How an intense spiritual retreat might change your brain
Dr. Andrew Newberg is the director of research at the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health and a physician at Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. He has published more than 250 peer-reviewed articles and chapters, and is the author or co-author of several books, including How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain (2016) and Brain Weaver: Creating the Fabric for a Healthy Mind through Integrative Medicine
What produces major spiritual or enlightenment experiences?
Five elements are common across many enlightenment experiences: intensity, love, joy, awe, meditation, prayer, and psychedelia
- Insights from neurotheology can help us better understand how intense spiritual experiences affect the brain and might ultimately help people figure out the best ways to have them
A sense of surrender
Most people describe enlightenment experiences as happening to them rather than as something that they made happen.
I surrendered everything, including my faith and my salvation, and only for one reason:
I loved God so much that I would truly give up everything to be connected with Him.
Intensity
The intensity of these experiences is likely associated with increased activity in the limbic system, the brain’s primary emotional centre.
- A sense of oneness or unity
- During the experience, the person feels a profound sense of connectedness with the rest of humanity, God or the Universe, and is able to feel a sense of unity
- Evidence shows that this is associated with a decrease of activity in parietal lobe of the brain
- People feel as if a veil has been lifted and that they are now seeing and understanding the world in ways they never have before
The brain scan studies suggest that a sense of surrender is related to decreased activity in the frontal lobes.
Frontal lobe activity normally increases during meditation or prayer because we are purposefully engaged in the practice. However, during the most intense of these experiences, we are likely to see a decrease in activity in conjunction with a loss of the sense of purposeful control.
Area of the brain related to clarity
Thalamus
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