Introduction
Meditation—that great
and mysterious subject which in the past has always conjured up the image of
the solitary Asian ascetic sitting in deep trance—is fast appearing in
unexpected places throughout modern American culture. Secretaries are doing it
as part of their daily noon yoga classes. Preadolescent teenagers dropped
off at the YMCA by their mothers on a Saturday morning are learning it as part
of their karate training. Truck drivers and housewives in the Stress Reduction
Program at the University of Massachusetts Medical
Center are practicing a combination of Hindu yoga and Buddhist insight
meditation to control hypertension. Star athletes prepare themselves for
a demanding basketball game with centering techniques they learned in Zen. [1]
Dhyana is the generic Sanskrit
term for meditation, which in the Yoga Sutras refers to both the act of
inward contemplation in the broadest sense and more technically to the
intermediate state between mere attention to an object (dharana) and
complete absorption in it (samadhi). [2] The
earliest known reference to such practice on the Indian subcontinent occurs on
one of the seals, a figure seated in the lotus posture, found in the ruins of
the pre-Aryan civilizations at
Meditation is also
referred to as a spiritual practice in
As for modern
developments, in trying to formulate a definition of meditation, a useful rule
of thumb is to consider all meditative techniques to be culturally embedded.
This means that any specific technique cannot be understood unless it is
considered in the context of some particular spiritual tradition, situated in a
specific historical time period, or codified in a specific text according to
the philosophy of some particular individual. [5]
Thus, to refer to Hindu meditation or Buddhist meditation is not enough, since
the cultural traditions from which a particular kind of meditation comes are
quite different and even within a single tradition differ in complex ways. The
specific name of a school of thought or a teacher or the title of a specific
text is often quite important for identifying a particular type of
meditation. Vipassana, or insight meditation, for instance, as practiced
in the United States is derived from the Theravada tradition of Buddhism, and
is usually associated with the teachings of the Burmese monk Mahasi Sayadaw;
Transcendental Meditation is associated exclusively with the teachings of
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose tradition is Vedantic Hinduism; and so on.
The attempt to abstract
out the primary characteristics of meditation from a grab bag of traditions in
order to come to some purified essence or generic definition is a uniquely
Western and relatively recent phenomenon. This tendency should be
considered, however powerful and convincing its claim as an objective,
universal, and value-free method, to be an artifact of one culture attempting
to comprehend another that is completely different. [6]
At the same time,
however, Western styles of meditation have long existed in the form of
contemplative prayer, and contemporary interest in Asian practices has kindled
a resurgence of interest in Western parallels. Orison, the repetitive
and devotional meditation on Christ, repetition of the Holy Names, the
spiritual teachings of St. Ignatius, and the Eastern Orthodox practice of the philokalia
are examples from the Western contemplative tradition that come nearest to
meditation as it has been cultivated in Asian countries. Indeed there is
an unbroken tradition of mysticism which can be said to embody forms of
meditative practice in the West—from the NeoPlatonists such as Plotinus,
through the medieval mystics both early and late—Johannes Eriugena, St.
Bonaventure, John of the Cross, St. Theresa, St. Bernard of Clarivaux—followed
by such personalities as Robert Parsons, Margaret Mary Alacoque, and Emanuel
Swedenborg, to modern Christian contemplatives such as Pierre Teilhard de
Chardin and Thomas Merton, and now Schlomo Carlbach, Bede Griffiths, and David
Steindl-Rast. [7]
But for purposes of
carrying on a coherent discussion about the subject, while mystical awakening
can be found in some form in all cultures, meditation per se should be taken as
a uniquely Asian phenomenon which, wholesale, has only recently come to the
attention of the West. In its new Western context, particularly in the
The Americanization of
Meditation
Ideas about the Eastern
meditative traditions began seeping into American popular culture even before
the American Revolution through the various sects of European occult Christianity
that transplanted themselves to such new settlements as
Asian ideas then came
pouring in during the era of the transcendentalists, especially between the
1840s and the 1880s, largely influencing the American traditions of
spiritualism, theosophy, and mental healing. The Hindu conception of Brahman
was reformulated by Ralph Waldo Emerson into the
In general, by the late
nineteenth century Americans appropriated Asian ideas to fit their own
optimistic, pragmatic, and eclectic understanding of inner experience. This
usually meant adapting ideas such as reincarnation and karma into a very
liberal and heavily Christianized, but nevertheless secular, psychology of
character development that was closer to the philosophy of transcendentalism
than to doctrines in any of the Christian denominations. (Today, the same
standard for interpreting Asian ideas persists but in the form of a
neo-transcendentalist, Jungian, and counter-cultural definition of higher
consciousness.)
The World Parliament of
Religions, held in
By then, the idea of
comparative religions had caught on as an academic field of inquiry in the
universities. Following the Sacred Books of the East Series, edited by F. Max
Mueller, and major translations of the Theravada scriptures by the Pali Text
Society in
During the 1920s,
American popular culture was introduced to the meditative practices of the
Hindu yogi Paramahansa Yogananda. Gurdjieff, the Georgian mystic who had
toured the
During World War Two,
Huxley, Heard, and others became disciples of the meditation teacher Swami
Prabhavananda, head of the Vedanta Society of Southern California. Together,
they produced such influential books as Vedanta for the West and
assisted in the popular dissemination of texts such the Hindu Upanishads
and the Yoga Sutras. Meanwhile, on the east coast of the United States,
Swami Akhilananda of Boston frequently met with leading university
intellectuals in psychology, philosophy, and religion, including Gordon
Allport, Peter Bertocci, William Ernest Hocking, and George H. Williams. One
product of this liason was Akhilananda's Hindu Psychology (1946), with
an introduction by Gordon Allport, a text on the philosophy and psychology of
Vedantic meditation.
Another momentous event
introducing Asian ideas to the West was the arrival in 1941 of Henrich Zimmer,
Indologist and Sanskrit scholar, who had been a friend and confidant of C. G.
Jung. Zimmer brought the young Joseph Campbell, comparative mythologist and
folklorist, to the attention of the newly formed Bollingen Foundation.
Subsequently, the Foundation produced the
English translation of Jung's collected works, as well as numerous books by
Zimmer, which
The 1950s represented a
major expansion of interest in both meditation and Asian philosophy.
Frederick Speigelberg, a professor of comparative religions at Stanford, opened
the California Institute of Asian Studies in 1951, which highlighted the work
of the modern Hindu mystic and social reformer Sri Aurobindo Ghose. Alan Watts,
a student of Zen and former Episcopalian minister, soon joined the faculty and
within a few years produced such best-selling books as Psychotherapy East
and West and The Meaning of Zen.
It was also during this
time that Michael Murphy first came under the influence of Speigelberg, was
introduced to the teachings of Sri Aurobindo, and began the practice of
meditation. With the assistance of Abraham Maslow, Alan Watts, Willis Harman,
Aldous Huxley, George Leonard and others, Murphy would soon collaborate with
Richard Price to launch Esalen Institute, which quickly became the world's
premier growth center for human potential.
During the same period of
the early 1950s, with the help of Watts, D. T.
Suzuki came from
What occurred next
opened an entirely new era of popular interest in meditation. This was the
confluence of three major cultural events in the 1960s: the psychedelic
revolution, the Communist invasion of
By the early 1960s, mind
expanding drugs were being taken by a significant segment of the post war baby
boom, a generation which numbered some 40 million people born between 1945 and
1955 who came of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This led young
people in their teens and twenties to collectively open the doors of inward
perception, experiment with alternative lifestyles, and question established
cultural norms in Western society. An entire generation soon established their
own alternative institutions which began to operate in defiance of traditional
cultural forms still dominated by the ideology of their parents' generation.
Subsequently, this was to have important political, economic, religious, and
social consequences in the West, especially in the
At the same time, the
increased Soviet influence in
As a result of such
personalities, there has been a tremendous growth in meditation as a spiritual
practice in the
The counter-culture
movement that followed was considered a revolution in consciousness, driven by
mind-expanding drugs, as well as defined by spiritual teachings from Asian
cultures, each creating the conditions for expansion of the other. As the
psychedelic revolution of the 1960s subsided for the post-war baby boomers
maturing into the 1970s, meditation, and all that it implied, then became fixed
as an enduring ethic of that generation. The belief was that meditative
practices not only cleansed consciousness of psychedelics, and confirmed the
commitment to pursuing alternative lifestyles, but they also informed the
socio-cultural direction that the lives of many young people would soon take in
establishing new and permanent forms of lifetime spiritual practice. Now, after
thirty years, these developments have produced advanced Western practitioners,
who themselves are qualified senseis, roshis, swamis, and tulkus. We known them as Ram Dass, Sivananda Radha, Jiyu Kennet
Roshi, Maureen Freidgood, Jack Kornfield, Robert Frager, Richard Baker Roshi,
and others. They have begun to teach these Asian traditions to Western
audiences. In so doing, they are also partipating in their modification by
forming new lineages of meditation practice that, while informed by Asian
influences, turn out to be uniquely Western. Such teachings are already being transmitted
to a second and third generation of younger people in the
Not the least of these
influences has been renewed interest in the Western contemplative
traditions. Examination of Western mystics had increased dramatically
since the 1960s. Witness, for instance, establishment of the Classics in
Western Spirituality Series, published by the Paulist Press, or the appearance
of the newly formed Mysticism Study Group within the American Academy of
Religion. At the same time, popular books on Christian meditation are clearly
linked to the spiritual awakening that has occurred in the counter-culture.
Avery Brooke's Learning and Teaching Christian Meditation (1975), Joan
Cooper's Guided Meditation and the Teachings of Jesus (1982), and Swami
Rama's Meditation in Christianity (1983) are but a few of the titles
that have enjoyed continuous printings since they first came out. There is also
a case to be made for the idea that the fundamentalist revival in the Christian
right has been a direct reaction to the larger upsurge of spirituality that has
occurred in the American counter-culture.
Perhaps the most
significant opportunity to arise out of the new stream of Western meditation
practitioners has been heightened awareness of Asian cultures, especially in
terms of their unique integrity and outlook. While the Judeo-Christian,
Greco-Roman, Western European and Anglo-American tradition continues to export
its beliefs and values into other cultures on a grand scale, the Asian
worldview is also fast asserting itself as a competing economic, political, and
social force. But is a clash of world epistemologies inevitable? Perhaps. Meanwhile, Westerners within a new and younger
generation have appeared who are fast becoming skilled interpreters of these
non-Western traditions as legitimate worldviews in their own right. Their
vehicle, the practice of meditation, could, instead of the predicted clash of
cultures, potentially set the stage for an exchange of ideas between East and
West that may yet turn out to be unprecedented in the history Western thought.
Meditation as a
Scientific Study
Within this context
scientific interest in meditation has grown significantly over the past quarter
of a century. This has occurred partly on the justification that science
might be able to show us objectively what meditation is and what its effects
are, but also because the scientific method represents one of the few ways in
which our culture can peer into the depths of
another culture so radically different from our own. To objectively study
meditative practices, however, requires that they be taken out of their
subjective context. One quarter claims that science produces objective
truth independent of cultures, while another maintains that the scientific
attitude has its own implied philosophical context, so all we are really doing
is taking the subject out of its original frame of reference and putting it into
one we can more easily understand. The methods and theory surrounding the
practice of meditation techniques thereby undergo a radical change.
According to this second
view, no more quintessential example exists of the Westernization of an Asian
idea than the scientific study of meditation. Science, the product of
Aristotelian thinking and the European rationalist enlightenment, now turns its
attention to the intuitive transformation of personality through awakened
consciousness (and other such Asian meanings of the term enlightenment).
This means that the faculties of logic and sense perception, hallmarks of the
scientific method, are now being trained on the personality correlates of
intuition and insight, hallmarks of the traditional inward sciences of the
East.
To grasp what meditation
is has proven to be no easy task. The underlying and usually hidden
philosophical assumptions of traditional, rationalist science do not value the
intuitive. They do not acknowledge the reality of the transcendent or subscribe
to the concept of higher states of consciousness, let alone, in the strictest
sense, even admit to the possible existence of unconscious forces active in
cognitive acts of perception. Meditation, therefore, is a topic that
characteristically would not be taken up by mainstream scientists. One
would expect that research funding would be scarce, peer review difficult, and
publication channels limited. The evidence shows that, at least until recently,
this has been exactly the case.
The essential difficulty
here is not just the reformulation of meditation techniques to fit the dictates
of the scientific method, but rather what might be called a deeper, more
subtle, and potentially more transformative clash of world epistemologies. It
is not simply that meditation techniques have been difficult to measure but
rather that, in the past, meditation has largely been an implicitly forbidden
subject of scientific research. Now, however, major changes are currently
underway within basic science that presage not only further evolution of the
scientific method but also changes in the way science is viewed in modern
culture. An unprecedented new era of interdisciplinary communication within the
subfields of the natural sciences, a fundamental shift from physics to biology,
and the cognitive neuroscience revolution have liberalized attitudes toward the
study of meditation and related subjects. Meanwhile, the popular revolution in
modern culture grounded in spirituality and consciousness is having a growing
impact on traditional institutions such as medicine, religion, mental health,
corporate management strategies, concepts of marriage, child rearing, and the
family, and more. Increasingly, educated people want to know much more
about meditation, while our traditional institutions of high culture remain
unprepared as adequate interpreters.
The First Edition
As a result, when it
first appeared, predictably, The Physical and Psychological Effects of
Meditation drew wide attention within the meditation community and eventually
sold out. Its authors, Michael Murphy and Steven Donovan, leaders in the
American growth center movement and themselves seasoned meditators, presented
their bibliography as a project of the Center for Exceptional Functioning, a
newly founded program within Esalen Institute. Esalen, which Murphy had
co-founded with Richard Price in 1961, was, for many, the premier growth center
for personal development in the
Interest in meditation
actually began out of the earliest programs at Esalen. Alan Watts, the
well-known interpreter of Zen to the West, and Al Huang, a Chinese Tai Chi
master of movement meditation, both taught meditation-related workshops when
Esalen first opened. Throughout the years, figures such as Suzuki Roshi, Baker
Roshi, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Lama Anagarika Govinda, and various Tibetan
Buddhist tulkus introduced different forms of meditation into the growth center
environment and helped to shape the basic theme of the Esalen program. This
theme Murphy conceived as nothing less than the transformation of personality.
The immediate impulse
that launched the bibliographic project, however, was publication of Murphy's
speculative fiction Jacob Atabet (1977). This was a tale, set in modern
Meanwhile, scientific
publications and other material collected in the course of putting together The
Future of the Body became the basis for the first edition of the annotated
bibliography in meditation research, which appeared in 1988. Before the advent
of the revolution in personal computers, before managed care took over the
health care industry, and before the full impact of rapid developments in the
cognitive neurosciences were felt, Murphy and Donovan had collected a database
of some 10,000 articles on various aspects of human potential and higher
consciousness. Out of this cache they extracted 1253 scientific and literary
studies on meditation which formed the core of the first edition. They
introduced their bibliography with a series of essays to make a statement on
the physiological, psychological, and behavioral effects of meditative practice
as was understood in the Western literature. To this analysis they brought a
meditator's reading of both the Eastern and Western contemplative traditions,
which provided insightful comparisons to the slow but steadily growing study of
meditation according to the methods of Western science.
The first edition
clearly indicated that the scientific study of meditation was fast becoming a
growth industry. In the wake of its publication, Esalen, in cooperation with
the
The Present Update
In the eight years since
the first publication of their work, basic experimental studies on the subject
of meditation have steadily increased, while outcome research in clinical
settings has grown at an even faster rate. At the same time, when compared to
what had gone on in the field in the fifty years preceding 1988, the total rate
of increase between 1988 and 1996 in articles in scholarly and scientific
journals as well as trade books has been nothing short of spectacular.
The second edition, in
keeping with the first, chronicles mainly scientific and scholarly works,
revealing several key trends and changes. Since 1988, not only has government
sponsored research increased, but meditation is now a category on the National
Library of Medicine's list of computer search subjects. There also has been an
increase in the number of studies reported by researchers outside the
TM and the TM-Sidhi
Project
As Murphy and Donovan
pointed out in their first edition, and as the present update of their work has
confirmed, the most prolific research on meditation in the
Over the past two
decades, David Orme-Johnson, one of the key investigators at MIU, and his
colleagues have complied and edited 508 studies on TM in five volumes under the
title Scientific Research on Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation and
TM-Sidhi Program: Collected Papers (Orme-Johnson and Farrow, 1977;
Chalmers, Clements, Schenkluhn and Weinless, 1989a, 1989b, 1989c; Wallace,Orme-Johnson and Dillbeck, 1990). These studies are
arranged approximately in chronological order in each volume under the headings
of physiology, psychology, sociology, and then either theoretical or review
oriented papers. Experimental studies reported are about evenly divided
between articles in refereed journals and those from TM conferences and
in-house TM publications.
The content of the
collected papers indicates that, historically, TM researchers began by positing
the existence of a fourth state of consciousness—a hypometabolic waking state
which their physiological measures suggested was distinctly different from
either normal waking consciousness, the state of sleep with dreams, or the
state of deep sleep without dreams. Studies then began to show effects when TM
was applied to medical conditions such as asthma, angina, and high blood
pressure. Personality variables became a focus of research. These included
measures of intellectual problem-solving ability, thinking and recall,
creativity, field independence, sense of self-esteem, and self-actualization.
Researchers then moved into applied social situations, looking at the effects
of teaching TM to the police, the military, and such
populations as juvenile offenders, incarcerated adults, high school students,
and athletes, as well as managers in the corporate environment. Meanwhile, more
subtle biochemical measures of blood chemistry were also undertaken. These
included endocrine levels, effects on neurotransmitters such as dopamine,
noradrenaline, and serotonin, and the measurement of altered cell metabolism.
TM was also examined in the context of various psychiatric disorders.
By the late 1970s
studies began to appear testing the abilities of advanced meditators in the
TM-Sidhi program on numerous variables during deep meditation and during what
they described as yogic-flying. Along with individual studies, TM researchers
also began reporting evidence for an inverse correlation between the amount of
meditation going on and sociological variables such as the local and national
crime rate for a given period. This has been labeled the Maharishi Effect.
Finally, there are numerous papers on TM and world peace.
After almost a quarter
of a century of scientific investigation, TM researchers now describe their
findings in theoretical terms referring to "Vedic psychology" and
"Vedic science." Their system clearly acknowledges the reality of the
transcendent and subserves materialist methods of Western scientific
investigation under the larger domain of spiritual experience within the
philosophical and religious context of Hindu monism. Their expertise with
certain aspects of Western science has become quite sophisticated, however,
creating an altogether new avenue of investigation at the interface between
science and spirituality. In the new and more open scientific climate
toward research on the subject of meditation, TM researchers have successfully
been able to master the blind peer review process and were recently awarded
some $2,500,000 in research grants from the National Institutes of Health.
Their studies will look at the large scale application of TM in the treatment
of alcohol and drug abuse and in such conditions as hypertension. [9]
Their preliminary research
has shown that, with regard to drug dependence, the traditional
single-cause-for-a-single-illness model is unworkable. Instead, addiction is
viewed as a progressive behavior pattern involving a complex of physiological,
psychological, and socio-cultural variables that can be successfully influenced
by meditative practice at key points. In the case of hypertension, they
have shown that psycho-pharmacology is still the preferred medical intervention
but remains complicated because of toxic side effects, issues of patient
non-compliance, and the fact that drugs work well on preventing stroke but not
coronary heart disease. Their previous studies have confirmed that
meditation works better than drug placebos, but is slower acting than
pharmacologic agents, leading them to confirm the current recommendation that
TM is most effective when used in combination with other therapies.
Herbert Benson: The
Mind-Body Medical Institute
Another of the most
visible research projects into the effects of meditation originally reported in
the first edition of the Murphy and Donovan bibliography has been going on
under the direction of Herbert Benson, cardiologist at
His first major work, a
trade book entitled The Relaxation Response, appeared in 1975. In it, he
described procedures he believed were generic to the onset of meditation and
other contemplative practices. The conditions necessary to evoke the relaxation
response involve a quiet environment, repetition of a sound or phrase, a
passive attitude, and relaxed watchful breathing. Meanwhile, in the medical
literature he had identified the relaxation response as a natural reflex
mechanism which, when practiced twenty minutes a day, reduced stress and
physiologically had the opposite effect of the fight-flight reflex.
Beyond the Relaxation
Response
appeared in 1984, and combined Benson's research into both the relaxation
response and the placebo effect. This text emphasized the role that harnessing
physiology can play in improving quality of life and character. Benson followed
in 1987 with Your Maximum Mind, a text that clearly associates the
positive physiological effects of the relaxation response with the hopefulness
of the patient's own religious beliefs and values.
Since publication of Your
Maximum Mind, Benson has launched the Mind-Body Medical Institute, a
for-profit research and training initiative in behavioral medicine, in
conjunction with the
Since 1967 Benson has
been working on identifying the physiological and neurochemical underpinnings
of the relaxation response, which he defines as a hypometabolic state of
parasympathetic activation, that is, a state of deep rest. Early work
showed the effect of the relaxation response on lowering conditions such as
essential hypertension, headache, and alcohol consumption. Studies then moved
to show the effect of the relaxation response on various forms of heart
disease, serum levels in the blood, and on psychiatric disorders such as
anxiety. Other studies compared the relaxation response with other forms of
relaxation such as hypnosis.
The next major phase was
to assess the effects of the relaxation response in a variety of clinical
situations. Women experiencing moderate forms of PMS were found to
benefit from the technique. Patients at a major health maintenance organization
were found to utilize the facilities less and to report less illness over time
when taught Benson's method. Recently, the Institute has inaugurated a
successful relaxation curriculum for high school students.
At the same time, Benson
has also been investigating advanced meditators. While he began with
practitioners of TM, as work on the relaxation response became more
sophisticated, Benson turned his attention to measuring the physiological
changes in advanced Tibetan Buddhist meditators, using monks who follow the
Dalai Lama. These were on-site investigations at monasteries in
On the educational side,
The Mind-Body Medical Institute offers regular one-week training programs for
health care practitioners in all aspects of the relaxation response. The
Institute franchises out its model to hospitals and other health care
facilities and periodically launches educational programs for the public.
In December of 1995, for
instance, the Institute sponsored a major conference on "Spirituality and
Healing in Medicine." The three-day program was aimed at clinical
practitioners, including physicians, psychologists, nurses, clergy, social
workers, allied health professionals, and health care administrators. Perhaps
for the first time, scientists, and Western healthcare practitioners joined
with scholars in comparative religions to assess the relationship between
spirituality and health. Here presentations on scientific evidence as well as
historical and thematic scholarship attempted to interpret the life-world of
radically different epistemological frames of reference from those of the
laboratory scientist. It also meant taking seriously the claims of faith
traditions in the West such as Pentacostalism, the Charismatic Catholic
movement, and Seventh Day Adventism which the scientific outlook normally
rejects. As well, Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist scholars took up the more
difficult task of interpreting the spiritual traditions of non-western cultures
as significant sources of healing. Thoughout the conference, the practice of
meditation played a central role in these discussions.
