Excerpt from Chapter 1:

The Power of Belief

 

 

            He wasn’t expected to live through the night.  His body was riddled with tumors, his liver and spleen were enlarged, his lungs were filled with fluid, and he needed an oxygen mask to breathe.  But when Mr. Wright heard that his doctor was conducting cancer research with a new drug called Krebiozen, which the media was touting as a potential miracle cure, he pleaded to be given treatments. Although it was against protocol, Dr. Klopfer honored Wright’s request by giving him an injection of the drug, then left the hospital for the weekend, never expecting to see his patient again. But when he returned on Monday morning, he discovered that Mr. Wright’s tumors had shrunk to half their original size, something that even radiation treatments could not do.

 

         “Good God!” thought Dr. Klopfer. “Have we finally found the silver bullet – a cure for cancer?” Unfortunately, an examination of the other test patients showed no changes at all.  Only Mr. Wright had improved. Was this a rare case of spontaneous remission, or was some other unidentified mechanism at work?  The doctor continued to give injections to his recovering patient, and after ten days, practically all signs of the disease had disappeared. Wright returned home, in perfect health. 

 

          Two months later, the Food and Drug Administration reported that the experiments with Krebiozen were proving ineffective. Mr. Wright immediately became ill.  His tumors returned and he was readmitted to the hospital. Dr. Klopfer, however, was convinced that it was the patient’s belief that had healed him.  To test his theory, he decided to lie, telling Wright that he had just obtained “a new, super-refined, double-strength product” that was guaranteed to produce better results. In reality, Dr. Klopfer gave him injections of sterile water.

 

        Once again, the patient’s recovery was dramatic. The tumors disappeared and Mr. Wright resumed his normal life -- until the newspapers published the following announcement by the American Medical Association:

   

Nationwide Tests Show Krebiozen to be a

Worthless Drug In Treatment Of Cancer!

   

        Wright fell ill, returned to the hospital, and died two days later.  In Dr. Klopfer’s report, published in the Journal of Projective Techniques, he concluded that when the powers of Wright’s optimistic beliefs expired, his resistance to the disease expired as well.

 

         Each year, thousands of cases of remarkable recoveries are described, and although such “miracles” are often attributed to the power of faith and belief, the majority of scientists are skeptical of such claims. In the medical literature, spontaneous remissions—at least when it comes to cancer—are extremely rare. Estimates range from one in 60,000 to one in 100,000, but O'Regan and Hirshberg’s definitive overview of the topic, argue that as many as one in 3000 patients experience spontaneous remissions. Still, the majority of oncologists believe that an unidentified biological mechanism is at work rather than a true miracle. In addition, current hypotheses favor alterations in the body’s cellular, immunological, hormonal, and genetic functioning over psychological mechanisms. But the case of Mr. Wright is so unique—and is one of the few to be documented during a university research project—that his fluctuations in the course of his cancer are most likely attributed to how his mind affected the biological functioning of his body.  

 

         Still, hundreds of mind/body experiments have been conducted—including placebo studies and research on the on the power of meditation of prayer— and few scientists have attempted to explain what the underlying biology of belief may be. We have volumes of comprehensive statistics about the kinds of beliefs we hold, but the “hows” and “whys” have been embroiled in controversial speculation for years.  

 

         Fortunately, recent discoveries concerning the neural mechanisms of memory, cognition, behavior and emotion can now provide us with a new template from which to proceed. What I will propose in this book is a practical working model for understanding beliefs: how they emerge from the perceptual processes of the brain, and how they are shaped by personal relationships, societal influences, and our educational and spiritual pursuits.  This model can help us to discern the difference between destructive and constructive beliefs, skills that are essential if we are to adequately address the individual, interpersonal, and global problems that are so prevalent today.

 

         The study of human beliefs often raises unsettling issues, for most people are not aware that the majority of our beliefs are based on incomplete assumptions about the world. How, then, can these beliefs hold the power to heal us, or cause us to suffer and die?  This question has haunted philosophers, theologians, and politicians for eons. . . .

