Waking Up Your Spiritual Brain: Part 1

Summary

Podcast Summary

Hidden Brain – “Waking Up Your Spiritual Brain: Part 1”
Host: Shankar Vedantam
Guest: Dr. Lisa Miller, Psychologist at Teachers College, Columbia University
Release Date: June 29, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the science of spirituality and transcendence within human psychology. Host Shankar Vedantam and guest Dr. Lisa Miller discuss why many adults feel a lack of meaning or awe in modern life, how spirituality can function as a measurable and protective human capacity, and what neuroscience reveals about the “spiritual brain.” Drawing on research, clinical stories, and personal anecdotes, the episode investigates how spiritual engagement shapes mental health and resilience.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Loss of Awe and Connection in Adulthood

• Inspired by Thomas Hood’s poem "I Remember I Remember," the episode opens with the theme of losing the childlike sense of awe and connection as adults ([00:00]).

  • Quote: “As grown ups, many of us lack the effortless sense of connection and awe that we felt as kids.” — Shankar Vedantam ([00:55])

• Central Question: Can this sense of transcendence be regained or nurtured in adulthood?

2. Clinical Stories Highlighting Spiritual Resilience

The Story of Ileana

• Lisa Miller introduces Ileana, a 12-year-old grieving her father’s murder, who found healing not through standard therapy but via personal spiritual experiences ([04:06]).
  • After a traditional Dominican ceremony honoring her father, Ileana had a meaningful encounter that she interpreted as her father watching over her ([07:19]).
    • Quote: “Don’t you see, Dr. Miller, my father’s watching over me. My father’s protecting me. My father’s right here with me.” — Ileana via Lisa Miller ([07:19])

The Psychiatric Inpatient Yom Kippur Service

• Lisa recounts organizing an informal Yom Kippur service for Jewish patients on a psychiatric ward, observing dramatic improvements that conventional treatments had failed to achieve ([10:50]).

  • One patient moved from being disruptive to becoming the group’s spiritual leader.
  • Spiritually grounded rituals brought “radiance” and relief that therapy and medication alone could not.

• Memorable Moment: Secret prayers across faiths in the hospital’s kitchen, met with trepidation about officially acknowledging the spiritual dimension in mental health practice ([13:50]).

  • Quote: “‘What you did was beautiful. It was completely right. Don’t ever tell anyone you did that.’ There was a sense that somehow spirituality doesn’t belong here.” — Lisa Miller ([14:37])

3. Observations of Everyday Spiritual Wellness & Lack

• Lisa describes seeing a “dysthymia” — a low-grade, lingering dissatisfaction — in ordinary people, not just patients ([15:23], [18:57]).

  • She contrasts this with seeing “illumination... the joy” in spiritually connected people, such as a Jewish man davening in the subway ([15:39]).

  • Quote: “I saw what was equal and opposite to the suffering. It was the illumination of spiritual awareness and connection.” — Lisa Miller ([16:47])

4. The Dilemma in Modern Achievement-Driven Life

• Lisa and her husband, both successful professionals, sometimes wondered: “Is this really all there is?” ([17:08]).
  • Achievement culture (dinner parties about promotions, real estate, etc.) led to feelings of emptiness or “a low-grade Monopoly game going on that was narrowly achievement oriented” ([17:32]).
  • Dysthymia: Explained as “a hole in the heart, a hole in the soul… a yearning for a deeper connection in life.” ([18:57])

5. Scientific Exploration of the Spiritual Brain

Materialist Model vs. Transcendence

• Traditionally, psychology viewed the brain as a closed “billiard ball” system; spirituality was considered outside scientific scope ([23:40]).
• Lisa Miller details her 30-year effort to scientifically investigate where spiritual awareness fits in human psychology and mental health ([25:43]).

Neuroanatomy of Spiritual Awareness

• MRI findings show everyone has neural circuits for perceiving the transcendent, regardless of religion or lack thereof ([26:15]):

  • Four main brain circuits are involved:

    1. Quieting the mind (default mode network disengagement)
    2. Bonding network (“we are loved and held”)
    3. Attentional network (shifting from narrow, top-down to open, bottom-up attention, allowing for inspiration and guidance)
    4. Parietal regions (simultaneous experience of individual distinction and unity) ([29:15]-[30:58])

  • Quote: “We all share the same core neural circuits of transcendent awareness.” — Lisa Miller ([26:36])

  • Quote: “Loved, held, guided and never alone moves together. These three circuits move together.” ([30:58])

Spirituality and Brain Structure

• Twin studies show spiritual capacity is 1/3 innate, 2/3 environmentally formed ([31:08]).
• Sustained spiritual practice correlates with greater cortical thickness in regions vulnerable to depression ([31:08]-[34:07]).
  • Quote: “When we sustain our spiritual life, the cortical thickness is seen across the very same regions, the very same regions that are not thick but thin in people with recurrent major depression... spirituality and depression appear to be two sides of one coin.” — Lisa Miller ([33:42])

6. Cultural and Scientific Resistance

• Early on, Lisa’s scientific community resisted integrating spirituality; her carefully designed studies slowly opened doors for discussion ([34:46]).
  • Quote: “Despite the meticulous science in top peer reviewed journals, because the findings were new, I would say people did not know yet what to do with these new scientific findings.” ([36:33])
• Younger generations of psychologists show more interest and openness.