More recently, Benson
has released Timeless Healing: The Power and
Biology of Belief (Benson and Stark, 1996). In this text he renames
the placebo effect "remembered wellness." By using this new term he
takes the idea of the placebo, which carries a negative connotation in science
as something "not real," and re-examines it as a new psychological
tool in medicine. In the term "remembered wellness" he here
redefines the old term "placebo" as the person's natural desire for
health and the person's right to choose the kind of healing to achieve it. To
pharmaceuticals and surgery, Western medicine must now add the patient's own
capacity for self-healing. Expectations, beliefs, values, and the practice of meditation,
Benson maintains, are among the new forces we must now harness for health and
growth.
Another major program of
research on meditation continues under the direction of Jon Kabat-Zinn in the
Department of Medicine, Division of Prevantative and Behavioral Medicine at the
University of Massachusetts Medical Center in
Each patient is
interviewed individually prior to enrollment in the program. The course
includes eight weeks of classes, two two-and-a-half hour classes per week. Each
class contains between twenty-five and forty members. Home study is required as
well. Six days per week, with the help of audiotapes, patients practice
meditation and yoga for forty-five minutes on their own. At week six, they
attend an all-day seven-hour silent meditation. All participants in the six to
eight concurrently running classes (approximately 240 people) participate in
this silent weekend meditation retreat together. Following the program, each
patient meets individually with the instructor. Three eight-week cycles of the
course are held each year.
Patients are taught a
basic regime of stretching and relaxation, plus different forms of seated
meditation that they can continue to practice at home. They are also taught a
method of body scanning, which entails following the path of the breath through
different parts of the body as a guided visualization. In groups, they also
discuss issues of formal meditation practice and ways to integrate what they
learn there into their daily lives.
The program has enjoyed
considerable success and notoriety. Kabat-Zinn has summarized his work in two
popular trade books, Full Catastrophe Living (1990) and Wherever You Go, There You Are (1994). In
1993, the work of the clinic was prominently featured in the PBS series Healing and the Mind with Bill Moyers. In
addition, over 100 centers in the
While Kabat-Zinn and his
colleagues have undertaken extensive outcome studies of their program on
meditation, recently they have moved into more basic research that tries
to refine the identification of specific biological markers that show the
effects of meditation on the body.[10]
Currently, the key variable of their investigation has been melatonin, a
hormone which is produced in the pineal gland and thought to be a scavenger
against cancer cells, acting to inhibit cancer growth at certain intermediate
stages of cell proliferation. Melatonin is known to be photosensitive and is
produced in greatest quantities in the body at night. Kabat-Zinn and his
colleagues suggest that ist is also pychosensitive, in
other words, that psychosocial interventions can also increase its production.
In a recent study employing graduates from their program, for instance,
Massion, Teas, Hebert, Wertheimer, and Kabat-Zinn (1995) demonstrated a
significant increase in melatonin levels among meditators. Because the oncology
literature provides support for the concept of psychophysiological interactions
in survival among cancer patients, the
Kabat-Zinn
and his colleagues have several research projects on meditation currently
underway that are in their preliminary stages and have not yet been published. One is the effect of
guided meditation on psoriasis. Another, funded by the US Army, will look at
the effects of behavioral interventions such as nutrition and meditation in
patients suffering from early-stage breast cancer. In another experiment,
just completed and not yet published, Kabat-Zinn joined colleagues A.O.
Massion, J. Teas,. J.R. Hebert, and M.D. Wertheimer
replicating their original findings and once again found a positive
relationship between intensive meditation practice and increased melatonin
levels.
Cognitive-Behavioral
Approaches in Psychology
In an important new
development, academic psychologists in the tradition of cognitive behaviorism
have launched experimental research programs in meditation. William Mikulas
(1981) at the
To rectify this
situation, Mikulas has outlined a program to study what he called
"Behaviors of the Mind" (mind, a decidedly unbehavioristic term, he
defines as the subjective center or agent of mental activity). [11]
Three such behavioral variables relevant to the study of meditation that he has
studied are concentration, the ability to focus attention on an object for
varying periods; mindfulness, a generalized state of alertness where the mind
remains unfocused but is prepared to attend to any potential stimulus; and
clinging, the tendency of the mind to attach to and to dwell on specific
thoughts or objects.
Such constructs, Mikulas
believes, can be operationalized as a way to understand meditation from a
cognitive-behavioral perspective. Moreover, this addresses what is actually
going on at a mental level in a much more sophisticated way than just studying
physiological measures or a single experimental variable. [12]
Another
cognitive-behaviorist, Jonathan C. Smith, at
His empirical research,
relying heavily on factor theory, has more recently caused Smith to revise his
thinking about theories of relaxation. In a complete reversal, he now considers
relaxation a subset of meditation (J.C. Smith et al., 1996). In the old Benson
model (one that still largely prevails), relaxation
was confined to measurements of reduced physiological arousal. Another
explanation that has been most popular among traditional stress researchers,
such as Davidson and Schwartz (1984, 1976), defines relaxation in terms of
cognitive-somatic specificity, i.e., there are two kinds of relaxation, physical
and mental, which require two different sets of techniques, physiological and
psychological. Then there was Smith's approach which saw all types of
relaxation as the refinement of cognitive skills involving passivity,
receptivity, and focusing. As more research results came in, Smith then came to
believe that, in addition to just cognitive skills, relaxation was most
successful when it included supportive cognitive structures, such as those
found in personal philosophies of life.
Now, his research has
further indicated that relaxation is composed of four separate effects: 1) the
initial evocation of the relaxation response, which is purely physiological
(which accounts for only 5% of the variance of relaxation); 2) tension release,
the combination of physiological relaxation plus positive thoughts and feelings
(as when one describes oneself as limp, melted, soothed, peaceful, calm); 3)
disengagement, which is an attentional effect, creating the sensation of being
distant, detached, forgetful, and becoming less aware of the world; and 4)
engagement, opening up to and becoming more aware of the world, but in a
passive way.
He has further
operationally refined engagement by defining it as an advanced level of
relaxation, having four subcategories. The first is engaged awareness, feeling
aware, clear, focused, strengthened, and energized. This can be attained
through yoga and breathing. The second is engaged prayerfulness, being open not
just to the world, but to a greater world, in the sense of feeling reverent,
spiritual, or selfless. Meditation is the key to attainment here. Third
is engaged joyfulness, meaning a rainbow of feelings (feeling simultaneously
loving, thankful, inspired, warm, healed, and infinite.) (He
suggests that joyfulness accounts for 40% of the variance of relaxation, and
further, that while progressive relaxation does not evoke it, yoga, breathing,
and meditation do). Finally, the final subcategory he defines as mystery, the
experience of mystical feelings. He claims that initially he did not have
enough subjects to measure this variable, that it was identified only by a
small statistical effect, and that more study will be needed in the future to
confirm it.
In addition to his
empirical research, Smith has also developed an applied program. Here, he
demystifies meditation, takes it out of its Asian context, and packages it as a
training course that covers all the generic forms one
can find in both Eastern and Western contemplative traditions, making
meditation accessible to the common reader.
The significance of work
by such researchers should not be underestimated. Programs such as these,
the new cognitive-behaviorists believe, have greater potential for connecting
traditional systems of Asian psychology with basic science than the more
experiential approaches of humanistic or transpersonal psychotherapy. At
the same time, interest in the subject by cognitive-behaviorists indicates the
extent to which meditation has penetrated into the mainstream of American
academic psychology as a respectable research subject.
Health Psychology and
Complementary Medicine
Another important
development in the field of meditation research has been alternative or
complementary medicine. The historical evolution of the alternative
medicine movement in the
Complementary medicine,
first of all, is now being defined by a new generation of
scientist-practitioners. Those who before were but the mere students of
their subject matter have now become both advanced meditators and recognized
scientists capable of carrying off sophisticated research. We remember the
pioneering work of Arthur Deikman and Charles Tart, done twenty-five years
ago. Then we listened to Herbert Benson and Robert Keith Wallace.
Then, in the 1970s and 1980s we heard from Dan Goleman, Daniel Brown, Jack
Engler, Roger Walsh, Dean Shapiro, Elmer Green, Alyce Green, Michael
Maliszewski, and Michael West, Today, we read Charles Alexander, Robert
Orme-Johnson, Richard Freidman, Mark Epistein, and James Spira. [13]
The trend began as a study of meditation as an isolated practice, whereas it is
now viewed in the much larger context of complementary medicine and one's
overall sense of health and well-being.
Complementary medicine
is complementary because it interfaces with scientific and medical
reductionism. It not only advocates a combined approach to healing, but also
points to the importance of holistic change. One does not merely take a pill
and then return to the same lifestyle that contributed to the creation of the
problem in the first place. The practice of meditation, as well as the pursuit
of other forms of complementary medicine, means an alteration of basic
attitudes, dramatic and positive lifestyle changes, and perhaps even radical
overthrow of old, habitual ways of perceiving on the part of the person being
healed.
Complementary medicine
also reflects the major social revolution now going on at the interface between
popular middle-class culture and the delivery of clinical services in the health
care professions. A recent issue of the Sharper Image Catalog, for
instance, advertises tapes, videos, and books by physician Dean Ornish
of the
In addition, there is
clear evidence for the rising influence of complementary medicine within other
traditional institutions of modern culture. One sign has been the recent founding
of the Office of Alternative Medicine within the National Institutes of Health.
The OAM, working on a small budget, has commissioned individual investigators
to run clinical trials on alternative therapies such as meditation that can be
used in conjunction with traditional scientific medical practice. They
have also recently established a network of research centers throughout the
The Qi Gong database
In addition to the
inclusion of meditation in complementary forms of medicine in the
Qi Gong is the
traditional Chinese practice of meditation upon the chi, or life force,
which is believed to continuously circulate throughout the body and which
regulates the daily and seasonal functioning of the person in dynamic relation
to the environment over the entire life cycle. The internal form of Qi
Gong can be practiced as a seated meditation, while its external aspect may
take the form of different movement disciplines. Qi Gong is the mother of tai
chi, for instance, the most familiar style of Chinese health movement known to
the West.
The database clearly
indicates that there is a continuously growing body of information on the
positive clinical application of Qi Gong therapy. [18]
However, to really appreciate the information presented requires a detailed
knowledge of the Taoist philosophy of yin and yang and the five elements, a
knowledge of acupuncture, acquaintance with the philosophy behind the important
Chinese works a such as the Book of Songs and the Book of Changes,
and a knowledge of the major classics in traditional Chinese medicine. Western
scientific medical practitioners will therefore find it difficult to assess the
clinical significance of unpublished studies presented only as abstracts and
based on an epistemological system so radically different from the Western
analytic tradition that the very frame of reference used in of many of the
discussions will to them remain incomprehensible. For the knowledgeable
researcher, however, the hermetically sealed quality of the research at least
gives an internal consistency to the one type of meditation studied.
Yoga Research in
Scientific research on
yoga and meditation appears to be going on all over
In the Trust's primary
publication, the Yoga Research Bibliography: Scientific Studies on Yoga and
Meditation (1989), Monro, Ghosh, and Kalish present over 1000 citations
ranging from essay-commentaries to clinical applications and pure empirical
research. Again, however, as with the Qi Gong database, the Yoga Research
Bibliography will be appreciated most by
individuals trained in scientific research who also have an extensive knowledge
of the classical texts in yoga and the philosophy behind the techniques, as
well as a detailed experiential knowledge of specific yogic practices and their
Sanskrit names. Again, the trend is clearly toward a mounting body of
evidence showing the efficacious use of yoga techniques and Hindu meditation
practice in specific disorders such as hypertension, diabetes, cancer,
cholesterol regulation, alcoholism, anxiety disorders, asthma, pain control,
and obesity. As compared to studies in the Chinese database, the level of
scientific expertise in various experimental studies on yoga and meditation is
quite sophisticated by Western standards. There is a much more subtle empirical
demonstration of the relation of brain states to mental states in this yoga
literature by Indian researchers than has yet to be demonstrated by non-Indian
researchers.
The International
Meditation Bibliography, 1950-1982
The only work comparable
to the present text is the International Meditation Bibliography, 1950-1982,
authored by Howard Jarrell and commissioned by the American Theological Library
Association. [20]
Its linguistic breadth is somewhat larger, in that it contains articles in
English, books in English and German, with some titles in French, Spanish, and
Portuguese, and dissertations in both English and German. The total number of
entries (just over 2,200) is also somewhat larger. There are 937 journal and
magazine articles, all of which are briefly annotated, over 1000 books, 200
doctoral dissertations and master's theses, titles from 32 motion pictures and
93 recordings and a list of 32 societies and associations. In addition there is
a title index, an author index, and a subject index.
The Transcendental
Meditation people seem to have had more than a passing hand in creating it, as
there is a eulogistic preface extolling the benefits of TM, although the
editors may have been simply trying to reflect the fact that the majority of
experimental studies reported up to 1983 involved TM techniques. The work also
does not discriminate between trade literature and more scholarly, academic or
scientific publications, but rather presents them all as part of the greater
bibliography. The impression that gets reinforced, quite accurate in my
historical opinion, is that in the
The Historic
Significance of Murphy and Donovan's Text
Murphy and Donovan have
done the field of meditation research a valuable service on several fronts.
Perhaps the most important of these has been to highlight the epistemological
differences between those who meditate and those who do not as a crucial
determinant of how and under what circumstances scientific research into this
new subject can be conducted. They have also raised the issue of what a new
science that takes meditation seriously might look like in the future.
This issue is the same we have raised earlier: namely, how can the methods of
science be applied to a subject whose full
understanding may transform the very foundation upon which reductionistic
science is based? Murphy and Donovan produced their first edition during
a time when there was fast-growing and widespread cultural interest in the
subject, but great resistance from the basic science community. They not
only collated a vast wealth of information on scientific research when the
subject of meditation was less acceptable than it is today, but they also
emphasized the importance of meditation for understanding the larger issues of
how we actualize our human potential. Now there has been a significant change
in outlook and such issues are being taken more seriously by a younger
generation of thoughtful leaders in modern culture. From an analysis of
recent history, the Murphy and Donovan bibliography in its first edition
contributed significantly toward advancing this discussion because it was a
milestone that marked the current cultural revolution
focusing on spirituality and higher consciousness. Two historical examples
suggest this conclusion; the first was an episode that took place within the
profession of psychology, while the second has occurred within the wider area
of government-sponsored research in the medical sciences.
Psychologists Debate the
Issues
Twenty years ago, the
American Psychiatric Association recognized the need for controlled
experimental research when it called for an in-depth study of different types of
meditation and their positive effects on health (mentioning also that we should
be investigating their potential "dangers"). [22]
Then, just before the first edition of the Murphy and Donovan bibliography
appeared in 1988, a significant exchange on the experimental evidence
underlying certain claims about meditation took place in the pages of the American
Psychologist, main organ of the American Psychological Association.
The controversy began in
1984 when David S. Holmes, a staunch behaviorist in the tradition of Pavlov,
Watson, and Skinner, who was from the
A year and a half later,
the editors of the American Psychologist devoted an entire section of
their June 1985 issue to criticisms of Holmes' article, including responses
from Holmes.
John Suler from
Michael West, from the
University of Sheffield, England, researcher, practitioner, and author of a
well known text on meditation, believed that Holmes did not look carefully
enough at the research literature so that his conclusions were overgeneralized
and unwarranted (West, 1985). Needed instead, West maintained, was a more
complex discussion of evidence and more double-blind, randomly assigned
experiments controlling for expectation and group differences. He believed that
someone also needed to undertake longitudinal studies of meditators and a big
picture needed to be constructed that included case reports and within subject
designs.
Deane Shapiro, clinical
psychologist, meditation practitioner, and researcher at the University of
California, Irvine, who has been one of the key pioneers in the field, waded in
and concluded that Holmes had not looked at all the literature, that what he
had looked at he had completely misinterpreted, and that conclusions drawn from
Holmes' experiments using laboratory subjects were not automatically
generalizable to clinical populations anyway.
Ignoring Suler and West,
Holmes replied only to Shapiro, since in all likelihood he saw him as the more
formidable opponent (Holmes, 1985a). He asserted on grounds of scientific rigor
that Shapiro's own review of the meditation literature, which Holmes himself
had originally ignored, contained numerous errors. Further, he clearly stated
that Shapiro did not know how to conduct or analyze scientific research.
Harvard cardiologist
Herbert Benson and SUNY psychologist Robert Freidman, practitioners, teachers,
and researchers of the relaxation response, then joined the chorus of voices.
Benson and Freidman's point was that the relaxation response was common to all
forms of relaxation, including rest and meditation, so that Holmes' distinction
of meditation from rest was purely artificial (Benson and Freidman,
1985). Further, the trophotrophic response as a complex of opposite
physiological reactions to the fight-flight reflex had been established in
physiology since the time of Hess (et al., 1947; Hess, 1953)—for which Hess had
received the Nobel Prize—and the relaxation response had been experimentally
established in the medial literature as an extension of Hess's work. Benson and
Freidman then pointed out other numerous errors in Holmes' work, suggesting not
only that Holmes did not know his basic physiology, but also that he did not
know how to conduct and interpret a scientific experiment.
Holmes (1985b) responded
by implying in his opening paragraph that Benson and his colleagues did not
know anything about meditation, physiology, or science, and then proceeded with
an essay of some 3,000 words to deliver a barrage of rhetoric about what
constitutes legitimate data in reductionistic science and what were the
criteria for legitimate designs of various experiments in psychology, meanwhile
having nothing much to say about meditation per se.
The final word was given
in another issue of the American Psychologist a
year later. This last comment that the editors permitted on Holmes was
delivered by Jonathan C. Smith, cognitive-behaviorist and meditation and stress
researcher from
This exchange tells us
that within psychology as an academic experimental discipline there has been
significant movement from reductionistic modeling that does not even
acknowledge the reality of consciousness—the position of the radical
behaviorists who controlled much of the methodological dialogue in the
discipline since J. B. Watson's infamous proclamation of 1913—to at least a
consideration of those aspects of meditation that can be operationalized. It
further suggests that scientists who are also practitioners are not only more
active in cross-disciplinary research, but by the 1980s were ready to engage in
discussions with their more reductionistic colleagues on issues of method and
interpretation. Subsequently, history has shown that the discussion has
not only moved out into the wider field of medical science, but continues to
develop in the direction set not by the reductionists but by the
scientist-practitioners of meditation.
Governmental Research
and Medical Science
More recently, in this
regard, an assessment of meditation has emerged in several statements made by
investigating agencies of the
More than this, however,
the overall tone of the entire research endeavor was negative and skeptical to
begin with. Numerous criticisms emerged afterward of misinterpretation of data
and false conclusions even from established experimentalists. As well, the
analysis of the experimental literature on meditation was undertaken by two
psychologists who had no expertise in the area of meditation research,
although, somewhat ludicrously, they attempted to launch a definition and
explanation of what they considered to be the different types of meditation/
They compared a few specific studies that had no basis for factual comparison
according to the experimental standards they themselves had set, and they based
their overall analysis of all experimental studies undertaken on meditation by
reading a single outdated summary that had been commissioned some years earlier
from a single researcher. To underscore the fact that their conclusions were
based on a philosophical bias rather than basic research, they even included an
epistemological coda admitting that to be the case. [25]
In October 1995, a more
positive and forceful recommendation was made in a joint statement issued by
agencies within the National Institutes of Health. The recommendation was based
on the outcome of a major technology assessment conference that attempted to
integrate behavioral and relaxation approaches into the treatment of chronic
pain and insomnia. [26]
One of the major interventions considered was that of meditation. The
sponsoring agencies for this conference included The Office of Medical
Applications of Research and the newly founded Office of Alternative Medicine.
These groups were then backed by co-sponsoring agencies that included the
National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Dental Research,
the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Institute on Aging,
The National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Nursing Research, the
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and the National
Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. Combining
meditation under the same heading as autogenic training and progressive muscle
relaxation, and determining that these were deep rather then merely brief
methods of standard relaxation therapy, the conference members concluded that
"the evidence is strong for the effectiveness of this class of techniques
in reducing chronic pain in a variety of medical conditions." [27]
They recommended the commitment of funds to research trials that tested these
combined forms of therapy and the integration of alternative medicine with
traditional scientific medical practice.
Here again we have the
classic differentiation between the attitudes of laboratory versus clinical
researchers. Basic researchers believe that they are doing the real science and
only what comes out of the laboratory should be applied to clinical
situations. Clinicians, on the other hand, faced with the real live
complexity of human problems, maintain that most of what comes out of basic
science is done to prove some theory, while what they say they really need is
data on concrete, workable interventions for immediate life situations. While
there is a revolution now going on in the neurosciences affecting how basic
scientists communicate with one another, a completely different revolution is
going on at the level of clinical services, one that has deep roots in values
and attitudes, lifestyle choices the patient alone can make, alternative forms
of healing, and an appeal to the spiritual dimension of human experience.
Consequently, the National Research Council has had its say on the scientific
validity of studying meditation, which has now been superseded by the more
recent conclusions of the National Institutes of Health.
As this brief overview
indicates, in their first edition, Murphy and Donovan gave us a summary of
meditation research that anticipated, among other trends, the rising influence
of psychology in general medicine, the increasingly important role of beliefs
and values in the healing process, the possibility of a new dialogue emerging
between science and religion framed in terms of spiritual experience, and the
potential impact that different models of consciousness might have on our
understanding of character development. Presciently, as the current update
suggests, these still seem to be rising trends for the
future.
__________________________________________________________________________
Chapter 1:
Scientific Studies of Contemplative Experience: An Overview
Scientific studies of
meditation and other forms of contemplative experience have only recently
become a subject of scientific interest within the last half century. In
1931 Kovoor Behanan, an Indian graduate student in psychology at Yale, was
awarded a Sterling Fellowship to undertake what has since been recognized as
the first empirical study of yoga and meditation. Supported in this research by
Walter Miles, an eminent professor of psychology, Behanan wrote a book about
yoga that described quantitative studies of his own yogic breathing. During 72
days of experiments at Yale, he found that one breathing exercise, or pranayama,
increased his oxygen consumption by 24.5%, a second by 18.5%, and a third by
12% (Behanan, 1937, Miles, 1964). This study helped stimulate interest in
meditation research by showing that the physiological effects of yoga could be
examined in the laboratory (Behanan, 1937). Unlike many tales by
travelers to the East, Behanan's straightforward, well-observed account of his
laboratory research was free of exaggeration and mystification.
Behanan also studied
Indian yogis. He was guided in this work by Swami Kuvalayananda, who promoted
yoga research at a center for meditation practice he founded in the 1920s at
Lonavla, a hill station near
In 1935 a French
cardiologist, Therese Brosse, took an electrocardiograph to
The instrumented study
of yogic functioning was expanded by Bagchi, Wenger, and Anand. Anand was then
chairman of the Department of Physiology at the All-India Institute of Medical
Sciences in
Bagchi and Wenger also
studied the effects of breathing exercises and found that some of their
subjects, especially experienced ones, could produce bidirectional changes in
every autonomic variable that the experimenters measured. Though the two
psychologists found that their subjects exhibited some dramatic physiological
changes, they were cautious in drawing conclusions about yogic claims in
general. "Direct voluntary control of autonomic functions is probably rare
among yogis," they wrote. "When such control is claimed, intervening
voluntary mechanisms are usually employed." They made this qualification,
however: "We have met many dedicated yogis who described experiences to us
that few Western scientists have heard of and none has investigated. It is possible that the mere presence of a foreigner precludes
optimum results"(Wenger and Bagchi, 1961).
Other researchers have
confirmed the discovery by Bagchi and Wenger that some subjects exhibit more
than one pattern of physiological activity during their yogic practices. N. N.
