When we have a group of people that can think compassion, think peace, think goodwill and demonstrate it and be able to maintain that state of being where they’ve memorized it internally, nothing in their external world can move them from it. When they’re in a state of being, they’re more prone to do things and think things equal to that state of being.

Welcome, blessed viewers to this week’s edition of Science and Spirituality, the conclusion of a two-part series featuring excerpts of interviews with respected scientists regarding how our brain is connected to spirituality and self-transformation.

The brain contains a massive and complex neural network with approximately 100 billion nerve cells. It monitors and regulates key body functions such as breathing and heart rate, receives sensory information, manages physical motion like walking and talking, and is involved in reasoning and dreaming.

The major parts of the brain are the hindbrain, which has the cerebellum and brainstem, the midbrain, and the forebrain which has the diencephalon and the cerebrum. During much of the modern era, mainstream science has avoided focusing on spirituality in neurological research.

However, in recent years, there have been an increasing number of studies regarding how the human brain functions and reacts during meditation, prayer, near death experiences, and when one is engaged in focused constructive thinking.

(Andrew) Newberg, the person who did the studies of the Buddhist monks and meditators, got qualitative descriptors of what these people felt like during their most advanced stages of meditation. And they said, “I feel unconditionally loved. I do not feel a sense of the self. I feel like I am totally connected to the universe.”

So I would say that is kind of the overall spiritual transcendence. And if you think of what the term transcendent means, it means to go beyond the self, which really fits with the neuropsychological studies.

It has been well documented that regular meditation changes the way the brain functions. Thanks to the development of state-of-the-art tools, neuroscientists now better understand the role of brain. Some of the many instruments they use include rCBF (regional Cerebral Blood Flow), real time MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), MEG (Magnetoencephalography), and improved EEG (electroencephalography).

In a study, they did these SPECT [Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography] scans, with Buddhist meditators and Franciscan nuns, and that shows what parts of the brain get blood flow. When these Buddhist monks were at their most heightened state of awareness, they pushed a button. They took a picture of blood flow of the brain. And same with the nuns. What happened?

Parts of the frontal lobe became very active. Parts of parietal lobe became very active. And then the right parietal lobe shut down, so it got less blood flow.

Meditation is the process of knowing yourself, and understanding who you are. Because we have such a large frontal lobe, we can observe our own thoughts, own actions and our own behaviors. And that concept in neuroscience is called “meta-cognition.”

A number of brain imaging studies show that patients suffering from clinical depression or obsessive compulsive disorder, when they start meditating and doing what we call “meta-cognition”, which is to take a distance from your own thoughts, your own beliefs, your own emotions, then it’s possible to change the functioning of the brain.

The benefits of meditation are immense. Scientific studies have shown that practicing meditation leads to lowering of heart rate, chronic pain alleviation, and erasing of negative thinking.

A recent study found that long-time practitioners have significantly larger volumes of the right hippocampus and increased gray matter in the right thalamus, left interior temporal gyrus, and right orbito-frontal cortex as compared to the rest of the population. Interestingly, all of these regions are associated with control of one’s emotions and researchers feel that this may be an explanation for the emotional stability seen in those who meditate.

So the process of meditation requires unlearning and relearning. Or what neuroscience calls “pruning synaptic connections” and “sprouting new connections.” Because we can do that, that allows us to modify and change our behavior so that we can do a better job in life.

You really can change the way certain brain structures function, and brain networks underlying all sorts of negative emotional states.

While our daily thoughts may seem to be inconsequential, this is far from the case. Our thinking literally has the power to change our genes.

You have genetically inherited patterns of brain activity. There is no question about that. That is completely non-controversial, but your genetically inherited patterns of brain activity are going to have very, very large effects on how you live your life.

However, if you realize that you can transcend, you can go beyond those patterns of brain activity through the power of your attention, and through focusing your attention more wisely, you can change the expression of those genes.

When Science and Spirituality returns, we will continue to examine the brain’s role in spirituality and effecting self-transformation. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

You can see that everything we were saying here about how focused attention changes your brain is very compatible with that, because you’re basically forming a view of the self, you are, through prayer and meditation, coming to see what God wants you to be.

