The Health Hypothesis
Chapter 11 in Thesis – On the Universal Meaning and Significance of Spirituality –
Until now, we have seen that there is good evidence and reason to believe that spirituality, whatever its ultimate nature turns out to be, reflects a universal and fundamental part of human nature. It is therefore also likely important to human life and possibly vital. However, further investigation is needed to establish how vital spirituality may be for human life if at all. There are arguably plenty of universal parts of human nature which may be possible and even desirable to live without, such as sexual violence and territoriality (Brown, 1991). So, while the conclusion that spirituality is based in a universal reality, fundamental to human nature may imply that it is also vital, but it is not sufficient on its own.
In the definitions, we defined a part of a system to be vital to the extent that its functioning correlates positively with the vitality of the whole. I also said that health and lifespan would be measurable indicators of the vitality of the whole of a person. If spirituality is truly comparable to thoughts and emotions in being vital parts of human nature that would be dangerous to live without, then we would expect to find ample evidence that spirituality correlates with mental and physical health and lifespan. In other words, we would expect that those with poorer spiritual lives would exhibit lower health and lifespan, and those with richer spiritual lives would exhibit greater health and lifespan. In terms of the consciousness definition, we would expect those who are more engaged in the navigation of their experience of consciousness and its phenomena to be healthier and vice versa. In this section we will examine this evidence and thereby give an answer to the question “should spirituality be considered a vital dimension to human life?”.
Effects of Religion and Spirituality on Health
In 2012 the second edition of the handbook of religion and health conducted a thorough analysis of the available evidence on the effects of religion and spirituality on mental and physical health. They found that 4% of the studies showed that religious and spiritual people (R/S people) experience worse mental health and 8,5% of the studies showed that R/S people experience worse physical health (Koenig et al., 2012). However, the vast majority of the studies showed that R/S people experience better physical and mental health.
“Indeed, at least two-thirds of these studies report that R/S people experience more positive emotions (well-being, happiness, life satisfaction), fewer emotional disorders (depression, anxiety, suicide, substance abuse), more social connections (social support, marital stability, social capital), and live healthier lifestyles (more exercise, better diet, less risky sexual activity, less cigarette smoking, more disease screening, better compliance with treatment). This helps to explain why R/S people on average are physically healthier (less cardiovascular diseases, better immune and endocrine functions, perhaps less cancer and better prognosis, and greater longevity overall). For many mental and physical conditions examined in the chapters of this volume, as the quality of studies increases, there is an increased likelihood of finding positive relationships between R/S and health.”(Koenig et al., 2012).
These conclusions do not bode well for the rising population of nones and especially for those who are neither religious nor spiritual. Indeed, while religious affiliations is dropping significantly in the US, we are simultaneously seeing a dramatic rise in mental health disorders, with a 62% increase in major depression (2009-2017) and a 71% increase in serious psychological distress among young adults (2008-2017) (Twenge et al., 2017), These numbers are so bad among students that some researchers argue that we are in a mental health crisis (Evans et al., 2018).
Extraordinary Health in Spiritual Athletes
Moving beyond the general relationship between R/S people and health we can also see that some of the most extraordinary levels of health have been observed in what may be considered spiritual athletes. In 2017 a seminal work in the science of meditation was published – Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body (Goleman & Davidson, 2018). After a long struggle during their career, the authors finally got the chance to study what is called olympic level meditators which are people with between 12000 and 62000 hours of meditation under their belt. These individuals showed remarkable mental and physical measurement outcomes, never before recorded in the history of neuroscience.
One Yogi named Mingur Rinpoche had 62.000 hours of meditation under his belt was able to raise the electrical activity in his empathy circuitry by 700-800% on command, he was able to effortlessly maintain a highly synchronized gamma wave brain state for extended durations, a state normally only observed in split moments when biting into an apple and the like. Furthermore, Mingur was 41 years old at the time of the study, yet the physical health of his brain corresponded to the average state of a 33-year-old. Insofar as biological age is an indicator of lifespan, we have here a correlation between spirituality and lifespan, one of the indicators of vitality according to the definition of vitality. These kinds of results were no fluke, for they were not just true of Mingur. They were true of all 21 yogis who were formally studied at the lab. “Like Mingyur, they entered the specified meditative states at will, each one marked by a distinctive neural signature. As with Mingyur, these adepts have shown remarkable mental dexterity, instantly and with striking ease mobilizing these states: generating feelings of compassion, the spacious equanimity of complete openness to whatever occurs, or laser-sharp, unbreakable focus.”(Goleman & Davidson, 2018)
Such feats of mental gymnastics had never been observed by science before this research. One of the authors most striking conclusions from their research also became the title of their book “Altered Traits”. Their conclusion was that altered states would become traits if sufficiently inhabited, i.e., anybody might become a compassionate person provided they had found a way to inhabit a state of compassion for extended durations. This state to trait dynamic was also key to understanding the extraordinary results of the olympic level meditators, who had inhabited altered states intensively for up to 62.000 hours during their lifetime. “They show clear signs of altered traits, such as large gamma waves in synchrony among far- flung brain regions—a brain pattern not seen before in anyone—and which also occurs at rest among those yogis who have done the most hours of practice. While strongest during the practices of open presence and of compassion, the gamma continues while the mind is at rest, though to a lesser degree.”(Goleman & Davidson, 2018)
These individuals also consistently exhibited slowed aging suggesting that these healthy traits were not just mental but also physical. These breakthrough studies in the field of contemplative neuroscience are evidence for just how far the relationship between spiritual practice and human health can potentially go and thereby strengthen the relationship.
