March 25, 2001

BRAIN WAVES AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

Barry Beyerstein calls what he studies "the neurology of the weird."

He's a biological psychologist who works in the Brain Behavior Laboratory in the Department of Psychology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, and he's interested in the way physiological disturbances of the brain cause the brain's owner to experience profoundly altered states of consciousness. He spoke recently in Boulder, Colo.

The descriptions are familiar. A disembodied self. A mysterious sense of oneness with God (or with the universe). Visions. An alien entity usurping control of one's body.

Are the varieties of religious and spiritual experience merely a matter of brain chemistry gone awry? Beyerstein doesn't make that claim.

"I do not dispute in the slightest that people feel changed," he said, "and they do change.

"For those who have the experience, what it felt like is good enough. But for scientists, that's the beginning, not the end" of the investigation. What is happening in the brain? These aberrations of consciousness often occur spontaneously, and without obvious external causes. Or they may be associated with migraines, or with epilepsy.

The most frequently cited reason that people believe in the paranormal, Beyerstein said, is that they themselves have had a compelling anomalous experience.

But it's also true that in many cultures such experiences are highly prized, and there are rituals and cultural practices to induce these transcendent states. Moreover, the practices are strikingly similar in otherwise dissimilar societies.

Some use drugs, including hallucinogens.

Both sensory deprivation and sensory overload affect brain function.

Rhythmic stimulus -- drumming, chanting, swaying, controlled breathing -- have been shown in laboratory studies to alter the electrical patterns of the brain.

Physical manipulation of the body -- fasting, dehydration, sleep deprivation, fatigue, exhaustion, even self-mutilation -- changes how the mind perceives reality.

These things happen in a social and cultural context, too, which tells the individual who has been made to feel weird what kind of weird he is expected to feel.

There are new versions of these cultural practices, Beyerstein said, "for those who like gadgets better than talismans."

He described the work of Michael Persinger, a researcher at Laurentian University in Ontario who studies brain activity evoked by electrical currents.

Persinger fits his volunteer subjects with a motorcycle helmet studded with magnetic coils.

The volunteers' experiences are apparently not so intense as those that have inspired prophets and madmen. At least, Beyerstein didn't know of any who walked out of the lab with a magnetically induced mission. But then, the setting would conduce toward skepticism. It would be asking a lot of coincidence to believe God spoke to you at exactly the same instant the researcher flipped the switch.

Nonetheless, Persinger found that some people are predisposed to interpret their experience mystically. And the response can be manipulated by the physical setting. People are more likely to describe what they feel in religious terms if they are tested in a room rich with religious symbols and imagery.

I wondered whether ecstasy on demand might be a business opportunity -- and sure enough, there's a Web site set up by a student of Persinger's, featuring "own-your-own magnetic signal spiritual technology."

This is not an endorsement; Beyerstein said he, personally, would not be willing to take the risk. Nor would I.

That there is a naturalistic explanation for some experiences customarily regarded as spiritual does not prove the nonexistence of non-naturalistic explanations, though I'm inclined to think one explanation is sufficient. Or it could be that the divine, however conceived, acts through the mechanisms of the natural world. Hard to imagine how it could act otherwise.

In any case, if something like this ever happened to me I'd sure want to know what caused it.

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