Welcome back to Science and Spirituality featuring distinguished scientists speaking about how the brain is interrelated with spirituality and can be re-mapped to significantly change our physical and mental state.

Some habits are deeply ingrained and imprinted in our brains and thus become even more entrenched as we grow older. If we do not focus our attention, or deeply concentrate, on changing an unwanted trait that we have, scientists such as Dr. Bruce Lipton, who is an expert in cell biology, say these habits stay with us permanently.

From before birth to two years of age, a child will express predominately delta activity, which is very low frequency brain activity. When we express that, we're essentially sleeping or not being conscious. It doesn't mean the child's unconscious. The child is totally present but not engaged in what's going on. It seeing, observing it and downloading it, but doesn't like (to) interfere with the download. Doesn't say, "Gee, that was a good behavior. That was bad behavior.”

It just watches you and learns the behavior. It's not being consciously involved in the learning. Sub-consciousness is not consciousness. Consciousness is creative. Sub-consciousness are tapes. Where did you get the tapes? Oh, your subconscious was programmed before birth up through six years of age without you even being involved. You learned tapes about how to live.

After you get past six, this development of the pre-frontal cortex region here, which is where our central source of consciousness comes from, self-consciousness, self-reflection is an add-on really. And as a matter of fact it's an option. A lot of people in this world don't even use consciousness. The reason is, you don't need it.

Once you learn the program, it's just repetition. When you are not paying attention to your own consciousness, you are playing tapes that are not even yours. And you don’t even see it. Because the sub-consciousness works in-perceptively, it’s so fast that it doesn’t even engage consciousness.

You see, every time we have a thought we make a chemical. So if we have a great thought or, if have an unlimited thought, we make chemicals that make us feel great or feel unlimited. If we have negative thoughts or self- depreciating thoughts, we make chemicals that make us feel negative or unworthy.

So this immaterial thing called thought fires a set of circuits in the brain that produces a chemical to signal the body for us to feel exactly the way we’re just thinking. The moment we feel the way we think, we begin to think the way we feel, which produces more chemicals for us to think

This creates a big loop.) the way we feel. And this loop, the cycle of thinking and feeling, and feeling and thinking creates what I call a state of being and it’s the cycle of thinking and feeling, and feeling and thinking over time that begins to condition the body to memorize that emotional state better than the conscious mind.

The power of thought can affect the brain to such a degree that if one’s thoughts are continually not on a constructive level, it and the entire bodily system can be affected in a very negative way. By contrast, if our thoughts and attitude are positive, our brain reacts differently and our body is healthier and outlook on life is sunnier.

We live in two states of mind: we live in survival or creation. When we live in those states of anger or aggression or hatred or judgment or fear, anxiety or insecurity or pain or suffering or depression, it’s those chemicals that are created from the chemicals of stress or survival that activate those states of mind. It’s the redundancy of those chemicals or the chemicals that push the genetic buttons that begin to cause disease.

If you’re thinking and feeling has been negative for the last twenty years, your mind may be thinking positively, but your body is remembering being negative. Ninety percent of who we are by the time we’re 35 years old is sitting in a subconscious set of programs. Automatic programs that operate without our conscious mind.

So here’s the 10 percent of your conscious mind wanting to change against 90 percent of who we’ve become as a personality. So we have to learn how to get into the operating system. It takes going past the analytical mind to be able to do that. And that takes practice.

Our sincere gratitude goes to the notable scientists featured today for sharing their insights on the brain, mind and consciousness. We wish all of them success in their further study of the brain and how self-transformation and spiritual experience are related to this fantastic organ.

For more information on the scientists on today’s program, please visit the following websites Dr. Mario Beauregard Dr. Joe Dispenza Dr. Brick Johnstone Dr. Bruce Lipton Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz

Thank you, intelligent viewers, for your company on today’s episode of Science and Spirituality. Coming up next is Words of Wisdom after Noteworthy News here on Supreme Master Television. May our planet always be united by love and grace.