Health Effects of Spirituality Independent of Religion
These findings above are highly relevant but not sufficient to answer the question of whether spirituality is vital to human nature. This is because most of the evidence examined so far did not look at spirituality independently from religion. The people studied in the handbook of religion and health were either religious, spiritual or both. The same goes for other handbooks with similar findings such as the handbook of spirituality, religion and mental health (Rosmarin & Koenig, 2020). It is important to note that spirituality is a central aspect of religion and therefore likely accounts for many of the health effects of a religious life, making the findings relevant for our hypothesis. However, there may be many other factors included in religion which influence human health independently of spirituality such as various cultural institutions (Friedman & Hartelius, 2013).
To better understand the effects of spirituality on its own we also need to look at the effects of spirituality independently of religion. The research on olympic level meditators goes a long way, but not all the way in showing this. Most of the yogis that were studied belonged to a religion which introduces the confounding variables of a religious life, however it is clear that the health outcomes of the yogis were strongly correlated with the extent of their spiritual practice as opposed to other aspects of their religious lives. This means that it is reasonable to conclude that their spiritual lives were the main factor behind their extraordinary health effects. Nevertheless, in order to further isolate the effects of spirituality on human health from other religious variables, it is useful to look at some of the studies which have examined the causal effects of spiritual practices in isolation. Furthermore, it would be a bonus to find evidence that such spiritual practices are not just reserved for spiritual athletes, but also for regular people with ordinary lives.
Evidence from Meditation
As it happens, some of the best of this kind of evidence comes from the same book – Altered Traits (Goleman & Davidson, 2018). In a major part of their review, the authors examined studies that tested people before and after attending a meditation course. They selected only studies which applied rigorous measures to reduce confounding variables, for instance by using active control designs and sometimes by hiring researchers who were openly skeptical of the effects of meditation. These studies were performed on people with little to no prior experience with meditation and tested the effects of these interventions on a range of outcomes such as stress response, pain, attention, compassion, default mode activity, immune function and genetics.
Results showed significantly decreased activation in stress circuitry after just 30 hours of practice, and also at baseline outside of formal practice. They showed that just ten hours of mindfulness improved attention, working memory and test performance on graduate school entrance exams. Finally, they observed that three days of mindfulness training caused a significant decrease in inflammatory molecules and that a day of intensive mindfulness practice downregulates genes involved in inflammation. Overall, these effects were found to scale with practice time, producing more stable and trait-like characteristics in the participants on the various measures. Tying this back to the main argument, these studies are especially relevant because they went to great lengths to isolate the effects of the spiritual practices of meditation included from confounding variables including religion. More specifically they did this by making sure that the only relevant difference between the experimental and the control groups was the spiritual practice.
However, these effects are not restricted to the spiritual practice of meditation. In parallel to the field of contemplative neuroscience, another scientific field has investigated a radically different form of traditional spiritual practice. Like contemplative neuroscience, this field has also exploded in research interest over recent years and produced findings never seen in the history of science. This is the field of psychedelic research.
Evidence from Psychedelics
Arguably the most dramatic evidence for the positive relationship between spirituality and health comes from psychedelic research. Before the criminalization of psychedelics in the 1960s, psychedelics were widely being framed as miracle treatments capable of therapeutic changes unlike any other forms of therapy. Early results from the 50’ies and 60’es were remarkable. A review article from 1967 showed therapeutic success in 42% of OCD patients, 62% for depressive patients and 70% for anxiety neurosis (Pollan 2019). During this period the clinical use of psychedelic grew rapidly with many stories of miraculous transformations including many Hollywood celebrities. The notion that psychedelics could heal long histories psychological illness by triggering a spiritual experience was widespread, however there were few to no controlled clinical trials at the time. However, this changed dramatically in the beginning of the 21st century.
The 21st century has seen an explosion of research into psychedelics (Carhart-Harris et al., 2014) to the extent that the phenomenon is widely referred to as the “psychedelic renaissance”, a notion popularized by Michael Pollan who has told the story of psychedelics in his book “How to Change your Mind” (Pollan 2019). During the psychedelic renaissance many studies have been conducted that support the extraordinary claims made before the criminalization.
