In a small, dark room at the lab of a large university hospital, a young man named Robert lights candles and a stick of jasmine incense; he then settles to the floor and folds his legs easily into the lotus position. A devout Buddhist and accomplished practitioner of Tibetan meditation, Robert is about to begin another meditative voyage inward. As always, his goal is to quiet the constant chatter of the conscious mind and lose himself in the deeper, simpler reality within. It's a journey he's made a thousand times before, but this time, as he drifts off into that inner spiritual reality -- as the material world around him recedes like a fading dream -- he remains tethered to the physical here and now by a length of common cotton twine.

It is this peak moment of spiritual intensity that interests us.

One end of that twine lies in a loose coil at Robert's side. The other end runs beneath a closed laboratory door and into an adjoining room, where I sit, beside my friend and longtime research partner Dr. Eugene d'Aquili, with the twine wrapped around my finger. Gene and I are waiting for Robert to tug on the twine, which will be our signal that his meditative state is approaching its transcendent peak. It is this peak moment of spiritual intensity that interests us. For years, Gene and I have been studying the relationship between religious experience and brain function, and we hope that by monitoring Robert's brain activity at the most intense and mystical moments of his meditation, we might shed some light on the mysterious connection between human consciousness and the persistent and peculiarly human longing to connect with something larger than ourselves.

In earlier conversations, Robert has struggled to describe for us how he feels as his meditation progresses toward this spiritual peak. First, he says, his conscious mind quiets, allowing a deeper, simpler part of himself to emerge. Robert believes that this inner self is the truest part of who he is, the part that never changes. For Robert, this inner self is not a metaphor or an attitude; it is literal, constant, and real. It is what remains when worries, fears, desires, and all other preoccupations of the conscious mind are stripped away. He considers this inner self the very essence of his being. If pressed, he might even call it his soul.

Whatever Robert calls this deeper consciousness, he claims that when it emerges during those moments of meditation when he is most completely absorbed in looking inward, he suddenly understands that his inner self is not an isolated entity, but that he is inextricably connected to all of creation. Yet when he tries to put this intensely personal insight into words, he finds himself falling back on familiar clich˜s that have been employed for centuries to express the elusive nature of spiritual experience. "There's a sense of timelessness and infinity," he might say. "It feels like I am part of everyone and everything in existence."

To the traditional scientific mind, of course, these terms are useless. Science concerns itself with that which can be weighed, counted, calculated, and measured -- anything that can't be verified by objective observation simply can't be called scientific. Although individual scientists might be personally intrigued by Robert's experience, as professionals they'd likely dismiss his comments as too personal and speculative to signify anything concrete in the physical world.

At worst, artists' spirituality is reduced to the commercial exploits of pop-singer Madonna or the cultic followings of the Grateful Dead.

Years of research, however, have led Gene and me to believe that experiences like Robert's are real, and can be measured and verified by solid science. That's exactly why I'm huddling, beside Gene, in this cramped examination room, holding kite string between my fingers: I'm waiting for Robert's moment of mystical transcendence to arrive, because I intend to take its picture. We wait one hour, while Robert meditates. Then I feel a gentle jerk on the twine. This is my cue to inject a radioactive material into a long intravenous line that also runs into Robert's room, and into a vein in his left arm. We wait a few moments more for Robert to end his meditation, then we whisk him off to a room in the hospital's Nuclear Medicine Department, where a massive, state-of-the-art SPECT camera awaits. In moments, Robert is reclining on a metal table, the camera's three large crystal heads orbiting his skull with a precise, robotic whir.

...

Robert was one of eight Tibetan meditators who participated in our imaging study. Each was subjected to the same routine, and in virtually every case, the SPECT scans showed a similar slowing of activity in the orientation area, occurring during the peak moments of meditation.

