The Advantages of Meditation as Documented by Leading Scientists
What do the leading scientists say about mediations and its potential benefits for your life?
There is a physical, identifiable process in the brain that separates experienced meditators from those who are not as experienced.
Very experienced meditators report feelings of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when experiencing life, as if everything is new and fresh.
They report a lack of disturbing thoughts, and their minds are peaceful, their outlook happy.
In short, very experienced meditators exhibit all the signs everyone, everywhere is seeking.
And this is backed by modern science.
Daniel Goleman | Big Think
Co author of Altered Traits (named after the 1980 Blockbuster Altered States) with Richard Davidson.
The key takeaway I get from the above video is how they identified a specific brainwave pattern, the gamma wave, that only shows up in very experienced meditators.
Buddhist meditators call this “Beginners Mind,” or Shoshin, which is ironic because no beginner experiences it.
Scientists freely admit they have no idea what this is.
What Daniel Goleman concludes is that advanced meditators do live in a different mind reality than most people.
Call it enlightenment, call it a higher level of consciousness, call it what you will.
There is clearly a mental and emotional state that rises above the ordinary that can only be reached through many, many hours of meditation.
Further confirmation comes from the following video.
Meditation’s Impact on the Brain | Documentary Clip
For more information go to https://www.ajoyfulmind.com/
Anil Seth and the Forefront of Neuroscience
The consensus of modern neuroscience says I’m hallucinating me, and you are hallucinating you.
Do you find that idea unsettling? Watch the video below, multiple times if necessary to absorb its message.
(Anil Seth, I salute you! Everything I understand about neuroscience I owe to you. You are a Giant who’s shoulders I stand on.
How does the collection of cells, neurons, and brain parts generate consciousness?
David Chalmers calls this the Hard Problem of Consciousness.
The fields of neuroscience and philosophy are converging in this area.
Meditators will show them the way.
With practiced meditation, you can see and experience these realizations firsthand.
No need to take anyone else’s word for it.
The Gamma Wave and the Rubicon of 24/7 Meditation
In the first video, Daniel Goleman openly admitted that scientists don’t know what they are looking at and how this sustained gamma wave brain state comes to pass.
Here is my theory.
See Object Meditation: Tibet’s Great Contribution to Buddhism
When practitioners meditate often, particularly when engaged in object meditation, they develop a large number of mental disciplines that they take with them outside of the meditation session.
By far, the most impactful mental discipline I took on was applying opponents and utilizing the Sword of Wisdom.
It’s a fancy way of saying that I learned to cut off negative thoughts before they triggered other negative thoughts that polluted my mind.
When something occurs that triggers an angry response, I immediately call up the many reasons not to become angry, distract my mind from the stimulus, and bring on other opponents like compassion if some person is the trigger.
When I see someone with greater wealth, attainments, fame, or anything else I might desire, if jealousy arises, I immediately remind myself of the benefits of rejoicing for their good fortune.
Whenever something occurs that I consider undesirable, I immediately remind myself it is a result of my past actions, and I stop the downward spiral into victim thinking.
Since events that trigger anger, jealousy, or delusion happen thousands of times per day, these mental disciplines become an extended meditation.
Plus, the rigorous application of opponent forces keeps the mind pure, peaceful, and undisturbed.
Gamma waves are the brain state of an undisturbed mind focused on virtue.
Eckhart Tolle describes the pain body. Heading off a pain-body episode is the point of applying opponents and utilizing the Sword of Wisdom.
Eckhart Tolle’s advice is priceless.
The Sword of Wisdom is actually a group of mental disciplines that are all utilized the same way.
They put out fires when they are a spark before they become a raging inferno.
When these mental disciplines become engrained, practitioners find themselves engaged in mediation all the time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
This greatly accelerates a practitioner’s progress.
The experience of meditation is no longer confined to the formal meditation session.
That’s when meditators cross the Rubicon, develop gamma wave brain states and their mental and emotional makeup is forever changed.
John C. Lilly invented the float tank.
When John C. Lilly invented the float tank, he was a scientist who wanted to explore what would happen if consciousness was completely isolated from outside stimuli.
He set up an experiment, collected data, and reported his results.
He wrote Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer, which is still available for reprint.
He intentionally made the first few chapters nearly academically impenetrable. After that, the book gets very, very interesting.
He was the first scientist to give a good report on the advantages of meditation and how it impacts the mind.
My Personal Scientific Exploration of Meditation
I spent many hours in float tanks practicing meditation in total sensory deprivation.
When I first started, I had no particular agenda other than to see what would happen, similar to John C. Lilly.
What I discovered frightened me.
There is an unfathomable amount of garbage fermenting in the subconscious mind.
Parallel versus Serial processing
Your brain is a powerful parallel processor.