Das and H. Gastaut studied seven Indian yogis, who registered no muscular
electrical activity during periods of complete immobility though their heart
rates accelerated in almost perfect parallel with accelerations of their brain
waves during moments of ecstasy. The most accomplished among these seven
subjects, moreover, exhibited "progressive and very spectacular
modifications" in their EEG records during their deepest meditations,
including recurrent beta rhythms of 18-20 cycles per second in the Rolandic
area of the brain, a generalized fast activity of small amplitude as high as
40-45 cycles per second with occasional amplitudes reaching 30 to 50
microvolts, and the reappearance of slower alpha waves after samadhi, or
ecstasy, ended. In summarizing their study, Das and Gastaut concluded
that:
The modifications [we]
recorded during very deep meditation are much more dramatic than those known up
till now, which leads us to suppose that western subjects are far from being
able to attain the yogi state of mental concentration.
It is probable that this
supreme concentration of attention . . . is responsible for the perfect
insensibility of the yogi during samadhi; this insensibility, accompanied by
immobility and pallor often led people to describe this state as sleep,
lethargy, anesthesia, or coma. The electroencephalographic evidence here
described contradicts such opinions and suggests that a state of intense
generalized cortical stimulation is sufficient to explain such states without
having to invoke associated processes of diffuse or local inhibition (Das and
Gastaut, 1955)
Das and Gastaut's
conclusion does not contradict the widespread findings of subsequent meditation
studies that many or most meditators experience the trophotropic or relaxation
response described by E. Gellhorn, W. Kiely, Herbert Benson, and other
researchers (Gellhorn and Kiely, 1972; and Benson, 1975). Most subjects in
meditation studies do not experience yogic ecstasy and so do not exhibit the
cortical excitement that Das and Gastaut observed. Furthermore, different kinds
of religious practice produce different types of experience accompanied by
different types of physiological change. Kasamatsu and Hirai's Zen masters, for
example, exhibited high-amplitude alpha and theta waves, not beta waves, during
their deepest meditations (see below).
Further evidence that
contemplative practice produces different physiological profiles was provided
by B. K. Anand, G. S. Chhina, and Baldev Singh, who found that four yogis
exhibited persistent alpha activity with increased amplitude during trance.
These four yogis exhibited no alpha-wave blocking when they were bombarded with
loud banging, strong lights, and other sensory stimuli, and two of them showed
persistent alpha activity while holding their hands in ice-cold water for
forty-five to fifty-five minutes (Anand, Chhina, and Singh, 1961a). The yogis
in this experiment exhibited physiological differences during meditation from
at least two other groups of accomplished meditators. They did not exhibit
alpha blocking in response to strong stimuli, in contrast to the Zen masters
studied by Kasamatsu and Hirai (see below).
Nor did they exhibit the beta waves that appeared on the EEGs of Das and
Gastaut's subjects. The difference from the Zen masters probably resulted from
a basic difference in focus between the two groups, the yogis having withdrawn
their attention from external stimuli, whereas the Zen masters remained aware
of their external environment. Their difference from Das and Gastaut's yogis,
on the other hand, might have been due to differences between their styles of
meditation, the conditions of the experiments, or the qualities of their
experience. The strong stimuli Anand gave his subjects, for example, may well
have prevented the more ecstatic absorptions experienced by Das and Gastaut's
yogis. The published reports of the Das-Gastaut and Anand-Chhina-Singh
experiments do not provide enough detail to fully explain their different
results, but they remind us that there are different kinds of contemplative
experience. Roland Fischer, Julian Davidson, and other researchers have
proposed some ways in which internal states might be correlated with different
physiological profiles (Fischer, 1971; and Davidson, 1976).
In a study published in
1958, the Indian researchers G. G. Satyanarayanamurthi and B. P. Shastry
described a yogi whose heart kept beating for thirty seconds even though his
radial pulse could not be felt and his heart could not be heard with a
stethoscope. This yogi's EKG showed no abnormalities, moreover, and finger
plethysmography showed that his pulse was present though greatly reduced. The
two researchers claimed that fluoroscopy conducted while the yogi was lying
down showed that for several 30-second periods the beating of his heart was
just a "flicker along the left border below the pulmonary conus and in the
apical segment of the left ventrical." They concluded that he achieved
this control through the Valsalva maneuver. [29]
Elmer and Alyce Green,
with their colleagues at the Menninger Foundation in
Yogis frequently use
abdominal contractions to slow their heart rate rather than intervening more
directly through the central nervous system. Curiously, though, an earlier
study had examined a man with no yogic training at all who could stop his heart
without such maneuvers, simply by relaxing and "allowing everything to
stop." By this procedure, he could induce a gradual slowing of his pulse
until he started to faint, at which point he would take a deep breath. When EKG
tests showed that his heartbeat did indeed disappear, the doctor who examined
him concluded that the man's cardiac arrest was induced through some mechanism
which, although under voluntary control, is not known to the patient himself.
Careful observation did not reveal any breath-holding or Valsalva maneuver.
Apparently the patient simply abolished all sympathetic tone by complete mental
and physical relaxation (McClure, 1959).
Like heart stopping, the
live burial of yogis has excited the interest of several researchers. A
physician, Rustom Jal Vakil, published an account in the British journal Lancet
of such a confinement that was witnessed by some 10,000 people near
In June 1956, a more
closely observed study of yogic confinement was conducted under the auspices of
the All-India Institute of Mental Health in
Because the earthen pits
used in most yogic confinements leak oxygen and carbon dioxide, Anand, Chhina,
and Singh tested a yogi named Ramanand in an airtight glass and metal box, once
for eight hours and again for ten hours. The yogi's average oxygen use during
the first experiment decreased from the basal rate of 19.5 liters per hour to 12.2, and during the second experiment to 13.3 liters per
hour. His carbon dioxide output went down during both experiments. Ramanand,
moreover, did not exhibit any rapid breathing or speeded heart rate as the
oxygen in his box diminished and carbon dioxide increased. "Sri Ramanand
Yogi could reduce his oxygen intake and carbon dioxide output
to levels significantly lower than his requirements under basal conditions,"
Anand and his colleagues wrote. "It appears from this study that [he]
could voluntarily reduce his basal metabolic rate on both occasions he went
into the box." [30]
During a remarkable
experiment reported by L. K. Kothari and associates, a yogi was buried for
eight days in an earthen pit and connected by leads to an EKG in a nearby
laboratory. After the pit was boarded up, the subject's heart rate sometimes
went as high as fifty beats per minute, until a straight line appeared on the
EKG tracing when the yogi had been in the pit for twenty-nine hours. There had
been no slowing of his heart immediately before the straight line appeared, nor any sign of electrical disturbance, but the
experimenters proceeded with certainty that their subject had not died.
Suspecting that their EKG leads had been deliberately or accidentally
disconnected, they checked their machine and continued to monitor its tracings.
To their astonishment, it started to register electrical activity some seven
days later, about a half hour before the yogi's scheduled disinterment.
"After some initial disturbance," they wrote, "a normal
configuration appeared. The [speeded heart rate] was again there but there was
no other abnormality." When the pit was opened, the yogi was found sitting
in the same posture he had started in, but in a stuporous condition. In
accounting for his remarkable EKG record, the experimenters argued that a
disconnection of the EKG lead would have produced obvious markings on the
tracings in their laboratory, as they found when they tried to simulate ways in
which the yogi might have tinkered with it.
Furthermore, the yogi
was ignorant about such machines, and the pit was completely dark. If the
machine had malfunctioned in some way they could not ascertain, it seemed an
extraordinary coincidence that it started again just a half hour before their
subject's scheduled release. Apparently, the yogi was operating with some kind
of internal clock that did not depend upon the daily cycles of light and
darkness, for the most likely cause of the straight line on his EKG tracing was
a dramatic decrease in the activity of his heart. Kothari and his colleagues
finally could not account for this remarkable cardiac record (Kothari et al.,
1973).
In a study that
attracted much attention among meditation and biofeedback researchers during
the 1960s, Akira Kasamatsu and Tomio Hirai, physicians at the
- Stage 1: Characterized by the appearance of alpha waves in spite of
opened eyes.
- Stage 2: Characterized by an increase in amplitude of persistent
alpha waves.
- Stage 3: Characterized by a decrease in alpha frequency.
- Stage 4: Characterized by the appearance of rhythmical theta trains
(Kasamatsu and Hirai, 1966).
Not all four stages were
evident in every Zen practitioner, nor in any of the controls, but a strong
correlation existed between the number of stages a given student exhibited and
that student's length of time in Zen training. This correlation was supported
by a Zen teacher's evaluation of each student's proficiency. The teacher ranked
the students in three levels, without seeing their EEG records, and his
rankings correlated well with Kasamatsu and Hirai's assessment of their EEGs.
The Kasamatsu-Hirai
study also revealed significant differences between four Zen masters and four
control subjects in their response to repetitive click stimuli. Like the Zen
masters, the controls exhibited a blocking of alpha when a click sound first
occurred, but they gradually became habituated to such stimuli so that their
brain-wave activity no longer responded when a click was made. The Zen masters,
however, did not become habituated, but continued to exhibit blocking as long
as the stimuli continued. This finding indicates that Zen practice promotes a
serene, alert awareness that is consistently responsive to both external and
internal stimuli (Kasamatsu et al., 1957; Hirai, 1960; and Kasamatsu and Hirai,
1963).
Difficulties of Research
with Religious Adepts
Though people testified
under oath before the Congregation of Rites that they had seen Saint Teresa of
Avila or Saint Joseph of Cupertino defy gravity, no scientific studies have
recorded instances of levitation. There are at least three possible reasons for
this lack of evidence. First, of course, it might be that levitation has never
happened. Second, the contemplative traditions might have lost their power to
evoke the phenomenon. Third, levitation might only occur during rare and
spontaneous ecstasies that cannot be programmed to meet the requirements of a
scientific experiment. Superordinary lifting from the ground, if it in fact
occurs, would require an improbable set of circumstances which a scientist
would be lucky to witness. Levitation, like other holy powers, would have to be
caught "in the wild." In a laboratory, with wires attached to his
head and a thermometer up his rectum, a yogi or lama is unlikely to exhibit a
capacity that is rare in any case. In studies of extraordinary functioning
there is a trade-off between robust results and scientific precision.
Uninhibited by recording machines and safety rules, for example, the Maharaja
Runjeet Singh could bury Haridas for forty days. More recent studies of yogic
confinement, however, have been constrained by procedural controls and humane
considerations.
Furthermore, there is
often a disjunction between a scientist's attitude toward exceptional powers
and an adept's ideas about them. Elmer Green, for example, described differences
he had with the healer Jack Schwartz in interpreting Schwartz's intuitive
diagnosis of illness. According to Schwartz, the question was:
Are the auras one sees
always radiatory patterns of energy from the human body . . . or are they
automatic mental projections of one kind or another that are used
psychologically to interpret a "knowing"? Sometimes when we
"know" something in this way we tend to "see" it in the
same way that we see a memory (Green and Green, 1977, p. 240).
Green was sympathetic to
Schwartz, however, realizing that a scientist's constant doubt can inhibit or
destroy a psychic's intuitions. This fundamental difference between scientists
and psychics, Green wrote:
Need not cause problems
if each takes time to understand the framework in which the other necessarily
operates. If the psychic tries to pull apart every perception in order to find
out if it is incorrect, so as to better determine the "truth," what
is most likely to be pulled apart is the faculty of "seeing." The
talent for perceiving might well fade away. On the other hand, if scientists
stopped trying to find alternate explanations for the facts, they might get
lost in a maze of [incoherent] ideas. For both scientists and mystics, however,
the area of facts rather than interpretations is common ground. Excluding the
opinions of fanatics, most of the arguments that we are aware of between the
two camps have revolved around interpretations. Because psychics almost always
have idiosyncratic factors in their frames of reference, scientists often do
not understand them. And psychics do not understand what seems to them to be a
destructive attitude on the part of scientists (Green and Green, 1977, p. 242).
Sympathy between
scientists and adepts was evident in Swami Kuvalayananda's projects noted
above, and in other experimenter-subject teams described in the preceding
pages. Even the stern mutual challenge between Haridas and Maharaja Runjeet
Singh exhibited an exemplary, if somewhat perverse, cooperation. Productive
study of extraordinary functioning requires understanding between accomplished
subjects and imaginative experimenters.
Contemporary Meditation
Research
Meditation research
increased dramatically during the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in the
The apparent
inconsistencies defining the effects of meditation can be accounted for in
various ways. Some physiological processes, perhaps, are unaffected by
meditation, no matter how proficient or experienced the meditator might be; or
perhaps they are affected to an insignificant degree. For some changes, such as
amino acid concentrations in the blood, there has not been enough research to
establish a consistent picture, partly because there has not been as much
interest in these variables as in the effect of meditation on blood pressure,
heart rate, and other indices that have an obvious bearing on health. Taking
blood samples during meditation, moreover, is harder to accomplish than
recording blood pressure or skin responses.
Individual differences
also present a special problem for understanding the results of meditation
studies, because subject populations have included people of both
sexes, all ages, various levels of education, and different kinds of
social background. Many subjects have been college students with no previous
experience at meditating; others have been recent converts to religious groups;
but only a few have been highly skilled in spiritual practice. The incentives
to concentrate during experimental sessions have also varied. Some subjects have
wanted success for religious or other reasons, while others seem not to have
been well motivated. And differences between meditation styles also complicate
the results of such research. Though most studies have used some type of quiet
concentration, some have used active methods such as rapid breathing. Julian
Davidson, Roland Fischer, and others have distinguished between two classes of
meditation, those that relax and those that excite, associating their effects
with the trophotropic and ergotropic conditions of the central nervous system
modeled by Gellhorn and Kiely (Davidson, 1976; Fischer, 1971, 1976; Gellhorn
and Kiely, 1972).
The results of
scientific research on the subject of meditation are accumulating now, forming
a publicly accessible body of empirical data that can serve generations to
come. Unfortunately, however, these data are derived mainly from beginning
practitioners of meditation, and taken as a whole do not reflect the richness
of experience described in traditional contemplative teachings. They are also
limited by the conventional scientific insistence that results be repeatable.
Certain important experiences occur only rarely in meditation, and a science
that disregards them loses important empirical results. For these reasons, contemporary
research does not illumine the full range of experience described in the
contemplative scriptures and the oral traditions from which they come. Modern
studies give us only a first picture of the foothills, with a few glimpses of
the peaks. Still, what they give us corresponds in several ways with
traditional accounts.
__________________________________________________________________________
Chapter 2
Physiological Effects
[While meditation can be
considered as a cognitive strategy by which consciousness gains control over
normally non-conscious states of awareness, including involuntary bodily
processes, the physiology of meditation has received more attention than any
other subject from Western scientists quite out of proportion to all other
dimensions of meditative experience.
Historically, this is
largely because, for three hundred years, the dualism of Descartes has required
an absolute separation of mind and body, while its handmaiden and more recent
dictum of research, scientific positivism, asserts mechanistically that what is
immediately physical and material constitutes all there is to reality. Hence,
the most visible and palpable form of a phenonenon is the only proper object of
scientific scrutiny.
Modern researchers, by
virtue of the fact that they are engaged in applying the methods of
reductionistic science, even as they apply such methods to seemingly
disreputable topics, cannot avoid these constraints. Thus the physiology of
meditation has been the starting point and remains at
the center of most research efforts. Ed.]
The Cardiovascular
System
Heart Rate
Many contemporary
studies have indicated that the heart rate usually slows in quiet meditation
and quickens during active disciplines or moments of ecstasy, as we would
expect from contemplative writings that describe the calming effect of silent
meditation [31]
and the stimulation of exercises such as Tantric visualization or devotional
chanting. [32]
Most studies of
Transcendental Meditation (TM), Zen Buddhist sitting, Herbert Benson's
"relaxation response," and other calming forms of meditation indicate
that meditating subjects generally experience a lowering of the heart
rate. The results of such studies vary to some degree, since they depend
on different kinds of subject groups and various experimental procedures, with
some showing an average decline of seven beats or more per minute among their
subjects and some showing two or three beats per minute among some of their
subjects. Bagga and Gandhi (1983) found an average decline as high as
fifteen beats per minute among some of their subjects. Some studies
indicate that meditation lowers the heart rate more than biofeedback,
progressive relaxation, other therapies, or simple sitting, while other studies
indicate that these various activities have an equivalent effect on the heart
rate. Once again, such differences in outcome can be accounted for by
differences among subjects and experimental designs.
A decline in heart rate
is more pronounced among experienced meditators, according to a few studies,
though here too the evidence is not unanimous. The only generalization we
can make safely now is that some subject groups demonstrate an average lowering
of heart rate during meditation, and that some experienced individuals may
achieve a permanent lowering of the heart rate with continued practice.
In studies involving
active methods such as rapid breathing, though, the heart rate has risen.
Such studies suggest that patterns of physiological activity are specific to
particular practices.
Julian Davidson (1976),
Roland Fischer (1971, 1976), and other researchers have distinguished
excitatory from relaxing forms of meditation, associating their effects with
the ergotropic and trophotropic conditions of the central nervous system
modeled by Gelhorn and Keily (1972). Fischer (1971) has said that the
extreme trophotropic state of samadhi sometimes triggers an extreme ergotropic
reaction, which may be ecstatic, so that the physiological effects of
contemplative activity show wide variability.
The following studies
show a decrease in heart rate during meditation. Bono (1984) found that
the reduction of heart rate during TM was greater than the reduction resulting
from sitting quietly with eyes closed. Delmonte (1984f) found that heart
rates were slightly lower during meditation than rest for fifty-two subjects.
Holmes et al. (1983), however, found that while meditators had lower heart
rates while practicing TM, they did not experience lower arousal than control
subjects who were simply resting. See follow-up discussion, particularly
Dillbeck and Orme-Johnson (1987), Morrell (1986), and Holmes (1984).
Bagga and Gandhi (1983)
compared groups of six TM practitioners and six Shavasana practitioners
(relaxing while lying on one's back) with six controls, and found significantly
reduced heart rates for both experimental groups versus the control group.
Cummings (1984) observed reduced heart rates for those practicing a combination
of meditation and exercise. Throll (1982) found that a Transcendental
Meditation group displayed a more significant decrease in heart rate than a group
using Jacobson's progressive relaxation.
Pollard and Ashton
(1982) divided sixty subjects into six groups in a comparison of heart rate
decrease obtained by visual feedback, auditory feedback, combined visual and
auditory feedback, instructions to decrease heart rate without biofeedback,
sitting quietly, and abbreviated relaxation training. A comparison group
of meditators with a minimum of six years of experience was also studied.
The results indicated that there was no advantage of a heart rate decrease task
for subjects receiving visual, auditory, or combined biofeedback, though all
groups showed evidence of a decline in heart rate over the testing
session. The meditation group showed the greatest overall decline, with a
decrease in heart rate of approximately seven beats per minute, versus three
beats per minute for the groups using biofeedback techniques.
Cuthbert et al. (1981)
had results demonstrating clear superiority for meditators using Benson's
relaxation response versus heart rate biofeedback, especially when the subject
experimenter relationship was supportive. Lang et al. (1979) placed the
heart rate decrease for advanced TM meditators with more than four years of
practice at 9%. Bauhofer (1978) found that the heart rates of experienced
TM meditators were lowered by TM more than those of less experienced TM
meditators. Corey (1977) and Routt (1977) reported that Transcendental
Meditation appeared to decrease heart rate under nonstress conditions.
Glueck and Stroebel (1975), Wallace and Benson (1972), Wallace et al. (1971c),
and Wallace (1971) found that the heart rate decreased from three to five beats
per minute during Transcendental Meditation. Reports of reduced heart
rates during meditation extend back to Paul (1969), Karambelkar et al. (1968),
Anand and Chhina (1961), Wenger and Bagchi (1961), Bagchi and Wenger (1957),
and Das and Gastaut (1955).
Kothari et al. (1973)
reported the case of a yogi who was confined to a small underground pit for
eight days and continuously monitored with an EKG. From the second day
until the eighth, EKG activity was below a recordable level, indicating that
the yogi had either stopped his heart or greatly decreased its electrical
activity. The authors believe that the yogi could not have tampered with
the EKG leads without creating an obvious electrical disturbance.
Some studies indicate
that heart rates increase under certain circumstances, such as deeply absorbed
trance (samadhi) [see Lehrer et al. (1980), Parulkar et al. (1974),
Wenger and Bagchi (1961), and Das and Gastaut (1955)]. Other research
shows no consistent changes in heart rate with the practice of Ananda Marga
Yoga or progressive relaxation [see Gash and Karliner (1978), Elson et al.
(1977), Travis et al. (1976), Wenger et al. (1961), and Bagchi and Wenger
(1957)].
We could not find
accounts in the traditional literature describing the number of heartbeats one
should expect during meditation, with which we could compare the numbers in
modern studies. Contemplative masters did not share the scientific
passion for quantitative analysis and generally appreciated the differences in
physiology and temperament among their followers. They also did not have the
means to measure bodily changes precisely, and generally wouldn't have used
them if they had.
Redistribution of Blood
Flow
Blood flow is directly
or indirectly manipulated for mental clarity, health, increased energy, or the
promotion of religious emotion through hatha yoga postures, breathing
exercises, prostrations, tai chi movements, dervish dancing, and other
activities associated with the contemplative traditions. Traditional teachers
could not measure blood flow with scientific exactness, of course, but some of
them could skillfully guide their students' practice through empathy,
intuition, and kinesthetic feel, and in doing so they sometimes looked for
bodily signs related to blood circulation, such as flushing of the face and
chest and changes in skin tone and complexion. [33]
The picture of meditation's effect on blood flow provided by modern studies is
quite preliminary, though. Most of it comes from TM-sponsored research.
Delmonte (1984f) tested
fifty-two subjects and found that meditators showed a significantly greater
increase in digital blood volume during meditation than rest. Jevning,
Wilson, and O'Halloran (1982) studied muscle and skin blood flow and metabolism
during states of decreased activation in TM. They concluded that acute
decline of forearm oxygen consumption has been observed during an acute, wakeful behaviorally induced rest/relaxation
state. This change of tissue respiration was not associated with
variation of rate of forelimb lactate generation. Since forearm blood
flow did not change significantly during this behavior, the decline of oxygen
consumption by forearm was due almost solely to decreased rate of oxygen
extraction. Decreased muscle metabolism was a likely contributor to these
observations. The occurrence of sleep was not related to the metabolic
change. The lack of coupling between the metabolic and blood flow changes
during this state of decreased activation suggests limitation of the hypothesis
of obligatory coupling between systemic and/or regional cardiovascular and
metabolic function.
Earlier, Jevning and
Wilson (1978) reported that TM increased cardiac output among twenty-seven
subjects by an average of 16% (ml/min measured by dye dilution methods),
decreased hepatic blood flow by an average of 34% (ml/min measured by clearance
methods), and decreased renal blood flow by an average of 29% (ml/min measured
by clearance methods), suggesting an increase of approximately 44% in the
nonrenal, nonhepatic component of blood flow (versus an increase of approximately
12% for an eyes-closed rest-relaxation control group). Increased cerebral
or skin blood flow may account for part of this redistribution.
