Book review by Dr. Keith Beasley. The inner and outer journey of a scientist.
“Paradoxically, it may require scientific measurements to prove that there is something beyond the physical, before the mainstream can accept it.”
Lisa Miller, The Awakened Brain: The Psychology of Spirituality, pp272, Penguin, ISBN 978-0-141-99103-0, £10.99
This is a book for our time: a personal and yet scientifically valid exploration into the overlap between the evolution of professional psychology and the process of spiritual awakening.
Lisa Miller is a professor in the clinical psychology program at Columbia University, Teachers College, and holds a joint appointment in the department of Psychiatry at Columbia Medical School. She describes how, through a series of projects, analysing factors affecting depression, associated MRI scans and related case studies, she has been able, during the course of her career development, to demonstrate that spiritual awakening can often offer a more effective response to depression than that offered by conventional psychiatric, medicinal or psychotherapeutic ones.
Her work represents a major breakthrough in bringing humankind’s inner dimension into mainstream medicine, identifying links not just between spirituality and clinical depression but a clear material physiological mechanism.
She includes mention of, for example, work by Dr Brad Peterson at Columbia, using neuro imaging techniques, which identify a thinning of the brain’s right cortex, in individuals with depression and other mental illness. In another MRI study refered to, “the subjects for whom spirituality and religion were highly important had a healthier neural structure than those for whom spirituality and religion held medium, low or no importance.” (p150).
Science is finally seeing a spiritual mind, (or transcendence consciousness as I would call it) showing up in their physical measurements.
Some of us might question why we need scientific proof when, inwardly, we know this anyway, but we still live in a material world. Paradoxically, it may require scientific measurements to prove that there is something beyond the physical, before the mainstream can accept it.
That being the case, the more people we can get to read this book and discuss it, the more rapid can a spiritual awakening proceed.
Whilst most of the examples and analyses presented relate to depression, Prof Miller also addresses other mood disorders, addiction and substance abuse, in an equally compelling way. This book is thus essential reading to anyone looking for solutions to the mental health crisis facing much of the world today.
Reading Lisa’s account of bringing a spiritual dimension into her psychotherapeutic practice, research and teaching, whilst navigating her own very personal journey towards parenthood, highlights one of the many integrating theories that she discusses: as above, so below. For example, how our personal, inner, development can mirror and be mirrored in our professional, outer, development. As such, this eminently readable paperback satisfies both the rational, scientific mind, emotional self … and the soul.
This book is so good I read all of it. Usually, I rapid read or skim a book, and that is sufficient to get its gist. Prof Miller’s work is both so packed with interesting and meaningful ideas and information and an engaging story that I just couldn’t skip any of it. The main text, broken down into sensibly sized chapters, is complemented by an extensive notes section (including wide-ranging academic references) and a useful, detailed index. As such, this is as much academic reference and research material as it is a thought-provoking text for anyone interested in personal development, spirituality or psychology.
Although author notes at the start emphasise that this book is not intended to be used for diagnosis or treatment of any specific medical condition, the ideas presented by Lisa could be of immense value to many who are either going through a major life challenge, on a personal journey or enabling such a journey in others.
Included is perhaps one of the most accessible explanations of how quantum theory might explain such effects as synchronicity that I have read anywhere. Lisa describes the wave-particle duality, the uncertainty principle and entanglement in a way that normalises the quantum reality: that focusing on something that changes its state. If that is true at the subatomic level, why not at the level of human psyche?
The basic premise of this book is that we humans have an innate capacity for and need for a spiritual dimension to our lives.
Whilst that will come as no surprise to those reading this review, to many in the scientific and medical community it is still an almost incomprehensible statement. Yet Prof Miller is able to justify it with sound science in a number of specific instances.
She presents strong evidence, for example, that individuals who have a spiritual practice or perspective are less likely to become seriously depressed and better able to manage that depression more successfully. Those of us who have and enable transcendent experiences won’t be surprised by her findings but to publish hard evidence to support it would seem to be a major step in humanities evolutionary progress. Now the rational mind can agree that “Spirituality is a consciousness for which all of our brains are wired: and that, long-term, the spiritually engaged brain is a healthier brain”, and depression looks like “a sensitivity or perceptual capacity–a knock at the door for the opportunity of an awakened brain” (p154).
Chapter 12, ‘The two modes of awareness’ will be of particular interest to readers of this site. Comparing MRI scans associated with spiritual experience compared to other mental states, Miller identifies an ‘awakened awareness’ (characterised by a sense of oneness) in contrast to ‘achieving awareness’: the more typical state of mind in today’s striving society. She goes on (in chapter 13) to discuss how we can choose which mode of consciousness to dwell in and to debate the need to integrate them. Fascinating insights, of immediate benefit to all of us. Do buy it, read it . . . and donate, for example, to a School of Psychology of your choice . . .
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