Tunnel Vision (23 page)

“So, what’s a nice girl like you doing in near-death experiences?” he asked her.

She chuckled. “Now, there’s an original line. Well, my grad work was with Morris Stern in his neurobiology lab at Tufts. He was working on enhancing molecular MRI imaging and ended up as my thesis adviser. He signed up with Dr. Luria, and later he asked me aboard.”

“What was your thesis on?”

“Neurotheology.”

“Ah, yes: ‘The Role of Serotonin … Receptors in Spirituality.’”

She nodded. “The neurological mechanisms active in spiritual and religious experiences.”

“Kind of what you’re doing with Dr. Luria—seeing if we’re hardwired for God.”

“Yes. We know that mystical experiences originate from the same mechanisms that produce hallucinations—you know, people who claim to see the Virgin Mary, dead grandmothers, even space aliens. When the parietal lobe is stimulated, that region reports a sense of another’s presence.”

“What happened to me in the booth.”

“Yes. We stimulated your parietal lobe, and you sensed your father’s presence.”

“But it felt so real.”

“As we knew it would. The challenge was to find a diagnostic means to distinguish these from actual experiences.”

The waiter returned with their drinks.

“Before she got the fMRI prototype, Elizabeth was restricted to interviewing hospital patients who claimed NDEs. Now we can do it in the lab under controlled conditions.”

“So how long have you been flatlining people?”

“Only three months, but the project’s been going on for a few years.”

“How many others have you suspended?”

“The data’s confidential, but a few.”

“Can you say what you’ve determined so far?”

“Nothing conclusive, but Elizabeth’s very excited about your testing.”

“Because I’ve got a hot God lobe.”

She sipped her wine. “Yes.”

“So how come I get a craving for root beer instead of a tunnel to the pearly gates?”

“Maybe next time.”

And how come I have flashes of digging myself out of sand?
another voice cut in. But he pushed it down, and the waiter came for their orders. Sarah requested the shrimp risotto and Zack the blackened tuna.

“One of the other problems,” she said, “is trying to separate actual near-death experiences from confabulations. People make all sorts of claims, some the result of autosuggestion—what they think they should experience: moving down tunnels, life reviews, meeting beings of light. Claims that don’t match with neuro and metabolic activity.”

“So it’s easier to verify out-of-the-body experiences because they either identify images or they don’t.”

“Yes, and reports of NDEs are nearly untestable. All we can see is activity and blood chemistry, which tells us something about the emotions of the experience.”

“Do people ever report bad NDEs, something other than light and peace?”

“On occasion. Why?”

“Just wondering. All you hear about are blissful ones.”

“The literature cites a few cases of unpleasant experiences. But nothing I’ve seen.”

Zack sipped his beer. “You’re a scientist, so where do you stand on all this? Do you think my mind actually separated from my brain and floated to the ceiling?”

“The short answer is maybe. But that’s the big question—what sits at the heart of the whole science-faith debate: Is the mind reducible to neural networks, or is there something beyond the physicality of the brain? And if so, does it exist in another realm—heaven, nirvana, the afterlife?”

“Yeah, all of that.”

“Well, I’m also a former dyed-in-the-wool Roman Catholic. I used to believe that religion was a leap of faith, untouched by rationalism. But the more I studied, the more I began to lapse in faith.” She took another sip of wine. “Yet this project raises other possibilities.”

“Like what?”

“Like maybe there’s something to the spiritual world, though not in the biblical sense.”

“So, you believe in God but you don’t.”

She smiled. “I like how you word things.”

“One of the few benefits of being an English major: saying things to impress a date.”

“I’m impressed. Let’s say that I’m still skeptical, but if there is a spiritual sentience, I don’t believe it’s the Judeo-Christian-Muslim paternal figure who watches over all life and answers prayers.”

“You’re not quite a born-again NDE-er.”

“No, I’m still stuck in the materialist school—you know, that consciousness is a function of the living brain—and once the brain is dead, so is sentience. So an NDE is a shut-down mechanism of the brain telling the body to die.”

“Then how do you explain all the reports of heavenly light and great peacefulness?”

“Possibly evolutionary strategies to make death easier to accept—buffers to the horror of one’s dying.”

“Pure neurobiology,” he said, using Stern’s phrase.

“Yes. For an NDE to be real, one would have to scientifically demonstrate that consciousness survives clinical death. And the only way to do that is for someone to acquire information when their unconscious mind leaves their body.”

“Like my craving for root beer.”

“Maybe.”

“But that could also be a coincidence, or recall of the photo tests.”

“Except that you couldn’t have remembered it. Also, we’ve seen other OBEs before.”

“Maybe more coincidences.”

“Or maybe evidence that the mind
can
separate from the body.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I’m open to the possibility, but not there yet.” Then she leaned forward, her face glowing as if a light had clicked on inside. “But if true, what an awesome possibility—that in the end, we experience a transformation in states, from physical to nonphysical sentience. In short, there’s no such thing as death. And that once we die, our minds merge with a cosmic sentience—the Overmind.”

The intensity of her manner sent a ripple through him. “The Overmind?”

“Another sci-fi term. Some think that mental telepathy is a glimpse of the Overmind. Also that some of us are genetically programmed for such.”

For a shuddering moment, his head filled with the face of Winston glowering at him across the poker table.

“And that telepathic people are evidence that we all merge with the Ovemind—which is what all religions talk about. If that could be demonstrated—a huge
if
—it might be
the
discovery of all time. As Elizabeth says, what we need are secrets from the grave.”

“Such as?”