7. Distinguishing Spirituality from Religion

• Key finding: Spirituality is innate/naturally human, religion is culturally transmitted ([40:24]).
  • Confusion between the two leads to discomfort in public and medical settings.
  • Quote: “Religion is environmentally transmitted. Spirituality is innate.” ([41:38])

8. Health Effects & Protective Power of Spiritual Life

• Engaging in personal spirituality, especially within a community, is strikingly protective against suicide in young people — “82% protective against completed suicides in Gen Z” ([45:34]).

  • Quote: “If I told you, Shankar, there’s a little pill...and it will protect your child...four fifths against the leading cause of morbidity of death in young people, who wouldn’t give that to their child?” — Lisa Miller ([46:31])

• Spirituality leads to greater resilience and wellbeing by transforming life’s orientation from transactional to inspired, discovery-based living ([47:05]).

  • Quote: “When we can release the stranglehold of our expectations and plans and be less hardcore makers of our path... life unfolds in extraordinary ways.” ([48:38])

9. The Awakened vs. Achieving Brain

• Achieving Awareness: Strategic, transactional, focused on control and planning—valuable, but limited ([49:59]).
• Awakened Awareness: Receptive, intuitive, open to guidance and discovery. This is the basis for meaning and purpose.
  • “Achieving awareness will get us on the A train… but we may not know where we are.… We need both. Awakened awareness sets our North Star.” ([49:59]-[52:24])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “There was sort of almost a low-grade Monopoly game going on that was narrowly achievement oriented.” — Lisa Miller ([17:32])
• “Dysthymia is a low-grade nagging, haunting… gray depression… a yearning for a deeper connection in life.” — Lisa Miller ([18:57])
• “Awakened awareness is a receptive form of perception. Awakened awareness asks the question, what is life showing me now?” — Lisa Miller ([50:46])
• “If we are struggling with recurrent major depression... spirituality and depression appear to be two sides of one coin.” — Lisa Miller ([33:52])
• “Religion is environmentally transmitted. Spirituality is innate.” — Lisa Miller ([41:38])

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Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment/Main Topic | |---------------|--------------------------------------------------| | 00:00 | Opening poem & theme of lost awe in adulthood | | 04:06 | The story of Ileana’s grief and spiritual encounter | | 09:18 | Psychiatric inpatient unit & Yom Kippur story | | 15:23 | Observations of “dysthymia” in ordinary people | | 23:40 | The materialist model vs. transcendence in psychology | | 26:15 | MRI studies: neural circuits for spiritual awareness | | 31:08 | Cortical thickness & spirituality; twin studies | | 34:46 | Scientific and cultural resistance to spirituality | | 40:24 | The difference between spirituality and religion | | 45:34 | Protective effects of spirituality on well-being/suicide | | 49:59 | Achieving brain vs. awakened brain distinction |

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Episode Tone

• Thoughtful, inquisitive, and carefully scientific, but open to wonder and personal meaning.
• Lisa Miller brings warmth and respect for the sacred, and Shankar Vedantam guides with a reflective, evidence-oriented lens.

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Final Thoughts

This episode offers a balanced, research-based exploration of spirituality’s place in psychological health. Through empirical evidence and deeply human stories, it challenges listeners to consider transcendent connection as a measurable—and essential—aspect of well-being.

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For further reading:
Lisa Miller’s book, The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life.

Transcript

[A]

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Thomas hood was a 19th century English poet known for his elegant, often melancholy verse. His 1826 poem I Remember I Remember captures a feeling that is familiar to many adults, especially its wistful last lines. I remember. I remember the fir trees dark and high. I used to think their slender tops were close against the sky. It was a childish ignorance, but now tis little joy to know I'm farther off from heaven than when I was a boy. Thomas Hood's poem gestures to the reality that as grown ups, many of us lack the effortless sense of connection and awe that we felt as kids. Was that intimate bond with the universe merely an illusion of childhood or a real, measurable human capacity that we can access as grown ups? Researchers are investigating the ways that we can preserve or revive the sense of being close to the sky that Thomas Hood so tenderly evoked. This week on Hidden Brain, we explore what it means to feel closer to heaven and the value of looking for transcendence in our busy, bustling lives. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Lily on this show, it's fascinating to discuss the unseen forces shaping the human brain. Consider conditions like Alzheimer's disease, where changes in the brain may develop up to 20 years before noticing symptoms. Talk to your doctor to understand your potential risk factors for dementia due to Alzheimer's disease and ask for a cognitive assessment. Visit brainhealthmatters.com for more information and resources. Support for Hidden brain comes from LinkedIn. Running a small business means every hire matters. A bad hire can cost you time, money and momentum. A good hire? They can help grow your business. LinkedIn's new hiring pro screens candidates for you, so instead of sorting through applicants, you spend time talking to only the right ones. Get started by posting your job for [e-mail] HB terms and conditions apply. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Lowe's. Get your home ready, inside and out with Lowe's July 4th deals event. Save on up to 45% off select major appliances plus up to an additional 25% off when bundling. Select major appliances and save $80 on a select Char Broy Performance Series gas Grill. Now $299. Shop Lowes July 4th deals event valid through July 8th, while supplies last selection varies by location. See Lowes.com for more. These days we are encouraged and even exhorted to optimize every aspect of our lives. Our bodies, our relationships, our productivity. But what about the parts of us that yearn for meaning, for understanding, for wisdom, those aspects of Ourselves are often ignored in our tireless pursuit of worldly rewards. At Columbia University, psychologist Lisa Miller studies the science of transcendence. Lisa Miller, welcome to Hidden Brain.