Jevning et al. (1976)
found an average 15% increase in cardiac output, an average 20% decline in
liver blood flow, and an average 20% decrease in renal blood flow among a group
of six meditators practicing TM. A control group of six showed no change
in cardiac output and liver blood flow, and a significant decline in renal
blood flow. The authors believe that decreased skin and muscle blood flow
was suggested by other, indirect data, and that since
cardiac output increases and all measured organ blood flows decrease, it is
possible that cerebral perfusion increases markedly during TM. Jevning et
al.'s findings were a surprise because earlier studies had indicated a decrease
in cardiac output of 25% during TM (versus a decrease of about 20% in deep
stage-four sleep) [see Wallace (1970)].
Wallace et al. (1971a)
speculated that the fall in blood lactate during meditation might be due to
increased skeletal muscle blood flow with consequent increased aerobic
metabolism. These researchers referred to Riechert (1976), who recorded
forearm blood flow increases of 30% with unchanged finger blood flow (using a
plethysmograph). Jevning and Wilson (1978) found that frontal cerebral
blood flow increased an average of 65% during TM for ten teachers of the
technique (five to eight years of regular practice), and remained elevated
afterwards, with brief increases up to 100-200% (measured by quadripolar
rheoencephalography). Levander et al. (1972) measured forearm blood flow (using
a water plethysmograph) in five subjects 180 times and reported that the
pretest period mean blood flow of 1.41 ml/100ml tissue volume/min increased to
1.86 ml/100ml tissue volume/min during TM, and returned to pretest values
during post-testing. Wallace and Benson (1972) found an increase in
forearm blood flow of 32% for their TM subjects.
Blood Pressure and
Hypertension
There is strong evidence
that meditation helps lower blood pressure in people who are normal or
moderately hypertensive. This finding has been replicated by more than
nineteen studies, some of which have shown systolic reductions among their
subjects of 25 mmHg or more. In some studies a combination of meditation
with biofeedback or other relaxation techniques proved to be more effective
than meditation alone for some subjects. Several studies, however, have
shown that relief from high blood pressure diminishes or disappears entirely if
meditation is discontinued, and few people with acute hypertension have
experienced lower blood pressure in experiments of this kind.
At the time of this
writing, speculation regarding the mechanisms mediating meditation's beneficial
effects on high blood pressure appears to be inconclusive. Meditation
often helps relax the large muscle groups pressing on the circulatory system in
various parts of the body. It might also help relax the small muscles
that control the blood vessels themselves; when that happens, the resulting
elasticity of blood vessel walls would help reduce the pressure inside
them. Other mechanisms may be involved, which further research will
reveal. The following studies explored meditation's effect on blood
pressure and hypertension:
Cort (1989) It
was hypothesized that the large the variability of results in different studies
on the effect of meditation on hypertension may be due to differences in
compliance to the meditation regimens. This study of fifty-one black
adults supports the claim that greater compliance to a meditation program leads
to greater decreases in blood pressure.
Delmonte
(1984f) Forty nonmeditators and twelve experienced
Transcendental Meditators were randomly assigned to four experimental cells
devised to control for order and expectation effects. All fifty-two
(female) subjects were continuously monitored in seven physiological measures
during both meditation and rest. Each subject was her own control in an
experiment comparing meditation to rest. Analysis of variance on change
scores calculated from both initial and running (intertrial) baselines revealed
small but significant condition effects for all variables except diastolic
BP. With respect to systolic BP, the nonmeditators showed a significantly
larger drop from initial baseline during meditation than during rest.
With respect to running baseline, the meditators demonstrated a significantly
smaller increase in systolic blood pressure with the complete trial data and a
greater decrease with the end-of-trial data during meditation than during rest.
Wallace et al. (1983b) This
study measured systolic blood pressure using a standard mercury
sphygmomanometer on 112 transcendental meditators. The subjects had a
mean systolic blood pressure 13.7 to 24.5 less than the population
mean. The analysis also showed that meditators with more than five
years of experience had a mean systolic blood pressure 7.5 lower than
meditators with less than five years of experience.
Bagga and Gandhi (1983) The
authors studied a group of eighteen people who were equally divided into a TM,
Shavasana (relaxing while lying on one's back), or control group. After
twelve weeks of practicing, the TM and Shavasana groups showed significant
declines in systolic blood pressure as high as 10 mmHg, whereas the control
group demonstrated no decline.
Hafner (1982) Twenty-one hypertension
patients who had been randomly assigned to eight one-hour sessions of either meditation training, meditation plus
biofeedback-aided relaxation, or a nontreatment control group were studied.
Statistically significant falls in systolic and diastolic blood pressure
occurred after both training programs, although overall reductions in blood
pressure were not significantly greater in either program than in the control
group. Meditation plus biofeedback-aided relaxation produced falls in diastolic
blood pressure earlier in the training program than did meditation alone.
All patients practiced meditation regularly between training sessions, but the
amount of practice did not correlate with the amount of blood pressure
reduction after training.
Seer and Raeburn (1980) Forty-one unmedicated
hypertensives were randomly assigned to three groups: TM training, placebo
control (TM training without a mantra), and no-treatment control. The
results showed modest reductions in blood pressure in both treatment groups,
compared with no treatment, with diastolic percentage reductions reaching
significance. There was considerable subject variation in response, with an
overall mean decline in diastolic blood pressure of 8-10% on a three-month
follow-up.
Surwit et al. (1978) This
study compared the separate effects of three procedures for the reduction of
high blood pressure in three treatment groups of eight patients, each with medically
verified borderline hypertension. The three treatment groups used the
following procedures: (a) biofeedback for simultaneous reductions in systolic
blood pressure and heart rate; (b) biofeedback for reductions in integrated
forearm and frontalis muscle electromyographic activity; and (c) meditation
relaxation based on the relaxation response procedure developed by Herbert
Benson. Each patient was studied in two baseline sessions, eight training
sessions, and a six-week follow-up. Half of the sample returned for a
one-year follow-up. Analysis of variance of the three
treatment groups over eight training sessions, with twenty trials per session,
revealed significant effects for trials within sessions. However,
there were no significant main effects or interactions related to differences
between the treatment conditions or to changes in blood pressure over the
course of training sessions. Although all groups showed moderate
reductions in blood pressure as compared to initial values, no technique could
be seen to produce a reduction in pressure greater than that observed in the
baseline sessions. Blood pressures of patients reporting for the one-year
follow-up were not different from pretreatment baseline levels.
Pollack et al. (1977) Twenty
hypertensive patients, nine of whom were on stable dosages of hypotensive
medication, were taught TM. Blood pressure reductions were 10 mmHg
systolic/2 mmHg diastolic after three months and 6 mmHg systolic/2 mmHg
diastolic after six months. The only statistically significant reduction
in blood pressure occurred after three months. Meditation plus
biofeedback produced decreases in diastolic blood pressure earlier in the
training program than meditation alone.
Simon et al. (1977) Five
borderline hypertensives were taught TM. After they learned the technique
and practiced it for an average of thirty-two weeks, their mean blood pressure
decreased from 153/101 mmHg to 138/92 mmHg.
Blackwell et al. (1976) Seven
subjects on stable dosages of hypotensive medication were taught TM over a
nine-to-twelve week period. They recorded a mean blood pressure reduction of 4
mmHg systolic/2 mmHg diastolic, and 3 mmHg systolic/4 mmHg diastolic during a
follow-up six months later, but there were changes in drug treatment during the
follow-up period.
Stone and DeLeo (1976) Fourteen
hypertensives were taught a "Buddhist" meditation that involved
counting breaths in five twenty-minute training sessions over six months.
Five hypertensives were used as controls. While supine, the treatment
group had mean blood pressure reductions of 9 mmHg systolic/8 mmHg
diastolic. While upright, the treatment group had mean blood pressure
reductions of 15 mmHg systolic/10 mmHg diastolic. While supine, the
control group had mean blood pressure reductions of 1 mmHg systolic/2 mmHg
diastolic. While upright, the control group had mean blood pressure
reductions of 2 mmHg systolic/0 mmHg diastolic.
Patel and North (1975) Thirty-four
hypertensive patients were assigned at random either to six weeks of treatment
by yoga relaxation methods with biofeedback or to placebo therapy (general
relaxation). Both groups showed a reduction in blood pressure (from
168/100 to 141/84 mmHg in the treated group and from 169/101 to 160/96 mmHg in
the control group). The difference was highly significant. The
control group was then trained in yoga relaxation, and the blood pressure fell
to that of the other group (now used as controls).
Patel (1975a) Thirty-two
patients—twenty-one females and eleven males—between the ages of thirty-four
and seventy-five years with essential hypertension of known duration from six
months to thirteen years, were randomly divided into a treatment group and a
control group. Fourteen patients in the treatment group and fifteen in
the control group were receiving antihypertensive drugs. Baseline blood
pressure was first obtained after a twenty-minute rest in the supine
position. The patients were given two stress tests: an exercise test
(climbing a nine-inch step twenty-five times) and a cold pressor test
(immersing the left hand in cold water after alerting the patient sixty seconds
in advance) at the beginning and again after six weeks. Blood pressure
was taken during the alert, at the end of each test, and every five minutes
until it returned to the original value or up to a maximum of forty
minutes. In the six weeks between test periods, all patients attended a
twice-weekly clinic. The treatment group was given training in relaxation
and meditation based on yogic principals, which was reinforced with biofeedback
instruments, and group members were asked to practice relaxation and meditation
at home twice daily for twenty minutes. In the treatment group there was
a significant reduction in the pressure rises as well as in recovery time.
Mere repetition of the tests did not influence these indications of
stress. When the differences between the groups were compared, all
measurements except the systolic pressure rise after exercise showed
significant improvement in the treated group.
Patel (1975b) Twenty
hypertension patients, nineteen of whom were using hypotensive drugs, were
taught yoga, breath meditation, muscle relaxation, and meditation
concentration. Their average blood pressure was reduced from 159.1/100.1 mmHg
to 138.7/85.9 mmHg. The average blood pressures of twenty control
subjects, eighteen of whom were using hypotensive drugs, who rested on a couch
for the same number of sessions and were given no relaxation training, was
reduced from 163.1/99.1 mmHg to 162.6/97.0 mmHg.
Patel (1975c) Twenty
hypertensive patients treated by psychophysical relaxation exercises were
followed up monthly for twelve months. Age- and sex-matched hypertensive
controls were similarly followed up for nine months. Statistically
significant reductions in blood pressure (BP) and antihypertensive drug
requirements were satisfactorily maintained in the treatment group. Mere
repetition of BP measurements and increased medical attention did not in
themselves reduce BP significantly in control patients.
Benson et al. (1974d) Twenty-two borderline
hypertensives not using drugs were taught TM, and their mean blood pressure
decreased from 146.5/94.6 mmHg during the premeditation control period, lasting
5.7 weeks, to 139.6/90.8 mmHg during the postmeditation experimental period,
lasting an average of twenty-five weeks. They were tested throughout the
premeditation and postmeditation periods.
Benson et al. (1974f) Fourteen
hypertension patients on drugs were taught the relaxation response.
During a control period of 5.6 weeks, blood pressure did not change
significantly from day to day, and averaged 145.6/91.9 mmHg. During an
experimental period of twenty weeks, blood pressure decreased to 135.0/87.0
mmHg.
Patel (1973) Twenty
hypertension patients using hypotensive drugs were taught yoga, breath
meditation, muscle relaxation, and meditation concentration. Their
average blood pressure was reduced from 159.1/100.1 mmHg to 138.7/85.9
mmHg. The average blood pressure of twenty control subjects, who rested
on a couch for the same number of sessions and who were given no relaxation
training, was reduced from 163.1/99.1 mmHg to 162.6/97.0 mmHg.
Deabler et al. (1973) In
this study three groups of hypertensive patients were tested. Six
subjects, who were taught progressive relaxation and hypnosis in eight to nine
sessions over four to five days, had average blood pressure reductions of 17
mmHg systolic/19 mmHg diastolic during their experimental sessions. Nine
subjects taking hypotensive medication, who were taught progressive relaxation
and hypnosis in eight to nine sessions over four to five days, experienced BP
reductions of 16 mmHg systolic/14 mmHg diastolic during their experimental
sessions. A control group of six subjects showed no significant blood
pressure changes.
Benson and Wallace
(1972a) Twenty-two hypertensives with no meditation experience were given the
standard TM training. Their mean blood pressure before meditation was
150/94 mmHg. After four to sixty-three weeks of meditation practice their
mean blood pressure was reduced to 141/87 mmHg.
Datey et al. (1969) Forty-seven
hypertension patients practiced "Shavasana", a yogic breathing
concentration and muscle relaxation technique, thirty minutes daily for
approximately thirty weeks. Of these forty-seven subjects, ten who did not use
antihypertensive drugs had an average systolic blood pressure reduction from
134 to 107 mmHg. A second group of twenty-two subjects, with BP well
controlled by antihypertensive drugs, had an average systolic blood pressure
reduction from 102 to 100 mmHg. A third group of fifteen subjects, with
inadequately controlled blood pressure using antihypertensive drugs, had an average systolic blood pressure reduction from
120 to 110 mmHg. The subjects' average drug requirement was reduced to
32% of the original dosages for the second group. In group three, six patients
reduced their drug requirement to 29% of the original, seven patients' dosages
were unchanged, and two patients required an increased dosage.
Blood pressure is one of
the easiest physiological variables to measure. The evidence just
presented shows that many patients with moderate hypertension improve with
meditation. Because these studies involved different types of meditation,
different levels of meditation experience among subjects, and different kinds
of measurement, the mechanisms mediating the improvement are uncertain.
Most studies indicate that benefits disappear without continued practice [see
Frankel (1976) and Patel (1976)]. Nevertheless, a therapeutic approach to
hypertension involving meditation has been shown to be effective [see Patel
(1977, 1984)] .
Other studies examining
the effect of various forms of meditation on blood pressure include: Sothers
and Anchor (1989), Kuchera (1987), Mills (1987), Caudill et al. (1987), Benson
(1986), Juhl and Strandgaard (1985), Patel et al. (1985), Friskey (1985),
Caudill et al. (1984a, 1984b), Muskatel et al. (1984), Benson and Caudill
(1984), Lang (1984), Slaughter (1984), English (1981), Bynum (1980), and Benson
et al. (1974c, 1974d).
Other Cardiovascular
Changes
Evidence that meditation
helps relieve certain forms of cardiovascular disease generally conforms to
assertions that yoga, tai chi, and other transformational disciplines promote
health. Similarly, evidence that meditators recover more quickly from stressful
impacts and demonstrate fewer chronic or inappropriate emergency responses than
nonmeditators agrees in a general way with teachings about the alert calm and
peace of yogic practice or the effortless but appropriate behavior of Zen
Buddhist and Taoist adepts.
For contemporary
evidence that meditation assists individuals with forms of cardiovascular
disease such as hypercholesterolemia and angina pectoris, see Barr and Benson
(1984), Benson (1983c), Benson and Goodale (1981), Cooper and Aygen (1979),
Zamarra et al. (1977), Benson (1976), Benson et al. (1976), Benson and Wallace
(1972a), and Tulpule (1971).
Goleman and Schwartz
(1976) exposed thirty experienced meditators to a stressor film, and measured
responses by skin conductance, heart rate, self-report, and personality
scales. The heart rates of both experienced and inexperienced meditators
recovered from stressor impacts more quickly than those of control subjects,
demonstrating a psychophysiological configuration in stress situations opposite
to that seen in stress-related syndromes. In a study by Glueck and
Stroebel (1975), meditators demonstrated fewer chronic or inappropriate
activations of the emergency response.
The Cortical System
EEG: Alpha Activity
Evidence indicating that
meditation leads to an increase in alpha rhythms (slow, high amplitude brain
waves extending to anterior channels and ranging in frequency from eight to
thirteen cycles per second) is extensive. The following studies, using many
types of meditation, with subject groups of one to more than fifty including
beginners and Zen masters, reach that conclusion: Delmonte (1984f), Daniels and
Fernhall (1984), Stigsby et al. (1981), Lehrer et al. (1980), Wachsmuth et al.
(1980), West (1980a), Dostalek et al. (1979), Corby et al. (1978), Pelletier
and Peper (1977b), Elson et al. (1977), Kasamatsu et al. (1957), Kras (1977),
Fenwick et al. (1977), Glueck and Stroebel (1975), Tebecis (1975), Williams and
West (1975), Woolfolk (1975), Banquet (1972, 1973), Vassiliadis (1973), Benson
et al. (1971c), Wallace et al. (1971c), Akishige (1970), Wallace (1970),
Kasamatsu and Hirai (1963, 1966, 1969a, 1969b), Kamiya (1968, 1969b), Anand et
al. (1961a), Hirai (1960), Hirai (1959), Bagchi and Wenger (1957), and Das and
Gastaut (1955) [see also the EEG research review of Echenhofer and Coombs
(1987)].
In contrast, some
studies report a decrease in alpha activity during meditation. See Jacobs
and Luber (1989), Warrenburg et al. (1980), and Tebecis (1975). A
possible explanation may be found in differences in the initial level of
relaxation of subjects.
Gayten (1978) examined
the EEGs of tai chi practitioners (a form of moving meditation) using a
Medi-Log Ambulatory Monitor and did not find brain-wave patterns similar to
those of meditators. After reviewing their own and other studies, Jevning
and O'Halloran (1984) concluded that various TM-correlated changes persisted
after the cessation of TM practice, particularly EEG changes of the kind reported
in the studies we have listed here.
Sim and Tsoi (1992)
investigated the effects of three centrally acting drugs (naloxone, diazepam,
and flumazenil) on the significant increase in the intermediate alpha frequency
of the EEG that accompanied meditation in an experienced meditator. They
found no significant changes, which would indicate that the EEG correlates of
meditation are not causally related to the rise or fall of endogenous opioid
peptides or benzodiazepinelike substances in the brain.
EEG: Theta Activity
A characteristic
brainwave pattern of long-term meditators includes strong bursts of frontally
dominant theta rhythms (five to seven cycles per second), during which
meditators report peaceful, drifting, and generally pleasant experiences with
intact self-awareness. The following studies have reported this pattern:
Jacobs and Luber (1989), Delmonte (1984f), West (1979a), Hebert and Lehmann
(1977), Elson et al. (1977), Pelletier and Peper (1977b), Fenwick et al.
(1977), Banquet and Sailhan (1977), Ghista et al. (1976), Levine (1976),
Tebecis (1975), Glueck and Stroebel (1984), Krahne and Tenoli (1975), Hirai
(1974), Banquet (1972, 1973), Wallace and Benson (1972), Wallace et al.
(1971b), Wallace (1971), Kasamatsu and Hirai (1963, 1966), Anand et al. (1961b),
and Bagchi and Wenger (1958).
EEG: Beta Activity
During deep meditation,
experienced subjects sometimes exhibit bursts of high-frequency beta waves
(twenty to forty cycles per second). This sudden autonomic activation is
often associated by the meditator with an approach of yogic ecstasy or a state
of intense concentration; and it is usually accompanied by an acceleration of
heart rate. The following studies have reported beta activity: West
(1980a, Peper and Ancoli (1979), West (1979a, Corby et al. (1978), Fenwick et
al. (1977), Banquet (1973), Kasamatsu and Hirai (1963, 1966), Anand et al.
(1961a), and Das and Gastaut (1955). Surwillo and Hobson (1978) recorded
the EEGs of six Protestant adults during prayer to discover whether the pattern
was slower than during rest. They did not find any evidence of EEGs
slowing during prayer, and in fact found the opposite in the majority of
subjects. The authors speculated that this phenomenon was similar to that
observed in experienced meditators during deep meditation.
EEG: Hemispheric
Synchronization
EEG
synchronization/coherence with respect to the distribution of alpha activity
between the four anatomically distinct regions of the brain—-left, right,
anterior, and posterior—-may indicate the effectiveness
of meditation. It has been positively correlated with creativity
(Orme-Johnson et al. 1977b). Such neural ordering has been reported in
the following studies: Jevning and O'Halloran (1984), Badawi et al. (1984),
Orme-Johnson and Haynes (1981), Dillbeck and Bronson (1981), Dillbeck et al.
(1981a), Glueck and Stroebel (1978), Corby et al. (1978), Bennett and Trinder
(1977), Orme-Johnson (1977a), Morse et al. (1977), Hebert and Lehmann (1977),
Westcott (1977), Haynes et al. (1977), Ferguson and Gowan (1976), Davidson
(1976), Levine (1976), Ferguson (1975), Glueck and Stroebel (1975), Banquet and
Sailhan (1974), Banquet (1973 and 1972), Wallace et al. (1971c), Wallace
(1971), Anand et al. 1961a), and Das and Gastaut (1955).
EEG: Dehabituation
Whether meditation
produces a heightened awareness that resists habituation is a significant
question, we feel, because many traditional teachings maintain that it
does. The Sanskrit anuraga, or constant freshness of perception,
for example, is said to be a primary result of yoga; Zen Buddhist teachers
describe the freedom from "perceptual averaging" that zazen and right
living lead to; and Taoist stories accentuate the spontaneity of each moment
for those who are wise in the way of the Tao. Such teachings are supported
by most modern meditation studies, though a few experiments have failed to
replicate their findings. Some religious ecstatics, however, become so
absorbed in trance that they inhibit or entirely suppress their responses to
the outer world. Early studies by Bagchi and Wenger compared yogis and
Zen masters in this regard, and appeared to show significant differences in EEG
response between the two kinds of meditation. The yogis they studied habituated
to repeated stimuli more rapidly and completely than Zen masters, leading
Bagchi and Wenger to speculate that the two types of discipline produced
different spiritual results—either inner absorption or heightened awareness of
the outer world. The following studies report that meditation leads to a
heightened perceptual awareness, in which the EEGs remain responsive to
repeated stimuli such as clicks or light flashes instead of habituating to
them: Delmonte (1984b), McEvoy et al. (1980), Davidson (1976), Williams
and West (1975, Hirai (1974), Wada and Hamm (1974), Banquet (1973),
Orme-Johnson (1973), Gellhorn and Kiely (1972), Naranjo and Ornstein (1971),
Wallace et al. (1971b), Wallace (1971), Akishige 1970), Kasamatsu and Hirai
(1963, 1966), Anand et al. (1961a), and Bagchi and Wenger (1957).
Other studies, however,
failed to replicate this finding. Heide (1986) compared seventeen TM meditators
and seventeen controls and found no significant differences between groups in
the rate of habituation of alpha blocking. Becker and Shapiro (1981) used
three groups of Zen, yoga, and TM meditators with five to seven years of
experience, and two groups of controls. They found that EEG alpha
suppression in response to repeated stimuli did not differ among the five
groups. West (1980a) concluded that too few systematic studies of
habituation have been made to reach a solid conclusion. Barwood et al.
(1978) tested auditory-evoked potentials of eight experienced meditators
before, during, and after meditation, and also during light sleep, and found no
consistent changes between baseline and meditating or meditating and sleep
auditory-evoked potentials.
Specific Cortical
Control
Traditional teachers did
not have electroencephalographs to study cortical activity, but the findings in
modern studies that meditators achieve various kinds of control over specific
kinds of brain function conform to the tenet of many contemplative literatures
that self-awareness brings self-mastery. As various kinds of functioning
are brought to consciousness, their integration can be more deliberately
guided, according to most traditional teachings. Several modern studies
seem to show that meditators do indeed acquire control of specific brain
functions.
Delmonte (1984b)
concluded that meditation practice may begin with left-hemisphere activity,
which then gives way to functioning characteristics of the right hemisphere,
while both left- and right-hemisphere activity are largely inhibited or
suspended in advanced meditation.