“Such as information known only to the deceased and not the subject.”

“Like meeting your dead grandmother, who says there’s treasure buried in the backyard. And lo and behold, you take a shovel and voilà.”

“That would do it.”

Zack was enjoying the suppleness of her mind and the vigorous enthusiasm in her manner that lit her eyes and lent a resplendence to her beautiful face. He could also tell that she was enjoying being with him—and that gave him relief that there was life after Amanda. When they had broken up last year, Zack had nearly convinced himself that his best options were behind him, that he was not destined to find a woman who was as fascinating, smart, and attractive. “I get the feeling that Dr. Luria is more open to spiritual possibilities?”

“Yes.”

“And Dr. Stern is pure neurobiology, kind of like yourself.”

She smiled warmly at his name, as if he were more than a mentor, maybe a father figure. “He’s a hard-core rationalist, a geneticist by training, who takes an evolutionary interest in the phenomena. He believes that a small number of people have a bent toward spirituality, but that’s as far as he goes.”

“That we’re wired to believe in God,” he said.

“Yes, which has the evolutionary advantage of forging communities based on belief systems, at the heart of which are shamans, priests, and other specially wired people.”

“But that’s not the same as saying there’s a God.”

“No, just that some have neurological hankerings for a God.”

“And visions of tunnel light and dead relatives are the brain’s way of softening death.”

“Yes. Interestingly, when the brain dies, the optical center creates illusions of moving down a tunnel toward light.”

“I can see why some would consider that sacrilegious.”

The waiter came with their orders, and they ate quietly for a few moments. Zack could not remember having such a satisfying first date—if that’s what this was. “When I was a kid, I used to ask God for a sign—make a weird noise, cause an animal to step out of the woods, send a meteorite across the sky. Something out of the ordinary. But I never got one.” And when his father died, Zack prayed for him to show himself, whisper to him, brush his cheek. He drew a blank there also.

“We all do that. Every time I get on a plane, I whisper a prayer we don’t crash. When my mother got cancer, I prayed to save her. But if God intervened whenever we asked, there’d be no science. In fact, the world would be a frightening place with nothing predictable.”

The waiter came by. Sarah ordered a second glass of wine. Zack had another beer. He looked around the restaurant. It was mostly a young crowd, college kids and young professionals. “I’ve got a feeling not a lot of other people in here are talking about whether there’s an afterlife.”

“They’re probably more concerned about the Red Sox.”

“Now
that’s
important.” On the bar monitors, the Sox were behind Toronto 6–2. As Zack scanned the bar, his eyes fell on a man sitting alone and reading a newspaper. Their eyes locked, then the man went back to his paper. Zack leaned into Sarah. “That guy with the newspaper and the Patriots hat. Does he look familiar to you?”

Sarah glanced over her shoulder. “Not really. Is he someone famous?”

The man was white and in his fifties, with an oval face partially hidden by the cap and glasses. “I don’t know, but he’s been eyeing us since he came in.”

“No one I’ve seen before.”

“Maybe he’s checking out good-looking women.”

“Or good-looking men.”

“He’d do better with option one.” Zack paid the check, and they got up to leave. Meanwhile, the guy behind the paper paid them no attention as they walked outside.

It was a pleasant evening, and the Square was alive with people. They walked to Brattle Street, then back up Massachusetts Avenue. Zack enjoyed the Square, although it had lost its renegade charm, funky little shops and eateries giving way to mall franchises. They cut through Harvard Yard, which took them back to Harvard Street and Sarah’s apartment, where he had locked his bike.

Zack hoped she would ask him upstairs, but she didn’t. Maybe this was just a professional tryst rather than a bona fide date. It crossed his mind to give her a kiss, but he didn’t want to push matters. So he thanked her for the pleasant evening and extended his hand. She took it and, surprisingly, gave him a hug. “See you Tuesday.”

Zack was so happy for that gesture that in his distraction while unchaining his bike at a nearby telephone pole, he failed to notice a man in a blue shirt and Patriots hat watching him from the silver SUV across the street.

41

Bruce dropped off Zack at the lab around seven that next Tuesday, and Sarah met him at the entrance and walked him to the lab office. “Where did you find that guy?”

“Bruce?”

“Yeah. Not exactly Hoke Colburn.”

“Who’s Hoke Colburn?”

“Morgan Freeman in
Driving Miss Daisy
. He’s got the personality of asphalt.”

Sarah laughed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Also, see if you can arrange a bona fide tunnel.”

“We’ll work on that, too.”

“My luck, I’ll end up in the Ted Williams with no money and a maniacal toll collector.”

“You’re in good spirits,” she said.

“For a guy who’s going to die.”

“You’re not going to die,” she said. “And thanks again for Friday night. I had a good time.”

“Enough to do it again?”

“Sure.”

She opened the door to the MRI room, where Drs. Luria, Stern, and Cates greeted him. He then changed and got up on the gurney, where Sarah and Cates hooked him up to the monitors and IV. He could feel his heart pounding in anticipation. As Sarah adjusted a connection, he whispered, “In case I don’t come back, you’re gorgeous.”

“You are, too,” she said. “See you soon.”

Zack smiled and passed out.

His first awareness was of moving through a tunnel toward light. No, not a tunnel. A hole above him with a dim slice of light glowing through the opening. And the walls were made of sand, and he was pushing his way upward. But he had no idea who he was or where he was. A dull, filmy moon hung overhead, and he was covered with sand and chilled to the bone and burning from stings of things needling into his flesh. His mouth was numb and his fingers stiff, as if his blood had turned to wax.