[B]

I'm so grateful to be here. I appreciate so much your show, the way you go deeper, the way you open up the double door in our life. So, Shankar, thank you for having me.

[A]

Lisa, early on in your career as a psychologist, you treated a young woman named Ileana. Can you describe her for me and tell me what brought her into your clinic?

[B]

SHANKAR ileana was only 12 years old. She was in middle school, this was in New York, and she came in one day all by herself to the clinic. Generally, of course, young people are accompanied by a grandparent or a parent. Someone break some. This little girl was hunched, her arms wrapped tight, and when I invited her in to say, what has brought you here? The first thing she said was two men had walked into her father's store. Her father owned a corner deli, two men who he knew had walked into his store, robbed him, and then taken his life. Her father was her son, her moon, her stars. She was devastated. Ileana was beyond bereft. She could barely move through the day. But equally, she was living in her new setting with her mother and her mother's mother. Both women had escaped themselves very perilous and painful situations, and they were quite understandably guarded and had yet to benefit from therapy. So in this setting, Ileana was really basically on a lockdown, a social lockdown. She wasn't allowed to go out and see friends. She wasn't allowed to go to the school dance. She'd gone from being the apple of her father's eye to living in a very cold, restrictive environment. The treatment of the day would suggest help her renegotiate her condition, help her make sense of what had happened, address the trauma, the brutality of her father's death and the wrongness, the moral and spiritual injury of her father's death. But all of the treatment, as usual, was not moving the needle. I mean, you know, every day that a patient comes into the clinic, we do a quick assessment, one to ten, how are you? And she was never above a five. It was a four. It was a three, it was a five, never above a five. Well, one day she came absolutely skipping it night and day. It was a whole different presentation clinically. It was as if the lights had been powered back on. And I said, please, please come in, Ileana, tell me what is on your heart, what has happened? And she said, bouncing in her seat joyfully, she looked me in the eye. And she said, you're not going to believe this. You're not going to believe this. I was finally allowed to go to a D, and I met a boy, and he was so polite and he was so nice. And we talked for 20 minutes, which is a long time in eighth grade, and you're not going to believe it. Guess what his name is.

[A]

Ileana told Lisa that the boy she'd met had an extremely unusual name. And it turned out it was the same unusual name of her dead father.

[B]

And she said, well, don't you see, Dr. Miller, my father's watching over me. My father's protecting me. My father's right here with me.

[A]

I understand that. Shortly before she went on this dance, Ileana's grandmother had organized a traditional Dominican ceremony to honor her father. Describe the ceremony for me, Lisa. What happened there?

[B]

Ileana's family had a beautiful tradition that was coming from the Dominican Republic, a blend of many faith traditions in which they honored the deceased much as many traditions do. What was important to Ileanna was that when they held the ceremony to honor her father with prayers, with candles, with photos, Ileana, through the ceremony knew her father's spirit was alive and real and in relationship to the family. So that shortly thereafter, when she met a boy at the dance who shared the very same name as her father, she had a depth of spiritual understanding that her father walks with her. She says, my father is looking after me. He is protecting me.

[A]

I understand, Lisa, that you had a similar experience working on a psychiatric inpatient unit. Tell me about what life was like on that unit. And a intervention, an unusual intervention that you came up with at one point.

[B]

Shankar. I worked on an inpatient unit in Manhattan where so many of the patients suffered terribly. Some had recurrent, very deep, major depression. Some struggled with addiction, others schizophrenia. The time in which I happened to be an intern on the unit was the time of the Jewish holidays. This hospital happened to serve a great number of people who are Jewish. As the holidays approached, one morning in our community meeting, a gentleman raised his hand. He was someone who was known as very explosive. As he struggled with bipolar, he'd become very angry, maybe toss a chair, yell, and march out. So it was he, of all people, who raised his hand. In a full community meeting, 30 people in a circle under the flickering lights. He raised his hand and said, what will we be doing for Yom Kippur? The unit chief, a very nice man, sort of looked at his foot and said, I'm sorry, we don't have anything. The rabbis will be going home to their own families. What? What? Nothing for Yom Kippur. And he became more and more upset, explosive, tossed the chair and walked out of the room.

