19
L. Tebartz van Elst et al., “Amygdala Abnormalities in Psychosis of Epilepsy: An MRI Study of Patients with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy,”
Brain
125 (2002): 593-624.
20
Ahahar Arzy et al., “Induction of an Illusory Shadow Person,”
Nature
443 (Sept. 21, 2006): 287.
21
M. A. Persinger and K. Makarec, “Complex Partial Epileptic Signs as a Continuum from Normals to Epileptics: Normative Data and Clinical Populations,”
Journal of Clinical Psychology
49, no. 1 (1993): 33-45.
CHAPTER 8. SPIRITUAL VIRTUOSOS
1
A. Newberg, E. D’Aquili, and V. Rause,
Why God Won’t Go Away
(New York: Ballantine, 2001).
2
A. Newberg, and M. R. Waldman,
Why We Believe What We Believe
(New York: Free Press, 2006).
3
Since Newberg had already conducted brain scans of people meditating, engaging in centering prayer, chanting, and speaking in tongues, we thought we’d mix it up. Scott would pray for someone else in “intercessory prayer,” and Newberg would take brain scans of both Scott and the recipient of his prayers. That guinea pig turned out to be me, as there weren’t many people in Scott’s church eager to have a radioactive tracer coursing through their veins. I thought this was pretty nifty, even though I am not fond of catheters. We were charting new territory—territory I will cover more fully in the next chapter. Would my brain “respond” to Scott’s prayers? To guard against anticipatory frontal lobe excitement in my brain—
He’s praying for me now! Oh yeah, baby, I can feel it!
—we conducted two sessions. During one session, Scott would pray for me (prayer state). During the other, he would think about nothing in particular (baseline state). But I wouldn’t know which was which. We would then see if my brain “responded” to his thoughts. This is called a “blind” study, where the subject does not know whether she’s getting the placebo or the real thing—Scott’s wandering mind or his prayers.
In a stroke of genius that would fell the whole endeavor, I had hired a sound man to record Scott’s session, and in particular, the instructions Newberg gave him. (I was reporting the story for NPR as well, and thus needed the sound; but I could not be in the room when Scott prayed, or did not, as that would “unblind” the study.) All went well, until the intermission between sessions, when the engineer, clearly bored, began to chat with me.
“You know, it was interesting,” he said helpfully. “After Scott had finished the session, he told me it was really hard not to—”
“Stop!” I said, covering my ears.
“Do not say another word!”
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
The damage was done. I knew where that sentence was going: “—really hard not to pray.” And thus the blind study was foiled.
I told Newberg that I knew that Scott had not prayed for me in the first session and he would pray for me during the next. Newberg stood there for a beat with a slightly frozen smile, then graciously reassured me that this sort of thing happens all the time in research. I was not comforted. I felt guilty and, frankly, peeved that it had taken a year for all the planets to align to allow Newberg, Scott, me, and the SPECT scanner to be free—only to be thwarted by a half-sentence. Newberg said he would continue the study for my sake: Scott would pray for someone else and get the scan, so we could see his brain in prayerful action. But the quirky side experiment that I was certain would change the world and defy materialism for good—that hope was dead.
As it turned out, Scott did pray for me, but my brain appeared to show no unusual activity.
Maybe another day.
4
S. Begley, “Your Brain on Religion: Mystic Visions or Brain Circuits at Work?”
Newsweek
, May 7, 2001.
5
Newberg did see one major difference in the two practices. The nuns were focusing on a word or phrase, and so the area of the brain that handles language lit up. The monks were focusing on a visual image, and so the visual areas of the brain lit up.
6
This story is recounted in Newberg and Waldman,
Why We Believe What We Believe
, pp. 198-99.
7
A. B. Newberg et al., “The Measurement of Regional Cerebral Blood Flow During Glossolalia: A Preliminary SPECT Study,”
Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging
148 (2006): 67-71.
8
Romans 8:26 (New International Version).
9
See Nina P. Azari et al., “Neural Correlates of Religious Experience,”
European Journal of Neuroscience
13 (2001): 1649-52.