  

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Excerpt from Chapter 8:

Speaking in Tongues

 

            It was New Year’s Day, 1901, and the place was Topeka, Kansas. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, a young woman named Agnes Ozman was about to be transported to a strange and wondrous place—not by a tornado, but through a “born-again” experience. She asked her teacher, Charles Parham, to lay his hands upon her and pray, and when he did, she began to speak in a language no one had ever heard before. Some of the bible students thought she was babbling, and others thought she was speaking Chinese, but they all agreed that she had been touched by the Holy Spirit and given the gift of “speaking in tongues.”  On that day, the Pentecostal movement was born, which would transform Christianity throughout the world. 

 

            Parham and a handful of charismatic converts stirred up tornados of revivalism that whipped across the country. Imbued with the power of gospel music, this evangelical revival quickly gained support among the disenfranchised people of the world.  But other Christians saw the movement as speaking the devil’s tongue. Today, the controversy still rages, and although the Pentecostal movement rapidly diverged into competing theological groups, speaking in tongues is still considered a meaningful sign that the person has given herself to God. 

 

           References to speaking in tongues—or glossolalia, as it is technically called—can be found in the Old and New Testament, but until the 20^th Century, only brief references have been made. Forms of glossolalia have also been reported in the shamanic rituals of many tribal groups throughout the world, but in the Pentecostal movement, it is considered the most important sign that a person has fully accepted the apostolic faith of the New Testament. Pentecostals believe that they when they become divinely empowered, they will be given the “gifts of the Holy Spirit,” which includes the ability to prophesize the future and heal others through prayer and touch.

 

            In March, 2005, my laboratory was given the opportunity to conduct, for the first time in the world, brain scans on a group of people while they were in the act of speaking in tongues. I was approached by a production crew from National Geographic who were creating a documentary about people who claimed to have been possessed by evil spirits.

 

            At first, I did not want to participate, as my work focused on the positive aspects of religious practice, and not on demonology. In spite of my reluctance to get involved with anything that would even be remotely related to possession states, National Geographic persisted.  As I thought about it, I remembered a conversation I had had with some colleagues about the religious revival movements during the Great Depression. It suddenly occurred to me that speaking in tongues might be considered a positive form of possession, because the individual believes he or she is taken over by the Holy Spirit. National Geographic took a few days to track down a proficient practitioner who was willing to be scanned, and they filmed her in our lab (the program, entitled “Exorcism,” aired on the National Geographic Channel in 2006 as part of their “Is It Real?” series). . . .

 

            Our scans of Pentecostal practitioners showed that there was increased activity in the thalamus, which was also activated in our studies with the Buddhist practitioners and nuns. Because this structure is involved in the transfer of sensory information from the world to different parts of the brain and the body, I have argued that it plays a significant role in making spiritual experiences real.

 

          We also found significant increases of activity in the temporal lobes, which contain the limbic areas that monitor our emotions. In other studies, the temporal lobes appear to play an important role in eliciting spiritual experiences. Other researchers have suggested some individuals have a form of temporal lobe “sensitivity,” and that these people are more prone to having visions, hearing voices, and experiencing hallucinations.

 

          Furthermore, such individuals are more inclined to hold paranormal and spiritual beliefs.  In particular, sensed presences are associated with alterations in temporal lobe and hemispheric activity.    This may help to explain why only half of the membership in Pentecostal churches has had glossolalic experiences; their brains may not built in a way that allows such spiritual experiences to occur. . . .

 

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 Excerpt from Chapter 9:

The Atheist Who Prayed to God

  

In 1988, a young college teacher had a spontaneous mystical experience that transformed his perception of the world and his career.  “I was sitting in my office, which has a marvelous view of the campus gardens,” said Kevin, “when I suddenly felt as though a blanket of intense silence had fallen over the scene. Then I had the sense that I was intimately connected to everything—the sky, the trees, the grass, even the garden walls. It was as if everything in the universe was in its proper place. Immediately, I was filled with a sense of peacefulness that I had never known before. I even remember saying to myself, ‘So this is what those Eastern mystics were talking about.’ The experience stayed with me for weeks.”

