The Science Behind Why Religion Actually Works | David DeSteno

What would happen if you took the world's major religions, set aside the theology for a moment, and studied just the rituals? The meditation, the chanting, the prayers of gratitude, the contemplation of death, the communal meals, the morning practices, study them as technologies? Technology is designed to work on your mind and body in specific, measurable ways. That's what my guest today, David DiSteno, has done. He's a professor of psychology at North Eastern and the author of How God Works, and he runs a social emotions group where his lab studies the mechanics behind compassion, gratitude, moral behavior, and increasingly, why the data on people who are engaged in spiritual practice and often who believe in God are so striking. We're talking a 30% lower all-cause mortality, less depressing, greater sense of meaning, better health outcomes across the board. And here's what makes this conversation land differently than most conversations about faith. David is not here to tell you to believe in God. He's not here to tell you not to. He's here to say that whether these practices were divinely inspired or figured out through thousands of years of human trial and error, they work. And we are walking away from them at the exact moment we may need them most. In this conversation, we go into what he calls spiritual technologies. The rituals hiding in plain sight inside every major faith tradition that science is now revealing to be remarkably effective at helping us deal with loss, find meaning, build connection, and navigate the exact season of life that most of us listening are in right now. We talk about a Hindu concept called the Vana Prastha, the midlife pivot from accumulation to sharing wisdom. And why making that shift earlier might actually be the single most important thing you do for your happiness. And we sit with the honest question of what it looks like to build a spiritual life if you've left the one you were raised in. This one really made me think and feel and want to just sit quietly afterwards. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. Welcome to Rheinische Serviet, Germany's most exciting investment hub, where global leaders like Microsoft are investing billions. Home to Europe's fastest supercomputer, the region offers strong R&D partnerships. So let its outstanding digital infrastructure connect you to key markets in real time. Rheinische Serviet is ready for growth and ready for you. Find out more at BePart of It dot n r w. Since 1926, Steele has been developing tools that make working in nature easier. From forests to gardens, Steele tools are made for people like you who work like a pro, mastering every challenge with heart and soul. For 100 years, the Steele name has stood for revolutionary technology with a passion for legendary performance and quality. Built for nature, trusted since 1926. Find your tool at Steele dot co dot uk. Your difference is your strength. No two perspectives are the same. And that's where opportunity begins. At London Business School, we believe diversity of thought isn't just valuable. It's essential. By learning from one another and embracing different ways of seeing the world, we unlock new ideas and bold solutions. Learn how difference drives progress. Search London Business School or visit London dot edu. I have been somebody who's been fascinated by the role of spirituality, of faith, of religion in our lives for a long time. I remember a chunk of years ago, stumbling upon a bit of research that effectively said that if you are somebody who is a person of faith, that you're more likely to experience positive experiences and outcomes, whether that makes you happier, healthier, potentially even more quote, successful. Is this true? I think it depends on exactly how you define those terms. So the data on religion and spirituality show a few things. One, I want to make it clear that what the data really look at is what's called religious or spiritual engagement. So it's not just saying, I believe in God. Are you actually going to services? If you're a person who is following a more Eastern philosophy, are you actually meditating? Are you doing the things that you're supposed to do in a faith? In most of the world, religion is really about more of what you do than what you believe. But in the US, we have this notion because of Christianity that is just about creed. But if you look at people who are actually engaging in some type of spiritual life, their health outcomes are far better. Lower all cause mortality, 30% lower over 15 year period, lower deaths due to cardiovascular disease and cancer, greater sense of meaning and flourishing in life, less depression. That's not always the same thing as being happy. I mean, on average, they're happy, right? And I'm sure you and your listeners have talked about this a lot. Being happy doesn't mean always being happy and never having downturns or never suffering for the right reasons. But in general, their physical and mental health outcomes and just general well-being and sense of flourishing are higher. I haven't seen any data that linked it to success in particular, though. It is interesting, right? Because you made this immediate distinction between believing in God, whatever tradition you are, whatever that entity, that being, that experience. You made a distinction between the just the wrote belief in something versus the practices, the rituals, the things built around it. Are you aware of any research that looks specifically just at that first question, which is, is there a change in outcome based purely on the belief in something bigger than yourself that you might, whatever your version of God is? Yeah, there is. And I'm glad you brought that up. Let me just clarify what I'm saying. It's not that belief doesn't matter at all. In terms of people's overall health outcomes, it doesn't seem to matter that much. But there are a few places it matters. One is around anxiety, around death. It matters a lot. So if you look at how anxious are you about dying, it's kind of an upside down you. That is, on one side of the you are people who have a deep faith that there is a pleasant, joyous afterlife. And then on the other end of the you, a little bit lower than that first group are the ardent atheists who are like, yeah, I'm going to end up in the ground as worm food, but that's it. I can't do anything about it. So fine. The people who have the worst time of it all and the greatest anxiety around death are the people who aren't sure because they're thinking, well, I'm not sure what's going to happen. But if there is something, maybe I'm not doing what I need to be in that good place. And so they have a lot of anxiety there. So belief matters around death. Belief also matters in the sense of helping people deal with certain types of problems. So there is a big literature on addiction. And this is why folks who are involved in 12 step programs. And, you know, for the most part of the data shows, they work, they don't work for everybody and there are some problems. But belief in a higher power helps people deal with issues of overcoming addiction of many types. It also offers a sense of mattering and meaning in the world. That is a lot of people feel that they don't have a purpose, maybe they don't have as a support of a social network as they would like. But to the extent that they have faith that there is some force or whatever they conceive of it in the universe