10
S. Begley,
Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain
(New York: Ballantine, 2007), p. 234.
11
R. J. Davidson et al., “Alterations in Brain and Immune Functions Brought by Mindfulness Meditation,”
Psychosomatic Medicine
65 (2003): 564-70.
12
In addition, both the newly minted meditators at Promega and the control group received a flu vaccine. As seen in other studies, the meditators developed more flu antibodies than did the control group, and suffered fewer flu symptoms. And the more meditation, the better the immune system: those whose brain-wave activity tilted more leftward developed higher antibody titers.
13
F. Crick,
The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul
(London: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 3.
CHAPTER 9. OUT OF MY BODY OR OUT OF MY MIND?
1
Michael Sabom has published two books on near-death experiences:
Recollections of Death: A Medical Investigation
(New York: Harper & Row, 1982) and
Light and Death
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1998).
2
In one of the early studies, researchers claim that journals are filled with descriptions of out-of-body experiences that turn out to be accurate. In one study, a researcher analyzed 288 cases in which patients reported events that they could not have seen or heard with their physical senses. More compelling, in ninety-nine of those cases, the patients reported the event before it was verified. In other words, the experiencers could not have simply heard about it from someone else. See H. Hart, “ESP Projection: Spontaneous Cases and the Experimental Method,”
Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research
48 (1954): 121-46.
3
James said this in his Presidential Address to the (British) Society for Psychical Research on January 31, 1897; the address was published in
Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research
12 (1897): 5. My thanks to Bruce Greyson at the University of Virginia for locating this citation for me.
4
The surgery was reconstructed practically to the minute by Michael Sabom, who obtained Pam’s records and wrote it up in
Light and Death
. I am grateful that he also spent considerable time with me in an interview, walking me through the process.
5
John 20:22. Then, fifty days later, when those same men were huddled together, seeking escape from the Romans, “suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. . . . All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.” Acts 2:2-4.
6
G. M. Woerlee,
Mortal Minds: The Biology of Near-Death Experiences
(New York: Prometheus, 2005).
7
This theory dates back to the 1950s, with the pioneering work of neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield. Before he conducted neurosurgery on an epileptic patient, Penfield routinely stimulated parts of the brain to figure out which parts to cut out and which to leave alone. His patients, who were awake (because the brain does not feel pain), could describe the sensations they were feeling, and where. In this way, he produced out-of-body-like phenomena. More recently, neurologist Orrin Devinsky and his colleagues investigated whether autoscopic experiences—body displacement similar to out-of-body experiences—occur when people suffer epileptic seizures. They studied ten of their own epileptic patients and thirty-three others who reported floating out of their bodies. Their conclusions: “Autoscopic seizures may be more common than is recognized; we found a 6.3% incidence in the patients we interviewed. The temporal lobe was involved in 18 (86%) of the 21 patients in whom the seizure focus could be identified.” O. Devinsky et al., “Autoscopic Phenomena with Seizures,”
Archives of Neurology
46 (1989): 1080-88.
8
Or consider the case of a forty-three-year-old Swiss woman who came into the University Hospital in Geneva for a neurological evaluation. She had suffered for more than a decade from seizures that originated, it turned out, in the right temporal lobe. Neurologist Olaf Blanke opened her head, began stimulating parts of her brain, and suddenly, the woman felt herself leave her body. At first she reported that she was “sinking into the bed” or “falling from a great height.” But when Blanke raised the voltage, he produced an out-of-body experience: “I see myself lying in bed from above,” she said, “but I only see my legs and lower trunk.” Upping the voltage gave her the sensation of floating about six feet above the bed, but the next turn of the dial was less fun: “She reported that her legs appeared to be moving quickly towards her face, and took evasive action.” I would, too, if my neurologist sicced my legs on me. Olaf Blanke et al., “Stimulating Illusory Own-Body Perceptions,”
Nature
419 (2002): 269-70. From this and from a later study involving five other people, Blanke theorized that a certain spot in the brain—where the temporal lobe and parietal lobe meet—was command central for out-of-body experiences. Scientists believe that this region of the brain orients the body in space, by integrating information about balance, touch, sight, and coordination. And if the messages going to that area are garbled—because of an epileptic seizure, or lesion, or artificial stimulation—then you could find yourself hovering near the ceiling, watching your own resuscitation. Olaf Blanke et al., “Out-of-Body Experience and Autoscopy of Neurological Origin,”
Brain
127 (2004): 243-58.