 

Kevin told me that the experience never happened again. Still, he felt that it changed his life in significant ways. “Prior to the experience, I only had a passing interest in religion, but since that time, I’ve been fascinated by the mystical traditions of the world. And even though more than twenty years have passed since that initial experience, it feels like yesterday when I think about it.”

 

The research literature suggests that most people, when they have such experiences, become more spiritual, but this did not happen to Kevin.  Instead, he went from being an agnostic to a devout atheist. “All I can tell you is that in that moment, I felt absolutely certain that when I died, that would be the end of it. Nothing. No afterlife, no spiritual dimension, no God. And the feeling left me elated. Later, I rationalized that if I were to accomplish anything significant, I only had this one life to do it in. I couldn’t sit back and passively wait for ‘it’ to happen. If my life was going to change, if I was to become happy, then I’d have to take complete responsibility for bringing it into being. No god was going to intervene.” 

 

The experience catapulted Kevin into a decade of research into the nature of religious experiences. He also began to explore a variety of Eastern and Western meditation techniques, many of which led to other peak experiences and insights, but none of them ever gave him the sense that a spiritual realm existed. “I wish I believed in God—I really do—but my experience doesn’t support it.  So I tend to see God as a psychological function of the mind, though I must admit that I am rather envious of those who do believe. I think it makes life easier to have that kind of faith.”   . . . .

 

Kevin had responded to an invitation I had circulated to several atheist organizations to participate in our research studies. Kevin interested me for three reasons: he was an atheist, he meditated regularly, and he often had experiences that were similar to those described by those who have maintained long-term spiritual practices. He’s exactly the sort of person I wanted to interview and scan. But why would I study atheists? After all, atheism is not a religion; it is a thought system that reflects a disbelief in theological and God-oriented premises. For me, atheism raises the question of whether there are neurological differences between those who believe in God and those who do not. After all, a strong disbelief can influence a person’s thinking and behavior as much as a strong belief, and there should be a way of exploring how such differences affect the brain. Since evidence suggests that religious affiliation modestly improves health, studies on atheism might raise the question of whether or not an inherent disbelief in God carries with it any physiological or psychological risks. These are some of the questions that I hoped could be explored in our lab. . . .

                                                            Can Fantasies Heal?

  Kevin does not believe in God, so I was quite bewildered when he told me that one of his favorite healing meditations involved an image of God. “I like to visualize the image that Michelangelo painted on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, of a compassionate wise old man with a flowing white beard. I imagine that I am being filled with a healing white light that enters my body from above.” Kevin informed me that he originally learned about this technique from Carl Simonton’s research with cancer patients. Similar guided imagery techniques are used in various psychotherapies and spiritual healing groups, with substantial evidence demonstrating that guided imagery has psychological and physiological benefits, especially when used to treat pain, anxiety, and depression.

 

For Kevin, God was merely a fantasy, but this presented a unique opportunity to see how Kevin’s brain might process such an image. We know that if you imagine yourself eating a fudge brownie, you can taste it, because there are parts of your brain that do not distinguish between imagination and reality. But since Kevin doesn’t believe in the reality of God, different circuits should be activated. As I have pointed out in previous chapters, the repetitive focus upon a specific image or concept tends to make it seem more real, but this does not seem to be the case with Kevin. “No matter how long I meditate, I never get the sense that God is real.” The question naturally arises: could some people be born with a biological inclination towards spirituality, and others not? Recent genetic research points to this possibility. . . .

 

                                       Are Atheists Lacking a Spiritual Gene? 

