Early in the history of this blog, I showed some disdain for some of my reductionist biologist brethren who in their frenzy to tie religion to brain impulses ascribed the visions of Mohammed and Joseph Smith to epilepsy. The desire to reduce the entire unseen world into mechanisms, impulses, and a pile of biological functions drives some science worshippers to distraction. In the comments, I commented on how rare these seizures really are, and I stand by that comment. As a child neurologist, I don’t run into spiritual seizures. However, In fairness, any child who feels a profound oneness with God during his seizures, likely does not have the vocabulary to express the wonder of their experience. I may just have patients who have this experience who cannot express it.
While the experience is rare, it is not unique. There are many who have described these spiritual seizures. Perhaps the most verbal and most eloquent description comes from the great Russian author and epileptic, Fyodor Dostoevsky.
In fact, Dostoevsky himself stated the belief that Mohammed in his great vision of God must have had epilepsy because he recognized the experience. Curiously, though he knew and recognized this event as a seizure, It did absolutely nothing to cast doubt on the singular spiritual reality of his experience. Even though the seizure was an event happening within his brain, he was convinced that it was a physical event within his brain that gave him a very priveleged glimpse of the face of God. Far from throwing doubt on God’s existence, this experience drove him forward in the face of all kinds of obstacles, trials and discouragement. This siezure formed the absolute foundation of his faith.
The folly of discounting subjective experience with a materialist explanation is that the impulses in the brain simply do not mean that what we are sensing from those impulses is in any way not real. It would be silly to say that because you measure visual impulses in the occipital lobe as you look at an apple, olfactory impulses as you smell it, gustatory impulses as you taste it, that therefore the apple did not exist. Similarly, Dostoevsky saw the ecstatic and profound euphoria he experienced preceding his siezures as an inborn gift that put him in touch with a higher truth that people cannot ordinarily experience.
Working in this same vein, the 1996 movie Phenomenon features John Travolta as George Malley, an ordinary man who develops a brain tumor that enhances and supplements his brain function rather than destroying it as an ordinary tumor would. A neurosurgeon sees an opportunity to advance scientific knowledge by operation on his tumor in order to learn about brain function in a way that had never been done before, calling himself George’s “biographer” in a sense. George then point out that ” that isn’t me, it’s just my brain.”
The real challenge for any of us when we come to any profound experience or realization is to embrace it, to share it and to help others experience it as well. What the fictional George had to offer was a glimpse of what was inside each of us, our true human potential. While the story is fictional, the moral rings true. We are more than our synapses and neuronal impulses. These represent sensations, ideas, inferences and experiences of something more, something real and powerful, something central to our humanity.
So when an atheist lazily discounts religious experience and accounts of the divine as simply seizures, he is missing the point. He is buying into an all to prevalent attitude that sees brokenness or dysfunction where true beauty and mystery might lie. This theme is masterfully explored by author Mark Salzman, in his book, Lying Awake. Based on a true story, he recounts the story of a Carmelite Nun who experiences the very seizures Dostoevsky describes, which drive her lifes choices to enter the sisterhood. Over time these ecstatic visions are accompanied by a more and more severe headache, leading to the discovery that seizures are behind her experience with the divine. The Nun is then given a heartbreaking choice, have her temporal lobe lesion removed surgically and cure her headache, losing a profound connection with God in the process, or to keep the connection, knowing her headaches may grow worse, and the episodes may eventually debilitate her. Salzman makes a very strong case for the counterintuitive, that one could very reasonably choose to keep their seizures, seeing them as key to their sense of self identity and happiness. That to lose her seizures would be to lose something wonderful and amazing. Doubtless the New Atheist crowd would be stupefied at such a crazy idea. Perhaps because they have already severed this profoundly human connection and experience from themselves, leaving them the poorer for it.
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October 22, 2010 at 7:35 pm
Lori
Thank you for this commentary. I have a dear friend who experiences “God seizures” and he, at times, is reluctant to discuss them openly because they are so sacred to him. He most certainly does not share his experiences with doctors. But it is wonderful to see a medical professional with such clarity and integrity of thought.
October 23, 2010 at 10:56 pm
Quezz
It’s been brought to my attention recently that I may also experience “God seizures,” though I have never been diagnosed with epilepsy. They usually happen when I meditate for a length of time. I am often walking or in an activity when they happen, so I’m a little confused as to whether or not these “God seizures” are seizures at all, or perhaps some other kind of brain activity. I am a practicing Catholic, so I can see your point on not discounting these experiences as spiritual as well as neurological. Still…I am curious if I might have some form of epilepsy, and if it can get worse.
October 24, 2010 at 10:31 pm
Doc
If they are triggered by meditation, I seriously doubt they are epilepsy, particularly if you don’t get tired and confused afterward.
March 2, 2012 at 2:56 pm
Ray Ledesma
For the last ten years I have had said quote unquote God seizures that left hospital staff in awe.On March 11 I had a vision in a hospital that was so clear in vision and a conversation that started in the spiritual vision after a frontal lobe seizure.I told my primary care doctor and she sent me to mental health.Mental health wanted to medicate me but I told them that this angel vision was protected under my Freedom of Religion.I being a lay man into the science for the reason why divinity visions happen in certain frontal lobe patients.For me to mentally understand the vision I have accepted it as a Heavenly vision that has opened the window to spiritual visitation dreams that are happening more than before.I have been taking an active role in the research of what had happen to me on March 11th 2011. Currently I spend 10 hours with senior citizens in a senior citizen center.Sometimes telling the story.
February 3, 2013 at 8:28 pm
Christine
It’s as though a wave takes over me and I leave my body. It’s like being in a dream state, only I remember every thing. Like looking beyond the physical, seeing creation and be recycled. It’s terrifying and I feel as though I’m struggling to exist.