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not unlike the seizures studied by Ramachandran. How do they produce religious states? Our “sense of self,” says Persinger, is maintained by the left hemisphere temporal cortex. Under normal brain functioning this is matched by the corresponding systems in the right hemisphere temporal cortex. When these two systems become uncoordinated, such as during a seizure or a transient event, the left hemisphere interprets the uncoordinated activity as “another self,” or a “sensed presence,” thus accounting for subjects’ experiences of a “presence” in the room (which might be interpreted as angels, demons, aliens, or ghosts), or leaving their bodies (as in a near-death experience), or even “God.” When the amygdala is involved in the transient events, emotional factors significantly enhance the experience which, when connected to spiritual themes, can be a powerful force for intense religious feelings.

Persinger got his start in this field when he began to explore the possibility that electromagnetic disturbances in the earth’s crust during earthquakes may cause such anomalies as ball lightning and other unusual atmospheric phenomena. From there he thought that perhaps earthquakes generate weak magnetic fields that could cause individuals to experience such paranormal phenomena as alien abductions and out-of-body experiences. Having now studied more than 600 subjects in the past decade, Persinger speculates that such transient events may account for psychological states routinely reported as happening outside the mind. These events, he suggests, may be triggered by the stress of a near-death experience (caused by an accident or traumatic surgery), high altitudes, fasting, a sudden decrease in oxygen, dramatic changes in blood sugar levels, and other stressful events.

In my 1997 book, Why People Believe Weird Things, I recount in detail my own alien abduction experience triggered by 83 hours of sleeplessness and riding a bicycle 1,259 miles without stopping (as part of the nonstop transcontinental bike race called Race Across America). I was, therefore, curious to experience Persinger’s research firsthand, which a trip to his laboratory for a television program on the paranormal allowed me to do. The effects, Persinger explained, are subtle for most subjects, dramatic for a few. His lab assistants strapped me into the helmet, hooked up the EEG and EKG machines (to measure brain waves and heart rate), and sealed me in the soundproof room. I initially felt giddiness, as if the whole process were a silly exercise that I could easily control. Then I slumped into a state of melancholy. Minutes later, still believing the magnetic field patterns were ineffectual, I felt like part of me wanted to have an out-of-body experience, but my skeptical/rational mind kept pulling me back in. It was then I realized that it was the magnetic field patterns causing these experiences, but that I was fighting them. I concluded that the more fantasy prone the personality, the more emotional/spiritual would be the experience. Persinger confirmed my informal hypothesis in a post-experiment debriefing. In a large population there will be a wide range of mental experiences, with the more fantasy prone people interpreting these as being outside the mind (demons, spirits, angels, ghosts, aliens, God), and the more rationally prone people interpreting these as being inside the mind (lucid, dreams, hallucinations, fantasies).

There is, in fact, a long history of research into the possibility of mental states being equated with the presence of God and other supernatural beings, dating back to the mid-nineteenth century. The classic work in the field was Alexandre Brierre de Boismont’s 1859 On Hallucinations: A History and Explanation of Apparitions, Visions, Dreams, Ecstasy, Magnetism, and Somnambulism. Brierre de Boismont, a French medical doctor, examined the relationship between hallucinations and a number of conditions, including “morality and religion.” It is in the nature of man, he explained, to form a “mental representation of objects.” We do this, for