“Science without religion is lame,
religion without science is blind.”
– Albert Einstein
Dopamine is part of a reward system that is important in human and animal behavior, and dopamine levels are elevated in the brain when we experience pleasure or well being. Pleasure is associated both with the anticipation of activities essential to survival—for example, eating and sex—and with the activities themselves.
But opiates, alcohol, cannabinoids, nicotine, and other drugs can also increase the release of dopamine and subvert the normal function of the reward system. A rat given infusions of cocaine into the brain following the pressing of a bar will persist in pressing the bar repeatedly in preference to consuming food or water. Sugar, too, can be addictive. Indeed, the National Institutes of Health is now studying whether foods high in fat and sugar should be classified as addictive agents, in the same category as nicotine, alcohol, and cocaine.
Scientists have discover that when we practice compassion, when we engage in the giving and receiving dynamic, when we share, our dopamine levels are elevated in the brain. A feeling of pleasure and well being is experienced. We feel good and this sensation lingers from one activity to the next. For Imam Afroz Ali, chemical responses are not the cause of compassion but merely the consequences of it. For Imam Ali, the acknowledgement of our communion with God and our human essence is the origin of compassion. Chemical responses are only that, biological responses to our spiritual bases.
According to neurologists,
there is no God spot;
there is no evidence of God hard-wiring the brain,
no God chemical.
So, there is no way to remove God from our brains.
Regarding actions and chemical reactions, what happens in the brain depends on the kind of activity that is being practiced. Religions and spiritual practices create various levels of integration that are different from ordinary consciousness. When we engage in our spiritual practices we are forming neuron architecture, a sense of self, and those practices orient us to a more integrated and healthy living. The particular goal of most spiritual practices is to orient us to our own place within and, from there. support us in establishing a larger set of relationships.
The mind is essentially disintegrating: Me, you, this, that, far, near, black, white, etc. Religions and spiritual practices integrate the self within itself and integrate it into successive layers of greater wholes. Literally, spirituality puts us in our place, rightsizes us. Today, more than ever, we cannot longer afford to be disconnected to the whole.
What happens when we practice Meditation?
It quiets the sensory cortex in the middle of the brain and awakens the frontal cortex of the brain (uniquely human part of the brain). It stimulates the limbic brain. Physically calming experience. Meditation creates neural architecture for integration. Enhances the complexity, plasticity, communication and social function of the brain. Repetitive spiritual practice creates neural circuitry that integrates the brain in ways that it distinct from ordinary awakened consciousness, literally giving coordinates for the mapping of reality within the self and the placement of the self within its greater realities.
We cannot organize
what organizes us
simply because
what organizes us
contents us.
What happens when we chant in sacred fellowship?
This kind of chanting activates both hemispheres of the brain and the frontal cortex. It is soothing and regulates the limbic system (mood system). Chanting a moral message is a highly satisfying activity and this is a biological fact. When you do something good it stimulates the brain reward system just as cocaine or chocolate would. You are getting powerfully reinforced through this spiritual practice to be good, to be aware of other people, to be relational.
What happens when we attend spiritual rituals and events?
The more complex the practice, the more complex the neural events and architecture. Practice of spiritual rituals and events really orient the self to the whole in a very inclusive way. They are integrating experience. Particularly when these rituals and events are aligning with natural events such as spring, summer, fall and winter. This is probably one of the reasons why there is such a revival of earthy based spiritual practices, Indigenous and pagan approaches to faith.
From the notes that I took during the workshop
The New Archaic: Neuroscience, Spiritual Practice and Healing
that took place on Monday December 7, 2009,
during the Parliament of World’s Religions.
The panelists were Anne Benvenuti, PhD,
Elizabeth Davenport, PhD, and Glenys Livingstone, PhD.
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