[A]

So I understand that you decided to arrange an informal Yom Kippur service on the ward. Describe the scene for me.

[B]

Well, I'm not a rabbi, but I did have at that time about two and a half decades of experience with Yom Kippur. So I approached the unit chief, who gave me permission and said, sure, if you want to come in on Yom Kippur, that's your decision. I found in a box in my apartment a beautiful, weathered prayer book that had been my grandmother's that day. When I arrived to the unit, the patients were all dressed beautifully, no hospital gowns or gurneys. Our so called sanctuary was the back room, the kitchen with its linoleum table and its fluorescent lights. But it felt sanctified. And there we were. There were four Jewish patients. And by their side, each had an aide who very graciously joined in our ceremony. As we started to move through the prayers, it was the gentleman who had been so explosive and so called chaotic, who was holding the cadence of our prayers, who was davening, as we say in Judaism, moving and swaying with his body and with the lyrical music of his voice, holding our collective prayer. He was far from chaotic. He was our spiritual leader and guide. The woman who had struggled so deeply with shame and guilt and depression perked up and said, I want to say something. I've always known that at Yom Kippur we can ask for forgiveness. But sitting here with all of you reading these prayers, I realized that we can be forgiven. All around the table, whatever had caged in their soul was superseded by the radiance in this moment of their spirit. It was extraordinary. And so I realized, Shankar, that something was happening in a spiritually grounded religious ceremony that was not happening in treatment as usual. Once the word got out that Dr. Miller talks about spirituality, patients who weren't even my own patients would pull me over to the corner. One woman, who I happened to be Jewish, she happened to be Catholic, turned to me one day and said, Dr. Miller, I have some very heavy news. They will be sending me away upstate, which means no longer will she be living in Manhattan, struggling through the revolving door of treatment, but is really being sent away. She said, will you come with me? I need to talk to you and come with me, Matt. Walk down the hall, leave the offices, enter the kitchen, go way, way back into the pots and pans closet, and There in the way, way back. Dr. Miller, will you pray with me before I'm sent upstate? We prayed. She in her way, I prayed in my way. And what I saw was a great peace and a comfort coming over her. I didn't know how to pray her way, but I knew how to be with her in a common state of spiritual love and support. The next day, I showed up, Shankar. Her bed was made. She was gone. I shared this story with one of the unit chiefs who's a very good person and was, I think, trying to speak in my best interest. The unit chief said what you did was beautiful. It was completely right. Don't ever tell anyone you did that. There was a sense that somehow spirituality doesn't belong here. Psychotherapy, mental health treatment is medical, so called biological. What is this sort of airy, fairy, indeterminate, unmeasurable, otherly thing of spirituality?

[A]

Lisa I understand that going home from work from this inpatient psychiatric unit, you noticed people in the subway. Now, these people were not clinically ill, but you felt that in their own way, they were also not healthy.

[B]

Shankar Once we see, in its intense, most grueling form, mental illness, whether it's a deep depression or profound anxiety, as a therapist, it's then very easy to eyeball the subway, be at a dinner party, and see a whiff of that depression or anxiety. So I left the inpatient unit, and just about every day I'd ride home on the subway and see on people's faces and in their countenance what weighs on them. But one day, Shankar, I saw a gentleman whose eyes were bright like the sun. He wasn't smiling across his mouth, but there was a joy through him. He was an Orthodox Jew, probably Chabad, and I could see that he was davening. He was praying right there on the subway. I felt the illumination, I felt the joy that I'd seen in the patients on the inpatient unit during our Yom Kippur service and in this sort of struggle of more suffering than we really need to have in our lives. On the subway, in a restaurant, in the coffee shop, I saw what was equal and opposite to the suffering. And it was the illumination of spiritual awareness and connection.

[A]

I understand, Lisa, that in your own personal life, you and your partner had occasion to examine what you yourselves were doing. You had been focused on getting good educations and launching your careers. And from the outside, anyone could look at your lives and say, you know, here's a couple that's really made it. But I understand that from time to time, you would look at each other and ask, is this really all there is?

[B]

After years and years of hard work, my husband and I, for years and years, he had gone to law school and then worked in a law firm. I had gotten my PhD and then worked in clinical and research settings. We worked, you know, not 60 hours a week, probably more. We were more like the 70, 80 hour a week type, driven by good things. We weren't overly obsessed with money. We were driven by the purpose of our work, the mission of our work. But I'd say that there was a lopsidedness. We were getting a little narrow in our focus. And the people we loved very much, who were so kind, we could turn to in a moment of loss or pain. Good friends lived in the same culture with us. So our dinner parties would have a lot of talk about, you know, well, once I make partner or if we can move over from second Avenue to Lexington, or, you know, there's a promotion coming up or I'm moving from a two to a three bedroom. There was sort of almost a low grade Monopoly game going on that was narrowly achievement oriented. And it felt empty as a tiny.

[A]

So, Lisa, there's a clinical term called dysthymia. What does it mean?