that values them and cares about them, it does offer a sense of meaning and that your life matters. And so in those ways, belief can play a role. But where we really see the benefits are when you combine that belief with some type of practice, because those practices, as I'm sure we're going to talk about, work on our minds and bodies in ways that help us meet many of the challenges life throws at us. Yeah. I mean, as you're describing that, what popped into my mind, I've had this conversation with a number of artists, writers often. And the question revolves around where do you place the muse? Is this something that emanates from within you? You're the source of it, you're responsible for it and you get to take credit for it. Or does this exist out in the ether? And your job is just to prepare yourself to receive it, like when it drops into you. And it's interesting, right? Because on the one hand, you have a sense of agency, if you say it comes entirely from me, but also a huge sense of burden, your responsibility that sometimes you become crippling. And when you place it outside of yourself and say, this is a force that exists outside of me, my job is to become a vessel, to open to it, to show up every day and receive it when and if I'm ready to receive it. On the one hand, you have a lack of agency there, which you would feel is disconcerting, but there's also a sense of surrender that says, like, my job is not to be genius on that level. It's just to set myself up to receive it. I wonder if there's something similar to play in what we're talking about here? I think so. And I think, so there is a lot of work on this notion of surrender and people who are willing to kind of surrender to a higher power do tend to show a lot less stress in life. I mean, stress about the big things, but even daily decision making. I mean, we all know the tyranny of choice. We have to make so many decisions each day and we're in an optimizing culture, right? Where we want to optimize every possible outcome and that takes a lot of work. And so people who surrender do have less stress, less anxiety around those issues. Now, I want to be clear that surrendering doesn't mean like, well, that's it. I'm giving it up to God. I'm not doing anything, right? It's not that. It means doing the best you can, but at a certain point realizing that you only have so much control and once you've done the best you can, then you put the rest in a higher power's hands. And so rat people call it surrender even than scientific literature, but I like to think about it as more of a collaboration between a junior and a senior partner. That is, we as the junior partner have a role that is to do the best we can, but we realize that it's not all resting on our shoulders all the time, nor do we have all that control. And so at a certain point, that acceptance comes in offering it up. And to the extent that you offer it up and believe there's a force of some type, whoever you conceive of it out there, that has your best interests in mind, that can be a comforting thought. People say, well, Dave isn't that just the opiate of the masses? And I'm like, I don't think so. I mean, as a scientist, I can't tell you if God exists. It's not my job as a scientist. There is no experiment that can prove it one way or the other. So I'm not advocating that you should believe or you shouldn't, but for those who do, there is that type of benefit of not having the sense that you have to be able to control everything. That conversation with people where, you know, we've been talking about similar topics and people who would say I'm a non-believer. But I really wish I did believe because it's clear to me that there are some very real benefits in some way of both belief and also the practices in the community that often get wrapped around it, which we'll drop into shortly. So we exist in this time now where participation in organized religion is declining. The number of people who identify as spiritual but non-religious, the quote, nuns is rising. And at the same time, many of the indicators of connection, happiness, or contentment, meaning that could be positively affected by participating, we're seeing less and less of this. We're experiencing less connection, less meaningfulness, less of a sense of purpose, mental health outcomes are in a disastrous state right now. Physical health outcomes are really being challenged. So it strains to me that, you know, on the one hand, we know that there are certain things that we can say yes to that would make a meaningful difference. And yet, at scale, people seem to be moving away from that. What's your sense of what's actually happening here? It's a complicated landscape. And you're right, the data do show that people are leaving traditional faith at an increasing rate. I think a lot of that is it comes from a dissatisfaction with the institutions themselves. Religious institutions are human-made organizations, and many of them have had moral failures. Many of them have built within them discriminatory practices based on gender or sex or other types of things. And then there is this notion too that, you know, oh, religion is this superstition. That last part, I don't believe there are many, many scientists who are persons of faith. And yes, if you're going to be a true fundamentalist, like you're going to interpret everything in these texts as truth, which some people do, then it becomes the square with what we know to be true in the modern world. But I know many scientists, you know, Francis Collins, who basically argues that we have, God gave us the power of the human mind so that we can learn about and celebrate God's creation. So I put that issue of kind of fundamentalism to the side. But I think a lot of people are leaving institutions because they're not speaking to them in ways. It's interesting. I've never gone to Burning Man, but I have friends who do. And one of them is a scientist. And at Burning Man, sure for some people, it is a debauchery party. But for other people, they're having these tremendous spiritual experiences there because it's this place where your outcomes depend so much on the kindness of others. There's no money allowed. And so it's kind of the giving economy. And so people are in this harsh environment. And it's in this, it's also this liminal environment where you're not wearing your normal clothes. People take different names. And I've heard people say that I've never felt the presence of the spiritual so palpably as when I'm there and see the beauty of humanity. And I think people are looking for more visceral experiences of goodness and the spiritual. It's also why we're seeing the rise in psychedelic use. Psychedelics offer a quick and dirty way to get the brain into state that would otherwise take years and years of deep meditative practice. And for those who do it and do it right, they feel their self slip away and this growing sense of connection and love. And so I think people are leaving institutionalized churches and temples and synagogues because they feel they're kind of calcified and not speaking to them. But most of those people, if you look at data from Pew, they're not saying, I don't think there's anything spiritual in the world or I don't, it's not that I don't think God doesn't exist. I'm just leaving faith and they're looking for other ways to find that awe and wonder that spirituality often provides. Yeah. So it sounds like they're really, what they're really leaving is the institutions, the