that religious experience is actually normal brain functions happening under duress -- not communication with God.
Another prominent thinker, Massimo Pigliucci, a professor of ecology and evolution at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has published essays questioning the discipline itself. In an essay titled "Neurotheology: A Rather Skeptical Perspective," Pigliucci wrote that he had two problems with neurotheology: "First, it is no theology at all. Theology is the study of the attributes of God.... [T]he neurological study of what happens to the brain during mystical experiences cannot tell us anything about God because all we can do is to measure neural patterns...."
The other problem, Pigliucci wrote, is that it violates Occam's razor, the rule of logic that what "can be done with fewer...is done in vain with more. That is, when faced with multiple hypotheses capable of explaining a given set of data, it is wise to start by considering the simplest ones, those that make the least unnecessary assumptions."
That logic would leave God out of the equation.
For scientists to conclude that "the self and the world at large are in fact contained within and possibly created by the reality of [an] Absolute Unitary Being" leaves the "boundaries of both science and philosophy to plunge into pure metaphysical speculation," Pigliucci wrote.
If "we realize that mystical experiences originate from the same neurological mechanisms that underlie hallucinations ... I bet dollar to donut that the reality experienced by meditating Buddhists and praying nuns is entirely contained in their mind and is not a glimpse of a 'higher' realm, as tantalizing as that idea may be," he concluded.
Simmons called that criticism "on target." Neurotheology doesn't deal with theology as it is traditionally done -- trying to get religion and experience together with reasonable consistency, he said. Progress in the field will come mostly in mental health, he said.
Alston, who studied ethics and philosophy at Yale Divinity School, says criticism of neurotheology depends on who is receiving the information. Much of it has to do with the difference between the physical brain and the metaphysical mind. Some experts believe that ideas in the mind cause action, while others say chemicals in the brain cause action -- and if chemicals are altered in the brain, behaviors will change, Alston said.
Either way of thinking is okay, since neurotheologists aren't interested in changing firmly held beliefs, he said.
"What I'm trying to do with neurotheology is to explain that each of these has a way with relating to the subject matter," he said. "It once again depends on the standing point of a person in terms of if they're a biologist and what their tools are and if they are a psychologist and what their tools are."
And with the stakes so high in this new and complex discipline, there's likely to be no shortage of opinions from either camp.
“Woodstock is where the consciousness revolution began, man,” Michael, the lanky guy next to me, said to the group, “and I was right here when it happened in 1969.” The actor’s voice, along with the two lavender plumes tucked in his headband, quivered as he spoke
Twenty-six writers and artists had packed into a small bookstore’s “sacred space” for a workshop. Lloyd, the middle-aged contractor who sat arms folded on my other side, shook his head and rolled his eyes as Michael spoke.
“I’m of the school that we’ll be judged in the end,” Lloyd said, “not for our groovy visions but for our good acts. What good are all of these visions if we’re not doing something to help others?”
Although the workshop description promised we’d explore how to communicate transpersonal experiences in stories and paintings, the workshop leader forfeited trying to espouse any wisdom for writers and artists and instead opted to let a dialogue unfold.
The dialogue made me, gray-haired and bespectacled, wonder where I sit — between Michael, the zealous optimist of all-things visionary, and Lloyd, the practical skeptic who sees promise in taking action to help the poor and destitute. Where do the Michaels and Lloyds converge?
There’s a growing number of us — in our 20s to 50s and even older — who recognize the value of such extraordinary experiences, not just for ourselves, but also for our families, our communities, the planet. Call us the transpersonal poly-generation. Forewarned by the ’60s’ dangers of visionaries’ self-delusion and self-indulgence, we sense, I think, that mysticism doesn’t have to be something “other,” outside of our everyday waking experience or apart from social activism.
Is there room for a respectable, dare I say, middle-aged and mainstream mysticism or spirituality that is integrative, that includes the ecstatic as well as the everyday, that includes beatific vision and progressive action? If so, what holds back some of the Lloyds among us from understanding and embracing such a way?
Poets and mystics from St. Francis to Blake describe those moments when, if for three-and-a-half seconds or four hours, the ego self vanishes and physical boundaries seem to dissolve, allowing for a glimpse into something more, something grander. Unity with all that is. Call it Godhead. Jack Kerouac’s It. Higher Self. Wakan-Tanka.