[B]

Dysthymia is a low grade nagging, haunting, sort of like a milquetoast gray depression. It's a dissatisfaction and hedonia, where things don't delight us. We fail to experience the full delight of life. Dysthymia is quite prevalent. It's very prevalent in young people. If we don't like our job, if we haven't found our deeper path. Dysthymia is a low grade depression that lingers and lingers and even becomes livable. So it becomes a normal, low grade pain or disengagement.

[A]

I mean, in some ways you were seeing it on the subway, you were seeing it at your dinner parties with your friends.

[B]

Yes, it's very easy to try to override the emptiness of dysthymia through a promotion or a new apartment or a vacation. But dysthymia runs deeper than the outward markers of achievement than the Monopoly game. Dysymia is, you could say, a hole in the heart, a hole in the soul. It is a yearning for a deeper connection in life.

[A]

In her work with patients and in her own social world, Lisa was seeing that the conventional approaches to achieving a good life were falling short. When we come back, exploring possibilities that lie beyond the material and the practical. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Support for Hidden Brain. Comes from Schwab. Investing with Schwab is like spending a Saturday at a great farmer's market. You can fill your reusable tote with a bit of everything. Maybe you go for some free range self directed investing or perhaps you pick up a few farm fresh trades while you peruse. You can even get help from a dedicated advisor. That's full service wealth management. Mix, match and change your mind whenever you want because at Schwab you can invest your way. No matter your goals or appetite for investing, Schwab has everything you need all in one place. Visit schwab.com to learn more. Support for Hidden Brain Comes from Defender Even the boldest journey starts small with a single decision to go somewhere new. The Defender 110 is a vehicle built for those moments for drivers capable of great things whether they're headed toward uncharted territory or just a weekend away. The Defender 110 combines on road presence with off road capability. It looks tough because it is with an exterior engineered for durability. Inside capability meets comfort with seating for five and the option for seven plus refined finishes and thoughtful design. It's also packed with intuitive tech like 3D surround cameras with clearside ground view to help you navigate rough terrain and the next generation PIVI Pro infotainment system designed to keep you informed, connected and in control. No matter the path. The Defender 110 is naturally capable, expedition ready and built. For those ready to move forward, explore the [e-mail]. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Modern science has given us astonishing tools to map the brain, sequence the genome, and analyze the body's chemistry. Many scientists interpret these advances as proof that life is nothing more than matter in motion. At Teachers College, Columbia University psychologist Lisa Miller is interested in the possibility that the human brain is built to have a spiritual dimension to it. For many years now, she has deployed scientific methods to study this aspect of the mind. Lisa Both your psychological training and the culture at large gave you a model of human existence, a notion that we're all just billiard balls bouncing off each other. Unpack this metaphor for me, Shankar.

[B]

Coming through graduate school training as an intern, I learned the models of the time for treatment of depression, treatment of anxiety. We're really radical materialist models, which means that the brain is effectively an atomistically sealed brain, like a brain in the box. The depression had biological correlates that needed to be treated with medicine, but also that psychotherapy silent on spirituality, reworking life experience would also Shift. And there was evidence of this shift, the brain. But spirituality or spiritually infused religion was viewed as something outside of the medical establishment. It was separate from the biology or the neural mechanisms of the human condition. And so what I had witnessed on unit six in the hospital, on the inpatient unit in New York City said to me, no, no, no, the spiritual life is part of the same person who is recovering from depression because the illumination was so strong. So I set sail for 30 years of science, MRI studies, long term clinical course studies, epidemiological studies, genotyping studies, you name it. Any lens or set of collaborators with whom I could work to ask the question, where is spiritual awareness in the composition of the whole person? And how might spiritual awareness be healing and even protective against the most prevalent forms of suffering?

[A]

What I find fascinating about your work, Lisa, is that you are trying to marry together these two parts of yourself. You're interested in the world of transcendence, and you're also interested in scientific measurement, and you're trying to understand this dimension of our lives using scientific techniques. One of the dimensions of your research has linked spiritual experience to specific neuroanatomical and neurophysiological markers. Tell me a little bit about this work.

[B]

So, Shankar, just as there are neural correlates for depression or anxiety, just as there's neural correlates for hunger or craving or thirst, it turns out that there are neural correlates for spiritual awareness. Now, if you think about it, it would seem to make sense that we all have a common visual system, we all have a common auditory system through which to perceive. And it turns out through now 15 years of MRI studies, we all have a common set of circuits through which to perceive the transcendent. Now, it doesn't matter if I am Hindu or Jain or Jewish or Muslim or Catholic or Christian or spiritual and not religious, we all share the same core neural circuits of transcendent awareness. Of course, as in any form of perception, there's human variability in the intensity or in the nuance with which we experience perception. Shankar. What's extraordinary is that perception of the transcendent calls on the same neural circuits. No matter what tradition I may be, or even if I am spiritual but not religious, what are those circuits? Well, there are four. The first and only the first is associated with quieting the mind. It's shared, of course, with mindfulness, the disengagement of the default mode network, the racket that spins round and round. But mindfulness, as helpful as it is to bringing us present presence alone, is not sufficient for transcendent awareness. Presence is perhaps the threshold of the door through which we might then cross to experience transcendent awareness. And there are three circuits on the other side of the door. Seen in all people of all faith traditions at a moment of transcendent connection. First, the bonding network comes up online. The same bonding network engaged when we are babies in our parents or grandparents arms. Through which we feel and know that we are loved and held. The universe, God, Hashem, Allah, Jesus, whatever one's sacred word loves and holds us. We are absolutely held. That is not a belief. That is a perception. It is a felt perception. The second circuit to come online is attentional. We see a shift from the very narrow top down dorsal attention. Why did I say that? What's going to happen next? Am I going to get fired? Did the check bounce?

