Now that neuroscientists possess the technology to tackle the problem, they are looking for the answer in the “sacred disease.”
CHAPTER 7
Searching for the God Spot
THE SUN WAS STILL HIGH in the northern Canadian sky when I arrived at Laurentian University early in the evening on July 8, 2006. I had traveled to the remote town of Sudbury, Ontario, to meet Dr. Michael Persinger, an American researcher who had gained some notoriety in neuroscience circles—and among journalists—for his experiments in spirituality. Several years earlier, he had produced the “God helmet,” a reconstructed motorcycle helmet that was supposed to evoke mystical experiences in its wearer. According to Persinger, the helmet would use weak magnetic fields to stimulate parts of the brain—in particular, the temporal lobe. This, in theory, would evoke a “Sensed Presence,” the feeling that a nonmaterial being was in the room. In other words, through the wonders of neuroscience, the helmet could summon counterfeit angels or demons on demand. I wanted to see if it would work its magic on me.
A bouncy brunette Ph.D. student named Linda St. Pierre greeted me at the research laboratory. She immediately sat me down and gave me a battery of tests to gauge my personality—and, in particular, to see whether I was prone to epilepsy, religiosity, or suggestibility. Questions like: Do you have a feeling that there is something more to life? Are you afraid of mice? Do people tell you that you blank out (a sign of epilepsy)? Do you believe in the second coming of Christ? And (my favorite): Have you been taken aboard a spaceship? As I was completing the tests, the man himself appeared.
Michael Persinger was ramrod slim, taut, with a puckish expression. He wore a dark blue three-piece suit, with a gold watch and chain tucked into his vest. I liked him immediately.
“I heard a rumor,” I said,“that you wear a three-piece suit when you mow the lawn.”
“True!” he admitted, seeming pleased that this eccentricity had made its way back to the States.
“Interesting. May I ask why?”
“For comfort. Three-piece suits are so versatile. I take off the jacket when it’s hot, and put it on when I’m cold.”
“How long have you been doing this?”
“Since I was in high school at least.”
I had boned up on Persinger’s theories about spiritual experience, and they boiled down to this: spiritual experience is a trick of the brain. It can be triggered by head injuries and brain dysfunctions such as epilepsy, by the earth’s magnetic fields, and by machines like his “God helmet.”
Persinger laid out his theory about how, precisely, the brain creates spiritual experience. It was like listening to Mr. Spock in a
StarTrek
episode—he peppered his theories with just enough acceptable science to make them plausible. The left hemisphere of the brain is associated with language, he explained, and thus the sense of “self.” The right side is more involved with “affective emotional patterns,” or feelings and sensations.
“When you stimulate the left hemisphere, you’re aware of your ‘self ’—of you as an individual,” Persinger explained.“So the question to ask is, What is the right-hemispheric equivalent of that left-hemispheric sense of self? And the answer is, the ‘Sensed Presence’: the feeling of another entity, of another sentient being that has emotional, meaningful, personally significant, and expansive temporal and spatial properties.”
If you stimulate the right side of your brain in a certain way, he said, you sense someone nearby. In this way, Persinger claimed to create “the prototype of the God experience.” Persinger claimed that fully 80 percent of the 2,000 or so subjects who have donned the God helmet report feeling a sensed presence, as well as dizziness, vibrations, spinning, and visions.
Even better, Persinger believed he had found the sweet spot for spiritual experience: the right temporal lobe of the brain. The temporal lobe, which runs along the side of your head near the ears, is involved with memory, emotions, and meaning, as well as hearing and language comprehension.
Why zero in on the right temporal lobe? I asked.
“Mystical experiences are in large part associated with temporal lobe function,” he said. “The visual experiences, the hearing, knowing, vestibular [balance] effects, the smell.”
Persinger explained that the temporal lobe (and, in his view,
not
the presence of God) explains why the mystics of old were said to smell fragrant flowers.
“In fact, their sweat emits it,” he said. “Areas of the temporal lobe probably affect the metabolism in such a way that your sweat has a certain smell, and many of the classic mystics are often described as having a smell about them that is very fragrant, like roses, and all of this is tied to temporal lobe function.”