 

Accumulating evidence suggests that genetic factors may account for a substantial percentage of the individual differences in religious attitudes, interests and values. In his book, The God Gene, Dean Hamer, the director of the Gene Structure and Regulation Unit at the National Cancer Institute, argues that spirituality is an instinct and that spiritually inclined people—specifically, those who claim to have self-transcendent experiences—are more likely to share the gene, VMAT2, that codes for a specific receptor in the brain. Others have suggested that a spiritual or self-transcendent proclivity would probably involve multiple genes, including genes related to the dopamine and serotonin neurotransmitter systems in the brain. However, even if there is a genetic correlation with spiritual and transcendent proclivities, single genetic factors may only have a relatively small effect on a person’s behavior, considering that our biology is governed by the simultaneous interaction of tens of thousands of genes. It is a huge speculative jump to say that a specific gene is responsible for a specific behavioral tendency or belief.

 

Although various studies support some relationship between genes and religious ideation, one’s religious affiliation—along with the specific beliefs a person chooses to embrace—is largely culturally and socially transmitted.  This means that genes do not turn a person into a Muslim or Hindu or Catholic, for these are matters relating to child rearing, social norms, and an individual’s freedom to choose. On the other hand, more general aspects of belief, such as religious fundamentalism, have been correlated with genetic factors. Again, this does not mean that innate behaviors and attitudes cannot be changed, for many studies have shown that genetic tendencies can be overridden easily by cultural, environmental, and social factors such as education. For example, geneticists have found that a religious upbringing seems to inhibit—especially in boys and men—genetic tendencies that allow some individuals to express impulsive behavior and emotions that could potentially lead to destructive acts.

 

One further possibility that I have argued is that the universal aspects of religion and spirituality such as love, compassion, and feeling connected to something greater than the self, are a part of every human being.  But as with any human trait, we each have varying predispositions and abilities.  The result is that some people can feel highly spiritual while others do not. . 

 

                                                  The Atheist Brain at Work

                       

After Kevin completed a series of interviews and questionnaires, we took him into a hospital examination room, where he rested quietly ten minutes. We then injected him with a radioactive tracer. Ten minutes later, we took him for his baseline scan.  This takes about forty-five minutes, during which time Kevin fell asleep. This is not unusual, but Kevin had had a difficult time sleeping the night before. “Too much excitement,” he explained.

 

When the baseline scan was complete, I compared it to those we had taken of the nuns and Buddhist practitioners. I knew that any conclusions I might draw would have to be considered cautiously, since Kevin was the first and perhaps only atheist subject we’d be analyzing. After all, how many atheists do you know of who meditate to an image of God? However, the argument has also been made that the data from individual case studies are as important as the information gathered from group studies, for they can highlight qualities that are unique within an individual’s brain. Large studies tend to generalize data by excluding the anomalies and extremes that may have significant relevance when studying the nature of the human mind. For example, if you were conducting a full-scale study on intelligence and creativity, you’d normally exclude statistical extremes. In essence, you’d be eliminating the Einsteins and Mozarts, since qualities of genius would be unusual compared to the norm. By studying exceptional individuals at both ends of the spectrum, we can begin to map a fuller range of human potential.

 

            In several significant ways, Kevin’s baseline scan turned out to be different from our other participants’ scans, for he had higher activity in the prefrontal cortex than both the Buddhist meditators and the nuns. Frontal lobe activity plays an important role in mediating attention and controlling emotional feelings, and Kevin’s brain seemed to be functioning in a highly analytical way, even when he was in a resting state.

 

If we make the assumption that atheism is a learned attitude that goes against the general beliefs of society (which would certainly be the case for Kevin), then I would argue that it takes a lot of cognitive work to embrace an atheistic point of view. Furthermore, I suspect that a significant increase in frontal lobe activity would slow down neural activity in those parts of the brain that have the biological propensity to perceive alternative dimensions of reality. Kevin’s personal experience confirms this possibility for he told me that although his mind was relatively quiet as we did the baseline scan, he was still filled with thoughts about the experiment. “My mind is going all the time, thinking and imagining all kinds of things. My main reason I meditate is to turn the damn thing off.” . . . .