[A]

What?

[B]

What could I have done differently? The narrow assumption of radical control. What do I want? How am I going to get it? Yields and gives way to the ventral attention network. Where suddenly the lights come back on. There's a broad landscape before us and we ask what is life showing me now? At which moment many people say a new direction pops. A door never seen before opens an inspired sense of guidance. We are loved and held. We are guided. We are guided. And third, we are loved and held. We are guided. And the parietal that puts in and out hard boundaries. That lets us know, Shankar, that you sit in one city and I sit in a sister city. That we each have our exquisitely beautiful, diverse bio body suits. We have different GPS coordinates. We are a point and we are a wave. We are distinct and beautifully diverse. And we are part of one unit of whole, one family of life. Loved, held, guided and never alone. Loved, held, guided and never alone moves together. These three circuits move together. It's not that we're loved, but we're not guided. Or we're guided, but we're not. The awakened brain moves together with these three circuits. Everyone on earth has the capacity to be in a deep transcendent relationship. Through which they know the deeper force in life.

[A]

I understand that in your brain imaging studies you find changes in cortical thickness in people who are especially spiritual.

[B]

Every human being on earth is born with a natural capacity for spiritual awareness. We know this through twin studies. We can look at twins raised together, twins raised apart. And factor out commonalities of function of shared environment, shared genes. So for instance, temperament is about half innate, half environmentally formed. IQ is about 2/3 innate or one third environmentally formed. The capacity through which we Experience transcendent relationship is innate. It is one third innate. Every single one of us is born with the natural neuro circuits for transcendent awareness. But 1/3 innate, 2/3 environmentally formed means that our parents and grandparents, the 10,000 exchanges at school, our pastor, priest, iman, rabbi, our relations to nature, and as we get older, we choose our environment both outer, the company we keep, the service that we offer or not to our world and the inner environment. Whether I meditate, whether I pray, whether I reflect or read sacred transcendent text. Two thirds environmentally formed means that, yes, we are all naturally spiritual beings, but we have the opportunity of our lifetime to cultivate our spiritual awareness. When we do, we see literally a thicker cortex across the regions of the awakened brain. Sustained spiritual life, prayer, meditation, service, right action, often within a faith community, often service outside a faith community. Sustained spiritual life is associated with cortical thickness across the regions of the awakened brain. Now, by sustained spiritual life, in this study, which we published in JAMA Psychiatry, we looked over eight years, people who sustained a strong spiritual life, who said, my personal spiritual life is highly important to me over eight years, showed a thicker cortex across the regions of the awakened brain. Shankar what makes this particularly helpful as we think back to unit six is that when we sustain our spiritual life, the cortical thickness is seen across the regions, the very same regions that are not thick but thin. In people with recurrent major depression. People with sustained spiritual lives show cortical thickness across the very same regions that are not thick but thin. If we are struggling with recurrent major depression, which is to say that spirituality and depression appear to be two sides of one coin.

[A]

I'm wondering, as you have presented these ideas, how they've been received by your colleagues. You told me that when you talked with your supervisor back in the day, your supervisor said, it's nice that you, you know, helped the patients by performing a religious service, but this is not something to put on your resume. This is not something to talk about because this in some ways is antithetical to what we're doing here. We're supposed to be scientists. We're supposed to be medical practitioners. I'm wondering how, as you have accumulated this body of research in the course of your career, how it's been received by your colleagues.

[B]

