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These studies support our argument that fear-based religions can be hazardous to one's health. It's too bad that the Surgeon General can't place a warning sign on certain passages from the Bible or Koran, especially those that encourage violence toward people who hold different beliefs.

THE ELEMENT OF TIME

If you analyze the data collected from meditation studies, one of the most influential factors is time. The longer and more frequently you meditate, the more changes you'll notice in the brain. Beginning meditators show little or no change in brain function after one or two practice sessions. However, most studies, like ours, have found small but significant changes in brain activity after only eight weeks of daily practice.

Those who practice daily for thirty minutes or longer, and for many years, show the greatest differences in neural activity,60 not only when they are meditating, but when they are also at rest. Richard Davidson, who is the head of the Waisman Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior at the University of Wisconsin, has been working with some of the most advanced meditators in the world. He and his team have found that these gifted individuals have extraordinary skills in manipulating specific parts of the brain that control thoughts and emotions,61 including the capacity to generate compassion in situations that virtually no one else can obtain.62

Davidson's findings also demonstrate that the neuroplasticity of the brain is greater than we have imagined.63 Another important study, recently released by the Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, also showed that meditation enhanced the brain's thickness and neuroplasticity.64 Normally when we age, our cerebral cortex thins.

IN SUMMARY

Our neurological findings have shown that different types of meditation and prayer affect different parts of the brain in different ways, and each one appears to have a beneficial effect on our neurological functioning and physical and emotional health. Some techniques increase blood flow to the frontal, parietal, temporal, and limbic areas of the brain, while others decrease metabolic activity in these areas. Intensive meditation may also trigger an unusual form of neural activity—deafferentation—in which one part of the brain ignores the information being sent to it by other parts. When this happens, we radically alter our everyday perceptions of the world.

By manipulating our breath, body, awareness, feelings, and thoughts, we can decrease tension and stress. We can evoke or suppress specific emotions and focus our thoughts in ways that biologically influence other parts of the brain. From a neuroscientific perspective, this is astonishing because it upsets the traditional view that we cannot voluntarily influence nonconscious areas in the brain. Only human beings can think themselves into happiness or despair, without any influence from the outside world. Thus, the more we engage in spiritual practices, the more control we gain over our body, mind, and fate.

∗ Some neuroscientists consider the anterior cingulate a part of the frontal lobe and prefrontal cortex; others see it as part of the limbic and paralimbic system. We, and others, view it as both part of, yet distinct from, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

TWO

NEURAL

EVOLUTION

AND GOD

The imagination is one of the highest prerogatives of man. By this faculty he unites former images and ideas, independently of the will, and thus creates brilliant and novel results…. The value of the products of our imagination depends of course on the number, accuracy, and clearness of our impressions, on our judgment and taste in selecting or rejecting the involuntary combinations, and to a certain extent on our power of voluntarily combining them.

—CHARLES DARWIN, THE DESCENT OF MAN

4

WHAT DOES GOD

FEEL LIKE?

The Varieties of Spiritual Experience

What does God feel like?

When I ask people this question, their reaction is often