Customer Reviews

Spiritual Evolution: A Scientific Defense of Faith

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If you are ready to explore new discoveries connecting spirituality and neuroscience, and have an expert collect them, summarize them and make them not only readable but meaningful, read this book.
As the jacket cover of this terrific book says, "Dr. Vaillant lays out a brilliant defense not of organized religion, but of man's inherent spirituality." He finds that the positive emotions of love, joy, hope and forgiveness are rooted in the evolution of the human brain. He predicts that our spiritual evolution will continue, and quotes published research in neuroscience and related fields that support this idea.
His writing is informative, clever and witty, filled with humanity, compassion, and the wisdom of a scholar with a deep commitment to understanding how the tapestries of human connection and spirituality are interwoven.
He is justifiably well-known for scholarly publications derived from his direction of the Harvard study of adult development for 35 years, his work in alcoholism, and his willingness to integrate diverse points of view.

Here is what will happen to you when you read George Vaillant's Spiritual Evolution:
* During the chapter "Joy," you may cry as you feel Joy. During the chapter "Love," you will want to call home to say Hi.
* You will be pulled in by personal stories from the Study of Adult Development, and how these men have come around to positive emotions and spirituality.
* You will be inside a colossal head fake - a situation in which you're learning but it seems like you're playing.

In Spiritual Evolution, Vaillant does something amazing: he makes the reader feel the emotion in the chapter about that emotion - Joy, Love, Compassion, Awe, and more. Imagine having a book in which you could reach for the emotion Joy just by opening that chapter again. This is the psychoanalyst at his best - he has bottled the emotions. Furthermore, he's bottled them by connecting your curiosity about how the mind works with your love for Emily Dickinson. It's the best kind of learning when it feels like play. Imagine having a book that you open up, and Vaillant on the other side says, "Let's play."

Spiritual Evolution is really a book about what binds us together. Religions have historically done some great things, but have also spread violence and segregation in the name of truth. Vaillant's heart-filled and wise book addresses what is universally good and true about all spiritual practice, and does so in a way that will inspire you to spread love, joy, and forgiveness.

The book is a wonderful example thanks to the author, that when one studies people from around the world, even if they are of a different belief or religion there are things that they all have in common. This is NOT about religion, far from it. The author writes so well about how cultures have evolved and as wisdom is discovered and put into place that history itself changes.

And we are reminded that religion often if not always, requires some 'leader' or dogma, whereas a universal spirituality can be as simple as sitting on a mountain top and sensing something bigger than ourselves, with no name, has created or allowed all we see to be created.

I finished my reading and this is really an amazing book, for it states in one place many things about spirituality and positive emotions that you may have heard about here and there or seem to be intuitive, but are not linked to any formal scientific knowledge. Here you may the links that were missing, or at least the first step to bring spirituality, positive emotions and science closer together.
It puts in black and white many ideas about religion and spirituality. I think the last chapter is the best, but you will not feel it if you have not read the other ones.
It's always good to read and meditate about positive emotions, it helps in keeping them alive! Useful for my spiritual journey. Helps understanding goals and means.

If you want to read just one good book about spirituality, I highly recommend George Valliant's (2008) Spiritual Evolution: A Scientific Defense of Faith. Vaillant is a research psychiatrist (which means the book is crammed with neurobiology) and directed Harvard's Study of Adult Development for 35 years. His conception of spirituality revolves around the eight positive emotions that involve human connection. He argues throughout that prosocial behavior is part and parcel of natural selection, that positive emotions both promote and follow prosocial behavior, and that this process occurs in the limbic and parasympathetic systems and the amygdala (rather than in conscious, cognitive thought processes), and that humanity is moving (from an evolutionary perspective) in the direction of greater spiritual (prosocial) interaction.

Vaillant would argue that spirituality defies rational, cognitive description. Vaillant's final chapter, entitled "The Difference Between Religion and Spirituality", is primarily a fascinating discussion of Alcoholics Anonymous ("AA"), which he concludes is mostly a spiritual rather than a religious program. AA certainly has its detractors, but it has also helped an awful lot of people to maintain sobriety, and Vaillant's discussion of the spiritual aspect of the program was most interesting. Given my emphasis on the importance of humor, I was also pleased to note his comment that AA meetings tend to be filled with laughter and humor (although, beneath it all there is a "deadly seriousness"). Excellent book.

Well thought out and well referenced. Valilland lights the path I have been following. I have given it to several friends that have been on a similar search and feeling the same frustrations.

An easy-to-read book filled-to-the-brim with wisdom, one that can help us all understand the reasons we want to adopt a spiritual lifestyle in the first place -- the promotion of optimal physical body-mind wellness. Indeed we are witnessing a revolution in-the-making where physicians become priests of optimism based upon science-fact, not faith alone!

These are phenomenal insights into energy-medicine protocols that links quantum physics to our biology of belief akin to my colleagues dedicated to change in paradigms from the prophets of doom and gloom to the truth that we are being groomed to bloom: Bruce Lipton, Gregg Braden, et. al.

In brief, I will say this much now: This book is a bestseller-to-be for it is teaching us how to manage our time (and space) wisely and how once united in our vision of the future, we will shapeshift our whole global mind-body-spirit field of consciousness towards the supreme model of well-being envisioned by our Creator -- a literal Garden of Eden!

Dr. John Jay Harper, author of Tranceformers: Shamans of the 21st Century.

Recommended by a friend of mine who heard the author's NPR interview, I purchased the book right away since I was really confused between being religious and spiritual. This book presented very satisfactory answers that you could be spiritually mature and full of positive emotions without submitting yourself to one particular religious community. Based on decades of adult study and research, the author has a lot to tell you about how positive emotions has been playing an important role in human evolution and an individual's life. However, the book seems somewhat slow and throws in many brain related terms that are kind of distracting. But, if this is the topic that's been bothering you deep inside, I strongly recommend it.

Excellant book on theories of spirituality. I puts light on the differances of religion, faith and spirituality.