The following blogpost is excerpted from my Sunday morning lecture at the Church of the Living Spirit on 5-17-09. See Part 1 here.
Part 2: Science is catching up with spirituality
As Spiritualists, we believe that we are all connected to God, to the Divine, to Infinite Intelligence, the Source, a Unified Field of Energy. Albert Einstein believed in a unified field of energy: that everything, everyone, all matter, and all energy are united, are all one field.
Einstein - a deeply religious man - believed this as a matter of faith but could not prove it mathematically. Well, perhaps science is catching up with spirituality.
There is a well-respected neurologist in San Diego, Vilayanur S. Ramachandram, who has discovered how the human brain experiences both the human sense of unity and the sense of being separate from God. By using a PET scan, he has noticed changes in the temporal lobes of individuals who experience religious vision. The temporal lobe, when interacting with the limbic system, is the brain center for unity.
What Einstein tried to do with the whole universe (discover the source of unity) neuroscientists like Ramachandran are doing with the brain by discovering the neural source of the feeling of unity.
Ramachandran has discovered that the human brain actually senses itself to be utterly connected, attached, and one with God, but does not feel that consciously at all moments, and so it posits that it is intrinsically disconnected from the universe. In response to the sense of disconnection, the human mind creates religions, which provide the mind with a way to feel connection more constantly. Though most religions reflect the sense of disconnection by positing that humans are disconnected from God, they also reflect the goal of connection, by providing connection as a reward of a religious life.
Another way to put this: We must experience disconnection or separation from God in order to feel connection.
And even more exciting --- there is now technology to see what happens in the brain when it is understanding the inner self,” “reaching a state of spiritual or religious union,” and “experiencing the timeless.”
The neurophysiologist Andrew Newberg has found this to be true. He and his colleague have done experiments with a man who is devout Buddhist and accomplished practitioner of Tibetan meditation. These scientists hook this man up to SPECT cameras and when this man enters the transcendent peak of meditation they take what they term ‘a photograph of God’.
Before meditating, the parietal lobe is filled with normal electrical activity. During meditation, it is dark and sensory links for orienting to physical space disconnect. So one could say that the meditator is lost in the world and blind to it, but can see God. As meditators we leave the physical world behind and find ourselves. These scientists have done these SPECT scans on people of many religions during meditation and have found the same pattern.
Sooooo (carried over from yesterday's post about Practicing the Presence of God, Part 1) my question to you is: Do we need to lose God in order to find God? Like some strange game of pretend. Hide and Go seek? Does it help us grow as individual souls?
Part 2: Science is catching up with spirituality
As Spiritualists, we believe that we are all connected to God, to the Divine, to Infinite Intelligence, the Source, a Unified Field of Energy. Albert Einstein believed in a unified field of energy: that everything, everyone, all matter, and all energy are united, are all one field.
Einstein - a deeply religious man - believed this as a matter of faith but could not prove it mathematically. Well, perhaps science is catching up with spirituality.
There is a well-respected neurologist in San Diego, Vilayanur S. Ramachandram, who has discovered how the human brain experiences both the human sense of unity and the sense of being separate from God. By using a PET scan, he has noticed changes in the temporal lobes of individuals who experience religious vision. The temporal lobe, when interacting with the limbic system, is the brain center for unity.
What Einstein tried to do with the whole universe (discover the source of unity) neuroscientists like Ramachandran are doing with the brain by discovering the neural source of the feeling of unity.
Ramachandran has discovered that the human brain actually senses itself to be utterly connected, attached, and one with God, but does not feel that consciously at all moments, and so it posits that it is intrinsically disconnected from the universe. In response to the sense of disconnection, the human mind creates religions, which provide the mind with a way to feel connection more constantly. Though most religions reflect the sense of disconnection by positing that humans are disconnected from God, they also reflect the goal of connection, by providing connection as a reward of a religious life.
Another way to put this: We must experience disconnection or separation from God in order to feel connection.
And even more exciting --- there is now technology to see what happens in the brain when it is understanding the inner self,” “reaching a state of spiritual or religious union,” and “experiencing the timeless.”
The neurophysiologist Andrew Newberg has found this to be true. He and his colleague have done experiments with a man who is devout Buddhist and accomplished practitioner of Tibetan meditation. These scientists hook this man up to SPECT cameras and when this man enters the transcendent peak of meditation they take what they term ‘a photograph of God’.
Before meditating, the parietal lobe is filled with normal electrical activity. During meditation, it is dark and sensory links for orienting to physical space disconnect. So one could say that the meditator is lost in the world and blind to it, but can see God. As meditators we leave the physical world behind and find ourselves. These scientists have done these SPECT scans on people of many religions during meditation and have found the same pattern.
Sooooo (carried over from yesterday's post about Practicing the Presence of God, Part 1) my question to you is: Do we need to lose God in order to find God? Like some strange game of pretend. Hide and Go seek? Does it help us grow as individual souls?
Comments
As John Locke said on a recent episode of "Lost," "I like the pain. I wouldn't be where I am today without it."
Deeds aren't the only factors in this equation. Loss of a loved one can significantly highlight a state of disconnect and give us the impetus to reconnect with God.
Deeds (actions and reactions to perceived events) are often catalysts for increased spiritual awareness.
Yes, sometimes a grief reaction to a perceived event such as so called death will launch a quest to reconnect with the passed loved one and leads to a reconnect with the Divine.