To Know Fear Is To Know God

Brain, Science, Spirituality, Religious Experience

SOULS, SPIRITS, DREAMS, AND POLTERGEISTS

TO KNOW FEAR IS TO KNOW GOD

“Fear the Lord your God.” -Deuteronomy 10:12.

Priests, prophets, shamans and many others who encounter “god” or His “angels” not uncommonly experience tremendous fear. Fear is the most common emotion associated with the amygdala

(Gloor, 1997; Halgren, 1992; LeDoux, 1996; Williams, 1956), with some patients experiencing horrifying, hellish, and nightmarish fear, sometimes coupled with hellish hallucinations.

We are repeatedly told in the Bible, that to know fear is to know god. Indeed, even a committed

atheist may feel compelled to cry out and pray to god if sufficiently terrified. Terror is also an emotion associated with the amygdala... as well as with the Lord God.

Yet others experience awe and rapture when confronted by the divine. As noted, amygdala

hyperactivation is also associated with feelings of extreme joy and ecstasy.

According to d’Aquili and Newberg (1993; p. 194) “a combination of the experience of both

fear and exhalation” is “usually termed religious awe.” These feeling states are “almost always associated with religious symbols, sacred images, or archetypal symbols” which flow “from the inferior

temporal lobe” and which “appear sometimes as monsters or gods”. Indeed, angels, demons, and

poltergeists may be experienced.

Most people find these experiences quite terrifying. They also frequently believe their perceptions are completely real and are not hallucinations.

SPIRITS AND POLTERGEISTS

“Cindy,” a 22 year old college student, was plagued by demons and ghosts for months until her

abnormal right inferior temporal lobe was surgically removed.

Prior to her brain injury, Cindy had never been very religious, and had certainly never seen a

ghost; that is, until following her auto accident. She had been thrown over 50 feet through the windshield of her car and suffered a fracture of the right temporal region of the skull and developed a

subdural hematoma, a blood clot, which was pressing on the temporal lobe inducing herniation. Burr

holes were drilled into her skull and the clot was surgically evacuated. Although her brain and temporal lobe had been injured, over the following weeks she seemed to quickly recover.

It was several days after her release from the hospital when she was startled while watching

television. The arms, legs, hands, feet, and heads of the various actors began protruding from the

screen into the living room where she sat.

Cindy said that at first she thought the television was broken and turned it off. But, as she

stared back at the blank screen she saw what looked like her dead father staring back at her (which

was probably her own reflection). As she backed away, the figure emerged from the television. He

beckoned to her, and then behind him ghostly spooks and wraiths began to stream from the picture

tube.

Terrified and crying for her mother she raced for the bathroom and locked herself in. Yet, even

as she hid within the inner sanctum of the washroom, spirits, sprites and poltergeists streamed from

the bathroom mirror and swirled about her. Crying and stumbling, she raced into the living room and

was horrified to see a spirit enter and take possession of her mother who was transformed before her

eyes. Panicked and terrified, Cindy ran into the street crying for help. A police officer, after investigating the scene, brought her to the local hospital and psychiatry unit. She was medicated and kept

there on a 72 hour hold.

Later she decided what she had experienced were ghosts and lost souls of people who had been

buried in an old, almost completely forgotten cemetery on the other side of the hill from where she

lived. She also thought they were the ghosts of Indians who had been entombed beneath her house as

there are numerous Indian burial grounds in the county.

Once she was released from her 72 hour psychiatric hold, she stopped taking her medication,

and over the course of the next several weeks, she claimed to see “animal spirits.” She reported that

the “secret souls” of her mother’s house plants were watching and observing her and that she could

sometimes see filmy, soul-like entities traveling to and fro across the room and between different

plants.

After several more hospitalizations, and an EEG, it was determined that she was suffering from

excessive activity, seizure activity in the damaged temporal lobe. The inferior temporal lobe and the

underlying amygdala were surgically ablated and destroyed, and she ceased to “hallucinate.”