trappings, the sort of the human made things that we wrap around. The problem is when you leave those, the other thing that religion provides often is community. Right. And so if you leave these and you're like, oh, I'm going to find my own path and I'm going to mix this idea from Buddhism that I like with this idea from Islam and I'm going to sprinkle in a little New Age stuff, maybe that only works for you. And so then you don't have community. And so that's the danger. I worry that people are going to move into too much individualized sense of spirituality. There are benefits to private practices, but there are benefits to community too. And that's going to be the difficult needle to thread, I think, as people move forward. I've always looked at almost no matter what the tradition is, when you really deconstruct it, the ones that are quote successful that have continued to thrive and flourish for often generations and generations and generations, if not thousands of years, you can identify at least three commonalities. One is a set of teachings, the Dharma, the dogma, but also community like the Sangha, the congregation. And then very often there is a spiritual figurehead. There's the teacher, the teachings and the community. They pretty much show up across every tradition. That's the thing. People don't realize, as most people don't realize this, that Buddhism originally, meditation was done in a Sangha, which is in a community. But now we're all sitting home with our little mindfulness apps. Let's listen to them. And does it help? Yes. But it's not the same. And so what I always tell people is we have to be careful when we try to extract from these traditions certain parts of them, like take meditation and make it entirely secular. Things can go wrong. They might not work as well. Sometimes they actually warp. I mean, there are people I know in Silicon Valley, a friend of a spouse of a friend of mine, who will say things like, yeah, I'm really into mindfulness and meditating. And there's this great new app because I can compare how much meditating I'm doing to my friend and see if I can beat him. And I'm like, no, that's not what it's about. I'm so guilty of that, by the way. I've used an app for years where it's gamified. You get stars and you have a streak and stuff like this. And I remember I'm like a year into a streak and I missed a day because I was sick or something like that. And I was distraught. My number went to zero. My stars got all messed up. And it's like, this is not what it was supposed to be. No, you know, I mean, and that's an example of the kind of the optimizing or gamification culture we're in. And people ask me sometimes since I run this show and wrote this book, how God works, they often say, so Dave, what's the common element of all these faces? Well, one common element that they all say is it's not all about you. Right? It is, what do we owe to each other? And I think that's what oftentimes gets lost in some of the ways we're interpreting some of these, some of these old spiritual techniques and trying to make them fit the modern world. Yeah, that lands really powerfully. Remember, a conversation I had a few years back with Parker Palmer, who spent a lot of time in the Quaker community. And I love his reframe around this, which is so many of us spend time really pondering like, what do I want from the world? And we never create the space to listen and see if we can tease out what does the world want from me or for me at the same time. It is, we drop into that sort of like adolescent sense of ego so regularly without even thinking about it. And I'm sure there's value in that too. But you know, you were describing earlier, the common experience so many people report with psychedelics now, whether you're doing it therapeutically or on your own, is this sense of ego dissolution. And that is the magical part that so many people say, like I literally felt like my ego, I was, I was either completely dissociated or my ego dissolved. And it felt more freeing and I felt more alive than it ever felt in the last 50 years of my life. And we, when we feel that, it feels like this is the way, like this, I've just been shown something that is profound and transcendent. And yet we wake up every morning and we open our eyes and we tend to run in the exact opposite direction. We are human. We didn't evolve to be good or to be bad. We evolved to be adaptive. And since we're a social species, we depend on each other. There are times we have to care about each other. We have to support each other. We have to be fair because if we were always just self-interested, no one would want to work with us, cooperate with us, marry us, etc. But when the mind perceives a way to have your cake and eat it too, and it perceives a way to be selfish without paying the reputational costs, that's very adaptive. And so we will, you know, it will push us that way. And what I think these faith traditions do is they build on those innate impulses, these moral sentiments of wanting to care for others, of compassion, of gratitude, of wanting to pay back our debts or even pay them forward. And they allow us to take those out of just being controlled by biological instinct and to allow us to tune them toward moral goals that we value. And so, you know, a lot of these religious practices, what the science is showing is the rituals aren't just superstitious things. They actually affect what we're doing. So take meditation. When we meditate, or when we say the rosary, if you're Catholic or if you're Hindu, and you chant, recite certain mantras, it alters our breathing rate. And what it does is it typically slows it down to about six breaths a minute, and it increases the exhalation rate. What does that do? It sends signals back up to our brain that we are in an environment that is safe, and one in which we should care about other people. Because think about it, when you, you know, Jonathan, if you get anxious, you can feel your heart rate go up, you're angry, you get tense, your breathing increases, that's your brain telling you get ready for something. But the vagus nerve, which connects the brain to the heart and lungs is a two-way street. And so if we take control of that breathing, we send a message back up to the brain that is, it's okay, you're among people who care for you, you should care back. And so it puts you in a situation where when you then get the teaching, either from the Buddhist teacher who is giving you things to think about, well, you're meditating, or from the prayers that you recite when you're saying the rosary that are, you should be good, you should be cared, you should care for others, you should be grateful. The brain is already in a position to be receptive to that, right? And so it becomes, it's more likely to be embraced and to be acted upon. