Brain scans suggest maybe Jesus isn't the only way to God after all

From part 3 of an NPR series on religion and the brain, by Barbara Bradley Hagerty:

When Baime [a Buddhist monk] meditated in Newberg's brain scanner, his brain mirrored those feelings [of timelessness and oneness with the universe]. As expected, his frontal lobes lit up on the screen: Meditation is sheer concentration, after all. But what fascinated Newberg was that Baime's parietal lobes went dark.

"This is an area that normally takes our sensory information, tries to create for us a sense of ourselves and orient that self in the world," he explains. "When people lose their sense of self, feel a sense of oneness, a blurring of the boundary between self and other, we have found decreases in activity in that area."

Newberg found that result not only with Baime, but also with other monks he scanned. It was the same when he imaged the brains of Franciscan nuns praying and Sikhs chanting. They all felt the same oneness with the universe. When it comes to the brain, Newberg says, spiritual experience is spiritual experience.

"There is no Christian, there is no Jewish, there is no Muslim, it's just all one," Newberg says.

A little theological dynamite there — but, remember, the research is just beginning.

(Emphasis added.)

Comments

[Redlefty]

Dr. Kandel's work on neuroplasticity, specifically as it relates to monks with thousands of hours of meditation practice, really fascinated me a year or two ago and led me down a path of researching this stuff more often.

Now I have "Welcome to Your Brain" on my nightstand and have even converted my wife to the dark side of neuroscience and all its mysteries and disagreements.

Interesting how the grey matter bears a lot of resemblance within a species, regardless of which color the skin is or which family name we inherited.

[Fr Craig]

doesn't bother me - I have always figured that God is not an American Episcopalian. Surely he/she is available to every human being on the planet. I happen to have grown up in America, with Christian parents. That is the context in which my spiritual life developed. I make no claim to having the 'only' way... thanks for the cite.

[Rachel]

Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father except through Him. John 14:6. Feeling at one with the universe doesn't mean you have an encounter with the living God. Philippians 4:7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

There can be peace, and then there is peace from God.