The End of Spirituality?

I recently finished a comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation by a psychologist. At the end of the testing he asked me if I had any questions. I asked him about my most recent bout of mania, which also granted me spiritual enlightenment, which was also a peak experience. I asked him if it was worth trying to distinguish between these three experiences, or whether they were three different words for the same phenomenon. 

He told me that there is an area in the temporal lobe that, when activated, can account for all of these experiences. Some of the spiritual leaders in the past were later found to have temporal lobe epilepsy, which was the source of their spirituality and way of thinking. Entheogens, or psychedelics, also activate this part of the temporal lobe. Mania, an intensely euphoric or stimulating state often accompanied by delusions and psychosis and found in people with bipolar disorder I, also presents with increased activation in the temporal lobe. I had read similar information, but had still held onto a belief that there may be something deeper. Hearing my psychologist distill all three of these profound and oft-discussed experiences down to merely increased activity in a specific area of the brain greatly clarified the situation. 

He went on to share his understanding of this“glitch” in our brains as an old biological remnant. He believes that as the human brain evolved and allowed for greater achievements, it needed a way to understand and explain parts of this vast universe. As our intellectual capabilities grew, the confusion and lack of understanding about what we didn’t know also grew, and this created tension, or distress. What was the sun? Why did the weather vary so much? What is the moon? These unknowns required a different type of thinking to alleviate the uncertainty and confusion, and he believes that this temporal lobe area evolved to sort of pacify or quiet these concerns. 

Anyone taking mushrooms or LSD, experiencing a week-long spiritual retreat, or experiencing a temporal lobe epilepsy, might immediately understand the sense of peace, calm, eternal understanding, and insight that these experiences provide us. It really does seem to reduce the tension of the unknown, and provide us with a temporary sense that we know everything, or at least that we know enough to stop questioning everything for a while. 

The current problem, the psychologist said, was that as science and evidence-based reasoning continues to evolve, we no longer need to rely on this old part of the brain. Eventually, we will continue to learn and answer our questions in a systematic way. We will learn how to enhance our biology, live longer than ever, and travel beyond our current solar system. Will this part of our temporal lobe atrophy, or convert to something else? Will the frequency of religious experiences diminish over time? Will there be fewer bipolar patients experiencing mania every generation? 

While I agree that all three experiences are generally reducible down to increased activity in the temporal lobe, I don’t think that this part of our brain is going away anytime soon. I don’t think that science and incremental knowledge will ever explain the “why” behind the mysteries of the universe in a way that a spiritual experience can. The inherent desire to know the “why” seems to live inside us as children, as we ask our parents a series of “but why” questions that lead to the inevitable “I don’t know” from our parents. Science and experimentation can explain the how forever, but the why is a mystery without a true answer. The why begs the question of motive, of purpose, of meaning behind the how. Why does the universe exist? Why is there love? Why is there anything over nothing? These questions are philosophical, abstract, and largely lie outside the realm of the “observable universe.” As abstract thinkers, not all of our questions can be answered with concrete answers. If one can quantify love, calculate love, compare and contrast love, manipulate and control love, perhaps eventually science can explain it better than our intuition and feelings. But, I doubt that there is a scientific experiment that can explain to us why there is something over nothing. Why anything exists in the first place. Why we feel like we have free will even though science tells us that it’s an illusion. 

“I think therefore I am” is not a scientific statement made by a scientist, it’s a philosophical statement made by someone whose brain had been deprived of oxygen after sleeping in a closed room next to a cucklestove (true story). This profound truth was not the result of careful experimentation, but rather a brain that could no longer devote resources to the energy-hungry frontal lobe, so it directed its blood flow and energy to the temporal lobe. There, Descartes found different types of truths, the truths that most people remember far more than his Cartesian mathematics. “I think therefore I am” may be a byproduct of an active temporal lobe with a quiet frontal lobe, but it has unquestionably been a crucial piece in understanding who we are as humans, what makes us feel human, and has helped us to understand free will and identity, irrespective of quantum physics. 

I hope that this spiritual part of the temporal lobe doesn’t atrophy over time. I hope that despite science and evidence-based knowledge, we can retain pieces of this spiritual/manic/insightful part of our brain. I hope that these instinctual truths like “love is the greatest thing in the world” and “we are all one” don’t dissolve with our ever-hungry race to quantify and qualify every experience and piece of information that we can. I do not believe that all experiences can be reduced down to scientific calculations, and that part of what has preserved humans, and perhaps elevated us to this status atop the food chain, is a result of our temporal lobe, not despite it.

 So, with all due respect to the psychologist’s beliefs, I will retain hope that it is not a biological remnant of our past, but rather a critical balancing aspect to our humanity. Without these spiritual experiences to tap into, life may become cold, calculating, and robotic. A scientist may be better at predicting the future than a spiritual leader, but the scientist is likely worse at enjoying the moment and experiencing the full breadth of human emotion. Like all things in life, the beauty is a balance between the two, and I hope that we can continue to appreciate all areas of our brain, rather than parse out pieces that we don’t like, thinking that we’ll be better off if we become more robotic. The old saying, “you don’t know what you’ve got until you’ve lost it” seems quite apt here. I hope for humanity’s sake that we don’t lose it, and that we can appreciate exactly what we have right now. If this temporal lobe experience has gotten us this far to-date - the most apex predator of all animals on earth - I don’t see any reason to throw it in the trash.