Fingerprints of God_ The Search for the Science of Spirituality - Barbara Bradley Hagerty [112]
I recalled that Pam Reynolds, whose brain was shut down for more than an hour during a surgery, had told me that her brain-wave activity was “extremely slow,” even when she was performing complex tasks. Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin found that his monks possessed a different brain rhythm—very fast gamma waves—which he said were a unique marker of meditation. And then there was Andrew Newberg at the University of Pennsylvania, puzzling over the fact that the Tibetan monks in meditation, the Carmelite nuns in prayer, the Pentecostals speaking in tongues, all showed the same neurological quirk: one thalamus was more active than the other.
Perhaps a close encounter with death has the same effect as a psychedelic drug. Perhaps it swings open the door to a spiritual realm, instantly accomplishing a state that usually requires untold hours of prayer. And once you have come in contact with God, or the Light, or the ground of being, or another reality, the experience leaves a fingerprint on your brain—that metaphysical stamp in your passport that proves you’ve traveled to another reality.
Beauregard said it is possible to test this hypothesis by looking at the EEGs, the brain scans, the immune systems, and the DNA of people before cardiac arrests and then after them. He wants to work with surgeons who perform the kind of surgery Pam Reynolds received: the “standstill procedure,” which takes one’s brain off-line for forty-five minutes or longer. That would certainly improve the odds of capturing a near-death experience. Beauregard mused that researchers might be able to determine whether the brains of those who experienced the “light” really did operate differently from the brains of ordinary, mildly spiritual people like me. And if they did, the question became, did the NDE brain start functioning differently before they died—suggesting that some people are born with the brain wiring to allow them mystical experiences? Or was it after they died—suggesting that their brains were altered by the experience? Beauregard has already proposed such a study, and hopes with the fervor of a true believer that he will one day know the answer.
“Of course,” he added with a sly smile,“the spiritual world, the source, has to be willing to play that kind of game for us to be able to do this.”
Yet even this sort of study cannot prove that the soul survives death, or that life continues after our hearts stop beating. It would only demonstrate that the brain is recording an event, either a real encounter or a hallucination. And there is another problem. Even if everyone from Richard Dawkins to the Dalai Lama agrees that something occurs in the boundary between life and death, no study can prove the content of near-death experiences, because no objective scientist can follow the dying person into the light, shake hands with Aunt Sally or Jesus, and return with a clipboard full of notes.
I outlined my concerns to Mario Beauregard. He nodded. Some things, it seems, must be taken on faith.
“So what do you think, Mario?” I asked. “Are we’re hardwired to connect to God?”
“Yes, of course, we are neurologically equipped to be able to connect with God,” he said. “It’s not the same thing as saying we are hardwired to do that, because if that would be the case, we would have seven billion mystics living on the planet. But is the equipment there to allow that to happen? Oh, yes.”
Of course, Mario Beauregard is a mystic.
Every person I interviewed who had traveled to the brink of death returned with a new definition of God. I had first noticed this when I talked with people who had enjoyed spontaneous mystical experiences, and I saw the pattern repeat with those who experienced other transcendent moments as well. I realized that after encountering the “Other,” people no longer clung to religious distinctions. If they had identified themselves as Christian or Jewish before, they might still attend