Beyond the 'left' and 'right' brain - the science of spirituality and art (2024)

The “right brain” has become one of the darling concepts of popular psychology.

The right hemisphere of the human brain has been associated for years with many wonderful things the “left brain” has not.

High-profile figures have championed the right brain for its creativity, intuition and spirituality, while maintaining the left brain is the locus of logic, analysis and pragmatism.

Matthew Fox, a famous liberal Christian theologian, recently said: “Mysticism is our deep experiences of unity – with nature, with music, with friends, with truth, with God. It is a work of the right brain more than the left brain; it is the essence of authentic religion and it is about experiencing, not intellectualizing.”

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Talk show host Oprah Winfrey has said, “Your left brain is logical, linear, by-the-numbers; the right side is creative, artistic, empathetic …. I’ve always been a right-brain kind of person, more of an inventive and empathetic storyteller than a linear, logical number cruncher.”

Leading trendspotter Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind, told CNN that “right-brainers will rule the future” because of their emphasis on artistry and big-picture thinking. They will leave behind left-brain thinkers, whom Pink says are only adept at engineering and spreadsheet analysis.

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Bringing science and religion together

These are just a few of the prominent people who have encouraged North Americans to build self-help and spiritual world views around the “scientific” belief the brain has clear left and right functions.

Unfortunately, virtually no research backs up their sweeping claims.

Even though the brain does have two cerebral hemispheres, researchers realize both sides contribute to logic and analysis. And both sides contribute to intuition and creativity.

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But there’s no need to throw out the mystical baby with the pseudo-scientific bathwater.

Indeed, exciting things are happening in brain science. A small band of adventurous neuro-scientists are discovering links between spiritual and artistic states of mind and specific nodes of the brain.

A Canadian researcher in psychology and radiology, Mario Beauregard of the University of Montreal (who recently spoke in Vancouver), is at the forefront of this movement, conducting laboratory experiments that align religious experiences with brain activity.

So is Richard Davidson, a psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who specializes in brain plasticity, including how the brain changes through meditation.

Both men have been in dialogue with the Dalai Lama, who established the Mind and Life Institute to study interconnections between meditation, spirituality, compassion and the brain.

Both Beauregard and Davidson have also been called too “radical” by traditional neuroscientists. Nevertheless, their interdisciplinary research gains momentum, with support from the John Templeton Foundation, Metanexus and individuals such as the Trappist monk Thomas Keating.

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Most of us have, at times, experienced the unusual state of spiritual or artistic awareness that many handily, but incorrectly, associate with the right brain.

That state of awareness can arise during an experience of beauty, eroticism or silence. Often the experience comes in nature; while contemplating a leaf or the stars.

Such states can also emerge during the artistic process, while writing, probing dreams, painting or enjoying music.

It should go without saying that such transcendent experiences can occur at religious services. But they can also arise at ordinary times, while holding a baby or just daydreaming.

These psychological states have been called many things; including experiences of peace, unity, wholeness, grace, profundity, transcendence, oneness, insight or deep contentment.

While talk about left and right brains doesn’t help us understand these states, the good news is researchers, with advanced technology, are making new connections between spirituality, art, the brain and states of consciousness.

When Beauregard’s team used electroencephalography to measure what happened inside Carmelite sisters engaged in prayer, for instance, they discovered a specific response in their brains.

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Experiences the nuns described as “unity with God” correlated with greater activity in their theta waves, which are now considered a marker of mindfulness practice. Davidson found similar results with meditating Tibetan monks, including French Buddhist author Matthieu Ricard (who was in Vancouver with the Dalai Lama).

However, another Canadian neuroscientist, self-avowed atheist Michael Persinger of Laurentian University, is among those determined to debunk the theories of scientists such as Beauregard, including any hint that spiritual realities might exist outside the brain.

Persinger has experimented with the so-called “God helmet,” a wired device he argues triggered spiritual-like experiences by stimulating the temporal area of subjects’ brains with electromagnetic fields.

A few years ago, a team at Uppsala University in Sweden copied Persinger’s laboratory methods, but were unable to duplicate his results. They concluded any “mystical” experiences the Sudbury researcher stimulated in his subjects must have been a result of “psychological suggestion.”

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Nevertheless, instead of finding a so-called “God spot” in the right hemisphere, researchers such as Beauregard are discovering that spiritual and artistic states are linked with all parts of the brain, including white matter, grey matter, the temporal lobe and the postulate cingulate cortex. In other words, spiritual and artistic moments light up all over the map of our brain.

In recent years, Beauregard has delved further into human experience.

He has employed magnetic resonance imaging to measure the brain waves of people who had near-death experiences.

When people who had near-death experiences were in a contemplative state, re-connecting with their out-of-body experiences, Beauregard’s technicians found increased activity in their temporal lobes.

What does it all mean?

In his book, Brain Wars: The Scientific Battle Over the Existence of the Mind, Beauregard acknowledges brain-imaging studies cannot prove the existence of a “higher power.” That’s not his goal.

He points out, however, it would be equally incorrect to assume that proving there are neural correlations to spiritual experiences means the latter are “nothing but” brain activity.

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That, Beauregard says, would be like “assuming that the painting you are contemplating is an illusion because it is associated with identifiable brain activity in the visual portion of your brain.”

There are far-reaching philosophical implications to such research. Among other things, it tends to confirm the theories of quantum mechanics – that the universe is not ultimately “materialistic;” it’s not made up of minuscule billiard balls of matter.

Quantum mechanics arose at the beginning of the 20th century, after the discovery of atoms, to better explain such a non-material universe. Nobel Prize winning physicists such as Werner Heisenberg were among those who concluded atoms are not bits of matter; they’re “potentialities” or “possibilities.”

To Beauregard, the kind of research he’s doing suggests humans are more than “meat puppets,” controlled by robot-like brains. The brain is only part of what makes possible marvellous non-material experiences such as emotion, consciousness and the perception of potential.

In other words, we are much more than our physical, material brains.

In a talk with the Dalai Lama, Thomas Keating, a leader in centring prayer, has joked that it’s about time for spiritual people and scientists to stop “being at each other’s throats, if they were ever that close.”

Keating applauds neuro-scientists such as Beauregard for finally “taking mystical and inner experience seriously.”

Why should they not? A vibrant inner live can contribute to both individual and community well-being.

There is much to gain from more collaborations between contemplatives, artists and those who probe the mysteries of the brain.

dtodd@vancouversun.com

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