I would learn much more about the temporal lobe in the coming months. For now, I was eager to test the God helmet.
At around six-thirty p.m., Michael Persinger led me into the “chamber.” This was a small room with an overstuffed chair and ottoman, covered with what looked like an Indian-style saddle blanket. I settled into it and Linda St. Pierre began to affix eight electrodes to my head. Once the electrodes were properly connected, Persinger eased a motorcycle helmet with its own solenoids onto my head, and covered my eyes with goggles stuffed with napkins. It was stunningly low-budget. I half expected him to hand me a bong.When I was fully blinkered and feeling fantastically ridiculous, I heard him snapping pictures. Then, with a hermetic
schlupf
, the door sealed shut, and I was left, wired up and alone, in my soundproof room.
In order to record what happened while I was in the chamber, I had placed a tape recorder (with Persinger’s permission, of course) in the control room where the neurologist and his assistant were manipulating the magnetic pulse passing over my scalp. The recorder picked up Persinger’s comments to the assistant (which I could not hear in the soundproof chamber), as well as his comments to me when he hit a button and spoke through a speaker in the chamber. It also recorded my comments to him, since I was wired with a microphone that fed into the control room.
“Ms. Hagerty,” I heard Dr. Persinger’s soothing voice through the speaker on the wall. “Can you hear me? It is important that you relax. The changes will be extremely subtle, so you must let the experiences simply arise.”
Then the experience began. I relaxed into the chair, and waited. Soon, I grew a little agitated. I could hear the helmet clicking as the magnetic patterns shifted, but I felt and saw nothing. Minute unfolded into uneventful minute, and I began to worry: What if nothing happens? What if I fall asleep in this smelly chair? I found myself straining to see patterns in my mind’s eye, wondering when—or if—the Sensed Presence would show up.
About this time, in the next room, Dr. Persinger was also becoming agitated, and dictated his concerns into the tape recorder.
I should point out,
he said,
that your EEG is quite fast right now. It is way above the level that is optimal. If your brain activity is too fast, the applied field will not drive the neurons to produce the first stages of the mystical experience—that is, the Sensed Presence. Obviously you can’t hear me, since you’re in a closed acoustic chamber, but if you could, I would be suggesting you relax much, much more.
Unaware of Persinger’s concerns, but keenly aware of my own, I suddenly recalled a scene from ten years earlier, a previous time when I had felt spiritual performance anxiety. I had been invited to the house of an acquaintance for a “Bible study.” I arrived to find six others there surrounding Nancy, the guest of honor. Nancy, I was informed, was a modern-day Christian prophet: she was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she heard directly from God. She visited Washington from Texas every few weeks to hold a Bible study and tell other women what God was saying about their lives. I quickly noticed that most of Nancy’s “prophecies” involved money—people becoming rich, owning large mansions, giving away millions of dollars for evangelism projects. Most of the Bible verses she quoted in her “study” promised abundance.
After about an hour of Nancy’s preaching, she slapped her hands on her thighs and said, “Now let’s hear from the Lord!” in the way someone might say,“Let’s have some ice cream!” Everyone murmured assent, except for me, who felt a little bit queasy.
We huddled together and Nancy prayed for God to speak through each one of us. Then she announced, “Okay, I want each person to prophesy over another person. I will begin.”
She began to prophesy about me. She “saw” me on a “jet plane with a man with a turban on—he owns the plane. Oh! He’s very wealthy. And I see you getting off the plane in a very hot dusty country. Oh! And you are being greeted by hundreds of children, little brown children, little brown babies.You must be in Africa,” she added. And that was it.
One by one, the others prophesied. My hands grew clammy; I surreptitiously glanced at the door, plotting my escape. Finally, everyone had spoken. It was my turn to inform Sheila about God’s will for her life. Silence fell on the room as I struggled for something to say. The seconds stretched to the breaking point, the silence yawned wider and wider, and I saw . . . nothing. I didn’t have a word for Sheila. Not one stupid word. I thought,
Oh, man, I’m drowning here.
“I see water,” I heard myself intone, in a flash of inspiration.