A major review article on psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, showed remarkable results in the treatment of substance use disorder, depression and anxiety. Initial results in the treatment of substance use disorder showed remarkable success, with one study reporting 67% abstinence on a 12 months followup and 60% on the 30 months follow up (Aday et al., 2020). In depression and anxiety treatment, the effects of psychedelics have been so reliable that psilocybin has been designated as a breakthrough treatment by the FDA in 2018. Additionally, remarkable results have been found in the treatment of death anxiety among people who are facing their death. Two studies showed respectively 82 % and 88% of life threatening cancer patients reporting increased well being and life satisfaction 6 months after psilocybin treatment. The experience was reported to help patience appreciate life and come to terms with their mortality.
These effects are not limited to people threatened by death. Increasing life satisfaction and wellbeing has been a generally robust finding in modern research according to the review. Psychedelics have also been shown to cause lasting personality changes, such as increased openness, extraversion and decreased neuroticism. Finally, multiple studies have shown that most participants in psychedelic research tend to rate their psychedelic experiences to be among their top 5 most meaningful experiences alongside events such as marriage and childbirth in long term follow ups. This finding was also true when asked for their top 5 most spiritually significant experiences.
The paper identified four top predictors of positive long term therapeutic effects, 1. Having a mystical experience, 2. Experiencing emotional breakthroughs. 3. experiencing connectedness and 4. Exhibiting increased entropy (Aday et al., 2020). The finding that mystical experience predict therapeutic outcome appears to be consistent across different reviews (Ko et al., 2022), and qualitative studies have shown that subjective effects of psychedelics have a strong association with therapeutic effects (Noorani et al., 2018; Belser et al., 2017). It has even been proposed that the subjective effects have been proposed to be necessary for long term effects (Yaden & Griffiths, 2020).
Finally it is crucial to emphasize that we have good reason to believe that these health effects are independent of being religious. The reason is that psychedelics have been subject to rigorous controlled conditions during the psychedelic renaissance, ensuring that the observed effects are indeed caused by the psychedelics and not by any other confounding variables. We can see this in this review of placebo-controlled trials (Luoma et al., 2020) and in the following review of randomized controlled trials (Muthukumaraswamy et al., 2021). From the evidence reviewed in this section, it appears that the health effects of psychedelics are primarily caused by the psychedelics themselves and the spiritual experiences the bring about.
Considering all the reviewed evidence, the main takeaways are 1. Brief psychedelic experiences can cause dramatic long term therapeutic change in conditions that are difficult to treat. 2. These effects are mediated by having mystical experiences and the intensity of subjective experience such as emotional breakthrough and union. 3. That such experiences commonly land among the top 5 most meaningful and spiritually significant experiences of participants’ lives. What does this mean for the hypothesis that spirituality is significantly correlated with health?
As already mentioned, the unique benefit of psychedelics in the study of spirituality, is that they are able to reliably trigger spiritual experiences under controlled conditions, making it easy to study the effects of spiritual experience including their effects on health. These results which have come out of the psychedelic renaissance are consistent with their health hypothesis and with the findings of R/S and meditation research. Psychedelic and meditation research suggests there is not only a reliable connection between spiritual experience and health, but that the effects are dose dependent. In meditation research we saw that the health benefits scaled with hours of practice all the way to the extraordinary outcomes of olympic level meditators. In the psychedelic research we saw that the mental health effects correlated with the intensity of the subjective experience.
Review and Discussion
In this section we have investigated the hypothesis that spirituality significantly correlates with human vitality. The reasoning was that, if spirituality is a vital dimension of human life then we would not just expect it to be universally reflected across cultures and in human biology, we would also expect to find greater vitality in the people who are more spiritual and correspondingly less vitality in those who are less spiritual. In terms of the definition of vitality, we would expect to find a positive correlation between spirituality and health and with lifespan. What did we find?
We found that there is a clear relationship between being spiritual or religious and being healthier both mentally and physically, supporting the vitality hypothesis. We also found that extremely spiritual people display extraordinary physical and mental health as well as biological age. This further supports the relationship between spirituality with health and lifespan. Finally we found that experiences of meditation and psychedelics are significantly correlated with health when tested in randomized controlled trials. This means that the relationship between spirituality and health does not exclusively depend on religion or other variables such as having a particular worldview.
Overall, we have found pervasive evidence for the positive correlation between spirituality and health and some for the correlation between spirituality and lifespan. As mentioned in the methods section, this is not surprising because there is generally far more studies available on health than lifespan. Yet in my assessment that the overwhelming evidence for the positive correlation between spirituality and health is enough to speak for itself on the vitality of spirituality. The implications for the “neither spiritual nor religious” are now becoming clearer. Not only have we found that this demographic shares the underlying biological basis of spirituality, making the knowledge of spiritual traditions relevant for them, we have now also found that this knowledge may powerfully promote their vitality in proportion to how much they practice.
In terms of the consciousness definition, we can conclude that the evidence supports the hypothesis that engaging in the navigation of consciousness and its phenomena is a vital dimension of human life.
Author – Sagi Andersen