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Welcome to Rheinische Serviet, Germany's most exciting investment hub, where global leaders like Microsoft are investing billions. Home to Europe's fastest supercomputer, the region offers strong R&D partnerships. So let its outstanding digital infrastructure connect you to key markets in real time. Rheinische Serviet is ready for growth and ready for you. Find out more at BePart of It dot nrw. Since 1926, Steele has been developing tools that make working in nature easier. From forests to gardens, Steele tools are made for people like you who work like a pro, mastering every challenge with heart and soul. For 100 years, the Steele name has stood for revolutionary technology, with a passion for legendary performance and quality. Built for nature, trusted since 1926. Find your tool at Steele dot co dot uk. So I have been in meditating situations. I've been in a lot of ritualistic chanting situations. I've spent many hours in Kirtan, where there's a community of sometimes hundreds of people listening to beautiful music. And it's often Sanskrit phrases, ancient, thousands of years old. There's an old tabla drum or harmonium, things where it's a beautiful, powerful, rhythmic experience also. And it is a call and response format. So Kirtan Mala, the singer, is the chant master later, is chanting something and then hundreds of people sometimes will chant it back and becomes this call and response type of experience. But the thing is, you know, like most of these have been in a room full of middle class Americans in a major city in the United States. We have no idea what we're actually hearing or saying. Like we hear it, we're moved by it, we chant it back. We have no idea what we're saying. And yet it still moves me deeply. Well, yeah, there are a few things going on there. So one, first that that simple action of what's called a motor synchrony that is doing similar actions saying similar words to other people. If we strip that down to its barest elements, we've done that in my lab, we bring people in and we have them listen to tones on headphones and they have a sensor in front of them, we tell them tap that sensor when you hear the tones and we rig it so that these two people who have never met are either tapping their hands in unison, right? So they're in sync or it's random tones and they're out of sync. And then they make a long story short. We have this situation we create where one of them needs help doing something. Simply by having someone tap in time with you, it triples the rate at which others are willing to say, you know what, I'm going to help you solve this problem. And they report having more compassion for this person and they feel more connected to them, even though they've never, ever, you know, encountered them before. And so it's an ancient mechanism to bring people together. But the part that I found really interesting that you mentioned is you don't know the words. And it reminds me, I was talking to a rabbi once and she was telling me that, you know, a lot of Jews know the words to prayers. But for some of the more esoteric ones, they've forgotten what they mean. These are American Jews. And so she went to, she was in Israel for a service, and they were starting to say some prayers and then they stopped saying the words and they started just using nonverbal syllables to basically chant them out kind of like na-na-na-na, like that. And she said to the rabbi later, why did you not use the words? He said, well, unlike you Americans, he said, we know what all these words mean. And sometimes the words can kind of get in the way of what you're really feeling. You know, they can be, they can be archaic, they can be gendered, they cannot be hitting right. And sometimes just the tones themselves allow you to express a feeling that you couldn't easily put into words. And so sometimes not having the words is actually a way of speaking to the divine in a way that only the heart understands. Yeah, that's so interesting. It's like, if maybe you even have prior association with those words or phrases that would take you out of just a more open connection with whatever you're seeking to experience in the moment, because it's sort of like, you know, you're associating it with something else, different experience, different moment in time, more different meaning that was assigned to those words in different countries. Yeah, in Judaism, there's this whole way of praying that's called nighunim. And it's basically that right, it is just... Our family has this thing that's been passed down through generations and generations. And like on the high holidays, you know, like when all the families gathered, everyone would sing it. And again, it was similar to what you were just saying. It's not words, it's just sort of like a couple of syllables, you know, in a melodic way. And, you know, you really get lost in it. Yeah, I think it, you know, not having ever done this practice myself, but people who've done it say it's... It just feels like a way to express things and to get into a contemplative space that trying to put it into words would basically just get in the way of. Yeah. So we've got sync... The synchrony is a really big element of this. There's something about like music and rhythm, like the sonic experience, just that part of it, that is playing into the nature of the experience. Probably. There is a lot of work on the psychology of music and the neuroscience in music. And there is this suggestion that it can put you in somewhat of an altered state at times and a state that allows for deeper feeling. You know, one time on my show we interviewed the pastor of the church. This is a real church. It's called the church of Saint John Coltrane. That sounds like an awesome place. And Coltrane himself, I mean, I'm no Coltrane scholar, but Coltrane himself talked about music as a spiritual experience. You know, instead of a sermon, they listen to his jazz. And for many of them, they describe it as a deeply moving experience. And again, I'm a terrible musician. I can't play anything to save my life. But when you look at people and know people who are really into jazz, they start to enter this space when they're playing and improvising where it is not really the conscious mind that's doing it anymore. It is just this kind of non-conscious feeling state that takes over. And in some ways, I would argue, you know, that's a contemplative state. When we... I said that we're contemplative, most people picture kind of Buddhist monks sitting cross-legged on the ground or, you know, monks in Christian monasteries and deep meditation. But there are active contemplative practices. You can think of Sufis, which are a version of Islam, where they twirl in circles to put themselves in altered states. Speaking in tongues is kind of like that. It can be a very active state, but that increased activity can sometimes rev the mind so much that it then begins to enter this altered state to quiet itself back down. So I think music can do that for people. Yeah, I know it does it for me. The closest to truly transcendent experience I've had, it probably all... Most of not all had been wrapped around music at every part of my life. It literally takes me somewhere that feels like at times I've just left my body. And I'm like, this is this state that I want to experience on a regular basis. It's kind of magical. Well, and think about, you know, beautiful architecture. Many cathedrals or other places of worship, they have these beautiful vaulted ceilings. And when you go in and if there's a service, there's a choir singing beautiful music, what does all of that do? It evokes this emotion that we call awe of being overwhelmed at something's power, feeling small yourself in the face of this, but also connected. And what we know about awe, the emotion itself is, and there's been studies on these some great studies by by Dacker Keltner and UC Berkeley, where when people feel awe, it makes them want to actually be a better person. They become more generous, more kind, and work by a colleague of mine, Pierre Carleval, the solo shows them, people feel awe, they actually slightly