Today, most people accept that psychoactive drugs affect human perceptions and behaviors by acting on the brain. It is understood that the brain undergoes neurochemical changes, resulting in shifts in sensations, feelings, and awareness when certain drugs are introduced. Many cultures have used psychoactive drugs in their spiritual practices to expand their consciousness. Other cultures have used different techniques to “open the door.”
Buddhists practice meditation and penetrating iconoclastic riddles. Kabbalistic Jews carry out complex numerical calculations in their heads. Christian mystics use mortification, fasting, prolonged silence, and contemplative prayer. Islamic Sufis forgo sleep, chant, and dance. Regardless of the techniques utilized, one result remains the same: the brain undergoes changes that allow for different perceptions of reality.
This understanding of connecting the brain to perceptions is relatively new. In the early 1500s, Leonardo Da Vinci began exploring the brain’s anatomy. He produced the first wax casting of the brain, but had no clue concerning the brain’s function. Although there were random, occasional insights over the next 300 years, for the most part, the brain’s purpose remained a mystery until the 1800s.
The wounds of the Napoleonic war bled into our initial insights concerning the brain’s functions. A military surgeon named Frans Joseph Gall noticed that soldiers who suffered a traumatic blow to the head underwent changes in their intellect, perceptions, and conduct. He distinguished how particular head injuries resulted in distinct personality changes and theorized that different parts of the brain control singular aspects of human behavior.
In the mid to late 1800s, researchers like Bouillaud, Broca, Wernicke, and Starr performed postmortem autopsies on people who experienced traumatic brain injuries. They found that damage to particular areas of the brain were strongly associated with certain changes in a person’s behavior.
Such early brain research laid the foundation for studying the brain as the mechanism of spirituality. Today, researchers are finding that certain spiritual practices actually change the structure and function of the brain. Current technology allows us to observe the brain activities of persons engaged in spiritual practices to locate the various structures, chemistries, and connections involved with spiritual experiences.
One outcome common to many spiritual systems is the sense of “Oneness” in which the boundaries between the self and the not- self dissolves along with all other limitations in the universe. This experience is the same for all, regardless of affiliation. The original self manifests- a single voice sounding its one verse: “I am: There is no other.”
Researchers have discovered associated brain activities with spiritual experiences. Such structures as the prefrontal cortex, occipital, parietal, temporal junction, posterior superior parietal lobe, and a host of neurotransmitters show changes when people undergo spiritual practices such as meditation, controlled breathing, and internal counting, to name a few.
Because of connections between the spiritual experiences of subjects and the associated changes in their brain’s activity, it is beginning to appear that our brains are both door and doorway of the divine. This may be why the fundamental spiritual episodes and knowledge of spiritual practitioners are parallel worldwide: all proclaim oneness and teach love, compassion, and selflessness.
Through my consulting practice, people open their mental doors and achieve peace and happiness. To say the brain is the seat of spirituality does not exclude a divine force or being; it merely explains the mechanisms by which spiritual experiences arise.
Contact Bierdz
Thomas Bierdz is located in Chicago, IL. USA
His services are available in person, by phone, and through secure E-mail.
He is also available for presentations.
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