As we plod through life, it's always heartening to see our loved ones break free from the habitual and turn their lives around. She's not the same person, we say. Our joy, though, is sometimes tinged with jealousy — why him, and not me? — if not downright pessimism. It won't last, we mutter.

Half hopeful and half in doubt about an individual's capacity for transformation, we are nonetheless taunted by commercial claims that everything from a Broadway musical to a new flavor of yogurt can be a "life-changing experience." Such bewildering concerns intrigue Dr. Solomon Katz, a professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and president of the Metanexus Institute on Religion and Science. For nearly three decades, Dr. Katz has studied spiritual transformation in relation to a phenomenon called "revitalization." He freely admits, it's a juncture of science and religion that is frowned upon by the academy and ignored by most funded research.

Of late, though, Dr. Katz finds himself marveling at how things have turned around in his own life, thanks to funding from the John Templeton Foundation. As principal investigator of the Spiritual Transformation Scientific Research Program, sponsored by the Metanexus Institute, he is now thrilled to be dispersing over twenty financial grants, ranging from $75,000 to $150,000 for scientific investigation of the various biological, psychosocial and cultural conditions underlying spiritual transformation.

Asked recently to explain this term, Dr. Katz couldn't suppress a delighted chuckle. "What's spiritual transformation? We're struggling to define it," he said. "That's, in fact, what this overall research program is designed to discover."

www.spiritualtransformationresearch.org, the program's website provides the following statement: "Spiritual transformation is a dramatic change in world and self views, purposes, religious beliefs, attitudes and behavior." Yet, even this official verbiage doesn't quite satisfy Dr. Katz.

"Dramatic change can occur over a lifetime or instantaneously. It can involve an organized religion, or not," he explained. "With this research initiative, we're establishing linkages between all sorts of people and ideas, to develop a scientific understanding of what all this means."

Indeed, after Dr. Katz requested proposals early in 2002, nearly 500 letters of intent poured in from all over the world. Both the quality and quantity of the grant applications were so tremendous that the unique step was taken to invite sixty prospective researchers to Philadelphia for a three-day conference in October. They met each other and heard addresses from speakers such as Bernard McGinn, a professor of Christian history at the University of Chicago, and Robert Thurman, a Buddhist scholar at Columbia University.

"Because our applicants were exposed to insights of these major scholars of the world's religions, the final proposals were much more sophisticated," said Dr. Katz. "People gained knowledge of other fields and got a better grasp of issues. They began to cooperate, not compete, with each other."

Eagerly awaited research projects include one being administered by Tom Smith, a social scientist at the University of Chicago, who will collect nationally representative data on the nature and level of spiritual transformation in America today. He plans to survey 1,500 people with an inquiry that begins with close-ended questions. Do you attend church? Do you believe in God? However, if an individual claims some sort of transformative experience-as Mr. Smith predicts a third might- he or she will be invited to describe it in detail.

"We don't want exceptional stories. We want the average story, because this will show where the population is," he said. "When talking about contact with a higher power, people tend to say, 'it changed my life,' but this phenomenon has never been looked at scientifically, across different social groups."

On a related theme, Alvin Dueck, from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, will employ a computerized technique called Latent Semantic Analysis to examine the language used by Muslims, Jews and Christians when talking about their transformative experiences.

"We're not counting how often people say 'God,' 'Yahweh,' or 'Allah,' but what words show up in close proximity, what we call 'semantic neighborhoods,'" he explained. "We will also track how often similes and metaphors are used to discover if word choice is more mystical or concrete. We may even find that some faith traditions have a house language."

That there is a glossary of transformation was a great surprise to Peggy Giordano, a professor of sociology at Ohio's Bowling Green State University. Back in 1982, she had the rare opportunity to study 254 chronically delinquent boys and girls, what was then the total population of youth incarcerated by the state of Ohio. "They are important because a small number of people commit the same crimes over and over," Dr. Giordano said.

After interviewing the juvenile offenders extensively as adolescents, she reconvened 210 of them in 1995, when they were adults. "In this second survey, we had a very modest set of questions about religion, yet we got strong, strong narratives that included nearly 50 stories of spiritual transformation," she said. "This was a complete surprise and our interviewers didn't know how to follow up on it. We realized, though, it was worthy of further study."

Funds from the Spiritual Transformation Scientific Research Program will enable Dr. Giordano to pursue this next phase. "In existing literature, there's a social network model, meaning that one's friends, family and spouses are pathways in or out of crime," she said. "But there's very little talk of spiritual transformation. It could be a key to why some people stay clear of the law."

Spiritual transformation may also be a factor in health, suggested Gail Ironson, M.D., Ph.D., and professor at the University of Miami. She is assaying a two-year study of how spiritual transformation affects 150 patients who are infected with HIV.

"This is a group-gay men and minority women-who have already dealt with a crisis of stigmatization," said Dr. Ironson. "Often, and especially with gay men, they've had to define their spirituality outside of organized religions. Does such fluidity of belief allow room for transformation? We hope to study this, as well as what seems to be a clear link between spirituality and longevity."

Finally, Nina Azari, senior investigator at the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands, is considering spiritual transformation in the context of neuroscience. Using fMRI, or functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, she plans to monitor Buddhists as they meditate, compared to their mental states while feeling compassion or self-consciousness.

"Scholarship addresses the reflective or theoretical, but how is the experience of spiritual transformation embodied?" she asked. "We want to study what parts of the brain are active during meditation and to observe how these different areas are cooperating."

That said, Ms. Azari took great pains to dispel what she feels is a popular misconception. "In neuroscience, we talk about the brain's plasticity, and its great capacity for change. We don't localize things, and say that happiness comes from spot 'X' in the brain," she said. "Neuroscience would never reduce spiritual transformation to mere brain function. Instead, we hope our objective point of view can enrich the subjective."

Ms. Azari's codicil is echoed by many of those about to begin scrutinizing spiritual transformation. Far from being reductive, all these studies are intended to greatly expand our understanding of a most mysterious realm, the connection of mind, body and soul.

Names of the awards winning researchers will soon be posted on the website with information about symposia planned during the two-year study.: please visit www.spiritualtransformationresearch.org.

Stephen Henderson, a writer based in New York City, contributes frequently to the New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, Town & Country, and Religion News Service, as well as other publications.