become more open to spiritual explanations from things. It's not going to make a hardcore atheist, you know, suddenly a believer. But when you feel that emotion on, you ask them, how likely is it that there's something greater than yourself in the universe? Those odds go up a little bit. That's interesting. That emotion is, is again, you can think of it as a spiritual technology, right? If you want, if you want people to feel that beautiful feeling of transcendence, what can you do in the environment to help them feel it? Music and architecture, right, are two ways to help put the brain in that state. Yeah. So let's talk about that phrase, spiritual technology a little bit more, it's something that you use as it feels like almost a proxy for the more the rituals and the practices that we tend to associate with religion, but that give us very powerful beneficial experiences. Take me into this and what you mean by a little bit more. Sure, spiritual technologies are exactly that. They are practices that work on our minds and bodies. And I want to be clear when I say, when I use this term, I'm not trying to be reductive, right? I can't tell you if the rituals and practices of certain faiths were divinely inspired by a God who cares for its creations and wants to give them a way to live a better life, or they're the result of people figuring stuff out through trial and error over millennia. I don't know. But in some senses, that's not, we don't have to answer that question to study how they work and how, and how they affect people. So, you know, for example, we talked about meditation, but you know, what's another spiritual technology? One is contemplating your own mortality. Almost every faith does this. You know, in Judaism, even on New Year, the year that you're supposed to be celebrating what's going to come, part of the service is a prayer called the Unitanatokep. In Christianity, there's Ash Wednesday. In Buddhism, there is having meditations on death, even somewhere the monks, these are hugely intense, will actually meditate in front of a decaying corpse to actually really see what happens when you die. So, why is this a good thing? Well, when you meditate on death, what it does is it increases the sense that your end could come at any time. And when that happens, science shows it reorients people's values. That is suddenly what you care about isn't getting the new iPhone or where you're going to go on vacation or, you know, are you going to get a raise? It really becomes focused on finding people you care about and sharing experiences with them, engaging in some type of service. Science shows that these are the things that bring the most happiness to people. And so, this simple practice of not doing it in a morbid way, but of contemplating a little bit your death daily, is a way of constantly reorienting your values to the things that actually brings joy. And, you know, another one is what all religions do. They have prayers of gratitude or rituals of gratitude. What does gratitude do? Well, in my lab, we study gratitude a lot. And when we make people feel grateful either by counting their blessings or by doing lots of other shenanigans that we do to make them feel grateful, they not only become more likely to repay favors, they become more likely to pay them forward to help others. They become more generous. They become more honest. They will cheat less and give them opportunity to do that, right? All things that basically increase your virtue. And I can go on and on. But there are all these practices that by altering our mental states and our bodies, push us toward the things that help us lead more fulfilling, meaningful lives. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, I think is what so many of us are looking to religion for. You know, it's like when we're not drawn to religion just because we want to be seen as a religious person. Well, maybe some people are. Maybe there's a certain perception of piety or positioning or status in the community that you see it was associated. But my sense is like more at large. People, they look to religion because they're in a moment of their life, a moment often where there's a point of inflection, a moment of fear or loss or concern or hardship. And they want to know how to be able to breathe through it as much as possible. Let's touch on that. I mean, you mentioned loss. That's one thing that cuts across everybody no matter what your SES is or where you live. You will probably lose somebody you love at some point. And what's one thing that all religions do when people die? Re-eulogize them, right? And that seems normal. But if you think about it, it's really weird because if my wife, who I love, just left me or I lost a job that I love, I wouldn't want to spend a lot of time thinking about how great that was because it would increase the pain all the more. But there's work by George Benana, who is one of the nation's leading bereavement researchers at Columbia that shows one of the biggest predictors of how well we can move through grief and by how well, I mean, can we move through it quickly enough and with not too much intensity so that we experience it, but experience it, but it doesn't become debilitating to us. The ability to consolidate positive memory of the person who has passed is one of the biggest predictors of whether or not you can do that. Tell me what you mean by consolidate. Most people, when you think about them, if you know them well, have good parts and bad parts, things that they have done that you value, things that they have done that you don't. But to the extent that you can take the good parts of the memories of someone who you value, who has passed, and create a story and a narrative for them as being a good person, being a valuable part of your life, dealing with those negative interactions you may have had with them, coming to peace with them and seeing them as valuable and positive, predicts you coming to peace with their departure. And so in eulogizing, that's what we do. But another great way to understand this is if you look at the Jewish ritual, those around Shiva, it is a beautiful practice, right? When someone passes for seven days, people come to your home. You are never alone. They bring you food. They follow your lead and do you want to talk about it? Do you not want to talk about it? You have what's called instrumental support, which is not like sending you a like on Facebook, but actually being there when people need you. People are instructed not to focus on their own appearance, right? And so if you're a man, you don't have to shave, you know, you don't worry about are you wearing the best clothes, etc. The mirrors are all covered. Yeah. And there's research showing that to the extent you decrease self-focus at times of grief, it decreases your tendency to ruminate on that. The covering the mirror is really interesting because whatever there's scientific work from the 70s or 80s showing that whatever emotion you're feeling when you look in a mirror, it intensifies it. So if you're happy and you look in the mirror, you'll feel happy. If you're sad, you look in the mirror, you'll feel sad. So covering a mirror at a time of grief actually is another way to cut down on that grief. And so all of these practices that we may think, why are people doing that? They're working on our minds and bodies to help us deal with the challenges that we're facing. Yeah. And as you described, you know, like these practices for big moments like this, they exist in pretty much every tradition. I would imagine you could point to almost everyone and say, and they would have, this is what you do when this happens. They do. And there's a lot of coming out, even the covering mirrors, some Hindi ceremonies they cover mirrors, some Irish wakes they cover mirrors, all for different theological reasons. But I think they serve the same purpose. And so that's exactly right. And even in a lot of the Christian traditions and the Jewish traditions, there are meditative contemplative practices for whatever reason they've kind of been hidden away more so than in the Buddhist practices that we see now. And so I think you're right. These are practices that, again, if there is a divine Creator, it has given to all of its creatures, or if not, we all inhabit the same bodies on this earth. And so we're all iterating to similar solutions to deal with them. