Spirituality and Brain Evolution

Today, I am a bit short on time.  Somehow, I just needed more sleep!  I have continued, however, to read How God Changes Your Brain and found this quote this morning:

"The cultural evolution of God follows the neurological evolution of the brain. The circuits that generate images of a wrathful God are closely tied to the oldest structures in the brain, and the circuits that allow us to envision a compassionate and mystical God are in the newest part of our brain. we can't get rid of our old limbic God, which means that anger and fear will always be part of our neural and spiritual personality.  however, we can train the newer structures in our brain to suppress our biological tendency to react with anger and fear." 

Divine Enlightenment from Pseudodionysius

Sometimes, I think that it is better to hear the voice of another than to talk so much myself.  Today, I'll be silent and let Dionusius speak from The Divine Names:

"This is the kind of enlightenment into which we have been initiated by the hidden tradition of our inspired teachers, a tradition at one with scripture. We now grasp these things in the best way we can, and as they come to us, wrapped in the sacred veils of that love toward humanity with which scripture and hierarchical traditions cover the truths of the mind with things derived from the realms of the senses. And so it is that the Transcendent is clothed in the terms of being, with shape and form on things which have neither, of what is an imageless and supra-natural simplicity. But in time to come, when we are incorruptible and immortal, when we have come at last to the blessed inheritance of being like Christ, then, as scripture says, ' we shall always be with the Lord.' In most holy contemplation we shall be ever filled with the sight of God shining gloriously around us as once it shone for the disciples at the divine transfiguration. And there we shall be, our minds away from passion and from earth, and we shall have a conceptual gift of light from him and, somehow, in a way we cannot know, we shall be united with him and, our understanding carried away, blessedly happy, we shall be struck by his blazing light. Marvelously, our minds will be like those in the heavens above. We 'shall be equal to angels and sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.' "

The Meditating Brain

I was tipped off a couple of days ago by a tweet from "The Episcopal Cafe" to a new book by Andrew Newberg, M.D. and Mark Robert Waldman, How God Changes Your Brain, Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist.  Although I have just started reading, the book is well-referenced with articles from respected peer-reviewed journals. It has been his finding that meditative techniques such as contemplative prayer and the like, produce measurable and distinct changes in the brain.  Of the effects that he describes, one is that the meditative techniques appear to enhance activity in a circuit involving the anterior cingulate, prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia and thalamus. The anterior cingulate "appears to be involved with emotional regulation, learning and memory." Increased activity in the anterior cingulate appears to have a role in "lowering anxiety and irritability, and also enhances social awareness." The prefrontal cortex is also activated by meditative techniques and, of course, appears to play a role in sustained attention. One thing that Newman is very careful to point out is that this provides no "proof" of the existence of "God" and that even atheist individuals using some of the meditative techniques can achieve similar changes in the brain.  Nevertheless, it does suggest that there is something that meditation/contemplation does to our brains and that it has the very real potential to change not only our internal millieu but perhaps through the thalamic regions, our perceptions of the world around us.