Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of watching a program on PBS which aligned almost exactly to a growing body of thought I have been pursuing over the past few years relating specifically to experiences of spiritual or 'religious' significance which many people within our community speak about and sometimes puzzle over. The program was called Secrets of the Mind and it broadcast on October 23, 2001.

Over the past few years I have become fairly certain that behaviors and experiences which fall loosely into the category of 'extreme sports' are mirrors to what many of us have experienced in this lifestyle. We are drawn to the edges, to force our minds against the threshold of what we can dare. Fear has a constant presence but the elixir that entices us is not so easily captured by the idea that our endeavor is merely to face such fears as some form of internal challenge to be conquered.

From the outside it is rather difficult to parallel these types of personal choices with the language of intimate spiritual awakening; how do you equate launching yourself off a high bridge with a bungie cord binding your feet to an essential vivid 'divine' experience? Yet, in the same moment if you are the person so launched you are aware that this is exactly what you have felt and the touch of it is more powerful than any drug ever invented. It will bring you back to the edge of the bridge over and over, hungry, yearning.

Dr. Ramachandran, (University of California, San Diego) within this documentary offered an intriguing insight into how the brain identifies an experience as being trancendent, immensely personal or intimate and overwhelmingly spiritual. Dr. Ramachandran explored this question by looking at people who had suffered specific brain injuries or trauma. Most of us know in a rather general way that when we are confronted with an 'extreme' situation we tend to identify that moment as having transformed us, often drawing us inexplicably toward an experience of spiritual revelation. Dr. Ramachandran wanted to know why and perhaps more interestingly, how this occurs.

Some of us would like to believe that such events, traumas or crisis in our lives are great learning experiences and much has been written to prompt us toward such a conclusion. Dr. Ramachandran's examination of this question has not really negated this idea but does tend to approach it from a slightly more scientific viewpoint.

One of Dr. Ramachandran's patients had suffered an accident which left them subject to intense frontal lobe brainstorms, seizures. This patient's father noted that the actual seizure was not really what they were dealing with, it was the after affects, the earthquake and aftershocks of the mind that had altered their lives so profoundly. As Dr. Ramachandran explored this situation he proposed some intriguing answers to what this patient was experiencing and why. He suggested that the normal activity of the mind washes across an 'emotional landscape' and makes hills and valleys as we relate emotion to our surroundings; when this patient had a seizure the activity of his mind accelerated and the mind no longer 'washed' across his emotional landscape but 'eroded' it at a much higher pace. He suggested that this type of accelerated mental activity also occurs when the mind is placed under trauma or stress. This 'eroded' landscape pushed the emotions outside of the range we would consider to be 'normal' and propelled the individual into extreme emotional and (transcendent) states. The patient within this actual event related everything within their perception of reality to be resonating with divine influences. The patient suggested that it was his belief that it was possible that all 'religious' messiah's noteworthy in human history may have been subjected to these or similar brain seizures which caused this emotional landscape to erode into much higher peaks and valleys propelling the mind into thoughts, ideas and experiences that the individual had never believed were even possible. It was interesting to note that this same patient had express a resounding 'lack' of religious or spiritual belief prior to his accident.

Dr. Ramachandran went one step further to suggest to the scientific community that there may very well be a distinct area of the brain which has evolved to contain or express spiritual and philosophical ideas and belief's. This suggestion connoted the possibility of a 'religious' center in the brain (highly controversial). The Dr. went on to suggest that spirituality or religious exploration may be part of our survival mechanisms as a species.

I found this documentary quite intriguing and could easily relate the practices of sensory stimulation or 'applied mental stresses' which are used in the S/m community to trigger these same heightened emotional floods, just as I could relate this to the person who bungie jumps off bridges in order to touch the face of god.

I believe that somewhere on the PBS site you can order a copy of the video of this documentary and for free you can download a 'teaching' transcript of what was said. I am pasting the PBS link here for those of you interested in exploring this a bit further. http://www.pbs.org/

One final note - in the 1600's Descartes identified the pineal gland (within the brain) to be the 'seat of the soul', a unique structure suspended within the brain which in conjunction with the lateral ventrical structures of the brain unite to form the structure identified as 'the Swan' - emblematic of the fully enlightened being. The pineal gland is associated with the Ajna Chakra - command chakra or that which carries thoughts and psychic phenomena, and how we acquire inner perception. Our symbol for the medical community is comprised of these ancient and in my humble opinion 'advanced' ideas regarding healing, health and spirituality as irretrievably intwined. We appear in this 'modern' time to lag far behind our less civilized ancestors.