Thursday, April 28, 2005

Probing the Mind For God

By Doug Beazley,
Edmonton Sun


It's the Holy Grail of brain research: trapping God in a magnetic bottle. In late 2003, University of Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard started inviting local Carmelite nuns to strap themselves into a barber chair in his lab, so that he could scan their brains with a powerful magnetic field.


He was looking for physical evidence of the unio mystica, the profoundly emotional Christian experience of God as a physical presence.


Since devout Christians like the Carmelites only get the real unio once or twice in their lives, Beauregard asked the nuns to simply remember the sensation, while their heads were wrapped in electrodes.


He wasn't trying to debunk the experience - just explain it, in biological terms.


"The experience is real, but the manifestation is in the brain," he told one newspaper. His hope is that by quantifying religious bliss, doctors may someday be able to induce it for anyone seeking spiritual comfort or growth.


CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL STORY

No comments: