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True, a keen scientist in the twentieth century could, if he strained, hear faint echoes of those who believed that spiritual experience involved more than the byproduct of misfired synapses. Canadian psychiatrist Richard Bucke theorized that mystics had an evolutionary advantage that allowed them to tap into “cosmic consciousness,” a spiritual octave too high for ordinary humans to hear.13 Carl Jung believed that numinous or supernatural experiences are everywhere and invisible, like the air we breathe. He argued that each person can access a “collective unconscious.” Mystics, then, are people who experience the collective unconscious vividly.14 And in the 1960s, psychologist Abraham Maslow coined the term “peak experiences”—ecstatic moments of joy that occur when exceptional (or “self-actualized”) people feel unified with the world and aware of ultimate truth. Maslow stated such experiences could be secular; but his work cracked open the door for the scientific investigation of mysticism.15

However, these were mere footnotes to the triumphant scientific idea of the twentieth century: namely, that science has no business sticking its nose into spirituality at all. Behaviorism, which was conceived by John Broadus Watson and popularized by B. F. Skinner, suggested that if a scientist cannot observe something directly, then it may not be real—and anyway, it is not relevant to science. From this perspective, if mental states and consciousness fell beyond the boundaries of scientific inquiry, then spiritual experience resided on another planet.16

Thus the scientific study of the spiritual was shoved to the side. The work of serious scientists was dismissed as little more than psychic voodoo. Careful experiments involving precognition and telepathy were thrown into the same ghetto as stories of haunted houses and UFOs.

And yet, the public refused to dismiss spirituality. Beginning in the 1950s, the power of positive thinking, and the growing evidence that thoughts (or prayer) can heal one’s body, forced scientists to take a closer look at the mind-body connection. In the 1970s, sparked by Raymond Moody’s book Life After Life, millions of people testified to experiencing life after death, suggesting we do have a soul. Some reputable universities, such as Princeton and the University of Virginia, began to study spiritual phenomena in earnest. While no one can pinpoint the moment when modern scientists began to take spiritual experience seriously, many say they know what sparked the new interest: technology. Neurologists in particular, armed with EEGs and brain scanners, were able to peer into the brain and witness spiritual experiences unfold. After a century, the tools of science caught up with William James.

Picking Up William James’s Gauntlet

How I would have loved to talk with William James about the present-day research in “neurotheology”—the study of the brain as it relates to spiritual experience. But I found a proxy for James, one who had the advantage of being available for interviews.William Miller would turn out to be my guide through the psychological exploration of mystical experience, and like the other guides who led me through genetics, neurology, and quantum physics, Miller seemed delighted to spend a few hours talking about his research, challenging, as it does, the materialist assumptions of science.

“When I went to graduate school, I got the very clear message: Spirituality is not something it’s okay to talk about,” Miller recalled. “We could ask our clients about anything else. We could ask them about family life and violence in the home and sex life, but never about spirituality or religion. It was the great taboo.”

Miller leaned forward in his chair. It was late July 2006, a blindingly hot day in Albuquerque. A lanky, bearded, rugged fifty-something, Miller looked more like a forest ranger than a Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico. The look seemed fitting for an academic with