Fringe-ology (25 page)

As a result, the brain isn't built to give us a true and accurate perception of reality. There is just too much stimuli to assess; so instead, the brain is built, in an evolutionary sense, to create a model of the world that will allow us to survive. The brain takes processing shortcuts, Newberg explained, bringing the features it deems most important into our consciousness and suppressing the rest. But sometimes the image it creates is wrong. To illustrate this, Newberg showed the class a whole series of perceptual illusions the brain creates. And in seconds, his class was
oohing
and
aahing
at its newfound fallibility.

Lines that seem to be different lengths turn out to stretch the same exact distance.

A series of black squares, for instance, separated by bands of white, can create the illusion of flashing gray circles.

Then there is the matter of change blindness: Newberg used a different example with his class, but my favorite is a video in which two teams throw a basketball back and forth for a minute. The first time I watched, I wondered what the point had been. Then some text appeared, informing me that my mind had naturally become so attuned to tracking the dynamic movement of the ball that I didn't see a man in a gorilla suit who moonwalked right across the center of the screen.

Newberg's lesson was simple: sometimes we miss what is right in front of our faces. But then he drove the class even deeper down the byways of philosophy: if our brains are prone to these kinds of errors, if we are only consciously aware of a small range of stimuli, how do we know our perceptions are accurate? “Well,” Newberg said, answering his own question, “we
don't
, in any definitive sense.”

All our visual perceptions are created by light reaching the retina of our eyes, which is then translated into a neural signal and interpreted by the brain. To demonstrate this for his students, Newberg showed them a series of three slides, each depicting what he called the “same familiar object.”

The first image was all lines and shades with no discernible structure at all. “This is the raw pattern of light our retina receives and sends to the brain,” said Newberg. “This is what we
actually
see, and our brain manufactures it into an image.”

Newberg tapped his laptop and brought a second image on to the projector screen. “I'm not going to show you all the stages of processing,” he said, “but this is about halfway there.”

In this second frame, the image has begun to cohere. Now a foreground is distinguishable. And there is a figure coming into focus at the center—small and rounded at the top, flaring out at the bottom. But what was it? No one could tell. “Okay,” he said. “Now we're going to jump ahead, all the way to the end.”

Newberg pressed a button on his computer and, suddenly, out of the amorphous collection of pixels, a dog emerged. And a super-cute one at that—its small, rounded head at the top, its shaggy body widening out beneath it as it stares into the camera, its eyes pleading for attention. The girls in the class, and I confess, this author, collectively said, “Awww.”

“He is no longer with us,” Newberg said. “But this was my dog, Cosmo.”

As Newberg went on to explain to his class, cognitive scientists studying human perception agree: we don't experience objective reality; we experience a model of objective reality that our brain creates for us. We have no choice but to react to everything we see as if it's real; but we are regularly missing all kinds of information our brain deems unimportant. This may not seem like that big a deal until we consider all the errors of our perception and the philosophical problems that come with this state of affairs. Just what was Cosmo? A cute dog? Or the formless hoo ha Newberg showed us in that first image—a raw pattern of light striking matter?

Philosophers have long been caught up in a debate over whether or not the world we perceive is essentially the world that is so. But for our purposes, the important thing to understand is that we also endure these same kinds of perceptual challenges when processing our own thoughts.

In the introduction, I gave a brief primer on the role the amygdala plays in our cognition. And Newberg also told his class about this perhaps most problematic part of the brain. These almond-shaped structures at the base of our temporal lobes are complicated, playing some role in mediating all the input we receive—from the interpretation of facial expressions to the processing of emotions and memory recall. The amygdala's chief job is a simple one. It is primarily our own personal bodyguard, shouting danger any time it perceives a threat. In this respect, it is much like all our tools of perception—chiefly concerned with helping us to survive. The problem is that it is activated by both bodily danger and threats to our worldviews. It makes difficult conversations that much more difficult, causing us to feel anxiety and nervousness and the tense emotions associated with the fight-or-flight response.

We normally think of fight or flight occurring when we are confronted with some physical danger, like a man with a gun. Do we run, or try to take the dude out? But in the human brain, a contentious conversation between believer and atheist, or Republican and Democrat, provokes similarly stressful biological and neurological responses—including anxiety, sweating, in-creased heart rate, and the sensation of anger or even fear.

The amygdala is so closely associated with our fight to preserve our lives that the amygdalas of cancer patients undergo changes in size. And of course, this suggests a negative feedback loop in which stress and fear lead to greater stress and fear. Underscoring this, terror management theory (TMT), a new field of psychological study, has equated perceived threats to our beliefs and the threat of death itself. Reminders of our mortality, and of course such reminders are all around, render us more sensitive to and guarded against threats to our beliefs. The findings have held true for both atheists and believers. In fact, while we never managed to schedule an interview, one of the masterminds of TMT, Tom Pyszczynski, did tell me in an email that the popular focus on the religious as the only ones denying their own mortality is misguided: “Science, evolution, atheism, etc., can all take on a ‘religious' function in that it becomes a faith beyond question,” he writes, “and functions to manage fear, especially fear of death. There's a lot of signs of this happening in the world today.”