Whatever you name it, two-thirds of Americans in 1993 claimed to have had at least one such experience. That, according to The University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center’s national survey.
Two-thirds? 66 percent is a marked jump from the consistent 40-55 percent reported by Gallup polls since the 1960s. Dr. Jeff Levin, who writes about faith’s role in physical healing, suggests that with every generation, we Americans become increasingly more interested in such matters.
In 1902, William James rallied for his fellow psychologists to take seriously what he called “religious experiences.” Thanks to Abraham Maslow’s later humanistic focus on “peak experiences” and Stanislav Grof’s founding of transpersonal psychology, by the 1960s, kissing God or death merited study as much as, say, dreams about cigars in Fidel Castro’s mouth or obsessively cleaning the kitchen sink.
In 2007, college students now can become transpersonal psychologists who study subjective experiences, biogenetic structuralists who examine how genetics and environment shape altered states of consciousness, or transpersonal anthropologists who explore the ways in which cultural signs and norms influence our mystical flashes. They can even join the new wave of “neurotheologists” who try to find the “God spot” in the brain.
Yet many of us — whether inside or outside that “two-thirds” statistic — either don’t value such experiences or may not recognize how mystical our lives might already be. Part of the hang-up may lie in how we define “transpersonal” and “mystical” experiences.
This ecstatic otherworld tenor may be part of mysticism’s bad rap. Those vision-seekers lured by nirvana’s song can grow attached to the ecstasy and suffer miserably otherwise as the rest of life just doesn’t measure up. We can become spiritually arrogant, imagining we have a high priest’s access to the spirit world among minions. Practical skeptics such as Lloyd, then, might think that transpersonal experiences are reserved for raving poets, beachside ravers and privileged gray-haired adolescents chasing after glimpses of God on the peaks of Tibet. Mystics drop out of society, we may think, and skeptics check out of mysticism.
“Ecstasy” means to “step out of what is.” Hence, one common definition of a transpersonal experience is one in which you feel “out” of yourself, “out” of the world, “out” of conventional time and space. But there’s more to mysticism than ecstasis. Gary Snyder’s poem “What a Poet Needs” suggests we need “the wild freedom of the dance extasy” and the “silent solitary illumination enstasy.” Enstasy moves us deep within the subtle body instead of out of it. What a poet needs, perhaps, so too an active visionary.
Labels similarly limit our perception. Psychologist Rhea White suggests that since we in Western culture typically view these experiences as “anomalous” or “non-ordinary,” then many of us won’t take them seriously in our daily lives. Instead White refers to them as “exceptional human experiences,” in order not to marginalize them.
Maybe these tastes of deep connection are simply another variety of potentially ordinary experiences. Transpersonal might refer to, then, not moving out of one’s self but rather expanding one’s sense of self.
Bliss is not exclusive. According to transpersonal psychologist William Braud, repeated and consistent evidence bears out that these experiences cut across class, race, as well as religious beliefs and practices.
Perhaps a sustainable mysticism or spirituality of visionary be-ers and doers is integrative and inclusive. Some of us may continue to seek peak experience after peak experience, while others may cultivate a continuous, integrated feeling of joy, well-being and connectedness, what Abraham Maslow described as a “plateau experience.”
A transpersonal life might focus less on getting “out” of one’s self and perhaps more on expanding one’s sense of self. Encounters with those we regard as others — the disgruntled neighbor with opposing political views, the manager of Office Depot, or your lover — become opportunities for connection. We might find ways to connect with food, with plants, with animals.
I think of the poet Lucille Clifton, who while cutting collards and kale in her kitchen, suddenly and unexpectedly tastes in her “natural appetite/the bond of live things everywhere.” I think of autistic author Temple Grandin’s heightened sensory perceptions that allow her to feel what cows and sheep feel.
A transpersonal life might consist of translating visions into action. Huichol shaman and author of Plant Spirit Medicine Elliot Cowan hears how plants vibrate and sing, and he communicates with their spirits; his experiences have helped uncover ancient ways to heal people’s maladies.
Grandin’s intuitive experiences with farm animals led her to design special handling facilities enjoyed now by a third of U.S. cattle. Long-time business consultant Gay Hendricks suggests that many CEOs are “corporate mystics” who approach business solutions with states of consciousness radically different from the consciousness that created the problems.
