Product Description

Drawing on his own research along with others' work in neuroscience as well as some provocative new research in NDE (near-death experiences), Beauregard proves that genuine spiritual experiences can be documented and they generally have life-changing effects. "The Spiritual Brain" explains how such experiences work and the difference they make in the lives of the individual, powerfully arguing for what many in science are loathe to consider - that it is God that creates religious experiences, not the brain. Most neuroscientists are committed to the view that mystical experiences are simply the result of random neurons firing, or as one scientist puts it, they are merely 'delusions created by the brain.' But Beauregard uses the most sophisticated technology to peer inside the brains of Carmelite nuns as they recall their most profound spiritual experience which they call unio mystico, the experience of oneness with God.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #121442 in Books
• Published on: 2008-12-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

About the Author
Mario Beauregard is currently associate researcher at the Departments of Psychology and Radiology, and the Neuroscience Research Center, Universite de Montreal. His work about the effects of consciousness and volition on the emotional brain, and the neurobiology of the mystical experience has received international media coverage.

Customer Reviews

New reviews
I truly was bowled over by the book, which had my eyes watering at points. For more than a century materialists have been trying to talk us out of our minds. No such thing, they say. It's just a brain, just electrified jelly, no more free than billiard balls bouncing around a pool table. Our overwhelming internal senses of self and freedom are pathetic illusions, meaningless byproducts of mechanical processes in a pointless universe. In The Spiritual Brain/ neuroscientist Mario Beauregard and science writer Denyse O'Leary push back hard. First they debunk the most widely touted urban legends of impoverished materialism -- the "God gene", "God spot", "God helmet". Then they soberly examine the latest data from neuroscience, ranging from brain scans of prayerful nuns to the powerful placebo effect of sugar pills. If approached without materialist prejudice, they write, the results point insistently to the reality of a spiritual mind that survives physical death. For my money, the most compelling demonstration of the reality of the psyche is the simple, elegant, entertaining, dryly humorous writing of /The Spiritual Brain/ itself. In it we are privileged to meet a pair of unfettered minds actively at work to shape our world. I strongly recommend this book to anyone with a mind of his own.

- biochemist Mike Behe, author of Edge of Evolution


I've just finished reading The Spiritual Brain (I was sent an advance copy). It's superb, and is a milestone in what I think is going to be a 'long twilight struggle' against materialist neuroscience.
- neurosurgeon Mike Egnor


In principle, the natural sciences are agnostic. Dealing only in physical data, they can prove neither that God (a being deemed entirely spiritual) exists nor that he does not. But if science is in essence agnostic, scientists themselves often are not. Many books purport that science supports atheism (e.g., Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking the Spell). Others, such as this one, believe that science supports theism. With the assistance of journalist O'Leary (Faith@Science: Why Science Needs Faith in the Twenty-First Century), Canadian neuroscientist Beauregard here argues that his own work with Carmelite nuns and various other scientific studies show that merely physical explanations for religious experience are insufficient. He should end the discussion there: answer unknown. But he argues further that mystical experience shows spiritual beings must exist, and that the existence of God is probable. This conclusion is beyond science. Beauregard argues well in clear, readable prose, avoiding highly technical language. Whether his argument is convincing is up to the reader. Recommended for academic libraries and for public libraries with strong religion collections.
Library Journal review

The Spiritual Brain is a wonderful and important book that provides new insights into our experience of religion and God. It offers a unique perspective to the ongoing dialogue between science and religion. This book is a necessary read for both the scientist and the religious person.

-Andrew Newberg, M.D. Associate Professor of Radiology and Director of the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania. Co-author of Why We Believe What We Believe.

Is spiritual experience an illusion caused by a misfiring brain, as many scientists believe, or is it something more? In The Spiritual Brain neuroscientist Mario Beauregard and journalist Denyse O'Leary persuasively argue that it is indeed something more. This means the mainstream neurosciences may have overlooked something of profound importance about who and what we are. If you have a mind, you will find The Spiritual Brain a refreshing antidote to the strange arguments offered by some scientists who insist that their minds, and yours, are meaningless illusions.

- Dean Radin, PhD, Senior Scientist, Institute of Noetic Sciences and author of The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds


The Spiritual Brain is a very important book. It clearly explains non-materialist neuroscience in simple terms appropriate for the lay reader, while building on and extending work that Sharon Begley and I began in The Mind and The Brain, and work that Mario and I collaborated on in academic publications. Of utmost importance is the fact that The Spiritual Brain clearly shows that non-materialist neuroscience is not simply a controversial view held by some neuroscientists. It is a coherent and theoretically very well-grounded perspective that can play a critical role in developing more effective treatments for many medical and psychological disorders. Further, it creates natural links between physical and spiritual health by stressing the need for the active participation of people in their own treatment planning and implementation. The Spiritual Brain greatly contributes to the on-going paradigm shift that is revolutionizing our understanding of the relationship of the spirit, the mind, and the brain in the 21st Century.

Jeffrey M. Schwartz, MD
Research Psychiatrist, UCLA
Author of Brain Lock and The Mind and The Brain

A Neuroscientists's challenge to materialism
At a time when unreflecting materialist/anti-theistic assumptions dominate psychology and neuroscience, Mario Beauregard's book is like a breath of fresh air.
Beauregard attack's the materialist scientist's view that mind and consciousness reflect the activity of the brain, and are not independent of it. He shows that such conclusions,often drawn from work in AI and in evolutionary psychology, are not in fact consistent with the evidence, but largely reflect the initial assumptions and worldview of materialism. In particular, whilst accepting that evolution has occurred, he ridicules the attempts to explain behaviour in terms of evolutionary psychology. Not only is the latter full of untested - indeed often untestable - theories about human nature. It seems to take some form of behaviour exising in a particular contemporary culture, and illegitimately tries to explain it in terms of universal and eternal features. Thus, we have evo. psy. 'explanations' for monogamy AND polygamy, competitiveness AND co=operation, selfishness AND altruism.
Beauregard goes on to deal with psi, near death experiences, and the placebo effect, showing in each case evidence that defies materialism.Moreover, in fields such as healing, it is shown how exclusively materialist approaches hold up progress.
The book, in essence, emphasises that if we wish to gain a comprehensive understanding of brain/mind interaction, we must go beyond the materialist paradigm which is so dominant in science today. Science properly involves scepticism towards claims made about reality, but scepticism needs to be two-way. We must make every effort to rid ourselves of limiting preconceptions, and be prepared to go where the evidence leads.

Regarding Stephen A. Haines's review
Mr Stephen A. Haines obviously missed the closing sentences of the 'Manifesto on the Present and Future of Brain Research':

'But all the progress will not end in a triumph for neuronal reductionism. Even if at some point we have explained all the processes of the neuron which underlie human sympathy, being in love or moral responsibility, the distinctive feature of this "internal perspective" nevertheless remains. For even a Bach fugue does not lose its fascination when one has understood precisely how it is constructed. Brain research will have to distinguish clearly between what it can say and what lies outside its sphere of competence, just as morphology - to keep to this example - has something to say about Bach's fugue, but can have no explanation of its unique beauty'.