Sandra Blakeslee
Sandra Blakeslee writes about science for the New York Times from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her specialty is neuroscience. Her latest book, The Body Has a Mind of Its Own, co-written with her science-writer son Matthew Blakeslee, will be published in August 2007. She has co-authored On Intelligence with Jeff Hawkins, Phantoms in the Brain with V.S. Ramachandran, and four books on the long-term effects of divorce with Judith Wallerstein. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and returned Peace Corps volunteer (Borneo), she co-directs the Santa Fe Writing Workshop.
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 Flesh Made SoulCan a new theory in neuroscience explain spiritual experience to a non-believer?  September 25, 1974. I am on the delivery table at a maternity hospital run by Swiss-German midwives in Bafut, Cameroon. My daughter, Abi, arrives at 1:30 a.m. but because no bed is available, I lie awake in the kerosene lamplight waiting for the dawn. Mornings in this West African highland are chilly and calm. Swirls of woodsmoke carpet the ground. On a nearby veranda, the peace is shattered by the high-pitched ululations of a young woman. Her arms are raised above her head, bearing a tiny bundle. It is her dead infant. As she paces up and down, grieving, I reach for my sleeping newborn and hold her to my body, shaking. The next morning, as dawn breaks, I am in a private room and again the ululations pierce the stillness. But this time the sounds convey elation. A grandmother walks the veranda, holding newborn twins–male firstborns–in her arms. A birth, a death, more births. So close. Palpable. These transformative events somehow conspire to propel me, while sitting up in bed, into an altered state of consciousness. I am floating in a vast ocean of timelessness. My right hand holds my mother's hand. In her right hand is her mother's hand, which is holding her mother's hand and so on into the depths of time. My left hand holds my daughter's hand, which is holding her daughter's hand, who is holding her daughter's hand and so on into an infinite future. Time stands still. My mind and body expand in a state of pure ecstasy. Again, I am floating. The spiritual experience envelops me–for how long I don't know–until I come back into my body and observe my baby by my side. |