Aware of what ails the planet — from suffering local economies to dying bees and frogs to strained human relationships — these transpersonal visionaries, I suspect, hunger to tune in, turn on, and drop deeply, actively, consciously in.
Living this way, as with any practice, is not easy. There are no 7 steps or 9 principles that will guarantee that this transpersonal momentum will continue or manifest into any kind of quantum global awakening by 2012 — or 2112.
After all, of the 79 percent (256 participants) in one study who said they had had a peak experience, half of them said they had been reluctant to tell anyone. The reason? Fear (of course) muted these daily mystics, according to the study published in The Journal of Humanistic Psychology in 1991. These days, discussing such experiences may not get us branded as an exiled heretic, as happened to 18th-century scientist-turned-prophetic mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. But you might be safer, after all, to bore your friends with your weirdest dream than to divulge that you actually saw Joan of Arc this morning on your subway commute.
The Woodstock group at times did feel like a “Mystics Anonymous Meeting.” Hi, I’m Ivan. I’ve been talking with spirits for thirty years in my bathroom. On the other hand, I felt at home in this room of odd ducks who talked about everything from embodying Christ in the Garden of Gethsamene to seeing angels in tall grasses.
We conversed. And to “converse,” after all, suggests a “turning with.” One turns with the other. Although conversation likely once referred to a monastic mode of life devoted to conversations with God, out of the monastery our daily conversations can let us hear how “all that is” speaks through strangers and lovers. “The yogi’s everyday speech becomes a mantra,” so claims a passage from the Shiva-Sutras, a text that describes ways to be with all that is.
To further our journey toward a life that couples vision and progressive action, some of us can practice hearing the languages of pizza twirlers and grandfathers, of stones and sidewalks, and letting these multiple tongues enfold into us, and us into them.
“Voices. Voices,” Rilke writes, “Listen, my heart, as only/saints have listened” (trans. Stephen Mitchell). The wandering poet spent a lifetime trying to do so. Maybe some active visionaries have a head start.
Jeff Davis, author of The Journey from the Center to the Page (Penguin), teaches the discipline of yoga with writing around the U.S. He is converting his farmhouse and barn near Woodstock, NY, into a simple place where active visionaries can gather.
How to wire your brain for religious ecstasy. By John Horgan
Posted Thursday, April 26, 2007, at 7:19 AM ET
Eight years ago, I flew to Laurentian University in Midwestern Canada to test a gadget that some journalists called the "God machine." The device consisted of computer-controlled solenoids that fit over the skull and stimulate the brain with electromagnetic pulses. Its inventor, neuroscientist Michael Persinger, claimed that it could induce mystical experiences, including, as Wired magazine put it, visions of "Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Mohammed, the Sky Spirit."
Persinger is one of the more colorful characters in the fast-growing, flakey field of neurotheology, which studies what is arguably the most complex manifestation—spirituality—of the most complex phenomenon—the human brain—known to science. Given that brain researchers have no idea how I conceived and typed this sentence, I doubt they will ever account for religious experiences in all their vast diversity and subtlety. Nor will they solve the riddle of whether God actually exists or is a figment of our evolved imaginations, like unicorns or superstrings. Neurotheology may nonetheless have a profound social impact, by yielding more potent, reliable methods of inducing spiritual experiences.
Surveys suggest that only about one in three people has ever had a mystical experience, defined by one poll as the sensation of "a powerful spiritual force that seemed to lift you out of yourself."
Humans have long sought such experiences through meditation, yoga, prayer, guru-worship, fasting, and flagellation, but these methods are unreliable, notes James Austin, author of Zen and the Brain, one of the best books on neurotheology. Austin hopes that neurotheology will eventually yield much more potent, precise methods of inducing transcendent experiences, from fleeting feelings of connectedness all the way up to "the full moon of enlightenment."
Persinger's God machine may not have done much for me, but here's a brief status report on four mystical technologies with potential:
Mystical Brain Chips
In the 1950s, Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, while preparing epileptic patients for surgery, stimulated their exposed brains with electrodes. Some patients heard voices or music and saw apparitions when their temporal lobes were stimulated. Upon learning about Penfield's experiments, Aldous Huxley wrote: "Is there, one wonders, some area in the brain from which the probing electrode could elicit Blake's Cherubim?"