 

Kevin also knew how controversial this experiment would be, and like most people, he was somewhat concerned about having his beliefs made available to others. Even though he knew we would take all steps to insure his anonymity, going against the social norm, as I explained in Chapter 6, stimulates a neurological impulse to hide opposing views. 

 

The nuns also had expressed excitement in participating in a study about prayer, yet they did not show the degree of activity seen in Kevin’s scan.  First of all, prayer is a widely accepted behavior, especially for a nun, so there would be no social dissonance to confront. Furthermore, the activity they were going to engage in complemented their system of beliefs, which is maintained by the frontal lobes. For an atheist, focusing on an image that contradicts one’s beliefs could evoke two types of neural responses: one being an increase of negative emotional activity in the limbic system, which would potentially slow down frontal lobe activity; the other being an increase in frontal lobe activity that would maintain a framework of disbelief. This is what we may be seeing in Kevin’s highly active frontal lobes, for a predominance of frontal lobe activity can also suppress the wider range of positive emotional experiences that I believe are essential to embrace spiritual perceptions such as God.

 

 When compared to the nuns and Buddhists, Kevin also had lower activity in the hippocampus and right caudate, which are both associated with emotional responses.  This might suggest that people who do not believe in God may exhibit decreased emotional range, at least when encountering religious stimuli. Kevin said, however, that he is often filled with a sense of peace and awe when entering churches and other sacred places. At first, his statement seemed contradictory, but then I discovered that Kevin spends a great deal of time visiting art galleries, museums, and historical buildings whenever he travels. 

 

This suggests that Kevin’s emotional reaction is based on nonreligious cues, such as the architectural beauty of the building or the aesthetic quality of a piece of religious art.  It isn’t the religion that turns him on, it’s the aesthetics.

  

        Unusual Thalamic Asymmetry

                                                               

              Kevin also had substantial asymmetry in his thalamus in his baseline scan (the left side being more active than the right), which was very similar to the asymmetry we found in the nuns, Buddhist practitioners, and Pentecostal practitioners. We typically do not see this in the “normal” population. Since the thalamus is a key relay of neuronal information in the brain, I have hypothesized that the asymmetry might be associated with long-term meditation processes. Since Kevin has been meditating for nearly thirty years, his resting scan supports this hypothesis. However, it is also possible that Kevin was born this way. If this were the case, then it might explain why Kevin is “driven” to explore religious themes and spiritual practices, even though his other cognitive processes reject a spiritual cause. Long-term longitudinal studies would be needed to assess the validity of either perspective, which means that we are decades away from making more definitive statements about the biology of spiritual experiences and beliefs.

 

                 My findings also suggest that thalamic asymmetry may be associated with a predisposition to have powerful experiences while meditating, and as our experiment progressed, I discovered that Kevin could indeed evoke altered states of consciousness that had a powerful effect upon his brain. For the religious person, this helps to validate the reality of a spiritual realm, and to keep that sense alive throughout the day. Thus, for the believer, this ongoing thalamic activity provides a more realistic sense of his or her faith.  For an atheist, a powerful transcendent experience might only reinforce his belief that altered states of consciousness can be generated within the mind. . . .

 

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Newberg's and Waldman's research into the neuropsychology of Nuns, Buddhists, Pentecostals, and atheists provides the first model for explaining why certain beliefs - be they political, romantic, religious, or emotional - take on a semblance of reality that is so strong that the brain has no choice but to perceive those beliefs as real.  If you meditate or obsess on anger, then the world becomes a hostile environment.  But if you intensely focus on compassion, kindness, and trust, then the world becomes a gift, and your ability to cope with the stresses of life increase dramatically and become a physiological part of your brain.  What you believe not only affects your health, it also  changes your perception of the world. 

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The Meditating Brain

Mark Robert Waldman

Counseling, Research, Workshops, Lectures, and Editorial Services

1601 Carmen Drive, Suite 203     Camarillo, California 93010

805-907-1181 

markwaldman@sbcglobal.net