Assumptions

“This is your brain on God.” Behind that statement lie a number of assumptions. As we begin to explore the brain on God in Christianity, it seems worthwhile to bring at least some of those assumptions into the light. So, here are four:

1. The contemporary findings of neurophysiology are showing us ever-more-clearly the nature of how our brains work.

2. The “brain” is really more like a body-encompassing neuro-network than a discrete organ entirely located in the skull.

3. Both the practices of the body and the musings of the mind flow from and help re-form the ‘hardware’ of the brain.

4. Christianity, as a theistic religious tradition, has affirmed that the ‘material’ of the human body (including the brain) is not the end of the story. That is, Christianity says that some great Mystery – God, Spirit, Being, Force, Flow, Truth, Creativity, Love, or any one of a number of other terms, depending on the tradition – exists in addition to and in relationship with the ‘material’ human being.

Now, as I ponder the assumptions outlined above, I must say that I am noticing something about my own experience in this moment: just the thought of exploring the assumptions and implications of “your brain on God” evokes excitement and wonder in me. Perhaps the same is true for you. If so, what I have to say about my sense of these experiences may prompt you to explore your own versions of the two.

First, the excitement…. My excitement comes from my growing sense that the spiritual practices of the Christian traditions – those practices that form versions of what Rick Hanson and Rick Mendius call the “wise brain” – may be deepened and expanded for our age through attention to the findings and understandings of neurophysiology. The ancient (and not-so-ancient) Christian sages have handed us wisdom of thought, purpose, attitude, and practice that have and can enrich our lives and the world. The sages plumbed the depths of human experience – and the nature of human experiencing – as they knew it, engaging the tools and understandings of the sciences of their times in order to help human beings shape their lives, as many put it, “in the image of God.”

So it was that the spiritual leaders and theologians of each era and each part of the world adopted and adapted their cultures’ philosophies, anthropologies, psychologies, and scientific processes in ways that laid a pathway into a newly-understood future. Sometimes they met resistance from the entrenched traditions, and often they came to be vindicated, even embraced, by the very traditions that had rejected them. Those who uncovered lasting, culture-rattling truths offered future generations new ways to open their lives to the Mystery they called God. I am excited in my belief that the understandings of neurophysiology offer the kind of culture-rattling truths that can point a new and very fruitful way forward for those Christians who want to engage in transformative spiritual practices that are relevant to the world that is unfolding in the 21st century.

Second, the wonder…. My wonder carries the flavor of not knowing. For instance, I do not yet know much of the scientific territory of the Wise Brain, so I wonder if I will be able to understand the science that so fascinates me. I wonder exactly how the spiritual practices of the Christian traditions connect with the discoveries of neurophysiology. I wonder what this connection has to say about how we formulate spiritual practices. I wonder what it says about the way we live our lives. I wonder how we can speak of immaterial ‘soul’ (or God, for that matter) when material brain takes center stage. I wonder if I will be able to recognize the important connections between science and spirituality when faced with them. I wonder if I will be able to trace out the implications of those connections in the way I live and in the way I relate to the persons and world around me.

Yes, I wonder about all that I do not know. But from the midst of the wonder of not knowing, arises another kind of wonder: that of being awestruck. For instance, I am awed by, I stand in wonder at, the intricacies of our bodies. I wonder at the astonishing wisdom in spiritual traditions not my own. I wonder at how the brain works (how, for instance, my late wife’s brain cancer caused loss of short-term memory, but heightened her ability to preach in front of hundreds of people). I wonder at the growing numbers of Christians who seek some spiritually-enlivening (whatever they may mean by that) integration of science and faith. Both of these senses of wonder – not knowing and awe – fire my curiosity for exploring the territory where neurophysiology meets spirituality. I am so very eager to uncover something of what I can only wonder at now.

