Fingerprints of God Read Online Free
Author: Barbara Bradley Hagerty
develop. Chapter 8 follows spiritual virtuosos—people who practice accessing God as intently as Tiger Woods perfects his golf swing. I witnessed a Christian virtuoso as he meditated in a brain scanner at the University of Pennsylvania, and tried my own hand at altering my brain through spiritual practice. Along the way, I began to question two exclusive theologies—the Christian doctrine that there is only one way to God, and the materialist doctrine that there is no God at all.
Finally, I find myself in territory just beyond the boundaries of “acceptable” science, and here I discover some tantalizing explanations for how science and spirit might coexist. In chapter 9, I look at the twentieth-century assumption that the brain is the sum total of one’s consciousness. Once the brain stops functioning, most scientists say, so does one’s mind, along with one’s identity and existence. Out-of-body experiences fly in the face of this assumption, including the remarkable—and clinically documented—case of a woman who had no brain function but continued to think and observe.
Chapter 10 tackles a different but related question: What happens to people who touch death and return? Today neurologists are submitting people who have had near-death experiences to scientific scrutiny, hooking them up to EEGs and sliding them into brain scanners. The results of these experiments do not prove that we have souls that survive death—that is beyond the capacity of science to determine. But there is room in this science to believe in another reality beyond the veil of death.
In chapter 11, I come to believe that a major problem with God is not whether He exists but how one defines Him. Indeed, scientists from Albert Einstein to Stephen Hawking have looked at the universe and acknowledged a being, or mind, or architect before whom the only response is awe. The “God” that scientists can accept, in His most recent iteration, springs in part from quantum physics, the mysterious behavior of the very smallest particles. I caught a glimpse of this physics in action at a research institute in California, where I watched as one person’s thoughts appeared to affect another person’s body. This, then, is where mysticism meets science, and points to a God who may be the medium through which our prayers and thoughts are transmitted to others.
In chapter 12, I find two sorts of paradigm shifts. One, I believe, is just beginning to take place in science. The other has already begun to take place in my own soul.
Now let’s get on with this radical project. But before we do, I want to make one more observation. Belief in God has not gone away, no matter how secular society has become or how much effort reductionist science has exerted to banish Him. God has not gone away because people keep encountering Him, in unexplainable, intensely spiritual moments. That is where I begin this scientific hunt, with the people who intimately know this God.
I begin with the mystic next door.
CHAPTER 2
The God Who Breaks and Enters
IF I HAD SEEN SOPHY BURNHAM in the produce section of my local grocery store I would not have thought, Oh, she looks like a mystic . But that is precisely what she is—a woman who has perforated the veil of physical reality and glimpsed another world. She lived only a few blocks from me, and after reading her book The Ecstatic Journey , 1 I made an appointment to see her. I approached this interview with a sort of fascinated terror. I was drawn to the untamed, almost uncontrolled spirituality she had described in her book. But I was also skittish because her journey bore an unsettling resemblance to my own.
True, her mystical experience was a nuclear explosion compared with my little blast of dynamite. But I knew instinctively that I had the same sensibility, the same sort of internal compass that might set me on a parallel spiritual path. This haunted me. I recoiled at Sophy Burnham’s adventurous faith life, the way
Finally, I find myself in territory just beyond the boundaries of “acceptable” science, and here I discover some tantalizing explanations for how science and spirit might coexist. In chapter 9, I look at the twentieth-century assumption that the brain is the sum total of one’s consciousness. Once the brain stops functioning, most scientists say, so does one’s mind, along with one’s identity and existence. Out-of-body experiences fly in the face of this assumption, including the remarkable—and clinically documented—case of a woman who had no brain function but continued to think and observe.
Chapter 10 tackles a different but related question: What happens to people who touch death and return? Today neurologists are submitting people who have had near-death experiences to scientific scrutiny, hooking them up to EEGs and sliding them into brain scanners. The results of these experiments do not prove that we have souls that survive death—that is beyond the capacity of science to determine. But there is room in this science to believe in another reality beyond the veil of death.
In chapter 11, I come to believe that a major problem with God is not whether He exists but how one defines Him. Indeed, scientists from Albert Einstein to Stephen Hawking have looked at the universe and acknowledged a being, or mind, or architect before whom the only response is awe. The “God” that scientists can accept, in His most recent iteration, springs in part from quantum physics, the mysterious behavior of the very smallest particles. I caught a glimpse of this physics in action at a research institute in California, where I watched as one person’s thoughts appeared to affect another person’s body. This, then, is where mysticism meets science, and points to a God who may be the medium through which our prayers and thoughts are transmitted to others.
In chapter 12, I find two sorts of paradigm shifts. One, I believe, is just beginning to take place in science. The other has already begun to take place in my own soul.
Now let’s get on with this radical project. But before we do, I want to make one more observation. Belief in God has not gone away, no matter how secular society has become or how much effort reductionist science has exerted to banish Him. God has not gone away because people keep encountering Him, in unexplainable, intensely spiritual moments. That is where I begin this scientific hunt, with the people who intimately know this God.
I begin with the mystic next door.
CHAPTER 2
The God Who Breaks and Enters
IF I HAD SEEN SOPHY BURNHAM in the produce section of my local grocery store I would not have thought, Oh, she looks like a mystic . But that is precisely what she is—a woman who has perforated the veil of physical reality and glimpsed another world. She lived only a few blocks from me, and after reading her book The Ecstatic Journey , 1 I made an appointment to see her. I approached this interview with a sort of fascinated terror. I was drawn to the untamed, almost uncontrolled spirituality she had described in her book. But I was also skittish because her journey bore an unsettling resemblance to my own.
True, her mystical experience was a nuclear explosion compared with my little blast of dynamite. But I knew instinctively that I had the same sensibility, the same sort of internal compass that might set me on a parallel spiritual path. This haunted me. I recoiled at Sophy Burnham’s adventurous faith life, the way
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