Audiobook. The former NPR reporter explores her research for the science of spirituality. She lets us know right away that she grew up in a Christian Science home and her grandmother was a widely known practitioner. It was when she was miserable with a cold that she abandoned Christian Science for Tylenol, but her faith is always in evidence in this book.
She writes about her interviews with people who have had a life changing mystical experience which most often occurred when they were at a very low point and she interviewed many people with temporal lobe epilepsy, a large number of whom report religious experiences resulting from their epileptic events. She puzzles about the possibility of a God who gives some people better access to receive his wisdom. (Of course if you think very long about God handing out assets, there are lots of questions you might ask.)
Clearly she was looking for evidence of God in scientific studies; ultimately it doesn’t happen. Her bias was there; she refers to some scientists as “materialists.” My understanding is that science is fundamentally materialist, and that is its great strength. If you believe that might not take in all the possibilities, that is its shortcoming.