Prayer and Mental Telepathy

In Orthodox literature we read that no one can read another person’s mind. This issue is often discussed in the context of sin: how do demons know our sinful thoughts? If inability to read minds by demons (who are fallen angels) is indeed the case, how then could non-fallen angels and saints hear our mental prayers? This is a valid question because the ‘physiology’ of demons (their makeup, or essence, if you like) did not change as a result of their fall, nor did their powers and ability to function change. Their appearance, however, most certainly did change. Being spiritual beings they would have radiated God’s glory when in heaven, but after being banished light was replaced with darkness. So their demeanour and behaviour went from one extreme to the other.

Consider the analogy of two babies born at the same time and both baptised. Their upbringing however differed markedly. Twenty years later, one young man was saintly; the other was a sinner, as distant spiritually from the normal person as was his saintly counterpart, but of course in the opposite direction. The sinner’s human qualities did not change as a result of his sins (and God loved him equally, if not more, because of his precarious position). Physically he remained the same. His rational faculties continue to function unaffected by sin. What we are getting at here is that a person remains fully human after falling into sin, even though his spiritual state has taken a dive. Dark sinful thoughts do not lower his humanity, because he is entitled to such thoughts, if he so chooses, because of freewill – a gift God has given him. From the human perspective, both men are equal, and they continue to share God’s image; where they differ is in His likeness.

To emphasis this point, consider the converse scenario. When a primitive pagan is baptised, he does not change physically, or mentally - for that matter. In essence he is the same person one minute after the baptism as he was one minute before the baptism. His brain remains the same and so does his mind, in the sense that he still has the same memories, and his mental capabilities remain unaltered. If he had an IQ of say 130 before the baptism, he would have an IQ of 130 after the baptism. Instead he has changed spiritually, and at that brief moment in time he is effectively sinless, although not for long.

The same applies to demons; the abilities they had immediately before the fall were retained after the fall. The fact that demons are prevented from using these abilities to their full extent in their continued warfare with God’s creation does not mean that demons have now been re-engineered somehow by God. How do we know? God’s love continues to shine on the good and the bad; what He has created He does not take away. Any change that occurs happens as a consequence of choice made by His creatures, and not by God. It should be remembered that angels, both those that fell and those that did not fall, also were created with freewill.

So if angels can read minds, then demons would have been able to do the same prior to the fall. (Note that we are talking about talents and abilities conceptually, and not factually because chronologically humans did not exist at the time of the angelic rebellion). And if they could read minds prior to the fall, they could read minds after the fall. Conversely, if they could not read minds as demons, then they would not have been able to do this prior to the fall, when they were angels. So if they, as angels could not read minds, then neither could their fellow angels, who subsequently remained loyal to God. And if angels cannot read minds then neither can saints. What then are we saying? Are we pushing the boundaries of heresy? After all we do know, as a matter of fact, that saints and angels can and do hear our mental petitions. Not only that, but as we see in the prayer to St John Maximovich, our petition correctly states: “As thou once didst hear the mental petitions of thy far-scattered flock even BEFORE they could speak to thee, so now hear our prayers and bring them before the Lord.”

So, is there something wrong with our analysis? - not at all. What about the apparent contradiction, it seems as if we are going around in circles.

We need to analyse this question in stages.

On what basis is the claim made that minds cannot be read? Is it based on empirical evidence, is it a revelation from God, or is it a rational deduction? And while we are in philosophical mode, the holy fathers (Optina Elders, for example) tell us that although demons cannot read our minds, they can transmit, or put thoughts into our heads. Technically, what is the difference? Let’s look at empirical evidence first.

In October 2003 scientists implanted electrodes in a monkey’s brain and then trained the monkey to move a robotic arm, which was located in another laboratory some 600 km away, using thought power alone. The monkey consciously knew that she was controlling the device with her thoughts.

In June 2004, four volunteers in a research project were able to control a video game using thought alone and some electrodes placed on the surface of the brain. To move the cursor on the video game the volunteers merely had to think the word ‘move.’

