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124 of 130 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Narrowing the Gap Between Science and Spirituality, September 16, 2000
This review is from: Where God Lives: The Science of the Paranormal and How Our Brains are Linked to the Universe (Hardcover)
'Learning to listen to our inner voice is what this book is allabout.' ' . . . We are just starting to learn how to use it.' This book combines the perspectives of science and spirituality to consider what right temporal lobe stimulation in the brain is really accomplishing. The best part of the book is that it goes on to propose daring new hypotheses about the nature of the mind and reality. I look forward to future experiments designed to test these hypotheses. Dr. Morse is a pediatrician whose young patients have often experienced near death. These young people report important spiritual events associated with their near-death experiences. These spiritual experiences include speaking with dead relatives, seeing themselves in out-of-body experiences as the doctors work on them, going through tunnels into another world, and meeting religious figures. When one of his patients asks Dr. Morse what the purpose of these spiritual events is, the question sets Dr. Morse to thinking. The results of that investigation are found in this book. One of the reasons that the question intrigued him is that he had noticed that these patients seemed to develop an improved balance in their lives that improved the quality of their lives afterwards. This quality of life often meant having better health, happier times, closer relations with others, eating healthier foods, and exercising more. What he has come to appreciate is that near-death experiences are simply spiritual experiences that anyone can have without having to almost die. ' . . . We have the biological potential to interact with the universe at any time during our lives.' Based on research with electrically stimulating different parts of the brain, scientists have located the Sylvian fissure in the right temporal lobe (just over the ear) as the site of these spiritual experiences. Take a healthy person, put some electrical current there and near-death experiences will follow. Scientists have studied these near-death experiences further, and can tell that these experiences are distinct from mental illness and hallucinations. Dr. Morse also reports that you can access these same experiences through prayer and meditation. He outlines 10 things you can do to have these experiences more often. (1) 30 minute of enjoyable exercise daily (2) pay attention to your life patterns through a journal and meditation (3) build relationships with your family and others (4) trust your inner vision and intuition (5) provide service for others (6) create a financial plan to have more peace of mind (7) improve your diet (8) pray and meditate daily (9) learn to love more (10) develop your spirituality to reconnect with all parts of the universe. One interesting connection he makes is to the theory of morphic resonance (see The New Science of Life). By postulating that there seem to be legitimate cases of reincarnation, he wonders what reincarnation experiences (if real) could mean about the nature of reality. He concludes that 'universal memory is best understood as a morphic field.' He cites the examples of how rats in succeeding generations can go through a maze for the first time in ever shorter periods of time . . . as though they are sharing knowledge from prior generations indirectly. From these pieces of evidence, he hypothesizes that we have two sources of memory. Short-term memory is in our physical brains, and long-term memory is outside of our brains. The right temporal lobe then operates as a memory receiver and transmitter to access this external memory that is available to all. This description reminds me of Napoleon Hill's writing in Think and Grow Rich about how to create abundance in our lives. He also describes many experiments that successfully show remote viewing can be done, physical objects can be changed with the mind, children have eliminated warts with hypnosis, the placebo effect cures some diseases, and spiritual healing methods reveal large transfers of electricity between healer and patient. He uses this evidence to argue that the quantum nature of reality takes a holographic form when it comes to the mind and what we observe. By changing the waves in our brain, we affect the waves that are the reality that we observe around us. One of the funniest examples of this phenomenon comes in the form of people who give off so much energy that they can make machines break down all around them. Dr. Morse provides 10 ground rules for getting the best results from morphic reality:...
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35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Scientific Approach to the Mystical, February 26, 2001
This review is from: Where God Lives: The Science of the Paranormal and How Our Brains are Linked to the Universe (Hardcover)
This is one of the most enlightening books on mystical, or spiritual, experiences and their meanings I have read. The approach Dr. Morse takes is extremely humane, sensitive, and honest. He manages in an interesting and meaningful way to examine near-death experiences, healings, apparitions, and other unexplained phenomenon in terms of the human brain. It seems our brains may at times function in a particular way to connect us with realities we normally are not aware of. I had enjoyed reading Dr. Morse's previous books, where he related the stories of children's near-death experiences, and described the evidence of the transforming nature of these experiences. In this book, Dr. Morse goes much further in developing his theory of the importance of the right temporal lobe in allowing us to experience the external reality of these experiences. As a speech-language pathologist, I know a little something about the brain and how it works. The right hemisphere of the brain processes information very differently from the left. We have generally known a great deal more about the left hemisphere, which is where our language center is in most people. However, what Dr. Morse has to say about the right hemisphere and its possible role in NDEs and other experiences connecting us to a "universal memory", or mind, makes a great deal of sense, especially to anyone who has ever had even a minor extra-sensory type of experience. I especially enjoyed Dr. Morse's personal stories in this book. It was brave and honest, and made the book real to me. After all, one of the big questions raised to him has been, "What is the good in having a near-death experience, anyway?" I appreciated that Dr. Morse attempted to apply some of the lessons he learned to his own life. It made a poignant story.
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46 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You can have a near death experience while still alive!, February 17, 2001
This review is from: Where God Lives: The Science of the Paranormal and How Our Brains are Linked to the Universe (Hardcover)
My husband's book describes the secrets of living that he learned from studying children who had near death experiences. He used these secrets to get himself off of five medicines for asthma and high blood pressure, heal his own life threatening illness, and discover his own spirituality for the first time. I have seen him transformed over the years from an arrogant critical care physician who thought he knew everything to a gentle man willing to spend an extra minute with a patient, or an extra hour helping a grieving parent. His studies document that there is an area in our brain which allows us to communicate with god. This is the same area responsable for intution, telepathy, remote viewing and mind-body healing. He has discovered that there are real angels guiding our lives. He presents a case of a well documented miraculous cure of one of his own patients who had a fatal liver disease, a cure facilitated by spiritual intervention. His book is oddly practical. He shares with us extremely moving stories of children who have faced death, and learns from them that the secrets of living are to pay off our credit card debt, give money to charity, and to go jogging in the morning with our 12 year old son. My husband shares with the readers his own spiritual experience, something I was shocked to learn that he had. He had never discussed it with even his own family. He is the sort of guy who watches football on Sundays and likes to say that he doesn't have a spiritual bone in his body. When I asked him about it, he said he wanted to share his experience with his readers because "if I can learn to use my right temporal lobe to have a spiritual vision, anyone can learn to use it. Why wait until we die to have the experience?". I was a little mad to read the review stating that his book was boring. There is nothing boring about his book! He presents a new theory of how our brains link to the universe, and explains how angel encounters, ghostly visions, paranormal talents and mind-body healing can actually work! He explains how anyone can tap into the power of the near death experience to transform their lives. Even our sex life is better after we applied the ten secrets of the near death experience to our daily life. It is a science book, but very easy to read with lots of stories. He has hundreds of scientific references he put in the back of the book so people can delve deeper into the topics he presents. He has already published in scientific journals that main concepts in his book and he is always being invited to conferences all around the world. I won't let him go because we have five children, so if you want to learn about why near death experiences are important in your life, you will have to read his book.
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