When I saw the tremendous impact of spiritual life on ameliorating, on breaking through some forms of suffering and despair, I raised the lens of science because the language of science, and in fact, the facts of science are the foundation of medically based mental health. And of course, the second reason I've always loved science is because it is jaw droppingly spectacular to look through the lens of science. So Shankar, I started publishing in a way that I hoped would speak to the field because out of every 10 variables in an article, nine of them were familiar. I used very tried and true beloved top notch data sets. I drew on the variables and the measures that everyone else in the top peer reviewed journals used. I set up the design that was familiar to people. And having effectively replicated 9 out of 10 elements of a study, I added one variable which was how personally important is spirituality or religion to you? And over time that item expanded into scales and measures of spiritual life. But I always added one and only one variable, what is the nature of your spiritual life? To a study that otherwise looked very familiar. And in this way we were able to publish in top peer reviewed journals, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry, JAMA Psychiatry, because the studies had the blue housekeeping seal of all the markers that we had come to trust as a field. Reliable measures, familiar statistics, dotted I's, crossed T's. Everything was meticulous and in keeping with the field, except for the step of advanced spiritual life. Every single article, as you know, Shankar, is submitted for peer review. Peer review is conducted blind to who the authors are. So there's no sort of cult of personality or vogue or one lab over another. And science also in the peer review process, requires that two or three scientists within or closely adjacent to the area of inquiry, weigh in on the method, weigh in on the conclusions, offer recommendations for expansion of the study. We were able over now three decades to publish our lab, often in collaboration with Fellow Labs, about 200 peer review articles and chapters, and the field around us has grown. We've tried to be collaborators in building a field as well. But I will tell you Shankar, that despite the meticulous science in top peer reviewed journals, because the findings were new, I would say people did not know yet what to do with these new scientific findings. And so for instance, we published an article that showed that an adolescent with a strong spiritual life compared to one who doesn't really know what you're talking about, was 80% protective against onset of addiction. 80% protective. Who wouldn't want that for their child? And yet when I presented these findings published in the top journal for children and adolescents, there was an utter silence and confusion. A couple people left, they got up and walked out in the middle of grand rounds later to share, well, what does that have to do with what does that have to do with psychology? But most people were just confused. The paradigm at the time didn't have a place for what on earth is going on. And so, you know, good people, good healers were confused. And a lot of this just sort of dropped silence for a while. And then culture started to change. New residents came, new psychologists came. And in the rising generation, there was more curiosity and perhaps a stronger sense of personal spiritual quest. And I saw residents light up, oh, you wanna talk about spirituality? Or I had to sign a book or offer an article. And the room felt liberated. The rising generation wanted to talk about spirituality and felt free. There were plenty of good spiritual people who were senior but perhaps didn't feel free to speak their heart about spirituality.

[A]

I'm wondering, Lisa, whether some of the resistance comes from the fact that there are many claims that people make about religion and spirituality that in fact are not scientific claims. Many people who are making claims on behalf of religion or spirituality have not done the empirical work that you have done. And so perhaps there's a knee jerk reaction among scientists to say anything that smacks of spirituality must by definition not be scientific.

[B]

Shankar One of the most important findings was put forward in 1997, replicated in 1999 by Ken Kendler at Virginia Commonwealth. And what Kendler identified was that spirituality is innate. It is 1/3 innate, 2/3 environmentally formed. Religion is environmentally transmitted almost entirely. So there's enormous confusion in a country where for 40 years there has effectively been an ice age on spiritual and religious discourse in the public square, where people in the classroom or boardroom or at a dinner party don't know how to talk about spiritual religious life without imposing or don't know where the line is, there's a tendency to simply shut down. So in that context, I have found in the 10 years I've spent sharing the science on spiritual life, resilience and mental health, I have seen enormous confusion, Shankar, over the difference between spirituality and religion through the lens of science. Religion is a gift of our parents and grandparents. We might choose a faith tradition and immerse ourselves. Religion is environmentally transmitted. Spirituality is innate. The capacity for a transcendent relationship as tracked by discrete and specific neural circuits that are universal in every human brain. So now when I'm asked, hey, you know, what about the fact that people have done all these bad things in the name of religion? I can say, well, my question as a scientist is, are they acting in a way that is consistent with natural spirituality? Is this person conducting themselves in such a way that is consistent with being loving, guiding and never leaving anyone alone. So if I hear a comment, hey wait a minute. How can you say spirituality is so good when all these bad things have been done in the name of religion? I say, well, is the practice of that so called religion consistent with natural spirituality? Are they being loving, guiding and not leaving anyone aloud?

[A]

When we come back, what science shows us about the effects of spirituality on our mental and physical health. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Lily on this show, it's fascinating to discuss the unseen forces shaping the human brain. Consider conditions like Alzheimer's disease where changes in the brain may develop up to 20 years before noticing symptoms. Talk to your doctor to understand your potential risk factors for dementia due to Alzheimer's disease and ask for a cognitive assessment. Visit brainhealthmatters.com for more information and resources. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Lowes. Get your home ready, inside and out with Lowes July 4th deals event. Save up to 45% off select major appliances plus up to an additional 25% off when bundling. Select major appliances and save $80 on a select Char Broil Performance Series gas Grill now $299. Shop Lowe's July 4th deals event valid through July 8th while supplies last. Selection varies by location. See Lowes.com for more details. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Have you had experiences in your life when you felt helped or hindered by your own spirituality? If you have a personal story that you would be willing to share with the Hidden Brain audience, or a question or comment about Lisa Miller's research, please find a very quiet room and record a voice memo on your phone. Two or three minutes is plenty. Email the file to [e-mail] using the subject line spiritual again, that's feedbackiddenbrain.org Lisa Miller is the author of the Awakened the New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life. Lisa, you found that an engagement with a personal spirituality is associated with improved stress, resilience and faster physiological recovery. How do you think spirituality protects us against the psychological and physiological effects of stress?