No doubt, then, this unruly and illogical structure of the brain affects both sides in the ongoing debate between atheists, who think of religion as threatening to the reason they hold so dear, and believers, who think of religion as providing the source and foundation of all life. But what Newberg has found, by bringing science and religion together, is nothing less than revolutionary: because mystics of varying religious persuasions may or may not have found one true God; they may or may not have discovered the identity of Cosmo the dog; but they most definitely have found a way to render our emotional perceptions more accurate. They most definitely have found a means of settling our unquiet minds.

I
T IS EARLY
D
ECEMBER
2009, and the lights at the Church of the Epiphany in Oak Park, California, are turned down low. Two men are on stage. One is Yuval Ron, a Grammy- and Oscar-winning musician and peace activist. He is dressed all in white. His close-cropped brown hair is lost a little in the shadows on stage, where he hunches contemplatively over an oud, an ancient, pear-shaped, short-necked member of the lute family. The music Ron plays is slow and repetitive—traits not normally associated with entertaining music. But the rhythms and melodies he picks out tonight fill and structure the room, their repetitive nature creating a stable space.

Periodically, the other man steps up to a microphone at stage right. Mark Robert Waldman is tall and skinny, and here in this Christian church he wears a Muslim hat—or
kufi
. He speaks in sober bass tones, and what he says captures the jargon of science and the self-help industry: “Music, spirituality and the brain,” Waldman intones. “
What
, in heaven's name, do these words have in common? As you contemplate your deepest values and beliefs you can change the structure and function of your brain in life enhancing ways. The right meditations can reduce anxiety and depression; can lessen symptoms of illness, and improve the cognitive function of your brain; create inner peace and enhance the neurological capacity for compassion; and maybe, just maybe, slow down the aging process of the brain.”

Over the course of the night, between stretches of Ron's meditative music, Waldman dispenses advice: If anyone in the audience wants peace and happiness, they can get it through meditation and prayer. If music is played in the background, it should be pleasant, slow, repetitive and relaxed. And the prayer or meditation itself should be profoundly meaningful to the practitioner and positive in all its connotations.

This night isn't a scientific presentation. So Waldman makes only passing references to the neurological findings that support his claims. But he promotes various mystical practices—including meditation and the Christian centering prayer. And in perhaps the most dramatic moment of his performance, he raises his voice like a priest to wring some emotion out of a poem: “I am circling around God,” he says, “around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years, and I still do not know if I am a falcon, a storm, or a great song.”

What I never did hear him tell the audience, however, is pretty remarkable for a man dressed in a kufi and reading mystic poetry in a Christian church: Waldman sees God only as a useful and beautiful metaphor—not a scientific reality. He doesn't believe in any religion. But he is a nonbeliever with a newfound respect for religion, a respect so deep he can't always be distinguished from a believer, because he has come to accept the positive power of some religious practice.

A counselor, teacher, and writer working in Camarillo, California, Waldman was content enough in his own non-belief that he felt religion held little value for psychological or societal health. But when he began to co-write and collaborate with Andrew Newberg, his viewpoints radically changed. And their partnership quickly went much further than either of them expected. A couple of books later, in fact, Waldman is firmly established as Newberg's sidekick.

Newberg conducts the lab research. Waldman combs the library stacks, integrating related scientific papers into their books. Working in this manner, they soon found themselves on the fuzzy borderland between science and religion, on ground the two could share. And from that position, they found they weren't just identifying the neural correlates of religious experience, they were finding that specific spiritual practices
work
.

Consider Newberg's early research on Tibetan meditators and Franciscan nuns, who Waldman referenced to the church crowd when he mentioned the centering prayer.

Used by Christian mystics since the fourth century, the centering prayer grew in popularity in the 1970s and differs from standard meditation in one crucial respect. In meditation, the practitioner sits and observes the workings of his or her own mind, no longer reacting to the flurry of thoughts constantly generated by the brain. In this state, all thoughts are allowed to just sail by, without any emotion or judgment. The meditator might choose to remain in this condition, allowing her sense of awareness to blossom; or she could shift focus to her breathing, to a particular ideal, or to a mantra. For the Christian mystic, however, engaged in a centering prayer, the object of focus is specific: communion with God.

The correlation between the goals of these two mystic practices and the neural processes Newberg observed is total: the Tibetan meditators Newberg studied felt incredible peace; correspondingly, activity in their amygdala and their rational frontal lobes quieted. They also claimed to feel a oneness with all things; and indeed, the areas of the brain governing the position of their bodies in relation to other objects fell silent, too. The nuns experienced all this, plus a sense of communion with a higher power; and upon analysis, their brain scans looked much like those of the Tibetans, with the addition of significant activity in the limbic or emotional center of the brain, reflecting their profound sense of union with God.