Andrew Newberg - Why God Wont Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief

1. A Photograph of God?: An Introduction to the Biology
of Belief

4. Myth-making: The Compulsion to Create Stories
and Beliefs

9. Why God Wont Go Away: The Metaphor of God
and the Mythology of Science

I n a small, dark room at the lab of a large university hospital, a young man named Robert lights candles and a stick of jasmine incense; he then settles to the floor and folds his legs easily into the lotus position. A devout Buddhist and accomplished practitioner of Tibetan meditation, Robert is about to begin another meditative voyage inward. As always, his goal is to quiet the constant chatter of the conscious mind and lose himself in the deeper, simpler reality within. Its a journey hes made a thousand times before, but this time, as he drifts off into that inner spiritual realityas the material world around him recedes like a fading dreamhe remains tethered to the physical here and now by a length of common cotton twine.

One end of that twine lies in a loose coil at Roberts side. The other end runs beneath a closed laboratory door and into an adjoining room, where I sit, beside my friend and longtime research partner Dr. Eugene dAquili, with the twine wrapped around my finger. Gene and I are waiting for Robert to tug on the twine, which will be our signal that his meditative state is approaching its transcendent peak. It is this peak moment of spiritual intensity that interests us.

For years, Gene and I have been studying the relationship between religious experience and brain function, and we hope that by monitoring Roberts brain activity at the most intense and mystical moments of his meditation, we might shed some light on the mysterious connection between human consciousness and the persistent and peculiarly human longing to connect with something larger than ourselves.

In earlier conversations, Robert has struggled to describe for us how he feels as his meditation progresses toward this spiritual peak. First, he says, his conscious mind quiets, allowing a deeper, simpler part of himself to emerge. Robert believes that this inner self is the truest part of who he is, the part that never changes. For Robert, this inner self is not a metaphor or an attitude; it is literal, constant, and real. It is what remains when worries, fears, desires, and all other preoccupations of the conscious mind are stripped away. He considers this inner self the very essence of his being. If pressed, he might even call it his soul.

Whatever Robert calls this deeper consciousness, he claims that when it emerges during those moments of meditation when he is most completely absorbed in looking inward, he suddenly understands that his inner self is not an isolated entity, but that he is inextricably connected to all of creation. Yet when he tries to put this intensely personal insight into words, he finds himself falling back on familiar clichs that have been employed for centuries to express the elusive nature of spiritual experience. Theres a sense of timelessness and infinity, he might say. It feels like I am part of everyone and everything in existence.

To the traditional scientific mind, of course, these terms are useless. Science concerns itself with that which can be weighed, counted, calculated, and measuredanything that cant be verified by objective observation simply cant be called scientific. Although individual scientists might be personally intrigued by Roberts ex

Years of research, however, have led Gene and me to believe that experiences like Roberts are real, and can be measured and verified by solid science.

We wait one hour, while Robert meditates. Then I feel a gentle jerk on the twine. This is my cue to inject a radioactive material into a long intravenous line that also runs into Roberts room, and into a vein in his left arm. We wait a few moments more for Robert to end his meditation, then we whisk him off to a room in the hospitals Nuclear Medicine Department, where a massive, state-of-the-art SPECT camera awaits. In moments, Robert is reclining on a metal table, the cameras three large crystal heads orbiting his skull with a precise, robotic whir.

The SPECT camera (the acronym stands for single photon emission computed tomography) is a high-tech imaging tool that detects radioactive emissions. The SPECT camera scans inside Roberts head by detecting the location of the radioactive tracer we injected when Robert tugged on the string. Because the tracer is carried by blood flow, and because this particular tracer locks almost immediately into brain cells and remains there for hours, the SPECT scans of Roberts head will give us an accurate freeze-frame of blood flow patterns in Roberts brain just moments after injectionat the high point of his meditative climax.

Increased blood flow to a given part of the brain correlates with heightened activity in that particular area, and vice versa. Since we have a good idea of the specific functions that are performed by various brain regions, we expect the SPECT images to tell us a lot

Figure 1.1: The top row of images shows the meditators brain at rest and indicates an even distribution of activity throughout the brain. (The top of the image is the front of the brain and part of the attention association area, or AAA, while the bottom of the image is part of the orientation association area, or OAA.) The bottom row of images shows the brain during meditation, in which the left orientation area (on your right) is markedly decreased compared to the right side. (The darker the area, the more activity; the lighter the area, the less activity.) The images are presented in a gray scale because this provides more contrast on the printed page. The images on a computer screen, however, are usually displayed in color.