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In this week's second installment of the NPR series on science and spirituality, religion correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty examines Navajo Indians (a tribe of First Nation or Indigenous Americans) and their sacramental use of Peyote for healing.
All Things Considered, May 18, 2009 · For much of the 20th century, mainstream science shied away from studying spirituality.
Sigmund Freud declared God to be a delusion, and others maintained that God, if there is such a thing, is beyond the tools of science to measure.
But now, some researchers are using new technologies to try to understand spiritual experience. They're peering into our brains and studying our bodies to look for circumstantial evidence of a spiritual world. The search is in its infancy, and scientists doubt they will ever be able to prove — or disprove — the existence of God.
I spent a year exploring the emerging science of spirituality for my book, Fingerprints of God. One of the questions raised by my reporting: Is an encounter with God merely a chemical reaction?
Peyote Healing
The search for that answer led me to my first peyote ceremony, on a mountaintop on the Navajo reservation at Lukachukai, Ariz.
While Fred Harvey, an 87-year-old roadman, or high priest, warmed up his voice, members of his family prepared the peyote, a cactus that induces visions when ingested. Using peyote to touch the spiritual world has been central to the Navajo religion for hundreds of years.
Andy Harvey, a ceremony participant, said peyote serves as a mediator between the human world and the divine.
"Sometimes we ask the peyote to help us cleanse the illnesses away and cleanse our mental being, our spiritual being," he said. "And we believe that's what peyote does, too. That's why we call it a sacrament, a sacred herb."
At 9 p.m., 32 of us crawled into the teepee; for the next 11 hours, the young men drummed, the roadman prayed, and everyone but me ingested a lot of peyote. Sometime around midnight, the subject of the ceremony — a Navajo woman named Mary Ann — spoke up.
"I want to confess to the fire," she said.
She said she had suffered from shingles for the past two months, and she needed the peyote to heal her. She said she believed she had harmed a man some 20 years earlier, and his spirit had been plaguing her ever since.
"I need him to forgive me," she cried. "I know I'm in pain because he hasn't forgiven me."
Two more hours had passed when Mary Ann suddenly cried, "The shingles are gone! The peyote has healed me!" More>>
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