Pagano and Frumkin
(1977) reported strong evidence that meditation enhances functioning in the
right hemisphere, with cumulative effects among experienced meditators. Prince
(1978) suggested that meditation may inhibit the left hemisphere somewhat,
shifting the focus of consciousness to the right hemisphere. Bennett and Trinder
(1977) reported that TM meditators had greater flexibility in shifting from one
brain hemisphere to the other. Davidson and Goleman (1977) suggested that
during periods of intense concentration in meditation, sensory information may
become attenuated below the level of the cortex. Earlier, Davidson (1976)
reported that during mystical experience cerebral function is dominated by the
right hemisphere. Goleman (1976a) stated that meditators showed a
significantly increased cortical excitation during meditation and a
simultaneous limbic inhibition that delinked the cortex and limbic
systems. He also reported that Gurdjieff meditators' brains showed
cortical specificity, or the ability to turn on those areas of the brain
necessary to the task at hand while leaving the irrelevant areas
inactive. Schwartz (1975) stated that meditation practices can lead to
heightened cortical arousability plus decreased limbic arousability, so that
perception is heightened and emotion is simultaneously reduced, which he
described as a "skilled response."
Others reporting
cortical specificity of response are Warrenburg (1979), Hirai (1974), Banquet
(1973), and Orme-Johnson (1973).
Other Cortical Changes
Persinger (1984) stated
that transient, focal, epilepticlike electrical changes in the temporal lobe,
without convulsions, have been hypothesized to be primary correlates of
religious experiences. He investigated two cases of this kind. The
first involved the occurrence of a delta-wave dominant electrical seizure for
about ten seconds, from the temporal lobe only, of a TM teacher during a peak
experience. The second involved the occurrence of spikes, within the
temporal lobe only, during protracted intermittent episodes of glossalalia by a
member of a Pentecostal sect. Persinger concluded that religious
experiences are natural correlates of temporal-lobe transients that can be
detected by routine EEG measures.
Researchers have
analyzed EEG differences between meditators and those in stages of sleep,
hypnosis, and other self-regulation strategies. Brown et al. (1977-78)
were not able to differentiate between EEG data during meditation, sleep, and
therapeutic touch healing states. Fenwick et al. (1977) found that EEG
results showed TM to be a method of holding the meditators' level of
consciousness at stage "onset" sleep. He found no evidence to
suggest that TM produced a hypometabolic state beyond that produced by muscle relaxation, nor support for the idea that TM is a
fourth stage of consciousness. Pagano et al. (1976) studied the EEGs of
five experienced meditators, and found appreciable amounts of sleep stages two,
three, and four during meditation. Otis (1974) found during a
posttreatment testing session that twenty-three Transcendental Meditators displayed
significantly more sleep-stage-one activity than they had in a premeditation
rest period, and significantly more sleep than controls. Rao (1965)
described meditation as a form of autohypnotism parallel to the state of
hypnotic trance or hypnotic sleep. On the other hand, those who have
found the EEGs of meditators to be distinct include West (1979a), Wachsmuth
(1978), Patey et al. (1977), Dash and Alexander (1977), Banquet and Sailhan
(1974), Wallace and Benson (1972), Wallace et al. (1971b), Wallace (1971),
Kasamatsu and Hirai (1966), Onda (1967), Anand et al. (1961a), and Bagchi and
Wenger (1957).
A few researchers have
looked at EEG results in terms of the ergotropic/trophotropic model developed
by Gellhorn [see Gellhorn and Kiely (1972).] Davidson (1976) stated that
mystical states may be experienced during either ergotropic (excited) or
trophotropic (relaxed) conditions. He suggested that the whirling dances of
Sufis and the violent abdominal contractions of Ishiguro Zen monks induce
ergotropic conditions, whereas TM and other forms of sitting meditation elicit
trophotropic reactions. Sargant (1974) speculated that trophotropic
states may occur in the midst of an ergotropically induced experience.
Gellhorn and Kiely (1972) observed that physiological changes in meditation are
due to a shift in the ergotropic/trophotropic balance in the trophotropic
direction—a good strategy for improving mental health. Their model was
criticized by Mills and
Blood Chemistry
Strict comparisons
between traditional understandings of bodily change in contemplative practice
and modern studies of meditation's effect on blood chemistry are uncertain at
best, though the finding in some studies that meditation lowers adrenal hormones, lactates, and cholesterol seems to confirm the
repeated discovery that spiritual practice reduces stress and anxiety.
This area of research is not as well developed, though, as other areas of
meditation research. Only more investigation will reveal the intricate
relationships of blood chemistry in contemplative activity.
Adrenal Hormones
Meditation generally
produces psychological results opposite from those of stress, yet researchers
have been puzzled by the fact that stress-induced adrenal hormone levels do not
fall consistently in the blood of meditators. Benson (1983a) studied
nineteen subjects who practiced the relaxation response technique twice daily
for thirty days. He found increased norepinephrine levels without any
increase in heart rate or blood pressure, and concluded that the relaxation
response technique reduces central nervous system responsivity to
norepinephrine. Or norepinephrine levels rise because less is used up by
tissues that ordinarily respond to it. Benson (1989) concluded that reduced
norepinephrine end-organ responsivity may be the mechanism through which
physiologic changes persist after the elicitation of the relaxation response
[see also Morrell (1985)]. Mills et al. (1990) measured functional lymphocyte
beta-andrenergic receptors and found lower levels in TM meditators supporting
Benson's hypothesis. Engle (1983), commenting on Benson's work, agreed
that the relaxation response is a useful technique to modify physiological
functions, but that little is understood about the mechanisms that mediate its
effect. Earlier, Hoffman et al. (1982) assessed sympathetic nervous
system activity in experimental subjects practicing the relaxation response and
in control subjects, all of whom were exposed to graded orthostatic and isometric
stress during monthly hospital visits. They found higher concentrations
of norepinephrine for experimental subjects and no changes for controls [see
the follow-up study by Morrell and Hollandsworth (1986) that supports this
conclusion].
Sudsuang et al. (1991)
reported decreased cortisol levels measured after meditation in inexperienced
meditators. Michaels et al. (1979) studied eight TM meditators and eight
controls, and found that cortisol decreased progressively for both groups,
aldosterone did not change for either group, and renin increased by 14% for the
meditation group, thereby not supporting the hypothesis that TM induces a
unique state characterized by decreased sympathetic activity or release from
stress. However, since cortisol concentrations varied more widely for
controls than for meditators during the experiment, Michaels concluded that
meditators may be less responsive to acute stress. Lang et al. (1979), in
a study of ten advanced meditators with over four years of experience and ten meditators
with over two years of experience, found that catecholamine levels were higher
in advanced meditators during the experiment, and concluded that meditation
enhances sympathetic activity. Michaels et al. (1976) measured plasma
epinephrine and norepinephrine in twelve meditators before, during, and after
meditation, and in a control group matched for sex and age who rested instead
of meditating, and obtained the same results for both groups, thereby
concluding that TM does not reduce stress and the activity of the sympathetic
nervous system. Bevan et al. (1976) found significant decreases in plasma
and urinary-free cortisol during TM, the effect being cumulative with increased
meditation experience. However, no significant effects on catecholamine
excretion were noted. He concluded that TM produces an acute and chronic
reduction in trophotropic anterior hypothalamic activity but little effect on
ergotropic posterior hypothalamic function, and that the mechanisms underlying
the practice are not a simple counterpart of the fight-or-flight response.
Other researchers,
however, have reported decreases in adrenal hormones during meditation.
Werner et al. (1986) evaluated eleven subjects before and during a three-year
period after starting the TM-Sidhi program. They found a progressive
decrease in serum TSH, growth hormone, and prolactin levels, with no consistent
change in cortisol, T4, or T3. Stone and DeLeo (1976) measured plasma
dopamine-B-hydroxylase as an index of sympathetic nervous system activity in a
six-month controlled trial of simple word meditation in hypertension
patients. They noted significant reductions of plasma D-B-H, which was
positively correlated with significant reductions of blood pressure.
Schildkraut et al. (1990) found a possible
common mechanism of action for the drug alprazolam (a triazolobenzodiazepine
with antianxiety and antidepressant as well as antipanic effects) and
elicitation of the relaxation response that involves decreased catecholamine
output. Bujatti and Riederer (1976) found a significant decrease of the
catecholamine metabolite VMA (vanillicmandelic acid) in meditators. This
decrease was associated with a reciprocal increase of the serotonin metabolite
5-HIAA, which supports, as a feedback necessity, the rest-and-fulfillment
response versus fight and flight. Loliger (1991) also reported an
increase in 5-HIAA during the practice of TM and the TM-Sidhi program.
Several studies have found decreased cortisol levels in
meditators versus controls with the level of effect increasing with duration of
meditation practice. See Ahuja et al. (1981),
Jevning et al. (1978a, 1978d), Udupa et al. (1975), and Jevning et
al. (1975).
Jevning and O'Halloran
(1984) stated that adrenocortical activity may be the one parameter sufficient
to determine the relationship between TM and sleep, since cortisol secretion is
not apparently related to sleep. They reviewed the literature,
particularly Jevning, Wilson, and Davidson's study (1978), and concluded that
it is unlikely that TM can be the same as sleep, or accounted for as unstylized
rest/relaxation, since sharp declines of up to 25% in cortisol during
meditation for long-term meditators was measured, whereas insignificant
declines were noted in short-term meditators, and no changes were noted in the
rest/relaxation control group.
Androgen levels are a
well-established correlate of the response to acute stress, and are possibly of
adrenocortical origin. Jevning and Wilson (1978) studied testosterone
concentration changes during TM and during rest among a group of fifteen TM
practitioners with three to five years of experience and a group of fifteen
controls. The controls were restudied as practitioners after three to
four months of practice. No change in testosterone concentration was
found during either rest or TM. Cooper et al. (1985) studied ten
experienced Transcendental Meditators and found no clear evidence that
meditation suppressed stress-related hormones [see the comments of
The serum level of the adrenal androgen, dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate
(DHEA-S), is closely correlated with age in humans and has also been associated
with measures of health and stress. Levels of DHEA-S decrease with age, stress,
and illness. Glaser et al. (1992) found generally higher levels of DHEA-S in TM
meditators versus controls suggesting greater health and adaptability for
meditators.
Hill (1990) studied ten
meditators to investigate the acute autonomic effects of Transcendental
Meditation and found that both divisions of the autonomic nervous system are
attenuated. The results also provide preliminary evidence to support the
hypothesis that TM is associated with acutely reduced hypothalamic and
peripheral serotonergic activity.
Thyroid Hormones
Werner et al. (1986), in
a study of eleven subjects in the TM-Sidhi program found decreased TSH, growth
hormone, and prolactin levels and no consistent change in cortisol, T3 or
T4. Jevning and Wilson (1977) found in a study of TM practitioners that
T3, T4 and insulin levels did not change during meditation, but that TSH levels
declined dramatically. Decreased TSH, along with stable thyroid hormone
levels, may suggest change of the set point for feedback control of TSH
secretion during TM and is consistent with primarily neural modulation of TSH
secretion. The stability of T3, T4 and insulin make it unlikely that
these hormones regulate the acute metabolic changes associated with the
meditative state.
Total Protein
Sudsuang
et al. (1991)
reported increased serum protein levels after six weeks of meditation and
speculated that cortisol reduction during meditation practice may be related to
an increase in total protein because of reduction of gluconeogenesis and
increased total protein synthesis by the liver.
Amino Acids and
Phenylalanine
There is some evidence
that amino acid metabolism is related to mental states, since alteration of
plasma amino acid levels has been correlated with various forms of
behavior. Jevning et al. (1977b) measured thirteen plasma neutral and
acidic amino acids in twenty-eight subjects, thirteen of whom were controls and
fifteen of whom had practiced TM twice daily for three to five years, and found
that phenylalanine concentration increased by 23% during TM practice with no
change during control relaxation. No significant changes were noted for
the other twelve amino acids studied. Jevning speculated that since the liver
is the principal utilizer of phenylalanine hydroxylase, reduced blood flow to
the liver during meditation [see Jevning (1978c)] might be the cause of
increased phenylalanine levels. He also suggested that the brain might
utilize less phenylalanine during meditation.
Plasma Prolactin and
Growth Hormone
Werner et al. (1986)
evaluated the endocrine changes of eleven subjects before and over a three-year
period after starting the TM-Sidhi program. A progressive decrease in
serum thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), growth hormone, and prolactin levels
occurred over the three years, while no consistent change in cortisol, total
thyroxine, or triiodothyronine was observed. Jevning, Wilson, and Vanderlaan
(1978b) studied the concentrations of plasma prolactin and growth hormone
before, during, and after forty minutes of TM. Twenty-four subjects were
studied, including a group of twelve who had regularly practiced TM for three
to five years and a group of twelve who had been regular practitioners for
three to four months. The short-term practitioner group was studied as
controls before, during, and after a forty-minute eyes-closed rest period.
Prolactin concentration began to increase toward the end or after meditation in
both groups of practitioners, with levels continuing to increase in the post-TM
period. The increases were not correlated with sleep occurrence.
Prolactin levels were stable in controls throughout the experiment.
Growth hormone concentration was unchanged in both TM and rest groups.
Bevan et al. (1979)
studied the short-term endocrine changes of five experienced meditators before,
during, and after a thirty-minute period of meditation; and restudied the same
group under the same experimental conditions, except that instead of meditating
they read and talked quietly among themselves. A comparable group of five
previously unstudied meditators were examined under the same nonmeditation
conditions to offset the "second-experience" effect. A
significant 38% reduction in serum hGH occurred during
TM. The hGH fall commenced before the onset of
meditation and appeared to be a response to anticipation of meditation.
Serum hGH concentrations after TM rebounded to 50%
above premeditation values. There was no change in the same subjects
during a comparable nonmeditation experimental period, and the absence of hGH changes was not due to a second-experience effect.
The experienced meditators showed slight decreases in prolactin and cortisol
during meditation, which were not statistically significant. There were
no statistically significant changes in thyroxine, triiodothyronine, reverse
triiodothyronine, hemoglobi, packed cell volume, or total serum protein during
the experimental period.
Lactate
High blood lactate
concentrations have been associated with anxiety and high blood pressure, and
the infusion of lactate in the blood has been found to produce symptoms of
anxiety. The following studies have reported significant declines of up
to 33% in blood lactate during meditation, and a rate of decline nearly four
times faster than the rate of decrease among people resting or in a
premeditation period: Bagga et al. (1981), Jevning et al. (1978c),
Jevning and Wilson (1977), Benson (1975), Benson et al. (1973a, 1973b),
Orme-Johnson (1973), Wallace and Benson (1972), Wallace et al. (1971a), and
Wallace (1971).
Other studies have not
confirmed a drop in lactate concentrations during meditation. Michaels et al.
(1979) studied the plasma concentration of lactates of eight TM meditators
before, during, and after twenty to thirty minutes of meditation, and of eight
controls who rested quietly. Their failure to observe a change in lactate was
consistent with their previously published report (Michaels et al.,1976).
White Blood Cells
Parulkar et al. (1974)
studied twelve TM practitioners and found the following average decreases:
white blood cell count before TM, 7,100, after TM, 6,813; eosinophil count before
TM, 638, after TM, 460; and lymphocyte count before TM, 2,855, after TM, 2,781.
Red Blood Cell
Metabolism
Jevning et al. (1983)
studied thirty-two TM instructors with at least six years of meditation
experience. They found a marked decline of whole blood metabolism during TM,
which was accounted for mostly by a decline of red cell glycolite rate.
This was correlated with decreased plasma lactate concentration and with
relaxation as indicated by electrodermal response.
Cholesterol
Chronic sympathetic
nervous system overactivity has been implicated as a factor capable of
elevating and maintaining high serum cholesterol levels independent of dietary
measures. Bagga et al. (1981) studied forty female medical students who
practiced TM and yoga, and reported that their average serum cholesterol
decreased from 196.3 mg/dl to 164.7 mg/dl. Cooper and Aygen (1979)
measured serum cholesterol levels at the beginning and end of an eleven-month
period for twelve hypercholesterolemic subjects who practiced TM. Eleven
hypercholesterolemic controls who did not practice the
technique were similarly followed for thirteen months. Paired comparisons
showed a significant reduction in fasting serum cholesterol levels for those
subjects who practiced meditation. The cholesterol mg per 100 ml for the
meditation group was 254 at the start and 225 at the end of the period, and for
the control group it was 259 at the start and 254 at the end of the period.
The Metabolic and
Respiratory Systems
According to most
contemplative teachings, the turbulence and distress of ordinary life can be
reduced through quiet meditation. The subtle turnings of the mind's substance,
the citta-vritti as they are described in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras,
can be quieted so that a clearer and deeper apprehension of inner and outer
worlds might ensue. This quieting also results in a growing efficiency of
mind and body and a concomitant reduction in the organism's consumption of
energy. This picture of contemplative transformation, embedded in Hindu, Buddhist,
Taoist, and other teachings, corresponds to the one we find in contemporary
studies of meditation's effects on breathing. Some forty studies have
shown that oxygen consumption is reduced during meditation, that carbon dioxide
elimination and respiration rate are reduced, and that minute volume is
lowered. Other studies, moreover, have shown that oxygen consumption was
decreased in subjects working at a fixed intensity, and that meditators
sometimes suspend breathing longer than control subjects without apparent ill
effects. These studies strongly suggest that meditation lowers the body's
need for energy and the oxygen to help metabolize it. Such quieting of
the organism, however, happens for the most part in quiet meditation of the TM
or zazen type, not in active, high-arousal practices such as Ananda Marga
Yoga.
Various studies have
shown that oxygen consumption is reduced during meditation (in some cases up to
55%), that carbon dioxide elimination is reduced (in some cases up to 50%),
that respiration rate is lessened (in some cases to one breath per minute when
twelve to fourteen breaths per minute are normal), and that minute volume is
also lowered. See Sudsuang et al. (1991), Kesterson (1986), Wolkove et
al. (1984), Morse et al. (1984), Singh (1984), Cadarette et al. (1982), Hoffman
et al. (1981b), Jevning et al. (1978c), Fenwick et al. (1977), Peters et al.
(1977a, 1977b), Benson et al. (1977a), Dhanaraj and Singh (1977), Elson et al.
(1977), McDonagh and Egenes (1977), Corey (1977), Routt (1977), Davidson
(1976), Benson et al. (1975c), Glueck and Stroebel (1975), Woolfolk (1975),
Beary and Benson (1974), Hirai (1974), Parulkar et al. (1974),
Benson et al. (1974a), Kanellakos and Lukas (1974), Benson et al. (1973a), Banquet (1973),
Treichel et al. (1973), Wallace and Benson (1972), Russell (1972), Watanabe et
al. (1972), Goyeche et al. (1972), Wallace et al. (1971b), Wallace (1971),
Allison (1970), Sugi and Akutsu (1968), Karambelkar et al. (1968), Kasamatsu
and Hirai (1963, 1966), Anand et al. (1961a), Wenger and Bagchi (1961), Anand
and Chhina (1961), and Bagchi and Wenger (1957).
Badawi et al. (1984)
observed fifty-two periods of spontaneous respiratory suspension in eighteen
subjects during the practice of TM. These periods were correlated with
subjective experiences of pure consciousness. Total EEG coherence showed
a significant increase during these periods, moreover. Earlier, Farrow
and Hebert (1982) observed, over four independent experiments, asignificant
number of episodes of breath suspension in forty subjects practicing TM, where
the frequency and length of the suspension were significantly greater than for
control subjects relaxing with eyes closed. This verified a previous
study performed by Hebert (1977).
Benson et al. (1978a)
reported that oxygen consumption was decreased by 4% in eight subjects working
at a fixed intensity (on an electrically braked stationary bicycle ergometer)
when the relaxation response was simultaneously elicited.
Vakil (1950) reported
the case of a middle-aged yogi who meditated for fifty-six hours in an airtight
concrete cubicle, measuring approximately five feet by five feet by eight feet
and lined with thousands of three-inch rusty nails. The cubicle was then
filled with 1,400 gallons of water through a narrow opening bored in the lid,
then resealed, and the yogi remained immersed for an additional seven
hours. The author examined the yogi immediately on his removal, and found
his pulse, blood pressure, and respirations normal.
Though it seems clear
that meditation produces changes in breathing patterns, a number of studies
have found little difference in various metabolic measurements between
meditation and other self-regulation strategies. D.H. Shapiro (1982)
argued that "the original belief that we would be able to discriminate
meditation as a unique physiological state has not been confirmed —on either an
autonomic or a metabolic level or in terms of EEG pattern." Puente
(1981) compared forty-seven volunteers randomly assigned to TM, Benson's
relaxation response, or no treatment, and found that none of the techniques
exhibited clear superiority in reducing physiological arousal (measured by
respiration rate, heart rate, electromyogram, electroencephalogram, and skin
conductance). A similar experiment using TM meditators of varying
experience indicated that individuals with 1.5 years of experience exhibited
arousal levels similar to individuals with over five years of experience [also
see Puente and Bieman (1980)]. Morse et al. (1977) concluded that
relaxation, meditation, and relaxation hypnosis yield similar results, all
suggestive of deep relaxation. In The Relaxation Response (1975),
Benson argued that the physiological response pattern found in meditation was
not unique to meditation but common to any passive relaxation strategy.
See also Boswell and Murray (1979), Cauthen and Prymak (1977), and Fenwick et
al. (1977), Travis et al. (1976), Curtis and Wessberg (1975-76), and Walrath
and Hamilton (1975).
Recently, Jevning and
O'Halloran (1984) summarized the results of their own and others' studies on
the metabolic characteristics of TM and its relationship to sleep and
unstylized eyes-closed rest/relaxation. They concluded that:
We have seen, in the
course of research into these questions, a clearer delineation of the
differences and similarities between TM and other hypometabolic states as more
sophisticated studies involving more clearly specified subject groups and more
powerful measures have been applied. At present, it seems unlikely that TM is
sleep or that it is the same as simple eyes-closed rest. Whether
physiological changes accompanying TM might be induced by other stylized means
is at present a moot and, in our opinion, a probably unproductive question, in
view of the dearth of regularly practiced techniques. The noncultic
relaxation response advocated by Benson et al. (1974b), may deserve further
investigation in this regard.
Recently, Jevning et al.
(1992) conducted a review of the physiology of meditation, with emphasis on
research in which the TM technique was used. They state that:
Although facts therefore
support the relevance of physiology to meditation (and indeed, meditation to
physiology), the precise relationship of physiology to the unique subjectivity
of meditation remains a primary research question.
Muscle Tension
Muscle tension, like
oxygen consumption, has been reduced during recent experiments involving quiet
meditation. In the secure calm of meditation, it seems, one comes to feel
less need for defensive armoring. One can begin to relax more deeply as
conditioned expectations of threat diminish. Such relaxation of the
musculature contributes to the body's lowered need for energy, the slowing of
respiration, and the lowering of stress-related hormones in the blood.
Credido (1982) tried to
find whether a low-arousal relaxation pattern consisting of frontalis EMG
decreases and peripheral skin temperature increases could be attained more
effectively through biofeedback or meditation training. Thirty female
subjects, ranging in age from twenty-one to fifty-nine, were randomly assigned
to a patterned biofeedback group, a clinically standardized meditation group,
or a control group, and were seen weekly for seven sessions. The
meditation group showed significantly lower EMG levels than the other groups.
