The Science Of Spiritual Experiences: How To Rewire Your Brain For More Happiness & Purpose

What do you feel when you feel something spiritual? One of the questions that I have is, you know, if one person says, "I felt l- love," and somebody says, "I felt energy," and then somebody else s- "I felt a force," and somebody else says, "I felt God," well, are they the same, fundamentally s- the same experiences that then people just interpret differently because of our backgrounds and the way we think about things, or are they actually different experiences? Mm. It, it, it's hard.

How do you want us to think about it? 'Cause I'm sitting here grappling with it right now. Do you do brain scans on people when they're praying and when they're meditating? How does it work?

Um, some of them are deeply meditative, uh, like Buddhist meditation, and some of them are deeply spiritual. We've studied people speaking in tongues.

What do you see in someone's brain when you pray, meditate, or have a spiritual experience? What's happening?

Well... (suspenseful music)

Hey, it's Mel. I'm so excited that you're here. You know, it's always such an honor to be able to spend some time with you and to be together. If you're brand new, welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. Thank you for choosing to listen to this podcast. It tells me that you're the type of person that's interested in deeper questions and having a deeper and richer experience in life, and I do too. And that's why I'm absolutely thrilled that Dr. Andrew Newberg is here in our Boston studios to talk to you and me today, and to share his groundbreaking research on the impact of spiritual and religious practices on your brain. Dr. Newberg is a renowned neuroscientist and medical doctor. He is the Director of Research for Integrative Health at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and Medical College. He is listed as one of the 30 most influential neuroscientists alive today. He's published over 250 peer-reviewed articles and chapters. He is also the author of 14 books which share his cutting-edge research. And here's where this gets really interesting. Dr. Newberg has been scanning the brains of people during meditation, prayer, and countless religious and spiritual experiences, and what he has found will make you think very differently about the connection between your brain and spirituality. So please help me welcome Dr. Andrew Newberg to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

Thank you for having me on your program.

Oh, I'm so excited to just learn from you today, and I'd love to start by asking you, if you could speak to the person who's listening directly and tell them what they might expect to be different about their life based on what you're gonna share and teach us today, what are we gonna learn?

Well, I think one of the most important things for people to learn is how to make their life more spiritual, and that doesn't have to be supernatural. Uh, um, it could be being in nature. It could be connecting to something creative. And sometimes it is something truly spiritual. But what we're gonna be learning tob- today is about how our brain helps us to be spiritual, and through that process, we'll, we'll learn how to actually be more spiritual. And I think perhaps one of the most important take-homes messages of all of the work that I've done is that we all have a pretty similar kind of brain, so these experiences are available to everyone. It's not like there's somebody who could be excluded from this. Everyone who's listening has the potential to, to find their own paths towards enlightenment and to, to thinking about their life in a much deeper, more meaningful way.