The science of spirituality, and how it can change your brain

Religious thinking has been a part of the human experience from the beginning

The question then becomes, why? Studies of children have shown that we are born with this instinct for what's called substance dualism

the idea that the body and the mind, or soul, are separate

If religious experience is a universal phenomenon, if it can be traced about all time, then there must be some adaptive advantage

Otherwise, it wouldn't exist. The problem is that the countless different answers that have been given for why religion fail primarily because they're functionalist answers

What religion does, not why religion exists. we are a point and we are a wave we are magnificently distinct and unique and diverse

and we are part of one field of life one sacred consciousness so it turns out that every single

one of us are all born with the neuro docking station for awakened awareness together with my

colleagues we looked at people who recovered from depression through an awakening we could see that

people who suffered the most really derived profound support and even renewal when connecting

to their higher power to God the universe whatever their word might be They were more likely to perceive and reflect in a profoundly spiritual way And this tendency to see life on spiritual bedrock

was mirrored by a thickening of the cortex, offering some evidence that sustained spiritual life

is neuroprotective against depression. And in addition, when we looked at the awakened brain

what we saw is that universally we are drawn into an experience in which we are loved and held, guided, and never alone

If you think about the past three, four hundred years of human history, especially the history of the Western world

we've had this explosion, some call it the age of certainty, the explosion of scientific rationalism

But we've had this explosion of knowledge about how the world actually works

Weight, height, gravitational pull, electromagnetic force. And yet the same questions are still gnawing at the soul

What's it mean? What are we doing here? This idea somehow that faith and science are in opposition

I've always found to be complete insanity. Both are searching for the truth

There is something in the way that our brains work more than just the sum of our material parts. Is it possible that you have been on a quest

that you already are walking a spiritual path