The others murmured, “Yes, Lord.”
Warming to my tale, I said,“It is a pool, and you are standing on the high dive.”
“Yes, Lord, thank you, Jesus,” several exclaimed, and I heard someone softly speaking in tongues.
“You’re afraid to dive, Sheila,” I continued, “but the Lord does not want you to be afraid. The Lord says, ‘I will catch you, my child, just trust me.’ ”
“Thank you, Lord!” This came from Sheila, in heartfelt gratitude for this, my first prophecy.
Six years later, I was at a reception at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. A woman walked up to me.
“Barb?” she said, moving closer to examine my face. “Do you remember me? I’m Sheila.We met at Julia’s house, when you prophesied over me.”
“Of course, Sheila, how are you?” I said, scrambling to remember what, exactly, I had said.
“Great! Do you remember how you prophesied that the Lord wanted me to jump off the high dive?”
“Oh.Yeah.”
“Well, the next day I quit my job!”
I wondered briefly if one could be sued for faking a prophecy. I was intensely relieved when she told me she had started her own animation and graphics company, which had prospered from the first day.
Back in Michael Persinger’s chamber, I found myself once again expected to manufacture a spiritual experience. I willed myself to stop thinking and simply relax. As the minutes ticked by, a few images penetrated the darkness—a flash of a park near my house, the brief glimpse of a face. The most profound moment came as I tottered on the edge of sleep.
“I am utterly relaxed,” I said in a thick, gravelly voice.“I feel as if I’m dissolving into the chair. It’s not that I don’t have boundaries, but the boundaries include the chair.” Pause. “I’m communing with a chair.” Pause. “Great.”
For the remainder of the session, I felt blackness cresting over itself like roiling waves. I briefly saw a woman’s face, but even in that suggestible moment, I knew these were creations of an imagination trying too hard, and certainly not the presence of a Sentient Being. Mercifully, the session ended a few moments later.
My answers on Persinger’s follow-up questionnaire reflected my desultory performance. On only one question—“I felt relaxed”—did I give an enthusiastic response. I had also (erroneously, I came to believe) checked the item:“I felt I left my body,” thinking about the union with the chair.
Dr. Persinger seized on that answer. I tried to explain that it was more relaxation, not an out-of-body experience, but he persisted.
“But you did feel something
like
this,” he insisted, and in that instant I realized how he came by his remarkable results.
“Yes,” I said, “but no Sensed Presence.”
“Well, according to your EEGs, you were right on the verge of feeling a Sensed Presence,” he assured me. The machine was showing very fast spiking behavior in my brain waves about three minutes before the session ended.
“If we had continued, it would have hit you”—he flicked his fingers in front of his face, as if releasing a ball of energy—“it would have hit you powerfully.”
“Say it
had
hit me powerfully,” I suggested.“Would that mean spiritual experience—God or Allah or whatever you want to call it—can be reduced to brain activity?”
“Well, certainly from the point of view of neuroscience, all experience is generated by brain function,” Persinger said.“That means when you have an experience of a memory, that’s a brain pattern being activated. When you have an experience of God, or Allah, or Buddha, or whatever the cosmic whole is that inspires you, that is brain activity. Does that mean that everything is programmed by brain structure or electromagnetic activity or chemistry?
Of course it is
.”
Simply because the brain is
firing
during these experiences does not mean the brain
causes
them, Persinger quickly added. But in the next breath he gave up the game, blithely stating what I suspect many scientists believe but do not say, at least not to religion reporters like me: Neuroscience will soon relegate “God” to the ash heap of history.
“If we look at the trend in the history of science, first we thought we were the center of the universe, and Copernicus modified that,” he said. “Then Darwin removed the illusion that we were a special creation. Freud ripped apart the concept that we were logical animals and showed that that was only a veneer, that actually we were still a primitive animal.
“So the next big question is: What is the last illusion that we must overcome as a species?” he asked rhetorically.“That illusion is that ‘God’ is an absolute that exists independent of the human brain. That somehow we are in His or Her care. We have to realize that ultimately that may not be true, but what we may learn from it may take us much further than we ever imagined.”