Later, we broadened the experiment and used the same techniques to study several Franciscan nuns at prayer. Again, the SPECT scans revealed similar changes that occurred during the sisters' most intensely religious moments. Unlike the Buddhists, however, the sisters tended to describe this moment as a tangible sense of the closeness of God, and a mingling with Him. Their accounts echoed those of Christian mysteries of the past, including that of thirteenth-century Franciscan sister Angela of Foligno: "How great is the mercy of the one who realized this union ... I possessed God so fully that I was no longer in my previous customary state but was led to find a peace in which I was united with God and was content with everything."

In other words, mystical experience is biologically, observably, and scientifically real.

As our study continued, and the data flowed in, Gene and I suspected that we'd uncovered solid evidence that the mystical experiences of our subjects -- the altered states of mind they descried as the absorption of the self into something larger -- were not the result of emotional mistakes or simple wishful thinking, but were associated instead with a series of observable neurological events, which, while unusual, are not outside the range of normal brain function. In other words, mystical experience is biologically, observably, and scientifically real.

This result did not surprise us. In fact, it was exactly what all our previous research had predicted. For years, we had scoured the scientific literature for studies examining the relationship between religious practice and the brain, searching for insights into the biology of belief. Our approach had been broad and inclusive. We found some studies that examined simple physiology -- for example, they measured changes in blood pressure of people as they meditated. Other studies aimed at loftier stuff such as measuring the healing powers of prayer. We read the research on near-death experiences, studied mystical states induced by epilepsy and schizophrenia, looked at the data on hallucinations triggered by drugs as well as electrical stimulation of the brain.

Besides our scientific readings, we also looked for descriptions of the mystical components of world religions and mythologies. Gene, in particular, researched the ritual practices of ancient cultures and looked for a relationship between the emergence of ritual behavior and the evolution of the human brain. An abundance of information exists that is relevant to the relationship between religious ritual and the brain, but little of it had been sorted or synthesized into a coherent framework.

Gradually, we shaped a hypothesis that suggests that spiritual experience, at its very root, is intimately interwoven with human biology.

Yet as Gene and I sifted through mountains of data on religious experience, ritual, and brain science, important pieces of the puzzle came together and meaningful patterns emerged. Gradually, we shaped a hypothesis that suggests that spiritual experience, at its very root, is intimately interwoven with human biology. That biology, in some way, compels the spiritual urge.

The SPECT scans allowed us to begin testing this hypothesis by observing the actual brain activity of people engaged in spiritual practices. The images do not prove our hypothesis beyond a doubt but they strongly support it by showing that, in moments of spiritual behavior, the human brain appears to behave as our theory predicts that it would. These encouraging results deepened our enthusiasm for our work, and sharpened our interest in the fascinating questions provoked by our years of research. Questions like: Are human beings biologically compelled to make myths? What is the neurological secret behind the power of ritual? Are the transcendent visions and insights of the great religious mystics based on mental or emotional delusions, or are they the result of coherent sensory perceptions shaped by the proper neurological functioning of sound, healthy minds? Could evolutionary factors such as sexuality and mating have influenced the biological development of religious ecstasy?

As we labored to better understand the implications of our theory, we found ourselves confronted again and again by one question that resonated more deeply than any other: Had we found the common biological root of all religious experiences? And if so, what did such an understanding say about the nature of the spiritual urge?

A skeptic might suggest that a biological origin to all spiritual longings and experiences, including the universal human yearning to connect with something divine, could be explained as a delusion caused by the chemical misfirings as a bundle of nerves.

But the SPECT scans suggested another possibility. The orientation area was working unusually but not improperly, and we believe that we were seeing colorful evidence on the SPECT's computer screen of the brain's capacity to make spiritual experience real. After years of scientific study, and careful consideration of our results, Gene and I further believe that we saw evidence of a neurological process that has evolved to allow us humans to transcend material existence and acknowledge and connect with a deeper, more spiritual part of ourselves perceived of as an absolute, universal reality that connects us to all that is.

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