It processes thousands upon thousands of feelings and thoughts simultaneously, all day, and all night when you are not in Delta sleep.
Your consciousness is a serial processor working on top of the parallel one.
Consciousness presents the most important (highly emotionally charged) of these parallel ideas to the perceptual field that “You” identify with.
This presentation is sequential; thus you experience a “stream of consciousness.”
Why is this important?
Because 99% or more of your mental activity is happening behind the scenes, beneath the level of your conscious awareness.
These feelings and thoughts motivate most of your behavior and determine your moods.
Ignore what’s happening in your subconscious mind at your peril.
Weeding the garden of my mind
When I discovered the reality of my own mind, I suddenly became highly motivated to clean it up.
Once I realized I had thousands of poisonous thoughts taking root in my mind, I knew I had to do something.
Fortunately, I had been previously exposed to Lamrim, so I knew of a method for weeding my mental garden.
I devoted several hundred hours to practicing it.
It works.
Lamrim Meditations
Practicing Lamrim Meditations changed my life. It can change yours, too.
The New Meditation Handbook from Tharpa Publications, production of the New Kadampa Tradition:
The New Meditation Handbook is a practical guide to meditation that teaches us how to make ourself and others happy by developing inner peace, and in this way making our lives more meaningful. Without inner peace there is no real happiness at all. Problems, suffering and unhappiness do not exist outside the mind; they are feelings and thus part of our mind. Therefore, it is only by controlling our mind that we can permanently stop our problems and make ourself and others truly happy. The twenty-one Buddhist meditation practices presented in this book are actual methods to control our mind and experience lasting inner peace. This extremely practical guide is an indispensable handbook for those seeking happiness and meaning in their lives.
This one book, more than any other, is responsible for changing my life.
I also own the three-volume set The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, an extended study on Lamrim.
I’m into it.
The books are merely a guide. It’s the practice; it’s doing the meditations that change your heart and your life.
Practice, practice, practice.
Buying the book merely for intellectual knowledge is a waste of time.
Understanding gets you nowhere.
Feelings lead to your destination.
The original Lamrim sequence was prepared by the Buddhist Master Atisha (982–1054). It was later updated by Je Tsongkhapa (1357–1419) and translated by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso (1931–2022).
Geshe Kelsang Gyatso- 1931–2022, RIP. You were the bridge between our cultures. I owe you everything. I felt your Love. Thank you.
I request one last Blessing: Please, find me in the Bardo and guide me on my journey. I will navigate by the Power of your Radiant Light.
Meditation Basics
The book starts with a brief overview of what mediation is and why the handbook focuses on virtuous objects.
See Object Meditation: Tibet’s Great Contribution to Buddhism
Vajrayāna Buddhism is prevalent in Tibet, and it’s the form of meditation I practice.
They take object meditation to the extreme.
It’s called object meditation, but I don’t focus my attention on things.
The “object” of meditation is a virtue or, more specifically, the feelings that arise when I think about virtue.
In the meditations, I start with a contemplation, and when the feeling arises, I hold onto that feeling for as long as I can, hours when I have the concentration for it.
If I lose the feeling, I return to the contemplation, generate the feeling again, and then hold it.
I became well-practiced at generating and holding virtuous feelings in my heart.
So will you.
What is Virtue?
The Vajrayāna Buddhists have a simple test for virtue.
A virtuous object causes the meditator to develop a peaceful mind when concentrated on it.
If we concentrate on an object that disturbs our mind, like anger, jealousy, or attachment, then the object is non-virtuous.
The entire point of meditation in the Vajrayāna tradition is to attain peace of mind.
Identifying Virtue doesn’t take complex edifices of reasoning like Stoicism.
Virtue is revealed by a peaceful mind.
More Scientists Discussing Meditation
I don’t agree with 100% of what every scientist says about meditation. Many have only a passing familiarity with the process and don’t actually practice it.
Many who do meditate have not taken it as far as I have, and certainly not as far as monks and nuns who’ve devoted their lives to the practice.
However, these people know science, and what they say about meditation is backed up by data.
Lots of data.
You can’t discount that completely.
Andrew Huberman
Andrew Huberman is one of the most brilliant and insightful scientists working with the Mind today. From his website:
Andrew Huberman, Ph.D., is a neuroscientist and tenured professor in the department of neurobiology, and by courtesy, psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford School of Medicine. He has made numerous significant contributions to the fields of brain development, brain function and neural plasticity, which is the ability of our nervous system to rewire and learn new behaviors, skills and cognitive functioning.
Think Big
I am a fan of the Think Big project.
The video below is one of their better ones.
Mindfulness is about speeding up our mental processes.
During my awakening, I increased my mental processing by 50% to 80%.
It’s a real thing.
~~wink~~
Anatta