An experiment by American neurophysiologists showed that after a week of religious exercise, the level of Christians increases the concentration of the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin.
Why do believers experience religious ecstasy and happiness during prayer? What happens at this moment with their consciousness? Andrew Newberg, professor at Thomas Jefferson University (USA), tried to answer these questions. He is known as one of the founders of neurotheology, a discipline that studies religious experience scientifically.
SPIRITUAL EXERCISES AND THE "REWARD SYSTEM"
To participate in the experiment, Newberg recruited 14 Christian volunteers between the ages of 24 and 76. During the week they had to strengthen their faith with the help of Ignacio de Loila's Spiritual Exercises. He is a Catholic saint, one of the founders of the Jesuit order. In his youth, he had a successful military career, Loila enjoyed phenomenal success with women. During the defense of Pamplona (1521), he demonstrated miracles of courage, but was badly wounded by a cannonball, which shattered both his legs. Ignacio miraculously survived, endured terrible torment during operations (one leg after a fracture did not grow together correctly and had to be broken again) and remained a crippled cripple for life. While undergoing treatment in the hospital, he asked his mother to send him some novel of chivalry to pass the time. Note,either she didn't find a suitable "bestseller", or she didn't want to get involved with low-grade (in her opinion) reading material and passed on to her son the Lives of the Holy Fathers. The book turned the minds of Loila: he decides to become a knight of Christ with the same fanatical passion with which he used to build a knightly career at the court of the king. Loila's "Spiritual Exercise", which the participants of the experiment followed, is a kind of instruction on how to achieve inner perfection and hear the word of God through the bustle of the world. The exercises are designed for 4 weeks (Newberg is forced to squeeze them into seven days - author.) At the first stage, a person remembers the sins of all mankind (for example, Adam's sin) and his own, while repenting and striving to get out of the state of sin. The second week is devoted to reflections on Jesus' earthly journey and the essence of his teachings. The third part of the exercise is devoted to mortification of the flesh and physical trials, their goal is to unite with Christ in His suffering and death on the cross. The fourth week implies a spiritual rebirth and the opportunity to love God with a new quality.
“For a week, the participants in the experiment lived in seclusion, indulging in prayer, contemplation and communication with a spiritual mentor,” says Professor Andrew Newberg. “Then we gave them a CT scan of the brain. It turned out that spiritual practices increased the concentration in the "gray matter" of "happiness hormones" - dopamine and serotonin, respectively, by 5-8 and 6.5 percent. Since both neurotransmitters are involved in the “reward system,” it is understandable why prayer and meditation can generate strong positive emotions.
The experiment report was published earlier this year in the scientific journal Religion, Brain & Behavior.
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HOW CHANGED THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF MONKS AND MONKS
Earlier, Newberg, together with his colleague Dr. Eugene d'Aquili, conducted another interesting experiment, in which 8 Tibetan monks and 3 Franciscan nuns participated. Neurophysiologists injected a harmless dye into the subjects' blood, which was "highlighted" during a brain scan in a CT scanner. At the same time, it was convenient to determine which areas of gray matter were activated during religious experiences. The participants of the experiment had to achieve enlightenment inside the tomograph. It turned out that the neural activity during prayer and meditation in representatives of the two religions is almost identical. But it is significantly different from the natural functioning of the brain!
First, in the course of spiritual practices, blood circulation in the posterior superior parietal lobe (TEPP) of the left hemisphere is disturbed. This area of the brain helps us become aware of the physical boundaries of our own body. When the signals from the senses of our body cease to be clear, the concept of our own "I" is blurred: we lose our own individuality and experience a feeling of unity with the Universe or God (as you like - author)
Secondly, in monks and nuns, there was a decrease in the activity of the inferior parietal lobe, which is responsible for the functioning of the speech centers. This leads to the fact that the "working noises" of the brain, which constantly processes the information received during the day, subside.
And thirdly, the blood supply to the frontal lobes of the brain improves, where mental, behavioral and cognitive functions "live". According to Newberg and d'Aquili, these three areas are responsible for the emergence of religious feelings and merging with God.
Confirmation of this idea is the difficult life experience of another specialist in brain anatomy, Jill Bolty Taylor of the Harvard University School of Medicine. In 1996, at the age of 37, a woman had a stroke. As a result of neurosurgical surgery, a blood clot the size of a golf ball was removed from her brain. By chance, he suppressed the speech centers in the left hemisphere of her brain, which in the experiments of Newberg and d'Aquili were associated with religious sensations. After 8 years, Jill fully recovered and wrote the book “My Stroke Was A Science To Me”. This is how she describes her condition: “… When my speech centers of the left hemisphere were disconnected, and the left associative orientation zone lost the normal influx of sensory signals, I entered a state of altered consciousness and stopped feeling like a solid body,and began to perceive itself as a fluid substance, dissolved in the vastness of the Universe."
Doesn't it sound like a state of religious nirvana?
Yaroslav KOROBATOV