Possibilities

As I consider the possibilities for exploring the “brain on God,” that is, the Wise Brain in Christianity, I am drawn first to the territory of human experience. In fact, as I have suggested above, explorations of the nature of experience have played a central role in the formulations of Christian spiritual writers throughout the ages. When such writers have delineated particular spiritualities, they generally have taken care to offer for each one something I have called a “spiritual anthropology,” a description of what it is about the nature of the human being that allows for connection with the Divine. Such descriptions usually have included detailed attention to the nature of human experience, careful attempts to identify the discrete, granular characteristics of human experience. But why has this been so important to them? It has been important because the Christian spiritual traditions have insisted that the more fully human beings understand their own experience, the more fully they may come into communion with God. Some have wanted to understand human experience in order to move past it to God. Others have wanted to understand their experience in order to find and embrace God within it. Some have proposed thought (what I refer to as “conceptual experience”) as the primary way to God. Others have emphasized affective experiences – or the will, or intention, or physical sensations, or some other aspect of human experience. In every case (as far as I know) they insist that human transformation can not happen apart from paying close, conscious attention to the nature and characteristics of the process of human experiencing.

So, throughout the Christian spiritual traditions, many, many voices have continued to insist on the necessity of probing the nature of experience. Certainly this multiplicity offers the blessing of abundance; there is something here for almost everyone. But this blessing also points to a problem: Christian spirituality has no shared, canonical source of reference when it comes to describing the nature of human experience. What do I mean by this? Let me explain by offering a comparison with Buddhism.

My interested outsider’s take on Buddhism suggests that adherents who are interested in understanding the warp and woof and granulated intricacies of human experience may look to the foundational texts of the religion, the scriptural canon that records what is remembered of the Buddha’s words. From a Christian perspective, these texts show the Buddha as unusually concerned with the nature of experience as a process of experiencing; in seeking to understand what could be done about suffering and the human condition, he attempted to identify and explicate the discreet movements and moments that comprise the complex nature of experiencing. I think it is fair to say that over the centuries his followers have debated (among other things, I assume) the proper interpretation of what the Buddha is reported to have said about the nature of experience (a debate visible, I imagine, in the fact of the various strands of Buddhism), but they all implicitly accept the premise that his teachings had to do, in part, with understanding how experience works and explaining how to engage in practices that re-form the way we experience life. For instance, when Buddhists want to talk about the fundamental characteristics of experience, they may refer to the notion of skandha, as found in texts reporting what are believed to be the words of the Buddha. Precise interpretations of the skandhas vary according to the perspectives of the interpreters , but any Buddhists interested in a deeper understanding of the nature of experience could be expected to refer to their shared, foundational texts’ explication of skandhas.

Christians, on the other hand, look to a foundational text, the Bible, that is grandly silent when it comes to explicating the nature of the processes of human experiencing. It portrays Jesus teaching, among other things, how to behave in relation to others (e.g., “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”), what kind of attitudes to adopt, (e.g., “Forgive seventy times seven.”), the nature of God (e.g., “…the shepherd will…seek the one lost sheep….”), the nature of relationship with God (e.g., “The reign of God is like a mustard seed…..”), and how to commune with God (e.g., “When you pray….”). But unlike the Buddha, Jesus is not (nor is any other figure in the Bible) portrayed teaching about the intricacies of human experience, mapping for us the movements and moments, the affections and thoughts and sensations, that comprise the process of experiencing. The explication of human experience is left to the generations of Christians that followed the compilers of the biblical texts. As sages and theologians such as Origen of Alexandria, Hildegard of Bingen, Thomas Aquinas, Julian of Norwich, and Ignatius of Loyola attempted to work out the details of living a Christian life, each developed his or her own description of the characteristics of experience. Yes, each description professes some grounding connection to what is expressed in the biblical text, but the biblical text itself offers no foundational description of the nature of experiencing. Christians have not been interpreting a description of the nature of experience as it is found in the Bible. Rather, they have been creating post-biblical descriptions of human experience in terms that draw from and fit the discrete understandings and sensibilities of their own times, places, and cultures.

