« The more we mobilize the networks of neurons that arouse us in serenity and sympathy for others, the more our entourage will feel it and the more peace will extend, by contagion, if I may say so, on our planet. A more detailed knowledge of the type of information processed by each half of our brain will make us more able to define our behavior as individuals, on the one hand, but especially as members of the immense human family. »

« Alas! compassion does not often have a voice in our societies. Many of us spend a lot of time (and waste a lot of energy) devaluing or criticizing others (or, worse, themselves!). When we are burdened with reproaches, we should ask ourselves who, deep down, hustles us and on whom we praise our recriminations. Have you ever noticed the unfortunate tendency of negative thoughts to increase our hostility towards ourselves or our anxiety? And the pernicious influence of our inner monologue on our relations with our loved ones and the reactions we elicit in them? »

« Tibetan monks and Franciscan sisters were invited to meditate or pray in the brain imaging apparatus and then pull on a rope when they felt as close as possible to God or to the highest degree of their meditation. Changes in their neurological activity in specific areas of their brain were observed at that time. The language centers of their left hemisphere stopped working and the little voice that usually babbling in them fell silent. Their associative area for orientation has been put on hold in the parietal circumvolution of their left hemisphere, the region of the brain that allows us to represent ourselves in space. When it slows down its activity or when our sensory system no longer sends it information, we no longer know where our body begins or ends, which tends to merge for us with our immediate environment. I understand better now why, when the language centers of my left hemisphere were silenced and information from my senses ceased to reach my associative area for orientation, I experienced a new state of consciousness by seeing myself as a fluid inseparable from the rest of the universe. »