The provided text offers excerpts from Barbara Bradley Hagerty's book, charting her journalistic and personal quest to understand the intersection of science and spirituality. Hagerty examines numerous accounts of transformative experiences, or "quantum change," which often occur during intense suffering or profound existential crisis. The investigation includes analyzing the biology of belief, such as the brain's role in mystical states, and studies involving near-death experiences and psychedelics, which seem to bypass typical sensory filters. She reports on neuroscientific findings, including brain scans of monks and nuns, suggesting that diverse spiritual paths converge on similar unitary consciousness states. Ultimately, the author considers controversial scientific fields like parapsychology and non-local mind as possible explanations for phenomena like distant prayer, while affirming the enduring importance of personal religious narrative.

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