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The New Enlightenment

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According to Andrew Newberg, director of research at Jefferson Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine, there are a mere five steps to reaching enlightenment. This is something he’s studied, using 250 brain scans of people during prayer and meditation. With this research, Newberg has come up with a more practical way to help people find their own style of prayer and meditation, their customized path towards enlightenment.

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ANDREW NEWBERG:

Dr. Andrew Newberg is the director of research at the Jefferson Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine and a physician at Jefferson University Hospital. He is board certified in internal medicine and nuclear medicine. Andrew has been asking questions about reality, truth, and God since he was very young, and he has long been fascinated by the human mind and its complex workings. While a medical student, he met Dr. Eugene d’Aquili, who was studying religious experiences. Combining their interests with Andrew’s background in neuroscience and brain imaging, they were able to break new theoretical and empirical ground on the relationship between the brain and religion.

Andrew’s research now largely focuses on how brain function is associated with various mental states—in particular, religious and mystical experiences. His research has included brain scans of people in prayer, meditation, rituals, and trance states, as well as surveys of people's spiritual experiences and attitudes. He has also evaluated the relationship between religious or spiritual phenomena and health, and the effect of meditation on memory. He believes that it is important to keep science rigorous and religion religious. Andrew has also used neuroimaging research projects to study aging and dementia, Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, depression, and other neurological and psychiatric disorders.

Dr. Newberg has published over 100 research articles, essays and book chapters, and is the co-author of the best selling books, Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief (Ballantine, 2001) and How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist (Ballantine, 2009). He has presented his research throughout the world in both scientific and public forums. He appeared on Nightline, 20/20, Good Morning America, ABC's World News Tonight, National Public Radio, London Talk Radio and over fifteen nationally syndicated radio programs. His work has been featured in Time, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and many other newspapers and magazines.

His newest work is How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain: The New Science of Transformation.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Andrew Newberg: When we look at all of the data that we now have. When we look at the several thousand descriptions that people have of the enlightenment experiences. When we look at over 250 brain scans that we’ve done of people engaged in different types of prayer and meditation practices, I think one of the things that we can ultimately distill out of this on a very practical level is how do we actually help people down their own path to enlightenment? What are the steps that people need to think about taking so that they can find their own path? I think one of the important aspects of all of this is that on one hand we can talk about this in generalities. There are certain basic elements. There’s certain basic approaches that people can take, certain basic aspects of the experience that people are going to have. But it ultimately is also a unique phenomenon and for each person part of what we need to try to encourage them to do is to find their own pathway, to find that own uniqueness that makes it an experience that’s meaningful for them. So when we start to think about the actual steps that people take we’ve been able to define that into five different specific steps that we think are relevant for this process.

The first step we usually talk about is the desire to make this kind of change in your life. The desire to have enlightenment. Now on one hand that may sound like a silly thing to say because on one hand why wouldn’t everybody want to have it? And to some degree that’s true. I mean if you went up to anybody on the street and say hey, would you like to have the most incredible experience you could ever have? Change your life, change the way you think about the world and you’re ...

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