One still wonders. A Swiss team recently induced out-of-body experiences in an epileptic patient about to undergo surgery by stimulating her right angular gyrus, which underpins spatial awareness. Other groups have shown that implanted electrodes can trigger euphoria, and in fact they are now being tested as treatments for severe depression (as well as paralysis, tremors, and epilepsy). In principle, implants would provide the most precise, powerful means of inducing religious ecstasy. Indeed, self-described "Wireheads" look forward to the day when these devices will vanquish mental suffering and deliver ecstasy on demand. But for now, this technology—which requires inserting wires into the brain through holes drilled in the skull—remains too risky for all but the most desperate patients.
Magic Wands
Transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, is noninvasive and hence safer and easier to test than implants. Researchers have reported success in treating depression and other disorders with this method, which often employs electromagnetic "wands" as well as headsets. Persinger insists that TMS, properly used, can also induce intense mystical experiences.
A group at Uppsala University has tried and failed to replicate Persinger's results in a controlled, double-blind experiment. Todd Murphy, a neuroscientist who has worked with Persinger, is nonetheless marketing a version of the God machine called the "Shakti" (a Hindu term for divinity), which according to Murphy's Web site "uses magnetic fields to create altered states."
Tweaking the God Gene
The work of Dean Hamer, a geneticist at the National Cancer Institute, raises the prospect of genetically engineered mystics. Hamer claims to have found a gene associated with "self-transcendence" or "spirituality" in a group of 1,000 subjects who filled out surveys that probed their beliefs in God, ESP, and so on. Hamer calls this gene "the spiritual allele" or, even more dramatically, the "God gene"—which is also the title of the popular book in which he describes his research. Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project, has called Hamer's claim "wildly overstated."
Rick Strassman, a psychiatrist at the University of New Mexico, suggests focusing on genes associated with dimethyltryptamine, the only psychedelic known to occur naturally in the human brain. In his book DMT: The Spirit Molecule, Strassman presents evidence that endogenous DMT underpins mystical visions, psychotic hallucinations, alien-abduction experiences, near-death experiences, and other exotic cognitive phenomena.
Our natural mystical capacity, Strassman speculates, might be enhanced with genetic modifications that boost the production of DMT or of the enzymes that catalyze its effects. A clever, unscrupulous geneticist might even transform us all into mystics without our consent. "I can envision a situation where a cold virus is tinkered with to turn on our methylating enzymes," Strassman says, "spreads around the world in a couple of years, and there you have it."
Good Old Psychedelics
Psychedelic (or entheogenic, literally God-containing) compounds such as LSD and psilocybin represent by far the most mature mystical technology available. Legal research into the therapeutic and spiritual benefits of psychedelics collapsed in the late 1960s after the drugs were outlawed but is now undergoing a renaissance.
Reseachers at UCLA, the University of Arizona, Harvard, and other institutions are treating post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety with psilocybin and MDMA (aka Ecstasy). Last year, a team at Johns Hopkins University reported that psilocybin had triggered profound spiritual experiences in two-thirds of a group of 36 subjects. "Psilocybin, the active ingredient of 'magic mushrooms,' expands the mind," the Washington Post noted drily. "After a thousand years of use, that's now scientifically official."
Independent chemist Alexander Shulgin has identified more than 200 psychotropic compounds that have potential as therapeutic and spiritual catalysts.
Our current mystical technologies are primitive, but one day, neurotheologians may find a technology that gives us permanent, blissful self-transcendence with no side effects. Should we really welcome such a development? Recall that in the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA funded research on psychedelics because of their potential as brainwashing agents and truth serums.
Even setting aside the issue of control, mystical technologies raise troubling philosophical issues. Shulgin, the psychedelic chemist, once wrote that a perfect mystical technology would bring about "the ultimate evolution, and perhaps the end of the human experiment." When I asked Shulgin to elaborate, he said that if we achieve permanent mystical bliss, there would be "no motivation, no urge to change anything, no creativity." Both science and religion aim to eliminate suffering. But if a mystical technology makes us immune to anxiety, grief, and heartache, are we still fully human? Have we gained something or lost something? In short, would a truly effective mystical technology—a God machine that works—save us, or doom us?
Xerpi