Fingerprints of God_ The Search for the Science of Spirituality - Barbara Bradley Hagerty [63]
If you stimulate the right side of your brain in a certain way, he said, you sense someone nearby. In this way, Persinger claimed to create “the prototype of the God experience.” Persinger claimed that fully 80 percent of the 2,000 or so subjects who have donned the God helmet report feeling a sensed presence, as well as dizziness, vibrations, spinning, and visions.
Even better, Persinger believed he had found the sweet spot for spiritual experience: the right temporal lobe of the brain. The temporal lobe, which runs along the side of your head near the ears, is involved with memory, emotions, and meaning, as well as hearing and language comprehension.
Why zero in on the right temporal lobe? I asked.
“Mystical experiences are in large part associated with temporal lobe function,” he said. “The visual experiences, the hearing, knowing, vestibular [balance] effects, the smell.”
Persinger explained that the temporal lobe (and, in his view, not the presence of God) explains why the mystics of old were said to smell fragrant flowers.
“In fact, their sweat emits it,” he said. “Areas of the temporal lobe probably affect the metabolism in such a way that your sweat has a certain smell, and many of the classic mystics are often described as having a smell about them that is very fragrant, like roses, and all of this is tied to temporal lobe function.”
I would learn much more about the temporal lobe in the coming months. For now, I was eager to test the God helmet.
At around six-thirty p.m., Michael Persinger led me into the “chamber.” This was a small room with an overstuffed chair and ottoman, covered with what looked like an Indian-style saddle blanket. I settled into it and Linda St. Pierre began to affix eight electrodes to my head. Once the electrodes were properly connected, Persinger eased a motorcycle helmet with its own solenoids onto my head, and covered my eyes with goggles stuffed with napkins. It was stunningly low-budget. I half expected him to hand me a bong.When I was fully blinkered and feeling fantastically ridiculous, I heard him snapping pictures. Then, with a hermetic schlupf, the door sealed shut, and I was left, wired up and alone, in my soundproof room.
In order to record what happened while I was in the chamber, I had placed a tape recorder (with Persinger’s permission, of course) in the control room where the neurologist and his assistant were manipulating the magnetic pulse passing over my scalp. The recorder picked up Persinger’s comments to the assistant (which I could not hear in the soundproof chamber), as well as his comments to me when he hit a button and spoke through a speaker in the chamber. It also recorded my comments to him, since I was wired with a microphone that fed into the control room.
“Ms. Hagerty,” I heard Dr. Persinger’s soothing voice through the speaker on the wall. “Can you hear me? It is important that you relax. The changes will be extremely subtle, so you must let the experiences simply arise.”
Then the experience began. I relaxed into the chair, and waited. Soon, I grew a little agitated. I could hear the helmet clicking as the magnetic patterns shifted, but I felt and saw nothing. Minute unfolded into uneventful minute, and I began to worry: What if nothing happens? What if I fall asleep in this smelly chair? I found myself straining to see patterns in my mind’s eye, wondering when—or if—the Sensed Presence would show up.
About this time, in the next room, Dr. Persinger was also becoming agitated, and dictated his concerns into the tape recorder.
I should point out, he said, that your EEG is quite fast right now. It is way above the level that is optimal. If your brain activity