9
S. J. Blackmore, “A Psychological Theory of the Out-of-Body Experience,”
Journal of Parapsychology
48 (1984): 201-18.
10
K. Ring and S. Cooper, “Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind: A Study of Apparent Eyeless Vision,”
Journal of Near-Death Studies
16 (1997): 101-47.
11
Mary Baker Eddy,
Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures
(Boston: Christian Science Publishing Society, 1875), p. 486.
12
Aldous Huxley,
The Doors of Perception
(New York: Perennial Classics, 2004; originally published 1954), p. 24.
CHAPTER 10. ARE WE DEAD YET?
1
Raymond Moody,
Life After Life: An Investigation of a Phenomenon—Survival of Bodily Death
(New York: HarperCollins, 2001; originally published 1975).
2
In general, researchers say, the average near-death experience will pass through five fairly universal stages.
Stage one:
Peace. Your heart stops, and while the emergency staff is thumping your chest and yelling orders, you are overwhelmed by peace, calm, contentment, no pain, no fear. Researchers figure between 60 and 85 percent of people who nearly die and return with some memory recall this profound peace. B. Greyson, “Incidence and Correlates of Near-Death Experiences in a Cardiac Care Unit,”
General Hospital Psychiatry
25 (2003): 269-76.
Stage two:
Body separation, or out-of-body experience. You detach, float over your body, remember conversations verbatim; blind people have been reported to see the events that transpire. Sometimes you see outside the room, get a glimpse of the book your mother is reading in the waiting room, but generally you regard with detached puzzlement the train wreck that is your body. Estimates of how many people have out-of-body experiences varies widely, from 25 to 70 percent. Greyson, “Incidence and Correlates.”
Stage three:
Entering darkness. While a “tunnel” has become the popular symbol of the near-death experience, relatively few actually go through the tunnel. Between a quarter and a third say they enter darkness and then move toward a light. The first time, they break all speed limits, including the speed of light, but if they happen to be on their second near-death journey—as psychologist and researcher Scott Taylor told the audience at the Houston near-death conference—“they saunter. ‘I’ve been here before, I know what’s happening, I’m taking my time.’ ” When he said this, a number of people nodded their heads knowingly.
Stage four:
Seeing the light. The light is always bright but never hurts the eyes. It comforts, and for the religious it is the physical manifestation of God. Between 16 and 70 percent of people see the light, depending on the study.
Stage five:
Entering the light. This is a very busy time. Some people talk with a being, or beings, of light, ask them questions, and receive perfect answers. Others are greeted by dead friends and relatives (some of whom they have never met before). Some walk through meadows or a heavenly landscape. Others review their lives, generally with a “being” to guide them through the process. Many see a border—a fence, a door, a window, a bridge, a line in the sand, a river—and sense that if they cross over, they will never come back.
Finally they return:
Sometimes they choose to return, drawn by unfinished business, such as children to raise, or a spouse to comfort. Others return kicking and screaming, like Pam Reynolds, who claimed she was pushed back into her body by her uncle. And always, the instant they return, so does the pain.
The percentages of each of these stages vary wildly, but meeting with the light and with dead relatives are the most common. Many near-death experiencers found being dead so lovely they were peeved when they came back.
“I was actually punched by a patient who said, ‘You had no right to bring me back,’ ” Maggie Callanan, a hospice nurse and author of
Final Gifts
(New York: Bantam, 1992), told me in an interview. “And you know what I wanted to say to him? ‘
Do you know I missed lunch for you?
’ ”