Monotheism: what misplaced awe of the Divine can do to your brain!
(CNN) — Next time Grandma asks why you’re going to the mall on Sunday morning instead of church, tell her you’re going to Apple Chapel.
For Apple fans, the brand triggers a reaction in the brain that’s not unlike that of religious devotees, according to a BBC documentary series that cites neurological research.
The neuroscientists ran a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) test on an Apple fanatic and discovered that images of the technology company’s gadgets lit up the same parts of the brain as images of a deity do for religious people, the report says.
The first episode of the documentary shows Apple employees “whipped up into some sort of crazy, evangelical frenzy” at the recent opening of an Apple store in London.
Observers and Apple critics have long accused fans of the tech company of taking their infatuation to an extreme.
People have gone to great lengths to prove their love of Apple with tattoos, bumper stickers and home shrines to outmoded Mac computers. Apple’s cult-like following was highlighted in a 2009 documentary called “Macheads.”
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Now read an excerpt from the book, the Philosophy of the Teachings of Islam, by Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community:
Of the natural conditions of man is his search after an Exalted Being towards Whom he has an inherent attraction. This is manifested by an infant from the moment of its birth. As soon as it is born, it displays a spiritual characteristic that it inclines towards its mother and is inspired by love of her. As its faculties are developed and its nature begins to display itself openly, this inherent quality is displayed more and more strongly. It finds no comfort anywhere except in the lap of its mother. If it is separated from her and finds itself at a distance from her, its life becomes bitter. Heaps of bounties fail to beguile it away from its mother in whom all its joy is concentrated. It feels no joy apart from her. What, then, is the nature of the attraction which an infant feels so strongly towards its mother? It is the attraction which the True Creator has implanted in the nature of man. The same attraction comes into play whenever a person feels love for another. It is a reflection of the attraction that is inherent in man’s nature towards God, as if he is in search of something that he misses, the name of which he has forgotten and which he seeks to find in one thing or another which he takes up from time to time. A person’s love of wealth or offspring or wife or his soul being attracted towards a musical voice are all indications of his search for the True Beloved. As man cannot behold with his physical eyes the Imperceptible Being, Who is latent like the quality of fire in everyone, but is hidden, nor can he discover Him through the mere exercise of imperfect reason, he has been misled grievously in his search and has mistakenly assigned His position to others.