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Welcome to Reynisches Revier, Germany's most exciting investment hub, where global leaders like Microsoft are investing billions. Home to Europe's fastest supercomputer, the region offers strong R&D partnerships. So let its outstanding digital infrastructure connect you to key markets in real time. Reynisches Revier is ready for growth and ready for you. Find out more at BePart of It dot nrw. These tend to be things that are focused on a moment in time, which is a big moment, a deeply emotional moment, whether it's loss. You also, you have interesting thoughts on the notion of rituals, practices that sort of help us just get through seasons of life, midlife, I think is, and it's interesting because oftentimes we hit midlife, and I think it's being described very differently by different people these days, like anywhere between 30 and 60. 45, 50 is the usual, but yeah, it's kind of like, 45 to 60. But it's this moment in life where sort of culturally, just in Western society, it doesn't feel like there are a lot of actual quote, rituals or practices. And I feel like it's a time in life where a lot of us walk away from them, even if we had them earlier. And yet we're going through really big moments and learnings and being dropped to our knees and feeling really high highs. Talk to me a little bit about the notion of rituals and practices that may in some way have derived from or still be based in faith, but that serve a meaningful, practical role as we navigate midlife. Well, yeah, that's a good point. I mean, traditionally, if you looked at happiness across the lifespan, it kind of is U-shaped and it hit its nadir, its bottom around 45 and 50. And it's a difficult time in life because it's a time when your kids might be moving out and moving on, if your parents are still around the generation ahead of you is starting to face health crises and maybe passing. And it's a very tenuous time. It's also a time of life when if you're a person who's working, I don't know about you, but it's hard to keep up that intensity. I can't do on 57. I can't do now what I did when I was 35. And so when I started thinking about this, Arthur Brooks had this wonderful article in the Atlantic where he was saying, how do you find meaning in midlife? And he pointed me to something in that article that spoke well to me, which is this in Hinduism, they have these four stages of life. The first stage is the student where you're learning what you need to do to basically be successful in the world. The second is the householder where you got a good job, you're earning money, you're buying a home, getting married, having kids. You're enjoying in some ways the central materialistic pleasures of life. But around 50, they say when the hair starts to gray and your skin starts to wrinkle, you're supposed to move to a new phase, which I forget the English translation, but the Hindi word for it is vana prastha. And it's where you pivot from being the person who's going all out to keep your career going and get ahead and earn more money to the sharer of wisdom. And so what that means in life is, okay, maybe I don't have to be the person who's like working, you know, 16 hours a day. But what do I have to offer? I have experience. I have wisdom that the younger folks around me don't have. And to the extent that you can pivot and see yourself as a sharer of wisdom and to start on that road of not accumulating, but starting to deaccumulate, at this stage, you're not ready to give away your worldly possessions, but you're ready to give away your wisdom, your experience to help raise others up than trying to climb the ladder yourself. People who can do that suddenly find more meaning in life. And it's funny, you know, I was saying before the curve of happiness is like you, it starts going up again in the 60s and then keeps going up until the 80s until and unless you start to hit really, really serious health issues. And what happens is people again are looking toward what brings them happiness, which is helping others, sharing experiences, positive emotional experiences with others. And so the idea behind Vana Prastha that Hinduism is figured out was if you can make that pivot earlier, if you can make that pivot in your 50s, you're not going to have that bottom out in happiness. And in some ways that's what contemplating death does. You know, now you're not waiting until you're like 65, 70, where you're really feeling it, it's not a death store. If you start contemplating in your 50s, you can reorient your values earlier in life. And so I think that's where some of the wisdom comes around these practices of life does have its seasons, you know, in America, the season now is keep working till you die because who knows if there's going to be social security or enough money or anything for you and your value is economically determined. But if we can change that, I think our happiness as a society will actually increase. But let's not gloss over that though, because what you just shared is this is really practical and it's on a lot of people's minds right now. A lot of people are in that season of life where they're like, I would love, they're listening along, they're watching us have a conversation, this all makes sense. And they're like, well, yeah, I would love to actually like move into that season. And yet I'm not where I need to be. I'm worried that the health system won't be here, that social security won't be here. And I don't ever, I would love to kick back, I would love to not actually have to work as hard as I've been working. But from a practical standpoint, they're looking at the lives and saying, I don't see when this is going to be available to me. Like I feel like I'm going to have to keep my head down and keep in this building phase and working phase and accumulating phase indefinitely, maybe into my 70s, maybe longer. When do I get like maybe the question I'm asking is if you're that person, right? And you're listening to this nodding along saying, this sounds awesome. I wish I could experience this. And yes, if I can accelerate that and do it younger, I would love to be able to do that. The practical realities of my life right now, I don't see a way to do that now, maybe you're under 50s, I don't see a way for me to do that for the next 10, 20 years. Are there practices or rituals, even given that that maybe I can dip into now that would at least let me case that a little bit? Yeah. I mean, this is a long standing debate in some senses is the spiritual life, a luxury life, right? That is, in some sense, that you