The researchers pointed out that one of their aims is to allow disabled people to operate artificial limbs using thought power, for example, and for people who are severely disabled, those who are completely locked in their bodies – without control even of breath or eye movement – to communicate. This indeed is a noble cause.

In May 2006 New Scientist published an article with the subtitle: “Our innermost thoughts and visions might not be secret for long.” Using fMRI brain scanning, researchers were attempting to correlate neuronal activity with sight. Frank Tong, a cognitive neuroscientists at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, who was running the experiment explained: “With fMRI, we can read out what a person is seeing or perceiving. [This experiment] demonstrates that very basic forms of mind reading can be achieved with brain imaging.” By inserting electrodes into the brain you might, even at this early stage of experimentation, be able to determine if someone is looking at a picture of a car, the Eiffel Tower or a particular person.

Some progress has already been made in recording simple images that people visualised in their minds, as opposed to seeing actual objects. This seems like another step closer to reading the mind. Despite the fact that all this work is still in its infancy, based on results to date, researchers are already concluding that it should be possible to decode a person’s dreams and thoughts. Neuroethicist at Stanford University, Judy Illes, considers we are not far off from being able to “get brain measurements without touching somebody, and even without their consent.” Capturing simple images using current fMRI techniques is already producing results with 90 per cent accuracy.

How comfortable are we now regarding our mental privacy? Going back to the original question, whether demons can read minds, is there now room for a little doubt? After all if machines can decode what goes on in our brain by looking at neuronnal activity, could not demons do the same?

One more example is worth looking at to demonstrate that brain communication techniques developed by researchers to date are not manifestations of, or restricted to, one peculiar process occurring in the brain. Professor of Cybernetics, Kevin Warwick performed an unusual series of experiments between 1998 and 2002 in England, which culminated in a demonstration of nervous-system to nervous-system communication between himself and his wife Irena. A microelectrode array [a series of small electrodes on a tiny circuit board] was implanted into each of their nervous systems via the median nerve in one of their arms [between the elbow and the wrist]. The array was in turn connected to computer monitoring equipment using cables and ribbons, much like that used to connect printers and scanners to computers. This was the first known attempt at man merging with machine to become a cyborg. During the experiment when Kevin Warwick moved his finger twice, Irena would receive two electric pulses in her hand; when he moved his finger three times, she would receive three pulses, and vice versa. The pulses were transmitted via the internet even though both participants in the experiment were located in the same building.

Earlier we posed the question, what is the difference between reading a mind and putting signals (thoughts) into a mind. This last experiment, although not technically mind-to-mind communication, gives a hint, in that the recipient of the signal had to wait till the sender chose to send the signal. The recipient could not enter the other person’s nervous system and pick up, or collect, the signal. This indicates that there is a difference between the two processes.

But the picture gets clouded when we look at the detail. In the video game experiment described above, the cursor was moved by the volunteer thinking the word ‘move.’ From his perspective he sent a signal that was picked up by a scanner; but the scanner physically looked at the brain, identified (read) what it saw and with computer wizardry, transmitted the data to a processing unit. So was the signal read or sent? And if the machine could pick up the brain activity associated with the thought ‘move,’ could it not pick up the brain activity associated with any other word, or any other mental activity for that matter, such as seeing an object, or merely visualising the object; would that not be ‘mind reading?’ It certainly does begin to look like it, does it not?

Without going into technicalities and semantics, it would be a fair assumption to make that anything that a machine can do, demons could also do, meaning that if machines could read minds then so could demons. But without exception, those holy fathers who commented on this topic were unanimous that demons cannot read minds. Also the Church teaches, and we know from direct experience that saints do (and in fact must, otherwise prayer would be pointless) hear our mental petitions; often this happens even before we formulate them in our own minds. So what seems to be happening is that on the one hand the fathers say no, but on the other hand the experiments indicate yes. The answer to this dilemma may not be obvious, but presumably the contradiction between teaching and observation is evident. Any thoughts on the matter? We will return to this later.