No group had significant temperature increases. The biofeedback
group had difficulty patterning the two feedback signals simultaneously,
confirming the difficulty revealed by other studies in training individuals to
gain voluntary control over more than one physiological modality with
biofeedback.
Zaichkowsky and Kamen
(1978) studied forty-eight subjects to determine whether EMG biofeedback, TM,
or Benson's relaxation response produced decreased muscle tension. They found
that all three groups had significant decreases in frontalis muscle tension
when compared with a control group. Morse et al. (1977) monitored
respiratory rate, pulse rate, blood pressure, skin resistance, EEG activity,
and muscle tension for forty-eight subjects divided equally into meditation,
hypnosis, relaxation, and control groups. Their results showed
significantly better relaxation responses for those practicing a relaxation
technique than the control group. There were no significant differences
between the relaxation techniques, however, except for the measure of muscle
tension, in which meditation was significantly better. Others reporting
significantly reduced muscle tension through meditation include Delmonte
(1984f), Brandon (1983), Bhalla (1981), Cangelosi (1981), Delmonte (1979),
Kemmerling (1978), Miller et al. (1978), Fee and Giordano (1978), Pelletier and
Peper (1977b), Haynes et al. (1975), Ikegami (1974), Gellhorn and Kiely (1972),
and Das and Gastaut (1955).
Ikegami (1974) compared
muscle tension in the lotus position with other relaxed forms of sitting, and
found that it was lower than in any other posture except that of lying down.
Citing the work of
Cauthen and Prymak (1977), Curtis and Wessberg (1975-1976), and Travis et al.
(1976), D.H. Shapiro (1982) pointed out that "most studies have found that
the constellation of changes is significantly different between meditation
groups and placebo control groups but not between meditation and other
self-regulation strategies."
Skin Resistance and
Spontaneous GSR
Low skin resistance, as
measured by the galvanic skin response test, is generally thought to be a
reliable indicator of stress because it is caused in large part by
anxiety-induced perspiration. Like respiration rate and muscular tension,
it has been affected by meditation in many contemporary experiments. This
measure of stress, we believe, fits into the general picture from both
traditional and modern accounts that meditation often lowers anxiety.
Increased skin resistance,
as well as lower frequency of spontaneous galvanic skin responses, has been
widely reported in the TM literature or in studies of TM groups [see Delmonte
(1984c), Bono (1984), Bagga and Gandhi (1983), Orme-Johnson and Farrow (1977),
Farrow (1977), Laurie (1977), West (1977), T.R. Smith (1977), Orme-Johnson
(1973), Wallace and Benson (1972), Wallace et al. (1971b), and Wallace
(1971)]. Other researchers who concluded that meditation increases skin
resistance (and sometimes lowers the frequency of spontaneous GSR fluctuations)
are: Schwartz et al. (1978), Sinha et al. (1978), Pelletier and Peper (1977a),
Glueck and Stroebel (1975), Walrath and Hamilton (1975), Woolfolk (1975),
Benson et al. (1973a), Akishige 1970), Akishige (1968), Karambelkar et al.
(1968), and Bagchi and Wenger (1957). In addition to increased skin
resistance, Wenger and Bagchi (1961) found slow oscillatory skin-resistance
waves in the later part of meditation for several subjects.
In reviewing studies of
meditation's effect on GSR, Shapiro (1982) said that early first-round studies
suggested that skin resistance significantly increased for subjects in
Transcendental Meditation groups compared with control groups, but cited more
recent studies showing no significant differences in GSR between meditation and
other self-regulation strategies, including self-hypnosis, progressive
relaxation, and other modes of instructional relaxation [see Lintel (1980),
Boswell and Murray (1979), Parker et al. (1978), Morse et al. (1977), Cauthen and
Prymak (1977), Travis et al. (1976), Curtis and Wessberg (1975), and Walrath
and Hamilton (1975)].
Other Physiological
Effects
Brain Metabolism
Using positron emission
tomography, measurements of the regional cerebral metabolic rate of glucose are
able to delineate cerebral metabolic responses to external or mental
stimulation. Using data from PET scans performed in eight members of a
yoga meditation group, Herzog et al. (1990-1991) showed the ratios of frontal
vs. occipital rCMRGlc were significantly elevated indicating a holistic
behavior of the brain metabolism during yogic meditation vs. a normal control
state.
Salivary Changes
Morse et al. (1983)
studied ten dental patients requiring nonsurgical endodontic therapy on upper
anterior teeth who practiced simple word meditation in order to relax.
Results showed significant pretest/posttest-meditation anxiety reduction
measured by questionnaire, increased salivary volume, reduced salivary protein,
increased amylase, and increased salivary pH.
Earlier, Morse et al.
(1982) tested the hypothesis that salivary changes from stress to relaxation
will be from opaque to translucent and from high to low protein levels, and that salivary bacteria will increase under the condition of
stress and decrease under the condition of relaxation. Stress and
relaxation of their twelve subjects, all dental students, were evaluated before
and after meditation by verbal reports and examination of saliva for opacity,
translucency, protein, and bacteria (resazurin dye method). Subjects were
taught word meditation and instructed to meditate twice daily for twenty
minutes. The study began one week after the subjects learned meditation
and continued for six weeks. There were significant anxiety-reduction
changes by the end of the meditation sessions as measured by increased salivary
translucency, decreased salivary protein, and reduced subjective evaluation of
stress. In addition, bacteria levels showed a significant decrease by the
end of the meditation sessions. The results support previous findings by
Morse in regard to salivary changes as measures of stress reduction mediated by
meditation [see Morse et al. (1977, 1981), Morse (1976b, 1977a), and Morse and
Hildebrand (1976)]. The finding of higher bacteria levels under stress
and lower bacterial levels under relaxation indicates that stress may
contribute to dental caries and relaxation may have an anticaries effect.
McCuaig (1974) studied
one male TM practitioner with six months of experience during ten sessions over
a two-week period and found that meditation produced a general increase in
salivary minerals, especially sodium, 70%; magnesium, 42%; calcium, 36%;
inorganic phosphate, 46%; and potassium, 23%. Salivary zinc was not
significantly altered. Protein content of the saliva was increased during
meditation by 60%. McCuaig stated that salivary changes during TM
indicate that extracellular fluid electrolytes may also be altered during this
state. Some of the increase in solids is undoubtedly due to water
reabsorption and/or the secretion of a more
concentrated saliva. According to McCuaig, however, the large difference
in the degree of concentration of solids indicates more than an overall change
in water concentration. Differing increases in acid-soluble over acid-insoluble
protein, moreover, and the fact that the former is decreased ten minutes after
meditation while the latter remains elevated, indicate a specific process
involving these substances.
Effectiveness in the
Treatment of Disease
Meditation has been found
to be of benefit in several conditions that may have a mental component to
their etiology.
Premenstrual syndrome
(PMS) is a disorder for which there is no known cause or consistent
treatment. Possible etiological factors include endocrinologic imbalances,
dietary deficiencies, and excessive psychological stress. Goodale et al.
(1990) found an improvement in physical and emotional symptoms after
elicitation of the relaxation response over a five-month period. A
suggested mechanism of action was reduction in norepinephrine receptor
sensitivity.
Cerpa (1989) found the
blood sugar levels of subjects with type II diabetes practicing a
meditation-relaxation technique (CSM) were significantly reduced after
participating in a six-week program, whereas the blood sugar levels of subjects
in a diabetes education program and a control group did not significantly
change, indicating meditation-relaxation techniques could be of significant
benefit in diabetes control. Contrary to predictions, the state and trait
anxiety levels of the three groups remained relatively constant.
A number of studies have
concluded that meditation is useful in the treatment of asthma.
See: Gong et al. (1986), Goyeche et al. (1982), Corey (1977), and
Honsberger and
Gaston et al.
(1988-1989) found that meditation may be clinically effective for some patients
in reducing their psoriasis symptoms.
In a preliminary study,
Kaplan et al. (1993) found evidence suggesting a meditation-based stress
reduction program is effective for patients with fibromyalgia, a chronic
illness characterized by widespread pain, fatigue, sleep disturbance, and
resistance to treatment.
Hershfield et al. (1993)
found enough evidence of improvement in a pilot study of Crohn's disease
patients using meditation to warrant a control study.
Treatment of Cancer
Magarey (1981b, 1983)
stated that medical technology has not reduced the death rate from cancer for
fifty years, and suggested that a broader, holistic approach involving
meditation was needed. He pointed out that meditation is associated with
physiological rest and stability, and also with the reduction of psychological
stress and the development of a more positive attitude to life, with an inner
sense of calmness, strength, and fulfillment.
Meares proposed a form
of intensive meditation associated with the regression of cancer (1983);
discussed the relationship between stress, meditation, and cancer (1982a,
1982b); reported on a case of regression of recurrence of carcinoma of the
breast at a mastectomy site associated with intensive meditation (1981);
reported the results of treatment of seventy-three patients with advanced
cancer who attended at least twenty sessions of meditation and experienced
significant reductions of anxiety and depression (1980a); reported on a case of
remission of massive metastasis from undifferentiated carcinoma of the lung
associated with intensive meditation (1980b); analyzed meditation as a
psychological approach to cancer treatment (1979b); reported on a case of
regression of cancer of the rectum after intensive meditation (1979a); analyzed
the quality of meditation effective in the regression of cancer (1978a);
reported on the regression of osteogenic sarcoma metastases associated with
intensive meditation (1978c); looked at the relationship between vivid
visualization and dim visual awareness in the regression of cancer after
meditation (1978a); raised the issue of atavistic regression, which reportedly
occurs in meditation, as a factor in the remission of cancer (1977); and
reported on the case of a woman whose breast cancer was alleviated through
intensive meditation (1976a).
Gersten (1978) reported
the case of a forty-three-year-old patient who used meditation as a treatment
of last resort for diplopia and ataxia. Although the reasons for the
improvement his patient experienced in these diseases is
elusive, Gersten believed that meditation was a significant factor in the
healing process. Pelletier (1977b) reported the successful use of
meditation and visualization with cancer patients.
Changes in Body
Temperature
Studies by Herbert
Benson, Elmer Green, and others have shown that Tibetan monks and Indian yogis
can raise the temperature of their fingers and toes at will, confirming many
written and verbal reports that spiritual adepts often achieve exceptional
control of their bodies. A wide range of physiological functions has been
brought under some degree of self-control in meditation experiments, showing
that traditional accounts have been accurate in this regard.
Benson et al. (1982a)
reported that three practitioners of the advanced Tibetan Buddhist meditational
practice known as g Tum-mo (heat) yoga exhibited the capacity to
increase the temperature of their fingers and toes by as much as 8.3°C.
Alleviation of Pain
Kabat-Zinn et al. (1987)
studied 225 patients in chronic pain following training in mindfulness
meditation. Large and significant overall physical and psychological
improvements were recorded with the Pain Rating Index (PRI), measures of negative
body image (BPPA), number of medical symptoms (MSCL), and global psychology
symptomatology (GSI). Earlier, Kabat-Zinn et al. (1985) trained ninety
chronic-pain patients in mindfulness meditation. Statistically
significant reductions were observed in measures of present-moment pain;
negative body image; and inhibition of activity by pain, symptoms, mood
disturbance, and psychological symptomatology, including anxiety and
depression. Pain-related drug utilization decreased and activity levels
and feelings of self-esteem increased. Improvement appeared to be
independent of gender, source of referral, and type of pain. A comparison
group of patients in pain did not show significant improvement on these
measures after traditional treatment protocols. Still earlier, Kabat-Zinn
(1982) presented data on fifty-one chronic-pain patients who had not improved
with traditional medical care. The patients experienced low-back, neck,
shoulder, and headache pain. Some also experienced facial, angina
pectoris, noncoronary chest, and gastrointestinal pain. After practicing
mindfulness meditation for ten weeks, 65% of the patients felt less pain [see
also Kabat-Zinn et al. (1984b) and Kabat-Zinn and Burney (1981)].
Hustad and Carnes (1988)
showed the effectiveness of walking meditation in reductions of EMG readings,
muscle tone, and levels of pain and/or anxiety. Mills and Farrow (1981) found
that TM increased pain tolerance and reduced distress, while the physiological
response to pain remained unchanged. Pelletier and Peper (1977b) studied
three adept meditators who voluntarily inserted steel needles into their bodies
while such physiological measures as EEG, EMG, GSR, EKG, and respiration were
recorded. Although each adept used a different passive attention technique,
none reported pain. Lovell-Smith (1985) reported three cases in which TM
was successful in reducing migraine headache pain. Buckler (1976) found
that TM was effective in relieving muscle-tension pain. Morse et al.
(1984), Katcher et al. (1984), Morse et al. (1984c), Morse et al. (1981), Morse
and Wilcko (1979), Morse (1977), and Morse (1976b) reported that
meditation-hypnosis relieved pain and anxiety during nonsurgical endodontic
therapy. Mandle et al. (1990) reported significant reduction in anxiety
and pain in patients in which the relaxation response was elicited prior to
femoral angiography. Goleman (1976) described an individual, who had not
been helped by a wide variety of medical treatments, whose migraine headaches
disappeared three days after beginning meditation.
Exceptional Body Control
Kabat-Zinn and Beall
(1987) and Kabat-Zinn et al. (1984) reported on a mental training program based
on mindfulness meditation to optimize performance in collegiate and olympic rowers.
Bono (1984) studied
sixteen beginning practitioners of Transcendental Meditation, nine meditators
with five years of practice, and twenty control subjects who sat quietly with
eyes closed for twenty minutes. He found a slight relationship between
meditation and aptitude for changing heart rate, no appreciable difference
between groups for changes in skin conductance, and no appreciable differences
between groups in their ability to modify spontaneous electrodermal
responses. However, the long-term meditators were significantly better
than controls in their ability to control phasic electrodermal responses.
The author concluded that the meditation groups tended to be slightly better than
controls at operant autonomic learning.
A number of researchers
have stated that adept meditators have been able to achieve control over
various autonomic physiological functions [see Pelletier and Peper (1977a),
Pelletier and Garfield (1977), Akishige 1974a), Wallace (1971), Kasamatsu and
Hirai (1966), Anand et al. (1961a), Wenger and Bagchi (1961), and Bagchi and
Wenger (1957)]. Orme-Johnson and Farrow (1977) and Hjelle (1974) viewed
TM as a method of increasing inner control. Hirai et al. (1977) compared
twelve Zen priests and disciples with sixteen students with no meditation
experience in their ability to control skin potential response using
biofeedback. They found that, although the Zen group had greater
frequency of potential response, both groups were equally able to produce more
spontaneous skin responses during biofeedback periods than during control
periods, suggesting that biofeedback training is independent of Zen
training.
Earlier, after claims
that certain yogis were able to learn cardiac control, and after some even
demonstrated a capacity for stopping the heart, Wenger et al. (1961) conducted
an extensive investigation with elaborate equipment. Since none of the
yogis they studied could stop their heart, the investigators concluded that the
disappearance of the heart activity signal was probably an artifact, since the
heart impulse is sometimes obscured by electrical signals from contracting
muscles of the thorax [see Wallace and Benson (1972)]. Wallace (1971)
stated that TM can change a variety of autonomic body functions, including
brain waves, rate of respiration, blood pressure, oxygen consumption,
spontaneous galvanic skin response, blood pH, and lactate, and these changes
persist after meditation has ended, which may account for reports of an
afterglow effect in the waking state after meditation. Wenger and Bagchi
(1961) observed yogis who could perspire from the forehead on command,
regurgitate at will, defecate at will, and draw water into the bladder using a
tube. They concluded, however, that such direct voluntary control was achieved
by employing intervening voluntary mechanisms. Bagchi and Wenger (1957)
believed that the superb respiratory control that yogis exhibited was due to
the importance of breathing exercises used in almost all forms of meditation.
__________________________________________________________________________
Chapter 3:
Behavioral Effects
[Since the 1930s Western
psychology has been gripped with the frenzy that it is a behavioral science,
meaning that what good scientific psychologists should study is only overtly
measureable behavior. Historically, this was due to the inordinately
excessive influence that animal learning theory, particularly classical and
operant conditioning, exerted over American academic laboratory psychology,
roughly from the 1930s to the 1960s. Large scale studies of the white rat
proliferated to such an extent that they took over all other forms of
psychology—causing B. F. Skinner to declare that the term psychology, at that
time believed to be outmoded, had finally been displaced by the more precise
phrase 'behavior science.' Following suit, federal and private grant
funding agencies took up the phrase, renaming all their departments, causing
the word psychology to fall out of scientific vogue for several decades.
Everything termed psychological was then termed behavioral. While the hegemony
of the behaviorists ended in the 1960s and was replaced by the cognitive
revolution in psychology, cognitivists have retained a large portion of the
principles of classical and operant behavior, which they apply to a study of
internal mental events. Thus, the term behavioral is now often used
synonymously with the word psychological, although the field of psychology
contains many more humanistic pastures. Ed.]
Perceptual and Cognitive
Abilities
Many traditional schools
maintain that sensory, perceptual, and cognitive abilities are enhanced by
meditation. Some Eastern schools, including Theravada and Zen Buddhism,
Vedanta, and yoga, offer systematic ways to cultivate a clarity, flexibility,
efficiency, and broadened range of mental functions similar to the meditation
results reviewed in the six sub-sections below. The perceptual and cognitive
abilities that seem to have been enhanced during modern experiments correspond
with various capacities described in the Hindu-Buddhist traditions as siddhis
(exceptional powers), vibhutis (perfections), and riddhis
(psychically prosperous states). Smritritwa, for example, is a highly
developed form of memory enhancement reported in contemporary studies. Adwani
siddhi, the ability to withstand misleading or destructive suggestions from
other minds, resembles the good judgment and perception associated with field
independence (below). Vijnamaya vidya siddhi, a supernormal
agility of mind, includes many of the mental improvements being reviewed
here. Other capacities such as these, according to the traditional
teachings, could also be included in such comparisons.
Perceptual Ability
Brown et al. (1984a,
1984b) studied the relationship between meditation and visual sensitivity, and
summarized their findings as follows:
Practitioners of the
mindfulness form of Buddhist meditation were tested for visual sensitivity
before and immediately after a three-month retreat during which they practiced
mindfulness meditation for sixteen hours each day. A control group
composed of the staff at the retreat center was similarly tested. Visual
sensitivity was defined in two ways: by a detection threshold based on the
duration of simple light flashes and a discrimination threshold based on the
interval between successive simple light flashes. All light flashes were
presented tachistoscopically and were of fixed luminanoe. After the
retreat, practitioners could detect shorter single-light flashes and required a
shorter interval to differentiate between successive flashes correctly.
The control group did not change on either measure. Phenomenological
reports indicate that mindfulness practice enables practitioners to become aware
of some of the usually preattentive processes involved in visual
detection. The results support the statements found in Buddhist texts on
meditation concerning the changes in perception encountered during the practice
of mindfulness.
McEvoy et al. (1980)
measured brainstem auditory-evoked potentials in five advanced practitioners of
TM to determine whether such responses would reflect reported increases in
perceptual acuity to auditory stimuli following meditation. No pre-,
postmeditation differences for experimental subjects were observed at low
stimulus intensities (0—35dB). At moderate intensities (40—50dB) latency
of the inferior collicular wave increased following meditation, but at higher
stimulus intensities (55—70dB) latency of this wave was slightly
decreased. The authors concluded that a comparison of slopes and
intercepts of stimulus intensity-latency functions indicates a possible effect
of meditation on brainstem activity. Earlier, Wandhofer and Plattig
(1973) reported that cortical auditory-evoked potentials were of significantly
shorter latency in TM practitioners compared with controls. McEvoy et al.
(1980) pointed out that these results were consistent with earlier reports of
increased auditory acuity in meditators versus nonmeditators, as well as
decreased sensory thresholds following a period of meditation [see Clements and
Milstein (1977) and Pirot (1977).] Such findings have been interpreted to
indicate a beneficial central nervous system effect of TM on factors underlying
sensory and perceptual processing [see Pelletier (1977b) and Pelletier and
Meissner and Pirot
(1983) tested twenty males (ten TM meditators and ten controls) with a strong
right-hand preference, with 120 time trials to a 500 hz auditory stimulus
presented to right, left, and both ears. Before meditation, when the ears
were compared to each other, a significant right-ear advantage occurred in all
relaxation conditions for both groups. After meditation, however, the TM
group demonstrated no right-ear advantage. The authors concluded that TM
is an attentional strategy that disrupts the usual biases of the brain.
Heil (1983) concluded
that the practice of meditation enhances visual imagery ability
performance.
Dillbeck (1977b)
investigated the effects of the regular practice of TM on habitual patterns of
visual perception and verbal problem solving. He hypothesized that two
weeks of TM practice would tend to free the subjects from inhibitory effects of
those patterns, while allowing an improvement in their efficient use when appropriate.
The subjects in this study were sixty-nine university students who either
practiced TM, relaxed, or added nothing to their daily schedule for two-week
periods. The general hypothesis was supported for tasks involving a
tachistoscopic identification of card-and-letter sequence stimuli, but not for
a verbal problem-solving task involving anagram solutions.
Pagano and Frumkin
(1977) reported that TM meditators demonstrated enhanced ability to remember
and discriminate musical tones. Shaw and Kolb (1977), Davidson et al.
(1976a, 1976b), and Udupa (1973) also reported that meditators seemed to have
better auditory receptivity and perceptual discrimination than controls.
Martinetti (1976) concluded that practitioners of TM may have learned to focus
their attention to a level at which thresholds for pertinent perceptual cues
such as binocular disparity may be lowered. He stated that the
concomitant increase in response sensitivity would account for the superiority
of meditators at signal detection in the Ames Trapezoid Illusion, where
meditators were twice as sensitive as controls. Nolly (1975) found that
meditating subjects perceived a greater number of objects on a stimulus slide
than did nonmeditating controls.
Reaction Time and
Perceptual Motor Skill
Jedrczak et al. (1986)
found that the number of months of practice of the TM-Sidha program
significantly predicted higher performance on two measures of perceptual motor
speed. Robertson (1983) assessed fractionated reaction time for fourteen
subjects to determine the short- and long-term effects of TM on neuromuscular
integration. Results indicated no significant immediate pre- to
posttreatment effect, but a significant cumulative effect over days.
Faster total reaction time was noted due to a decrease in premotor time,
although an increase in motor time was also observed. Warshall (1980)
found a significant reduction in reflex latency and reflex motor time in TM
practitioners, indicating increased peripheral neurological efficiency.
Holt et al. (1978) reported that TM increased the speed of visual-choice
reaction time. Sinha et al. (1978) found a consistent decline in reaction
time following vipashyana meditation for three groups of police
officers. Shaw and Kolb (1977), Blackwell et al. (1976), Appelle and
Oswald (1974), and Wandhofer and Plattig (1973) concluded that the increased
alertness developed through meditation resulted in improvement of reaction
time.