have to have your material needs met before you can focus on this. And that's why, many people went to monasteries traditionally. Yeah, or just become an ascetic. Become an ascetic because then you went around with a begging bowl because that's where you had the ability to do this. And I completely agree with what you're saying. Many people because of the ways society is structured and send and incentivize don't have a way to do that. And you or I don't have a way to change that by flipping a switch. If you can engage in that element of service with other people, right? Service has been shown to be one of the biggest predictors of happiness. People completely mispredict how much it's going to make them happy. Or one of the things that data show is we often don't reach out to, I don't mean service like volunteer in a soup kitchen. I mean like to friends or other people who are facing issues. We often don't reach out to them because we think they're not going to want the help or it's going to make it feel weird or I don't know what to say. But the data show on these studies that when people are assigned basically to go and do this, you're as part of an experimental protocol. Not only are the people who they engage, who they give service to happy, but the givers are also happier. And so I would say to people whatever stage of life you're at or if you're in midlife and having these issues and you feel like I'm trapped, how do I find some of that piece or taste some of that piece. Finding an opportunity for service is a way to do it because all the data show it's good. Now the one thing about services you might be saying, sure Dave again that's easy for you to say, I don't have the luxury to do this. I'm always feeling stressed or I don't have time. You have to find a balance between inner life and outer life. And so what I'm telling you about service is kind of outer life. Do this in the world. But the way to be able to do that is to carve out time for yourself for quiet meditation, quiet prayer, if you're a person of faith. These are the things that recharge your inner life that help you sit with the stress, the anxiety, the anger, the frustration to sit with it, to place it aside so that you can then go into the world and be productive in helping others and not be swallowed up by that anger and that frustration. And so finding a practice of contemplation that allows you to have that renewal is what allows you to feel like you can go into the world and engage in that service. And that brings people more meaning than they expected. It may not make it easier to pay your bills. It may not make it easier to meet some of the challenges you're facing. But it will give you a taste of sharing that wisdom that Avonaprosthi emphasized. Yeah. I love that. And also it's this notion that it doesn't have to be a grand gesture. I think sometimes we get caught in that trap of thinking, if it's not big, if it's not like it doesn't really move the needle, it's not worth it for them. And it's not worth it for me. I'm not going to get the feeling I want. It's not going to make a difference for them. What you're offering here is really, it sounds like it's like, it's going to be the tiniest little thing. This is literally built into most faith-based systems. You're part of a community and you show up on a regular basis. And in the tiniest little way, there are always opportunities to offer a little bit of yourself, even in the simplest way, whether it's physical labor, whether it's intellectual, like what or emotional support, whatever it may be, it may be just showing up there for people who are struggling just to be a person in a room next to them. And I think a lot of this conversation is circling back to this notion of like, okay, so these things have been built into these systems that are, that derive from religion often for thousands of years. We're walking away from those institutions and structures. But what you're sharing is that there's a lot of science showing a lot of the individual rituals and practices have standalone value, whether you do or don't believe in God. So how can we recreate those in our own lives? Exactly. And like you're talking about giving, you know, we all tend to think about, oh, my church, my rabbi, my priest, my imam wants me to give. And that's great. I should help other people. But what people don't realize is the giver's help just as much as the givi. And you know, that sounds like pie in the sky stuff. But look, I'm a scientist. We do these experiments. I can point you to the papers where they randomly select people like Jonathan who say, I want to be in a study. And they say, okay, Jonathan, here's $50. Today you can either spend it on yourself, some people or other people today, you have to spend it on other people. Guess who's happier at the end of the day, the people who spend it on other people. And so there's data to back this up. And you're hitting on a real important point there. These practices are baked into these faiths to help us and to help the other people around us. The question, of course, is how much can we extract without losing benefits, right? Or without having those techniques warped. And so like, I'll give you one example that worries me. You know, a lot of indigenous faiths use psychedelic, psilocybin or ayahuasca. Now you can go do psilocybin or ayahuasca with your Brooklyn hipster friend in an apartment, right? A lot of those trips, not a lot. 25% of them on average are bad trips. 8% of them can be so bad that people need mental health treatment afterward. Why is that? Well, it's because we are removing these chemicals from the guard rails that are usually around them that the shamans use to kind of put you in the right state to have this happen. When I was talking to Michael Pollan, he said to me, you know, when I try psilocybin, the one thing that I realized is you have to feel supremely safe when you take it. Because when that moment of ego dissolution comes, it can be beautiful or it can be terrifying. Right? And then you'll see these visions and some of them can be very disturbing. You need someone to help you reintegrate and understand what they mean. And even at Johns Hopkins, that is doing some of the greatest research on psychedelics right now, they don't call them a shaman, but they have a person who is there with you while you go on the trip, who is there for you to reach out to if things get scary, who is there to help you make sense of what happens, kind of like a modern day shaman. And that's how they ensure things are going well. And so the danger when we extract some of these practices from their original containers is that maybe they don't work as well, or maybe there's even some danger to it. I mean, if you think about religion as a spiritual technology, something that moves hearts and minds, it can move it for good or it can move it for bad. We've all seen religion harness to justify lots of acts of violence. And so I think we have to be careful about how we extract things. Yeah, I so agree with that. And you referenced this very early in our conversation. There's a risk of being too reductionist also and saying, yes, okay, so now we have a whole bunch of research. Your lab is doing a bunch of research on when we split some of these practices and rituals out and just do them in a dissociated way from the religion. It has certain benefits. We can see it, we can measure it, we can report on it. It's real. And yet, at the same time, my sense is it's not just about