Let’s now have a look at some of the things that happen from the religious perspective. When we use the expression “reading the mind” we tend to interpret that as going into someone’s head and ‘seeing’ their thoughts as they are occurring, as if they were our own; or by analogy it’s like hearing mentally someone speak. But we saw from the prayer to St John that when he was still alive on Earth, he could “hear the mental petitions his far-scattered flock even BEFORE they could speak to him.” In other words he knew what they wanted to ask before they even formulated the words in prayer.

In a similar vein, St John of Kronstadt introduced general confession in Church because it was physically impossible for him to confess the thousands of parishioners individually. Yet there would be instances where a person would come up to St John to take Communion, and St John would say to that person that they had certain unconfessed sins, and not give them communion. How do we interpret this? St John found it impossible to listen to individual confessions, so when the masses were verbally saying their sins openly in Church, all at the same time, he was not listening to each of them concurrently.

The human brain can only use any given set of neurons on one specific process at any given time; for example, the neurons that process visual images are located at the back of the brain in the visual cortex. These neurons respond to external images that we look at, and they also can create mental images using the imagination. While these neurons are active with one function, say looking at a particular object, they cannot concurrently process signals from another source, be it external or imaginary. The same applies to other neurons, such as those involved with sound. When the brain hears a sound it can’t at the same time focus on another auditory signal, again irrespective of whether it is external or internal. Many people would argue that they in fact can focus on separate events at the same time, but that is only an illusion; in that situation the brain rapidly switches backwards and forwards between events.

This happens to mere mortals like us, and it happens to saints. Recall that Christ is perfect man and God. Biologically He was the same as us, apart from the fact that He did not sin. (It’s worth sidetracking here momentarily because many people have difficulty in comprehending how Christ could not sin, hence you get the absurd and blasphemous movies and novels depicting the Lord succumbing to temptation. Think of it this way: sin by definition is a separation from God; the bigger the sin the greater the separation. So for Christ to sin it would mean separating Himself from Himself, which is a logical absurdity). So if God retained His humanity intact, the saints can be no different – biologically they remain constant in their journey to sainthood. This means that their brains continue to function the same way as they always did – they do not have a shortcut for bypassing the laws of nature within their human nature.

However, when their souls are separated from their bodies, their minds are no longer restricted by the physiological constraints of the brain. So to use computer terminology, while in the body, their minds process thoughts sequentially (or serially), but when freed from the body, their minds can process thoughts in parallel. This means that the saints can listen to multiple prayers (any number – even millions) at the same time when they reside in Heaven. This, however, still does not explain what happens - how minds are read by saints, so our exploration of this phenomenon continues.

Going back to St John of Kronstadt, when the unworthy sinners approached for communion, they were not at that moment thinking about their sins, in the sense: “I have robbed my neighbour,” thereby allowing St John to read their mind at that instant and in so doing finding out that the person approaching communion robbed his neighbour. He knew their sins by a mechanism other than by reading the mind. He did not observe their thoughts directly.

What we have witnessed in these two examples is saints seeing the state of another person’s soul, rather that reading thoughts word for word. This was necessary to save their souls, and by doing this publicly at times, it strengthened the faith of others. In order to see another person’s soul with such clarity required God’s grace in such measure as to allow the saint to see what was required, and no more. When salvation was not at stake, the saints had to rely on conventional lines of communication, and for this reason they could also be deceived.

Having said this, it does not mean that minds, at times, were not read directly; indeed they were. In 1980 Great-Schema monk, Abbot Savva, from the Pskov-Pechory Monastery in Russia passed away. He was renowned amongst Orthodox for his saintly life – for his dedicated service God. One of his spiritual daughters writes how one time she was present at a panikhida (a short service to commemorate the departed) that Fr Savva was serving; she stood with a group of worshipers behind him. During the service she, in her elated state brought on by romantic notions, thought to herself that maybe she should practise fasting on Mondays, the way the monks do. At that moment Fr Savva stopped the commemorations, turned to the group, and with a smile said that a woman has now decided to practice monasticism at home. Little does she know that when her husband finds out, he will ‘kill’ her.