On the other hand, Wood
(1983 and 1986) tested sixteen TM meditators with three or more years of
experience against a group of controls and found that there was no significant
difference between groups on the pursuit rotor task. Williams and Herbert
(1976) had similar findings when they compared thirty TM meditators and thirty
nonmeditators on the pursuit rotor task, reporting that meditators did not
perform better, did not exhibit less intra-individual variability, and were not
more resistant to the accumulation of reactive inhibition. In fact, it
appeared that the meditators were a little more susceptible to the cumulative
effects of reactive inhibition. Williams and Vickerman (1976) gave
forty-six college female volunteers sixty-six ten-second trials on the pursuit
rotor task in three practice sessions (eighteen, thirty, and eighteen trials
per session). After the first eighteen trials, the twenty-three subjects
who were practiced Transcendental Meditators meditated for a twenty-minute
period followed by a five-minute waking phase prior to performing a further
thirty trials on the rotor. A four-minute rest was taken before resuming
practice for the final eighteen trials. The other twenty-three subjects,
who were not meditators, followed the same procedures, except instead of
meditating they sat quietly with closed eyes. In terms of performance,
learning, reminiscence, and intra-individual variability, the two groups were
similar. These results were not in accordance with the expectations that
these parameters would reflect the facilitative effects of Transcendental
Meditation on alertness, awareness, consistency, and resistance to
stress. While Williams and Vickerman concluded that the practice of
Transcendental Meditation does not appear to benefit acquisition of fine
perceptual motor skill, they suggested that more investigation might produce a
better understanding of meditation's effects on perceptual motor behavior.
In a ten-day trial,
Dhume and Dhume (1991) compared the performance of balance on a balance board
in three groups: controls, subjects given dextroamphetamine, and yogic
meditators. The group given dextroamphetamines scored significantly worse
than the control group, and the yogic meditation group scored significantly
better than the control group.
Deautomatization
Deikman (1966a)
hypothesized that mystical phenomena were a consequence of deautomatization,
i.e., an increased flexibility of perceptual and emotional responses to the
environment. He suggested that meditation is a manipulation of attention
that produces deautomatization. He also suggested that deautomatization
was a regression to the perceptual and cognitive state of the child or infant,
and that it explained the five principal features of the mystic experience:
intense realness, unusual sensations, unity, ineffability, and trans-sensate
experiences.
Field
Bono (1984) studied
sixteen beginning TM meditators and found that the meditators made a
significant shift toward field independence after six months of TM
practice. However, a group of twenty control subjects tested
simultaneously also made a significant shift toward field independence after
merely sitting quietly with eyes closed for twenty minutes. The author
concluded that relaxation and calmness are crucial factors involved in the
fluctuation of this perceptual style, perhaps along with a practice
effect. And while meditation is a sufficient cause of these quieting
responses, it is not a necessary one. Bono also measured autokinetic
effect, which Pelletier (1974) considered a measure of field independence, and
found that control subjects demonstrated greater autokinetic effect than
meditators when observed before and after the six-month control period.
Although meditators showed a slight shift toward greater perceived autokinesis
after the two control periods, while control subjects moved slightly in the
opposite direction, no significant differences were found. Five-year
meditators were not found to be appreciably different from control subjects in
reported autokinetic effect. However, the difference between long- and
short-term meditators approached significance, with long-term meditators
perceiving more autokinesis.
Macrae (1983) studied
forty-five experienced meditators and forty-five controls using the Time
Metaphor Test and the Human Field Motion Test. There was a significant
difference in scores between meditators reporting deeper meditative experiences
and controls, indicating that meditators experienced greater human field
motion.
Hjelle (1974)
investigated the effects of TM on locus of control and found that meditators
demonstrated increased internal locus of control on the Rotter I-E scale.
Concentration and
Attention
Sabel (1980) assigned
sixty practitioners of TM to two treatment groups. One group meditated
for twenty minutes while the other read a text quietly. Both groups were
tested before and after treatment to measure their concentration ability.
Meditation had no measurable short-term effect on concentration and the
subjects' experience of meditation was not correlated with their concentration
score.
Spanos et al. (1980a) pretested eighty-one male students on absorption and three
measures of hypnotic responsiveness, then randomly assigned them to three
treatment groups, one that meditated for eight sessions, a second that listened
analytically to lectures about hypnosis for eight sessions, and a third that
was not treated. All students were then posttested on absorption and
hypnotic responsivity measures. Meditating subjects were much more likely
than those who listened to lectures to report intrusions into their attending.
Neither the meditation nor the listening treatments enhanced hypnotic
responsivity or absorption.
Earlier, Spanos et al.
(1979) studied four groups of trained meditators differing in amount of
meditation practice, and a group of nonmeditators, all of whom were assigned to
attend nonanalytically to a mantra in two meditation sessions. Meditators
signaled fewer intrusions and reported "deeper" levels of meditating
than nonmeditators. However, meditators and nonmeditators did not differ
on hypnotic susceptibility, absorption, or indices of psychopathology.
Previously, Spanos et al. (1978) found a significant negative correlation
between the number of irrelevant thoughts that subjects reported as intruding
into their meditating and hypnotic susceptibility.
Other researchers have
reported that meditation trains the capacity to attend, that meditators report
more instances of total intentional involvement, or that meditators have fewer
intrusions of irrelevant Memory and Intelligence
Jedrczak et al. (1986)
found that the number of months of practice of the TM-Sidha program predicted
higher performance on two tests of nonverbal intelligence.
Verma et al. (1982) gave
twenty-three TM practitioners and fifteen controls ten cognitive psychological
tests. Statistically significant improvements were noted in the coding,
time factor, and Raven standard progressive matrices tests, with improvement in
the arithmetic test falling just short of significance. On the other
tests, which measured less complicated mental functions, such as number 9 cancellation and digit span, the influence of TM on
performance was negligible.
Fiebert and Mead (1981)
randomly assigned twenty students in an introductory psychology class to an
experimental group that was taught "actualism" meditation and asked
to practice before studying and before exams, and a control group that was
taught the technique but asked to practice at other times. There were no
differences between the groups in mean weekly study time, but the experimental group
performed significantly better on examinations than the control group.
Yuille and Sereda (1980)
studied sixty-six females and seventy males who responded to ads in a
university newspaper. All subjects were given pretests and posttests of
short- and long-term memory, attention, reading skills, and intelligence.
After the pretest, each subject was given individual training in TM, Shavasana
yoga, or pseudomeditation, and was asked to practice meditation twice a day,
monitoring his or her practice with individual diaries. The practice of
meditation had no systematic effect on the variables assessed.
Kindler (1979) studied
230 subjects in forty-six five-person teams in group problem-solving
effectiveness, and found that meditation teams improved more from pretest to
posttest than control teams and that meditators felt less tense and had a
greater sense of effective teamwork than control teams.
Nidich (1976) measured
ninety-six TM meditators of various lengths of experience using Lawrence
Kohlberg's Moral Judgement Review, and found a positive relationship between
the practice of TM and moral development.
The TM literature
generally reports improvement in intelligence, school grades, learning ability,
and short- and long-term recall
Rorschach Shifts
Brown and Engler (1984)
studied five groups of meditation practitioners who practiced Buddhist
Vipassana or mindfulness meditation. Teacher ratings were used as the primary
criteria to delineate a subject's experience level.
A "beginner's
group" consisted of fifteen subjects whose Rorschachs were collected
immediately after three months of intensive meditation. These subjects received
a mean rating of six or more by their teachers on the scale of Emotional
Problems. Their Rorschachs were not especially different from Rorschachs they
took just before the meditation retreat. The only differences were a slight
decrease in productivity across subjects and a noticeable increase in
drive-dominated responses for some subjects.
A second group consisted
of thirteen subjects who met the dual criteria of receiving a mean rating of
six or more by their teachers on the scale of Emotional Problems and who
reported "sometimes" on the POME (Profile of Meditation Experience)
questions concerning concentration and samadhi. The most outstanding
characteristic of their Rorschachs was their unproductivity and paucity of
associative elaboration. In addition, many of their images were fluidly
perceived and they made many comments on the pure perceptual features of the
inkblot.
A third group consisted
of three subjects who met the dual criteria of receiving a mean rating of six
or more by their teachers on the scale of Emotional Problems and who reported
"sometimes" on the POME questions concerning concentration and
samadhi. Their teachers also believed that they had progressed to the
more advanced "insight" stages as classically defined. The
Rorschachs of this group point in a direction nearly opposite to that of the
second group, in that they are primarily characterized by increased productivity
and richness of associative elaborations.
A fourth group consisted
of four advanced Western meditators judged by their teachers to have reached at
least the first of the four stages of enlightenment recognized by their school
of meditation practice. Their Rorschachs were collected after a period of
intensive meditation and they appear to be more like the Rorschachs of the
beginners' group. The most unusual feature of their responses was the
degree to which they perceived the inkblots as an interaction of form and
energy or form and space.
A fifth classification
consisted of a single South Asian individual recognized as an ariyas or
"one worthy of praise," who is alleged to have attained all but one
of the four levels of enlightenment and to have undergone a cognitive-emotional
restructuring that has completely or almost completely eliminated suffering
from his experience. Analysis of this Rorschach opens up all the
complicated issues of cross-cultural Rorschach interpretation, though it
revealed two notable facts. First, the subject demonstrated a shift in
perspective, seeing the inkblot as a projection of mind, whereas most subjects
accept the physical reality of an inkblot and then project their imagings onto
it. Second, the subject integrated all ten Rorschach cards in a single
associated theme representing a Buddhist discourse on the alleviation of
suffering.
The authors concluded
that these Rorschach protocols supported the belief that the classical
subjective reports of meditation stages are more than religious belief
systems. Such reports, the authors maintain, are valid accounts of the
perceptual changes that occur with intensive meditation that seeks
understanding and relief from suffering.
Earlier, Maupin (1965)
conducted a Rorschach study of twenty-eight inexperienced meditators who were
instructed in a Zen Buddhist-related concentration exercise, concluding that
these subjects experienced an increase in primary process thinking along with a
greater capacity to tolerate it. Kasamatsu and Hirai (1963) found
relatively higher scores of whole responses, relatively higher scores of Human
Movement Reaction, and relatively lower total color responses and
differentiated texture reactions among Zen practitioners.
Empathy
Every enduring school of
spiritual practice, no matter how world denying, has emphasized concern for the
condition of others. Nearly all their disciplines seek to promote an
empathy with created things that leads toward oneness with them. Tat tvam asi, thou art that, perhaps the most famous Indian
spiritual assertion, refers to our fundamental identity with the Ground of
Being, which we can realize through the practice of Vedantic yoga. The
cessation of the mind's subtle turbulence, the citta-vritti-nirodh
described in Patanjali's sutras, reveals the essential unity we have with the
universe. Given the pervasiveness of this teaching in so many traditions,
it is not surprising that several contemporary studies show that meditation
increases empathy for others.
Lesh (1970a, 1970c), for
example, studied Zen meditation and the development of empathy in counselors. He used Carl
Rogers' characterization of empathy as a twofold process involving both the
capacity of the counselor to sense what the client is feeling and the ability
to communicate this sensitivity at a level attuned to the client's emotional
state. Three groups were studied. The first consisted of sixteen
students who were taught zazen. The second consisted of twelve students
who volunteered to learn zazen but were not actually taught. The third
consisted of eleven students who were opposed to learning meditation. All
subjects were pretested and posttested four weeks later using the Affective
Sensitivity Scale, the Experience Inquiry, and the Personal Orientation
Inventory, with the following findings:
- The group that practiced zazen improved significantly in empathic
ability. The two control groups did not.
- The level of concentration reached in zazen is not related to the
degree of empathy achieved.
- Zazen is most effective in improving empathic ability in people who
start out low in this ability.
- Openness to experience is related to empathic ability. The
more open to experience, the more empathic a person seems to be.
- Empathic ability is related to the degree of self-actualization a
person has achieved. The more self-actualizing, the more empathic a
person seems to be.
- People less open to experience seem to be unwilling to practice
zazen, and they are less empathic than those who are open to experience.
Sweet and Johnson (1990)
have developed a meditation-based program for developing empathy called MEET
(Meditation Enhanced Empathy Training) for use in training of mental health
professionals and in treatment protocols. Anecdotal reports of
effectiveness have been positive and confirmatory research is planned.
Other researchers have
concluded that meditation increases empathy and sensitivity Regression in the Service of the Ego
The legend that Gautama
Buddha witnessed his past lives before he attained enlightenment can be interpreted
as a parable of meditation's cathartic power, which facilitates liberation from
unconscious effects of early experience on present consciousness and
behavior. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali suggest a similar process
(see Book III, verse 18). Modern studies also suggest that meditation
stimulates a regression to early fixation points so that they may be understood
and mastered.
Shafii (1973b), for
example, stated that in meditation controlled regression returns an individual
to early fixation points, and to the reexperience of
minute and silent traumas of the separation and individuation phase on a silent
and nonverbal level. This revisit and reexperience frees psychic energy,
he suggested, providing more freedom from earlier patterns of behavior and more
openness to all forms of learning. Maupin (1965) reported that Rorschach
test results indicated that meditation brings about a sequence of regressive
states. Others who have reported that meditation increases adaptive
regression include Kornfield (1979), Pelletier (1976a, 1978), Moles (1977),
Lesh (1970), and Alexander (1931).
Creativity and
Self-Actualization
Studies that have tried
to measure these two aspects of personal functioning have produced mixed
results, making comparison with traditional ideas about them extremely
difficult. Both creativity and self-actualization, moreover, as they are
defined for psychological study, are complex entities consisting of various
traits and capacities, such as perceptual skill, ideational fluency, openness to experience, emotional flexibility, empathy, and
adaptive regression. In some studies, one or more of these traits have
improved while others have not, clouding the picture of meditation's result on
the category as a whole. Furthermore, the psychologies on which
traditional contemplative disciplines were based did not use the same
personality categories. In the two sections that follow, therefore, we
have not tried to compare the results of contemporary studies with traditional
accounts of contemplation's effect on personality development as a whole.
Creativity
O'Haire and Marcia
(1980) used three groups to study personality characteristics associated with
Ananda Marga Meditation: thirty- two subjects with interest but no experience
in meditation, seventy-eight subjects with six months to three years of
meditation experience, and thirty-six subjects with more than three years of
meditation experience. Autobiographical information was collected from
the subjects and the following measures were taken: Torrance Tests of Creative
Thinking, Barron's Ego Strength Scale, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Eysenck
Personality Inventory, and frequency of lateral eye movement. No
relationship between creativity and experience in meditation was found.
This conclusion supported the research of Domino (1977), Otis (1974), Schwartz
(1974), and Cowger (1974a).
Cowger and
Earlier, Kubose and
Umemoto (1980) pointed to various similarities between creative problem solving
and Zen koan study. They found that both involved the elimination of
prior interfering approaches, satiation effects resulting from prolonged
concentration, a unification of contradictory events, and more right- than
left-brain hemispheric functioning. They also noted that both involved
common psychological processes, including stages of preparation, incubation,
illumination, and evaluation.
Several TM researchers
have claimed that meditation and creativity are linked. Ball (1980)
stated that students participating in the TM-Sidhi program showed significant
increases in creativity. Ball (1980) also compared a group of TM
practitioners with a group of students taking a developmental psychology class
and found that TM improved verbal originality and originality on the sounds and
images test. Orme-Johnson and Granieri (1977) reported significant
increases in originality and fluency of visuo-spatial creativity using the
Torrance Test of Creative Thinking. They concluded that their subjects
improved significantly on the fluency and creativity subscales of the Torrance
Test of Creative Thinking, and that these improvements were significantly
correlated with the number of experiences of siddhis. They stated that at
least one type of competence—superior performance on the Torrance Tests of
Creativity—has been found to correlate significantly with subjective reports of
transcendental consciousness. Shecter (1977) reported increased
creativity in the classroom [see also Margid (1986), Stamatelos (1986),
Garfield (1985a, 1985b), and Jedrczak et al. (1985)].
Self-Actualization
According to Sallis
(1982), Abraham Maslow and meditation philosophy share a view that humans are
endowed with potentials for growth that are obstructed by social conditioning
and fears. Although meditation teachers teach that self-actualization is
an intermediate step on the meditator's path, and that man's true potential far
exceeds the imagination of most Westerners, psychotherapists might profitably
explore the practice of meditation as a means of enhancing the growth process,
and a consideration of meditation theory may add new dimensions to the
conceptions of growth and human potential [see also Compton (1984), who stated
that Sallis failed to differentiate between the various levels of meditation
practice].
Comptom and Becker
(1983) tested the hypothesis that the inconsistencies found in research on the
relationship between Zen meditation and self-actualization were due in part to
the existence of a learning period for Zen meditation. Using the Personal
Orientation Inventory, they tested thirty-six students of Soto Zen and
thirty-four undergraduate students who had never meditated. They found
that the learning period was approximately twelve months, during which time
there was no increase in group self-actualization. After that time, a
significant increase in group self-actualization was noted.
The following section
summarizes reports on the effect of various types of meditation (primarily TM)
on measures of self-actualization:
Alexander et al. (1991) The authors performed a
statistical meta-analysis of all existing studies (42 treatment outcomes) on
the effects of TM and other forms of meditation and relaxation on
self-actualization. The effect size of TM on overall self-actualization
was approximately three times as large as that of other forms of meditation and
relaxation. Factor analysis of the Personal Orientation Inventory
revealed three independent factors: effective maturity, integrative
perspective on the self and world, and resilient sense of self.
Gelderloos et al.
(1990b) The authors investigated the nature of the
relationship between experiences of transcendental consciousness and
psychological health, and found that experience with TM and the TM-Sidhi
program was positively related to a general measure of psychological health.
Zika (1987) His study compared
hypnosis with two forms of meditation and a placebo treatment for their effects
on the Personal Orientation Inventory (POI). Hypnosis and TM were
significantly more effective in facilitating self-actualization
with hypnosis showing a slightly stronger effect. Findings support
research suggesting that hypnosis and meditation are similar in promoting
psychological health.
Bono (1984) This study measured the
self-concept (the relationship between one's real and ideal self) of sixteen
subjects practicing Transcendental Meditation and twenty control subjects, and
found that the meditators showed a dramatic increase in self-regard.
There was no meaningful difference between long- and short-term meditators,
however. Since the meditators had a significantly lower score on
self-concept than controls before TM instruction, the author speculated that
those choosing to practice TM have greater dissatisfaction with self and are
more ready for a change; in this they resemble individuals seeking
psychotherapy or other forms of help, so other disciplines of self-improvement
may work as well as TM in improving their self-esteem.
Turnbull and Norris
(1982)
The authors studied seven subjects who learned and
practiced TM and seven controls. They were given a role construct
repertory grid and an Eysenck Personality Questionnaire once before and twice
after starting to practice TM. Initially the two groups differed only in
that meditation subjects tended to judge other people to be more unlike their
ideal selves than did comparison subjects. This difference was
maintained. With meditation subjects the grid results showed a systematic
pattern of significant changes over the three tests. Meditators came to
perceive their actual selves as being increasingly similar to their ideal and
social selves, and they developed a more strongly defined concept of their
actual selves. The authors concluded that TM has therapeutic value.
Kline et al. (1982) The MMPI and Tennessee
Self-Concept Scale were administered to volunteers in an experimental group
consisting of recovering alcoholics and individuals with general emotional
problems participating in a three-month program of TM, and to a control group
from the same population. Experimental and control groups were not
significantly different on any of the pretest measures, and at posttest no
significant differences were found.
Turnbull and Norris
(1982)
In this study a role construct repertory grid and an
Eysenck Personality Questionnaire were completed by TM subjects, once before
and twice after starting the regular practice of TM. Controls did not
learn TM and were assessed in the same way at the same times. With
meditation subjects the grid results showed a systematic pattern of significant
changes over the three tests. These changes indicate that meditators came
to perceive their actual selves as being increasingly similar to their ideal
(as they ideally want to be) and their social selves (as they are envisaged by
others), and that they developed a more strongly defined concept of their
actual selves that involved increased self-acceptance. Controls did not show
consistent or signficant changes between tests on any measure.
Hart and Means (1982) Ten undergraduate
students in social work were administered the Shostrom Personal Orientation
Inventory and were taught Benson's relaxation response meditation technique or
instructed to read relevant material for thirty minutes per day. After three
weeks, the two groups switched practices. A positive effect of meditation on
self-actualization was reported.
Throll (1982) The Eysenck Personality
Inventory, the State Trait Anxiety Inventory, and two questionnaires on health
and drug usage were administered to thirty-nine subjects before they learned TM
or progressive relaxation. All subjects were tested immediately after
they had learned either technique and then retested five, ten, and fifteen
weeks later. There were no significant differences between groups for any
of the psychological variables at pretest. However, at posttest the TM
group displayed more significant declines in neuroticism and drug use than the
progressive relaxation group. Both groups demonstrated significant decreases
in state and trait anxiety. The more pronounced results for meditators
were explained by the greater amount of time they spent meditating.
Delmonte (1981a) Ninety-four prospective
meditators were administered two fourteen-item questionnaires to ascertain
their present self-perceptions and their expectations of TM, on three
occasions: just before two introductory talks on meditation, just after these
talks, and seven months later on follow-up. Thirty-six subjects decided
against taking up meditation. Analysis of variance showed that those who
took up meditation were older, with more negative self-perceptions and higher
expectations of the positive effects of meditation. Frequent practice was
related to improved self-perception and increased expectation
scores on follow-up. Younger subjects appeared to be more suggestible;
they meditated more frequently, perceived themselves more positively, and were
more likely to report an improved perception of self compared with their
initial pretalk scores than older subjects.
Davidson and Goleman
(1977) Individuals who practiced meditation scored higher on various indices of
psychological well-being and on hypnotic susceptibility. The authors
concluded, however, that similar previous results may reflect selective
volunteering for or selective attrition from meditation.
Fehr et al. (1977) Forty-nine subjects
practicing the TM technique were given the Freiburger Personality Inventory and
were found to be less nervous, less aggressive, less depressed, less irritable,
more sociable, more self-confident, less domineering, less inhibited, more
emotionally stable, and more self-reliant than a comparison group constructed
from available age and sex norms. They were normally extroverted.
Fehr (1977) The Freiburger
Personality Inventory was administered to a group of thirty-seven subjects
three times: before they learned the TM technique, approximately seven weeks
later, and approximately fifty-five weeks later. At the time of the last
testing, twelve subjects had discontinued meditation and were treated as a
control group. At the third testing, the twenty-five meditating subjects
showed significantly better scores than the control group on the following five
scales: nervousness, depression, irritability, inhibition, and neuroticism.
Davies (1977) Spielberger's
State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and Shostrom's Personal Orientation Inventory
were completed by three groups of undergraduates a few days before they began a
program of TM or a parallel program of progressive relaxation,
or before acting as controls. Seven weeks later both inventories were
readministered to all groups. Only the subjects who practiced TM showed a
significant reduction in trait anxiety scores, while subjects who practiced TM
or progressive relaxation showed a significant improvement in
self-actualization.
Shapiro, J. (1977) Two hundred eleven
subjects were tested with the Northridge Development Scale and the Spielberger
Trait Anxiety scale before learning TM. A significant increase in
self-actualization was observed among the 180 of these subjects who completed a
posttest seventeen weeks later.
Orme-Johnson and Duck
(1977) The Personal Orientation Inventory profile of
Nystul and Garde (1977) The Tennessee
Self-Concept Scale was administered to fifteen Austrialian subjects who had
been practicing Transcendental Meditation for a mean of three years and to
fifteen Australian subjects who had never practiced. A "t" test
showed that meditators had significantly more positive self-concepts on seven
of the twenty-nine test scores: Total Positive, Identity, Self-Satisfaction,
Personal Self, Personality Disorder, Distribution Subscore 2, and Moral Ethical
Self.