Given the diversity of the Christian formulations of experience, then, it makes sense to begin to explore how the understandings of neurophysiology may connect to the many Christian understandings, the many Christian mappings, of the nature of experiencing. Of course, it also makes sense to examine the spiritual practices connected to these many understandings, since engaging the spiritual practices will be the thing that finally transforms our experiencing. In fact, ultimately, if we want to “train the brain” (a la Hanson and Mendius ) in wise ways, our main concern will be to develop (or re-develop) spiritual practices that match what neurophysiology is teaching us about the nature of the processes of experiencing. So, I can imagine that the Explorations of this web page will focus (at least initially) on these tasks:

• Understanding how Christian spiritualities have characterized the nature of human experience.
• Examining the practices these spiritualities have prescribed to shape that experience.
• Seeking to draw connections between the findings of neurophysiology and the understandings. and spiritual practices expressed in these spiritualities..
• Suggesting ways to reformulate traditional spiritual practices to reflect more accurately what neurophysiology has to tell us about the nature of human experience and about how best to cultivate healthy transformations of human experience, consciousness, and lives.

  Questions

  As we examine the many understandings and practices of Christian spiritualities, I hope to keep certain questions in mind (even beyond those I have already raised in passing): Is there a way to speak of the connection between human experience, spiritual practice, and neurophysiology that accurately expresses for our time one particularly Christian (or, even, one progressive Christian) understanding of these things? Is such uniformity of language even desirable? And why would it be – or not? That is, should we seek such a thing? If not, how can Christians (especially, progressive Christians) speak in helpful ways (that is, helpful for positive human transformation) about the nature of experience and the spiritual practices that shape experience? Or, if we should seek uniformity of language, what language should we use? Given our lack of biblical language for the nature of experience, should we, for example, develop a new language, as theologies, philosophies, and sciences have done for generations? Would it be better to reinterpret the traditional language of Christianity? Or should we define Christian spiritual experience, understandings, and practices in terms of the language of neurophysiology? This listing of questions offers only a taste of what might be asked.

  Invitations

  It may be that over time answers will come for the questions raised. Or it may only be possible to present the material of the Christian tradition in light of – or in anticipation of – many of these questions. In any case, I envision these Explorations of the Wise Brain in Christianity as offering a context in which to probe the ‘givens,’ wonder at the answers, question assumptions, and seek answers wherever they might be found. I also envision this page helping us formulate (or reformulate) Christian spiritual practices that may help us “train the brain” in fruitfully transformative ways. To that end, I hope this page will become something of a clearing house for sharing information, probing the Christian spiritual tradition and its practices, suggesting links to other pertinent sites, reviewing literature, reflecting on new possibilities, raising new questions – and, above all, approaching one another in a spirit of openness and generosity.

  I invite you to join this conversation as it moves us toward a deeper understanding of how Christians might more fully transform life by attending to the nature and practices of the brain on God.

  1.Specific examples of these adoptions and adaptations must await future “Explorations. ” At this point it is enough, perhaps, simply to note the fact that pre-Modern Christianity was cast and recast in terms of Neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism (among other things).

  2.As John Calvin, the 16th-century Protestant Reformer put it in the opening section The Institutes of the Christian Religion, knowledge of God can not come without knowledge of self. It is worth noting that the French and Latin words Calvin used for “knowledge” connote rich human experiencing (akin to sexual union or intimate kinship ) rather than simply intellectual understanding. Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion. The Library of Christian Classics, Volume XX. 1,i,1, fn 1, p36

  3.Rick Hanson and Rick Mendius, “Train Your Brain: Awareness of the Body” presentation manuscript, March 13, 2007, p. 3-4.

  4.For instance, while Rick Hanson and Rick Mendius quite helpfully call the fourth skandha “formations” (Ibid, p. 3.).

  5.See Rick Hanson and Rick Mendius, 24-week “Train Your Brain” course, here.

  ©Andrew Dreitcer, M.Div., Ph.D. – 2007 – 2008, adreitcer@yahoo.com