And closer to home, a young nun wrote to a priest in Melbourne about a recent experience she had while on a pilgrimage to Russia. While on a train journey from Moscow to a renowned monastery, a discussion arose among the group of pilgrims about the nature of the soul; at journey’s end the issue was not resolved. The pilgrims attended liturgy at the monastery, and as is customary, at the end of the service worshipers go forward to kiss the cross held by the priest. As the woman in the group, who originally raised the question about the nature of the soul, came up, the hieromonk (priest-monk) said to her (‘out of the blue’): “So you want to know what the human soul looks like. Come with me.” And he took her to the side and showed her an icon on the wall depicting the Dormition of the Theotokos (where the Lord is pictured holding the soul of the Theotokos, in the form of an infant, beside the body of the Theotokos), and said: “There, that is what the soul looks like.”

The mechanism in both examples by which the priests were privy to topics not accessible by the senses was similar, although in the second case it is more pronounced. Here there was no possible way for the hieromonk at the monastery (located hundred’s of kilometres away) to have access to the conversation that took place in the train, using any known brain mechanism. When we use any of our senses, the brain processes the sensory signals and passes the result to the mind. When mental images and thoughts are generated by the mind, the brain likewise is involved. However, when the mind receives ‘information’ that entirely bypasses the senses, this demonstrates two things: first, it confirms that the mind is a separate entity to the brain, and secondly, there must be another channel for data transfer.

How does this mechanism work?

One would be hard pressed to find a book shop without books and magazines on mind, body and spirit. This is a popular concept that is perennially discussed and written about in secular society. The Orthodox version is body, soul and spirit, an expression that most have heard but not all understand, hence the ‘faq’ (frequently asked question): what is the difference between soul and spirit? The usual response is that the spirit is the mind of the soul, with the implication being that the soul has its own spiritual mind while the brain has the normal ‘thinking’ mind (the real one) that we are all conversant with. The spiritual mind is invariably viewed as either being dormant in the general populus, or it is barely kicking over somewhere in the background (probably linked to the conscience in someway), and really only becomes active with people such as St Gregory Palamas. So in reality, from the practical perspective, it is a nice piece of theory that either belongs to a bygone era or surfaces as a topic of discussion for theology students.

This common understanding about the function of the spirit is actually wrong. There is another component that appears on the scene at a deeper level in Orthodox literature; it is the nous. Despite the fact that the nous has a solid foundation in Orthodoxy, spanning the best part of 2000 years, it too is not clearly understood even among the theologians. We won’t go into details here, but suffice to say that it is the nous that parallels the common understanding of the mind. In the writings of the fathers we read that our intimate link with God is via the nous; it is our channel of communication with God, just as the mind is our link with the world at large. When someone speaks to us we hear their voice, which enters the brain via the auditory system, and then is accessed by the mind. This is communication at the worldly level.

When a person is in tune with God, as per the examples above, they ‘hear’ God’s voice via the nous. The details are outside the scope of this discussion, but in simple terms, the nous, like the mind resides in the brain, and consequently when there is dialogue between God and the nous, the nous, once it has been informed by God about a specific issue, then passes on this information, via the brain, to the mind. At this point one can almost hear the reaction from the theology students, and even their mentors: that can’t be true; we know that the holy fathers specifically speak of the nous residing in the heart. Technically speaking, that is not correct; the nous resides in the brain, but focuses its activity in the heart; in other words its effect is felt in the heart but its place of residence is in the brain.

In the life of St Seraphim we read how he would pray to God for a resolution of a specific issue and he would then receive from God precise details about his query. Here the communication channels were:

- St Seraphim would pray consciously to God using the mind
- God would respond by communicating through St Seraphim’s nous
- The nous would transfer this knowledge via the brain to the mind
- St Seraphim would inform those who asked for his help what God’s response was.