the larger construct being a way to help potentially ameliorate the risk of harm, but also I don't want to just say that there isn't necessarily a bigger something going on, a mystical element of some of these. And of course, this is nothing that we can ever prove or disprove as you shared earlier. We can't actually measure the existence of a negative. And people will be following along this conversation saying, yes, I've tried all these things that makes a difference. And I've also done this as part of a faith-based tradition, and it's profoundly different when I participate in that context because I believe there's something bigger happening beyond the ritual or the practice itself. No, I think that's right. And my mission is to actually show that there is a wisdom to a lot of these practices that we can study scientifically, but in no way to suggest that those higher elements aren't there. The psychologist William James is the father of modern psychology. He studied religious experience a lot, and ultimately, people asked him, do you believe there's something greater? He struggled with that. Then he came down to this notion of what he called an over-belief, and the over-belief logical argument goes like this. If there's something that I can do for which there is no hardcore data, and I'm paraphrasing here, but it feels true intuitively, and it leads to better positive outcomes, then it's logical to believe in it and to follow it. What's the harm? And so, for me, that rings true. It is, we don't know if God exists. If God exists, I'm sure it's in a form that none of us can conceive of, and there's certainly no empirical test that we can apply to it. If it's not causing harm, and I know religion, the institutions of religion have caused harm to people, I'm not in no way diminishing that. But in general, the data suggests that it's good. If you're having those amazing transcendent experiences, and you're feeling this connection to something else, and it's enriching your life, I think the notion that you have to logically reject it because there's no empirical data to support it is misguided. Even Richard Dawkins, the world's most famous atheist, will say, if push comes to shove, he can't entirely 100% be sure that God doesn't exist. So, why are we like having these debates? Why are we telling people, God must exist, or you're a fool if you think he does. I think be open to what we don't understand, and as long as it's rewarding and enriches your life, that's a good thing. Yeah, don't disagree there. So, people are following along. They're kind of not in line. They're like, this sounds really interesting. Okay, so where do I go from here? Where do I take all of these insights? And it seems like, and you've written and spoken about this, there are a couple of different directions we could go. Like one, reclaiming a sense of faith or returning to it if it's been a part of your practice, and centering a lot of these practices we've been talking about. The second, letting go of faith, but maybe holding on to the rituals and practices that we've been talking about because they have their own standalone value. And then this other interesting third option, which is, what if we actually explored what would it look like to create a new, a different spiritual path or framework that just resonates with us? The first two are relatively easy, and I know many people who have done both. It's actually interesting right now. There's actually a resurgence among young men. I'm sure your listeners have heard about the crisis of meeting young men or facing. Certainly not the majority, but there is a sizable minority of young men who are turning back toward traditional faith, especially Christianity, to try and find meaning. The third one has been tried lots of times, but often without any spiritual elements. So people will come together and they'll try and agree on a certain set of principles and virtuous outcomes and things. But those tend to fall apart because they don't have the rituals there that bind them together. And the way that we're talking about whether it's things like synchrony, cultivating gratitude, working toward empathy, they don't have those things that reinforce group bonds. And so the question for us really is, can we take some of these practices and not just kind of ethical or philosophical beliefs and create new rituals around them? And I haven't seen that ever be tried, but I think there's a chance that it could work. The hardest part again though is getting people to agree on what those will be. And that's where the idea of kind of social consensus and sacrifice comes in, that it's not just your way or the highway that you have to find a community. I mean, we all, those of us who have been parts of religious communities recognize it's like, we don't always agree with everything, but you have to find meaning in enough of it that you want to continue with it. And I think that's the trick. If you're not born into a faith or if you're not converting to a faith that's there, but trying to create one, how do you get that committee to agree on what it is? Yeah. And I could just see that be feeling so contrived, so easily. It's interesting. I was talking to a scholar who studies new religious movements, and she shocked me. She said, you know, every year there's, there is in the U.S. and Canada, there's probably 5,200 new religious movements that start. Now, you know, that, that could be someone who's saying, I've heard the word of God and follow me, right? And they're typically small. Most of them are like flashes in the pan and fade away. The ones that stick are the ones that speak to people's needs in the current moment. So the question, where is that going to be? And there are a lot of reasons people are leaving traditional faith, but one is, I think, because they're not offering that as much. People are yearning to fill that kind of proverbial God-shaped hole in their heart. They want to feel that connection to something bigger, and they're going to look for different ways to do that. And so, you know, the question is, are our current traditions going to adapt to give them that, or are they going to be replaced by newer things? That is the question. Yeah. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So in this container of a good life project, if I offer up the phrase, to live a good life, what comes up? I think to live a good life is to make life better for other people. And I know it sounds trite, but I, you know, for the longest time, I never appreciated the value of that. And maybe it's because I'm in my sharing wisdom phase of life, where I've realized it's not about me and I only have a certain number of years left. And from the work that I do, which basically gives me data that shows me what I'm saying, is borne out. It means making life better for other people, not at the total cost of yourself. It doesn't mean you have to give away everything you own. But it means, remember that everybody is facing their own difficulties and hardships. And if you can do anything to help, even at a small scale, at the end of your life, when you look back, you'll be the happier for it. Thank you. What you both discovered to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter, because that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. She came, she saw, she gentrified. On BBC iPlayer, Senuous is a not-for-profit organization. We've literally never made a profit. 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