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By Root 581 0

search for the spiritual brain center began almost by accident, with the pioneering work of Wilder Penfield. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Canadian neurosurgeon began to excavate the brains of his patients before surgery to determine what parts could be removed (to stop the seizures) and what parts could be left in (so that he would not unnecessarily remove, say, the patient’s ability to speak). Because the brain contains no pain receptors, Penfield could put his patients under local anesthesia and keep them conscious while he opened their skulls and poked around. He would stimulate various areas of the brain with an electrode and then ask the patient where he felt the prod in his body.8 In this way, Penfield mapped the part of the brain that corresponded to the right thumb, or the lips, or the left big toe.

Penfield made a different sort of discovery when mucking around in the temporal lobes: a few of his patients reported out-of-body experiences, hearing voices, and seeing apparitions.9 To be sure, these were nothing like the complex, hours-long visions of Teresa of Ávila or Joan of Arc. The sounds consisted of snatches of music or random words.The visuals included bizarre images or familiar scenes scooped up from their memory banks. Only two of Penfield’s more than 1,100 patients reported anything like an out-of-body experience. Nor were any of their experiences awe-inspiring visits to paradise. One patient cried, “Oh God! I am leaving my body!”10 And another patient said, “I have a queer sensation as if I am not here ... as though I were half [gone] and half here.”11

Still, Penfield’s electrodes bore testimony to a suspicion that many doctors had harbored for decades—namely, that there is something special about the temporal lobes. Could they be the seat of spirituality?

Beginning in the 1960s, British psychiatrists Eliot Slater and A.W. Beard picked up the search.When they asked their psychiatric patients about their seizures, nearly four out of ten reported mystical delusions and hallucinations, including events like “seeing Christ come down from the sky,” “seeing Heaven open,” and hearing God speak.12 Anecdotal evidence accumulated about the “sacred disease.” For example, Dr. Beard and another colleague, Kenneth Dewhurst, theorized that people with temporal lobe epilepsy might be prone to have a religious conversion in the hours or days after a seizure. They described the cases of six people suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy. One woman heard “a church bell ring in her right ear; and the voice said, ‘Thy Father hath made thee whole, Go in Peace!’ ” Another patient had a “day-time visual hallucination in which he saw angels playing with harps.”13 Something about their seizures triggered spiritual experiences in their brains.14

Although the spirituality-as-epilepsy theory remains controversial, with time, many neurologists settled into the idea that increased activity in the temporal lobes is central to spiritual experience.15 If the evidence is thin, researchers speculate, that is because the clinical neurologists, the ones in the white coats who actually treat patients, generally do not ask about spirituality. So, how is the Dilantin working for you? Okay. And your most recent seizure? Tuesday? And when was the last time you saw Christ descend from heaven? For their part, patients hesitate to mention these types of visions; most already feel sufficiently self-conscious without adding the heavenly spheres into the mix.16 Yet when I asked patients about their spiritual auras, the stories surged out of them with an urgency and a clear-eyed certainty that left me stunned and impressed.

Jordan Sinclair’s Scar

There is no doubt in Jordan Sinclair’s mind that he got religion from his temporal lobe.

“Of course I did,” he told me. “I’ve seen the brain scans.”

I met Jordan Sinclair (not his real name) through the Epilepsy Foundation, which let me post a note on its website. I wrote that I wanted to interview patients who had experienced ecstatic spiritual seizures or dramatic religious conversions as a result of