A similar process occurred in the above examples. The pilgrims on the train had a genuine love for God. By providing an answer in the way that He did, God strengthened the faith and love of the pilgrims – to their benefit and also for the benefit of those who subsequently learned about this event; and that includes us. In this case God initiated the communication process by informing the hieromonk, in much the same way that He did with St Seraphim. So the hieromonk did not read the minds of the pilgrims; he was informed by God what to say, and to whom to say it.

Because what transpired did not involve mind reading, demons were bypassed entirely; they have no way of getting in on the act. This almost answers the question originally posed, but not quite. We did describe one case of mind reading – that involving Fr Savva and the panikhida incident. So could demons read the mind in that case?

Previously we saw the following examples of mind reading performed in laboratory experiments:

- A monkey could move a robotic arm using mental processes
- Research volunteers controlled a video game cursor by thinking ‘move’
- Detecting what a person was actually looking at and also imagining
- Sending electrical impulses between two subjects linked by the internet

Was this mind reading? It depends on the definition, but technically the answer is yes. Physical acts were performed which were initiated by the mind. The mind focussed on performing a task specified by the researchers; brain scanning equipment picked up electrical signals generated by neurons associated with a given activity and these signals were then manipulated like any other type electrical inputs used in conventional electromechanical systems worldwide. Essentially from the engineering point of view the issue was really the source of the signals rather than the type of signals. Since neurons communicate with each other electrical-chemical signals, the concept is not new.

What needs to be understood, however, is that a thought or mental image generates electrochemical activity. The brain scanning system picks up this electrochemical activity (which is only energy). But that electrochemical activity (electric current, if you like) does not contain the thought. To emphasise the point, the thought creates the current, but the current does not contain the thought, and therefore the equipment that subsequently measures the current cannot measure the thought.

Let’s look at the specific example of the video game; we will use some fictitious figures for illustration purposes.

- Different parts of the brain are dedicated to performing specific tasks. When we are looking at an object, say an apple, one part of the brain will become active. Call that group of neurons Group A.

- When we think about names of people, a different group of neurons are involved. Say when we think about the name ‘Alexander’ the neurons involved are Group B. But when we think about the name ‘Despina’ again Group B neurons are involved.

In both cases the common link between the names is the fact that they are nouns. So nouns activate a specific area of the brain.

- When we think of the verb ‘Move’ a different area of the brain becomes active, which we will call Group C neurons. If we next think of the word ‘Run’ again Group C neurons are involved.

So from this we see that the brain scanner may be able to differentiate between the types of thoughts that we are thinking (ie either nouns or verbs) but it has no way of determining, even in principle, which nouns or verbs are being thought about. Consequently there is no way that a machine or a demon or anything else that scans brains can ever read actual thoughts.

To put this in the context of the video experiment, say when the volunteers thought the word ‘move’, the researchers would be able to say that it was Group C neurons that were involved. They could also measure the strength of the signal, typically in millivolts and milliamps, and its frequency, but that’s it. Within that signal no thought could be extracted.

So when the fathers claimed that demons could not read our minds they were correct on both fronts; the demons could not read the conscious mind and nor could they read the nous – that is God’s channel. But they could get a hint of the direction our conscious mind was heading, far more precisely than any brain scanning system, by seeing the associated brain activity, and combining this information with observations of our mood, our responses to certain circumstances and stimuli, knowledge of our likes and dislikes, our beliefs and disbeliefs, our attachment to particular passions, and so on. Using all these inputs they could make an accurately calculated guess as to where we were in any given predicament or circumstance.

Now that the picture is clear, how then did Fr Savva read the mind of his parishioner? Perhaps that question, together with an excursion into Heaven to see how souls communicate there, could make an interesting sequel into our journey into the mind.

The final point that needs to be made here is that this article expresses the views of one Melbourne Russian Orthodox priest, and does not purport to speak on behalf of the Orthodox Church.

Glory to God for everything He gives us, but especially glory to Him for giving us Himself. Amen.

10 July 06

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