Is spiritual experience real or a delusion? Are

there realities that we can experience but not

easily measure? Does your consciousness

depend entirely on your brain, or does it

extend beyond? In Fingerprints of God,

award-winning journalist Barbara Bradley

Hagerty delves into the discoveries science

is making about how faith and spirituality

affect us physically and emotionally as it

attempts to understand whether the ineffable

place beyond this world can be rationally

—even scientifically—explained.

Hagerty interviews some of the world’s

top scientists to describe what their groundbreaking

research reveals about our human

spiritual experience. From analyses of the

brain functions of Buddhist monks and Carmelite

nuns, to the possibilities of healing

the sick through directed prayer, to what

near-death experiences illuminate about the

afterlife, Hagerty reaches beyond what we

think we know to understand what happens

to us when we believe in a higher power.

Paralleling the discoveries of science is

Hagerty’s own account of her spiritual evolution.

Raised a Christian Scientist, she was

a scrupulous adherent until a small moment

as an adult triggered a revaluation of her

beliefs, which in turn led her to a new way of

thinking about God and faith.

An insightful examination of what science

is learning about how and why we believe,

Fingerprints of God is also a moving story of

one person’s search for a communion with

a higher power and what she discovered on

that journey.

One theme kept drawing my attention, a theological

buoy that repeatedly popped up in the

choppy sea. No matter what their belief systems,

the people who had enjoyed profound spiritual

experiences saw the same kind of “Other.” In

fact, they generally shunned the word “God,”

since it is the purview of particular religions. And

without exception, this Being in the eye of their

spiritual tornadoes was a hovering presence, infinitely

intelligent and gentle. My mystics might

use different terminology, but they described

uncannily similar experiences: light, love, peace,

and often, an overwhelming sense of unity with

the universe. . . .

I asked Bill Miller at the University of New

Mexico if he had found any particular themes in

the accounts of his “quantum changers.”

“All the people who describe the mystical

type of experience, described the same ‘Other,’”

said Miller, who is a Presbyterian. “Never mind

their religious upbringing—

they were in the presence

of the same thing.”

“What is that ‘Other’?” I asked.

“It’s profoundly loving and accepting beyond

words. It doesn’t demand anything of you

at the moment. You simply feel accepted as you

are, and loved as you are, to the very depth of

your being.”