[B]

There are multiple pathways through which spirituality protects us against physical and mental illness. First off, the most remarkable finding in science is the scale, the magnitude at which spirituality protects against some of the most prevalent forms of suffering. The number one cause of death right now to rival auto accidents is suicide in Gen Z in high school and college. A strong personal life when shared shared in the Sangha the minyan, the fellowship amongst friends or family, is 82% protective against completed suicides. Four fifths less likely to take our life. So if I told you, Shankar, there's a little pill and you can pick up this little pill at Walgreens or the CVS at the drugstore and it will protect your child, your grandchild, all the students in your classroom. Four fifths against the leading cause of morbidity of death in young people who wouldn't give that to their child.

[A]

I understand that you and others have found that having a spiritual side to one's life is associated with greater well being and life satisfaction. Do you think this is connected to those three things you talked about earlier? That people with a spiritual side feel like they are held, that they are guided, that they're nurtured?

[B]

Precisely. We walk on an entirely different landscape. We walk on sacred landscape. When we open the aperture and let in the light through our awakened brain, life unfolds in an entirely different way. Life moves from what do I want and how am I going to get it? Really quite a transactional way of life. And by the way, who are you? How are you going to help me get what I want? Relationships of transaction, what I call narrow achieving awareness out of that narrow rut to hey, okay, I just didn't get what I wanted. I didn't get the job, my kid didn't get into the college, hey, what is life showing me now? We move from what do I want and how am I going to get it and what did I do wrong and how could I get it? Next time to wait a minute. What is life showing me now? What is the universe directing? What am I being asked to do? Am I being asked to love more deeply? Am I being asked to listen to those with whom I work or my children? Am I being given an opportunity to serve the life that is before us is so much bigger and full of portals and possibilities than we could a priori have spun or cooked up in our mind. In other words, when we can release the stranglehold of our expectations and plans and be less hardcore makers of our path, creating space to be discoverers of our journey, life unfolds in extraordinary ways. It is beyond what we might have imagined. In other words, when I can move from narrow achieving awareness to open up a relationship, a dialogue with life, I can be guided in places I didn't even know existed. I can find a job that I didn't even know was a job. I can meet someone at a party that I wouldn't have spoken to because they didn't meet my a prior criteria of a date. But if I'm open, why is the universe introducing me to this person? Now I can discover a relationship I've never dreamed of. That's a much bigger life. That is an inspired life.

[A]

So, Lisa, you've made a couple of references in this conversation to the distinction between an achievement of oriented brain and an awakened brain. Can you talk about this distinction for a moment? It's a central portion of your research career these past few decades.

[B]

Shankar. Every one of us has a capacity for two types of reasoning. On the one hand, we have achieving awareness, the ability for strategizing, tactic, research, empiricism. Achieving awareness is extremely helpful at laying out a plan. And we come to achieving awareness with a great deal of practice we learned in school. The first thing I ever received on my desk in first grade, right there in the center of my first grade desk, was a planner. In school I learned to plan, to organize to some extent to control. Achieving awareness has tremendous instrumental value. It helps us pay the rent. Achieving awareness helps us move through a scientific problem. But achieving awareness alone is utterly insufficient for a meaningful life. Achieving awareness will get us on the A train and it might send us flying at great speeds. But when we disembark, we may not even know where we are. This is what we learn in school how to do. But we all are also endowed with another form of perception, our natural awakened awareness. Awakened awareness is the capacity to perceive through intuition, perhaps a mystical experience. Awakened awareness is a receptive form of perception. Awakened awareness asks the question, what is life showing me now? What did I just perceive? That whisper of a hunch. We need both. Awakened awareness sets our North Star. Awakened awareness sets our true direction. Achieving awareness rolls out the plan how to get there. The problem in our contemporary culture is that very often we are highly versed and practiced in achieving awareness. But we don't know where we're going because we've yet to find our guiding star through our awakened awareness.

[A]

Lisa Miller is a psychologist at Teachers College, Columbia University. She's the author of the Awakened the New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life. Lisa, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

[B]

What a joy, Shankar. I so enjoyed connecting with you. Thank you.

[A]

Have you had experiences in your life when you felt helped or hindered by your own spirituality? If you have a personal story that you would be willing to share with the Hidden Brain audience, or a question or comment about Lisa Miller's research, please find a very quiet room and record a voice memo on your phone. Two or three minutes is plenty. Email the file to [e-mail] using the subject line spiritual. Again, that's feedbackiddenbrain.org Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy, Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Kwerell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our Executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's Executive editor. Our unsung hero today is Pablo Wojthaler. Pablo is a video and digital media producer at Stanford University. A few weeks ago I was at Stanford for a stop on Hidden Brain's live tour. I needed to record some audio for the show and Pablo helped me out at a studio at the Stanford Business School. Thank you, Pablo. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to share it with a friend or a family member. You never know who might find the ideas in an episode like this valuable at a difficult point in their lives. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.

[C]

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[D]

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