Fingerprints of God by Barbara Bradley Hagerty

Author:Barbara Bradley Hagerty
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.

Looking Under the Hood

So far, Newberg has identified two types of virtuoso brains: contemplative brains and rowdy ones. Let’s examine the contemplatives first. For this study, Newberg put Franciscan nuns and Tibetan Buddhist monks (separately, of course) into the brain scanner at the University of Pennsylvania. The “theologies” underpinning these two practices have nothing in common. During their centering prayer—a meditative prayer that emphasizes interior silence—the nuns focused intently on God, and usually on Jesus. During their meditation, the monks nestled into a state of intense awareness, connecting with the underlying reality of life; their belief system excludes a supernatural, external “God.” Yet each group’s descriptions of those transcendent moments bore an uncanny resemblance.

“I felt communion, peace, openness to experience,” Sister Celeste, a charming seventy-year-old Franciscan nun, recalled after emerging from the imaging machine.4 She felt “an awareness and responsiveness to God’s presence around me, and a feeling of centering, quieting, nothingness [as well as] moments of fullness of the presence of God. [God was] permeating my being.”

Now listen to Michael Baine’s words. Baine is a Tibetan Buddhist and a scientist who works with Andy Newberg and became one of the subjects in the study. Baine described his meditation experience as “timeless and infinite.”

“There was an intense feeling of love,” Baine told Newberg. “I felt a profound letting-go of the boundaries around me, and a connection with some kind of energy and state of being that had a quality of clarity, transparency, and joy. I felt a deep and profound sense of connection to everything, recognizing that there never was a true separation at all.”

It sounded to me like two different road trips. One group drives a Lexus through the Redwood Forest, the other takes an Escalade through the Swiss Alps. The vehicles look entirely dissimilar, as does the scenery. But gazing at the giant trees and towering mountains may stir up a similar sense of exhilaration or awe. For Andy Newberg, the question was this: What is going on under the hood? Are the brain mechanics the same for Catholic nuns and Buddhist monks as they experience the transcendent, just as two different cars in two different countries operate along the same mechanical principles?

That is precisely what Newberg discovered when he peered at their brain scans. With both the monks and the nuns, the front part of their brains “lit up” as they focused on the task at hand. Think of the frontal lobes as the chief operating officer of the brain, one with accountant-like tendencies: it handles the details, helps plan and execute tasks, keeps you awake and alert and, above all, focused. It also processes memory and language and other complicated social tasks, such as figuring out how to behave at a cocktail party or how to respond to your spouse or friend or rival at work.

As the Christian nuns focused on God—on a word like Jesus or Elohim that helped them connect to the divine—their frontal lobes shifted into overdrive. Similarly, as the Buddhist monks meditated

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.