Van den Berg and Mulder
(1976) Two studies were undertaken to examine changes in
personality brought about by the practice of TM. First, short-term
meditators were compared with nonmeditating controls on the Netherlands
Personality Inventory. Significant reductions in physical and social
inadequacy, neuroticism, depression, and rigidity were found in short-term
meditators, whereas no change occurred in controls. The second study
compared long-term meditators with nonmeditating students on the Netherlands
Personality Inventory, Quality Inventory, Self-Esteem Inventory,
Self-Actualization Inventory, and Ego Strength Scale. Long-term
meditators showed remarkably higher levels of self-esteem, satisfaction, ego
strength, self-actualization, and trust in others, as well as improved
self-image as measured by the Self-Ideal Self Scale of the Quality Inventory.
Ferguson and Gowan
(1976)
This study found that the practice of TM twice a day for about twenty minutes
facilitated self-actualization for an experimental group of thirty-three
short-term meditators and sixteen long-term meditators, versus a group of
nineteen nonmeditators, as indicated by their improved scores on the Northridge
Development Scale, the Cattell Anxiety Scale, and the Spielberger State-Trait
Anxiety Inventory.
Hjelle (1974) Fifteen experienced TM
meditators and twenty-one novice meditators were administered Bendig's Anxiety
Scale, Rotter's Locus of Control Scale, and Shostrom's Personal Orientation
Inventory of self-actualization. Experienced meditators were
significantly less anxious and more internally controlled than beginning
meditators, and they were more self-actualized on seven of Shostrom's twelve
subscales.
Nidich et al. (1973) Shostrom's Personal
Orientation Inventory was administered two days before the beginning of a TM
program and readministered ten weeks later to an experimental group of nine and
a nonmeditating control group of nine. The control group took the tests
during the same period of time, with no significant difference on any POI variables.
For ten of the twelve variables, significant differences between experimental
and control subjects appeared in the direction of self-actualization.
Stek and Bass (1973) Using the
Internal/External Control of Reinforcement Scale and the Personal Orientation
Inventory, the authors found that individuals interested in TM were neither
more self-actualized nor more externally controlled than average.
Seeman et al. (1972) Shostrom's Personal
Orientation Inventory was administered to an experimental group of fifteen
people two days before the beginning of a TM program. The control group
consisted of twenty nonmeditators. Experimental and control subjects did
not differ significantly on any of the POI scales on the first
administration. Two months later, following regular meditation sessions
by the experimental subjects, the POI was again administered to both
groups. For six of the POI variables there were differences between
experimental and control subjects in the direction of self-actualization.
For other studies
examining the relationship between meditation and self-actualization, see:
Greene and Hiebert (1988), Thomas (1987), Coffelt (1986), Warner (1986),
deSantis (1986), Hungerman (1985), Rhyner (1985), Delmonte (1984d), Ray (1984),
Burrows (1984), Oldfield (1982), Trausch (1981), Dice (1979), Joseph (1979),
Bartels (1976), Joscelyn (1979), Maher (1979), Pelletier (1976a, 1978), Lewis
(1978), Kongtawng (1977), Scott (1977), Bartels (1976), Weiner (1977), Denmark
(1976), J. Shapiro (1975), Valois (1976), Walder (1976), and Willis (1975).
Hypnotic Suggestibility
Hypnotic suggestibility
is influenced by a number of personal attributes, among them the capacity for
concentration, the ability to surrender one's attention to commanding images,
the tolerance of unusual experiences, and the trust of the hypnotist or
induction program involved. Because meditation depends in large part on
concentration [34]
and the tolerance of unusual experiences, it is not surprising that several
contemporary studies have shown a relationship between it and suggestibility.
Delmonte (1981) tested
thirty-six subjects using Barber's Scale for Hypnotic Suggestibility during
both meditation and rest, with subjects acting as their own controls, and found
that during meditation subjects were significantly more suggestible. This
finding was similar to one made by Davidson et al. (1976a), who reported that
higher absorption scores among meditators was due to the practice of
meditation.
Walrath and Hamilton
(1975) reported that there is some indication that TM is related to hypnotic
susceptibility. In their study, although only 44% of
the non-TM volunteer subjects were rated as highly susceptible, with scores of
10 or higher on the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale, 100% of the TM
practitioners received scores of 11 or 12 on the Stanford Scale.
Walrath and Hamilton concluded that either the practice of TM increases
susceptibility to hypnosis or only highly susceptible subjects find sufficient
reinforcement in the technique to continue its practice. Using the
Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility and the Field Depth of Hypnosis
Inventory to test hypnosis, Van Nuys (1973) also found that hypnotic
susceptibility correlated with subjects' initial skill at meditating.
On the other hand,
Rivers and Spanos (1981) assessed 147 students on absorption, hypnotic
susceptibility, three measures of psychological well-being, and their response
to meditation, concluding that differences between meditators and nonmeditators
may be due to self-selection. Earlier, Spanos et al. (1980a) and Spanos
et al. (1978) found that hypnotic susceptibility correlated significantly with
subjects' initial skill at meditating.
Recent studies have
shown that meditation and practices such as Progressive Relaxation reduce both
acute and chronic anxiety. This finding agrees with the assertion in
nearly all traditional teachings that contemplation reduces unwarranted fear.
The various traditions give somewhat different (though related) reasons for
this, however. For example, Buddhism maintains that the eight-fold path
or its variations relieve suffering (including fear) by eliminating egotism and
desire; Vedanta and Samkhya claim that yoga removes the anxieties born of false
attachments; and some Christian mystics say that union with God drives away the
concerns of the world. Contemporary studies, on the other hand, interpret
meditation's success in reducing anxiety with clinical terms such as lowered
arousal of the sympathetic system or the reduction of cognitive
dissonance. Modern and traditional understandings of the matter do share
certain features, though, among them the observations that calming mental activity
helps produce calmer bodies, that concentration helps unify scattered feelings
and thoughts, that introspection facilitates catharsis, that self-mastery
builds a self-confidence that mitigates fear.
It is important,
however, to note a fundamental difference between the aims of modern therapy
and most spiritual traditions, namely that the latter generally aim to remove
suffering rather than alleviate it. In this, they often regard affliction
as an aid to spiritual transformation and therefore something to be learned
from. Even when therapies try to deepen self-awareness through continued
focus on presenting symptoms, they do not seek the deep liberation that the
great ways of enlightenment promote. On the other hand, by promoting
liberation, contemplation may eliminate symptoms automatically.
Delmonte (1985b)
reviewed the literature on meditation and anxiety reduction, and concluded that
those who practice meditation regularly tend to show significant decreases in
anxiety, although meditation does not appear to be more effective than other
types of intervention, such as hypnosis [see Edwards (1991) and Eppley et al.
(1989)].
Davidson and Schwartz
(1984) argued that different relaxation techniques (progressive relaxation,
hypnotic suggestion, autogenic training, and meditation) activate different
major modes or systems, and that the effects of a particular relaxation
technique can be meaningfully understood only after determining the type of
dependent variable employed. For example, progressive relaxation, a
somatic technique, was significantly superior to hypnotic relaxation, a
cognitive technique, on a number of somatic measures, while the results on a
cognitive measure yielded no significant differences. They demonstrated
that the cognitive and somatic contributions to anxiety can be meaningfully
separated, and they stated that two general principles pertaining to relaxation
and anxiety reduction apply: first, that self-regulation of behavior (including
voluntary focusing of attention) in a given mode will reduce (or inhibit)
unwanted activity in that specific mode; and second, that self-regulation of
behavior in a given mode may, to a lesser degree, reduce unwanted activity in
other modes.
These researchers
hypothesized that forms of Zen meditation that require that the person count
his breaths or say a mantra in synchrony with breathing are particularly
effective because they simultaneously attenuate both cognitive and somatic
anxiety. They suggested that meditation involving the generation of cognitive
events (TM's mantra) should elicit greater changes on measures of cognitive
processing than meditation on somatic events (breathing), which would result in
greater changes on measures of somatic activation. They concluded that it
is valuable to assess anxiety in a more systematic way so as to uncover the
specific modes in which the unwanted behavior is occurring. Only then
will it be possible to determine which relaxation technique might be most
effective in reducing anxiety for a given patient in a given state. In
addition, the procedure selected must be acceptable to the patient, since his
or her motivation to faithfully practice a given technique is crucial to the
outcome of treatment.
The following studies
have analyzed the relationship between meditation and anxiety:
Kabat-Zinn et al. (1992) Twenty-two study
participants were screened with a structured clinical interview and found to
meet the DSM-III-R criteria for generalized anxiety disorder or panic disorder
with or without agoraphobia. The subjects participated in an eight-week
meditation-based stress reduction and relaxation program with a three-month
follow-up period. The study found significant reductions in anxiety and
depression scores and a reduction in panic symptoms after treatment for twenty
of the subjects—changes that were maintained at follow-up.
Edwards (1991) A meta-analysis was
conducted to determine the effects of meditation and hypnosis techniques on
psychometric measures of anxiety. The chief measure employed in the
evaluated research was the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Spielberger, 1970; 1983). The analysis included twenty-one
hypnosis studies and fifty-four meditation studies. Both techniques were
effective in reducing measures of state anxiety. However, for measures of
trait anxiety, meditation was more effective.
Steptoe and Kearsley
(1990)
This study evaluated the influence of meditation and
physical exercise on cognitive and somatic anxiety, using 340 meditators,
competitive athletes, recreational exercisers, and sedentary controls.
Results did not confirm that meditation is associated with reduced cognitive
anxiety or that exercise is linked with lower somatic anxiety.
Eppley et al. (1989) The
authors conducted a meta-analysis of studies on the effects of relaxation techniques
on trait anxiety. Effect sizes for the different treatments (e.g.
progressive relaxation, biofeedback, meditation) were calculated. Most
treatments produced similar effect sizes, although Transcendental Meditation
produced a significantly larger effect size than other forms of meditation and
relaxation. A comparison of the content of the treatments and their
differential effects suggests that this may be due to the lesser amount of
effort involved in TM. Meditation that involved concentration had a
significantly smaller effect than progressive relaxation.
Muskatel et al. (1984) Fifty-two
undergraduates who had volunteered to receive meditation training were placed
into either high or low time-urgency groups based on their scores on Factor S
of the Jenkins Activity Survey. Subjects then either received training in
Clinically Standardized Meditation followed by three-and-one-half weeks of
practice or waited for training during that period. Analyses of scores on a
time-estimation task and of self-reported hostility during an enforced waiting
task indicated that meditation significantly altered subjects' perceptions of
the passage of time and reduced impatience and hostility resulting from
enforced waiting.
Beiman et al. (1984) Fifty-two respondents
to an ad for anxiety reduction therapy were randomly assigned to TM, behavior
therapy, self-relaxation, or a waiting-list control group. They were evaluated
before and after treatment on multiple self-report and psychophysiological
measures. The results of multivariate analyses of variance indicated
there were no significant differerential treatment effects. The results
of stepwise multiple regression analyses performed separately for each
experimental condition indicated that client characteristics accounted for
significant portions of the variance in one or more of the dependent variables
for each treatment. Clients who reported perceiving more internal locus
of control benefited more from TM than clients who reported greater external
locus of control.
Heide and Borkovec
(1983)
This study was designed to document the occurrence of
relaxation-induced anxiety. Fourteen subjects suffering from general
tension were given one session of training in each of two relaxation methods,
progressive relaxation and mantra meditation. Four subjects, plus one
other who terminated prematurely, displayed clinical evidence of anxiety
reaction during a preliminary practice period, while 30.8% of the total group
under progressive relaxation and 53.8% under focused relaxation reported
increased tension due to the relaxation session. progressive
relaxation produced greater reductions in subjective and physiological outcome
measures and less evidence of relaxation-induced anxiety.
Kindlon (1983) Thirty-five
undergraduate volunteers were randomly assigned to either a meditation group or
a sleep/rest control group balanced for expectancy to compare the function of
these treatments in the alleviation of test anxiety. Self-report,
performance, and physiological indices were assessed, as moderated by gender,
Scholastic Aptitude Test score, frequency of practice,
repression, and expectancy of relief. The treatments were equally
effective in reducing test anxiety.
Lehrer et al. (1983) Physiological and
self-report data were collected on sixty-one anxious subjects who were
recruited from newspaper ads and randomly assigned to a Progressive Relaxation,
mantra meditation, or control group. Both progressive relaxation and
meditation generated positive expectancies and produced decreases in a variety
of self-reported symptoms and on EMG, but no skin conductance or frontal EEG
effects were observed. progressive relaxation
produced bigger decreases in forearm EMG responsiveness to stressful
stimulation and a generally more powerful therapeutic effect than
meditation. Meditation produced greater cardiac-orienting responses to
stressful stimuli, greater absorption in the task, and better motivation to
practice than Progressive Relaxation, but it also produced more reports of
increased transient anxiety.
DeBerry (1982) Thirty-six female
volunteers ranging in age from sixty-three to seventy-nine years participated
in a twenty-week study designed to evaluate the effects of
meditation/relaxation on symptoms of anxiety and depression. Subjects, 83%
of whom were widows, were selected because of complaints of anxiety,
nervousness, tension, fatigue, insomnia, sadness, and somatic complaints.
Subjects were randomly assigned to one of three groups: (1)
relaxation/meditation, (2) relaxation/meditation with a ten-week follow-up
consisting of practice on a daily basis using relaxation/meditation tapes, and
(3) a pseudorelaxation control group (N=12 per group). The treatment
groups received one week of baseline evaluation, ten weeks of weekly thirty-minute
training sessions, and a ten-week follow-up, with taped relaxation sessions for
group 2. The control group followed an identical schedule for ten weeks
but did not participate in the follow-up. The Spielberger Self-Evaluation
Questionnaire and the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale were administered
before treatment, at the end of the ten weeks of training, and again at the end
of the follow-up period (for the treatment groups). In comparison to the
control group, the treatment groups manifested a significant pre- to
posttreatment decrement for both state and trait anxiety. When the
treatment groups were compared as to the efficacy of the follow-up practice
sessions, it was found that the practice group continued to show a decrement in
state anxiety while the nonpractice group exhibited a return toward baseline
levels. However, trait anxiety continued to decrease for both
groups. In terms of depression, there was a tendency toward a decrease in
mean symptom scores that failed to reach significance. Yet, when
questions that correlated highly with anxiety and somatic symptoms were removed
and analyzed separately, a significant pre- to posttreatment decrement was
noted.
Woolfolk et al. (1982) Thirty-four subjects
were recruited from advertisements in local newspapers and received training in
meditation or progressive relaxation, or were assigned to a control
group. Subjects were tested using the SCL-90, IPAT Anxiety Inventory, and
the Lehrer-Woolfolk Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire. Their behavior was also
rated weekly by a spouse or roommate. The Progressive Relaxation and
meditation treatments resulted in a significant reduction of stress
symptomatology over time.
Fling et al. (1981) Sixty-one undergraduate
volunteers were randomly assigned to clinically standardized meditation, quiet
sitting, or waiting-list groups. Nineteen others were assigned either to
a group practicing "open focus," a technique that begins with
awareness exercises focusing on bodily spaces and continues
to an expanded awareness of space permeating everything, or to a waiting
list. All subjects were tested before training and again eight weeks
later. All groups except the waiting list decreased significantly on
Spielberger's Trait Anxiety.
Throll (1981) The Eysenck Personality
Inventory, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and two questionnaires on health
and drug usage were administered to thirty-nine subjects before they learned TM
or progressive relaxation. All subjects were tested immediately after
they had learned either technique and then retested five, ten, and fifteen
weeks later. There were no significant differences between groups for any
of the psychological variables at pretest. However, at posttest the TM
group displayed more significant and comprehensive results (decreases in
Neuroticism/Stability, Extraversion/Introversion, and drug use) than did the
progressive relaxation group. Both groups demonstrated significant
decreases in State and Trait Anxiety. The more pronounced results for
meditators were explained primarily in terms of the greater amount of time that
they spent on their technique, plus the differences between the two techniques
themselves.
Carrington et al. (1980) The authors studied 154
New York Telephone employees, self-selected for stress, who learned one of
three techniques—clinically standardized meditation, respiratory one method
meditation, or progressive relaxation—or who served as waiting-list
controls. At 5.5 months, the treatment groups showed clinical improvement
in self-reported symptoms of stress using the SCL-90-R Self-Report Inventory,
but only the meditation groups showed significantly more symptom reduction than
the controls. The authors concluded that meditation training has
considerable value for stress-management programs in organizational settings.
Lehrer et al. (1980) Thirty-six volunteer
subjects were assigned to a progressive relaxation group, a clinically
standardized meditation group, or a waiting-list control group asked to relax
daily without specific instructions. Subjects were given the state and
trait scales of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and the IPAT Anxiety
Inventory two times, separated by five weeks, during which the two treatment
groups received four weekly sessions of group training. At the end of the
five-week period all subjects were tested in a psychophysiology laboratory
where they were exposed to five very loud tones. Using the techniques
they had learned while anticipating the loud tones, the meditation group
exhibited higher heart rates and higher integrated frontalis EMG
activity. However, they also showed greater cardiac decelerations
following each tone, more frontal alpha, and fewer symptoms of cognitive
anxiety than the other two groups, according to the two inventories.
Raskin et al. (1980) Thirty-one chronically
anxious subjects were studied to compare their responses to muscle biofeedback,
TM, and relaxation therapy. The study consisted of a six-week baseline
period, six weeks of treatment, a six-week posttreatment observation period,
and later follow-up. Each subject was ranked according to the degree of
improvement on five anxiety variables: Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale
Score, Mean Current Mood Checklist score, situational anxiety, symptomatic
distress, and sleep disturbance. The results indicate that neither EMG
feedback nor TM is any more effective in alleviating the symptoms of
chronically anxious patients than relaxation therapy. Additionally, the
three treatments were similar with respect to both the time course for
obtaining therapeutic results and the subjects' ability to maintain these
results once they were obtained.
Kirsch and Henry (1979) This
study examined the effect of self-desensitization and meditation in the
reduction of public speaking anxiety. Thirty-eight speech-anxious students
were assigned to a control group or one of the following self-administered
treatment conditions: systematic desensitization, desensitization with
meditation replacing progressive relaxation, or meditation only. The
results indicated that the three treatments were equally effective in reducing
anxiety, and all of them produced a greater reduction in self-reported (but not
behavioral) anxiety than that found in untreated subjects. Reliable
changes in physiological manifestations of anxiety were found only in those
subjects who rated the treatment rationale as highly credible. High
credibility ratings were also associated with significanty greater reductions
in self-reported anxiety.
Benson et al. (1978b) This
study explored the efficacy of two nonpharmacological techniques for therapy of
anxiety: a simple, meditational relaxation technique and a self-hypnosis
technique. Thirty-two patients were divided into two groups and
instructed to practice the assigned technique daily for eight weeks.
Change in anxiety was determined by psychiatric assessment, physiological
testing, and self-assessment. There was essentially no difference between
the two techniques in therapeutic efficacy according to these
evaluations. Psychiatric assessment revealed overall improvement in 34%
of the patients, while self-rating assessment indicated improvement in 63% of
them.
Thomas and Abbas (1978) Using the Middlesex
Hospital Questionnaire (which measures free-floating anxiety and obsessions)
and the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, this study found TM and
progressive relaxation to be equally effective in reducing anxiety among a
group of anxious subjects. The authors suggested that the only way to
evaluate claims made by TM practitioners was to compare them with others who
are using alternative treatments (or coping mechanisms) with measurement
criteria strictly defined.
Davies (1977) Spielberger's
State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and Shostrom's Personal Orientation Inventory
were completed by three groups of undergraduates. A group of twenty-five
was taught TM, a group of forty was taught progressive relaxation, and a group
of twenty-seven acted as controls. Seven weeks later, both inventories
were readministered to all groups. Only the subjects who regularly practiced
TM showed a significant reduction in trait-anxiety scores compared with
controls.
Stern (1977) The Trait Anxiety Scale
of Spielberger's State-Trait Anxiety Inventory was administered to an
experimental group of thirty-seven subjects practicing the TM technique and to
a control group of fifteen subjects not practicing TM. The meditators
were found to be significantly less anxious than the nonmeditators.
Lazar et al. (1977) Four weeks after
learning the TM technique, eleven subjects showed a significant decrease in
mean anxiety scores on Campbell and Stanley's Recurrent Institutional Cycle
Design and the IPAT Anxiety Scale Questionnaire. Similar results were obtained
in a second experiment.
Ross (1977) Seventeen students who
practiced TM regularly and thirteen who learned TM but did not practice it
regularly were given the IPAT Anxiety Scale and the Psychoticism, Neuroticism,
Extroversion, and Lie scales of the PENL before and three to four months after
starting the TM program. Analyses of covariance showed that neuroticism
declined significantly more among the regular meditators. There was a
similar trend of greater decreases for the regular meditators in anxiety and
psychoticism, although these differences in changes over the three- to four-month
period only approached significance. No changes were observed in the
other scales.
Kanas and Horowitz
(1977)
This study experimentally tested the claimed
stress-reducing effects of TM. Two stress films were shown to a group of
sixty meditators and nonmeditators. Stress response was observed through
the use of cognitive and affective measures, employing content analysis
techniques and self-ratings. On several self-rating scales, a group of
subjects who had signed up to be initiated into TM rated themselves significantly
more emotionally distressed than either a control group or other
meditators. There was a trend for meditators who meditated during the
experiment to show less stress response to the films than meditators who were
told not to meditate. However, this difference was significant on only
one measure, a subjective stress scale.
Shapiro (1976b) This
study combined the self-control techniques of Zen meditation and behavioral
self-management, and applied them to a case of generalized anxiety. The
subject was a female undergraduate student who complained of
"free-floating anxiety" and who described her feelings of loss of
self-control and anxiety as an "overpowering feeling of being bounced
around by some sort of all-powerful forces." Intervention consisted
of training in behavioral self-observation and functional analysis, a weekend
of Zen experience, and three weeks of formal and informal meditation.
Results indicated a significant decrease in daily feelings of anxiety and
stress during the intervention phase.
Nidich et al. (1973) The State-Trait Anxiety
Inventory A-State Scale was administered to eight experimental subjects and
nine control subjects two days before the experimental subjects began the
practice of TM. Six weeks later the subjects were asked to carry out a
demanding task, after which the control group was instructed to sit with eyes
closed and the experimental group was instructed to meditate for fifteen
minutes. The anxiety scale was then readministered. Mean anxiety scores
for the two groups were not significantly different on the first administration
of the test. The reduction in anxiety between the two tests was
significantly greater for the meditators than for the nonmeditators.
Since both groups were exposed to knowledge about the TM program but only the
experimental group was instructed in the technique, it appeared that the
reduced anxiety in the meditators was due to the experience of TM rather than
knowledge about it.
Puryear et al. (1976) One hundred fifty-nine
Association of Research and Enlightenment members were randomly assigned to
either a treatment or control group, with the former learning a new meditation
technique (Edgar Cayce's approach) and the latter continuing their customary
daily pattern. Analysis of variance was used to compare group means of
the scale scores yielded by the IPAT Anxiety Scale and the Mooney Problem Check
List. Unlike the control group, the treatment group reported highly
significant reductions on the IPAT Anxiety Scale scores after twenty-eight days
of meditation with the new approach. No significant differences were
found on the checklist variables for either the treatment or control group.
Davidson et al. (1976a,
1976b)
Attentional absorption and trait anxiety in fifty-eight subjects divided into
four groups: controls who were interested in but did not practice meditation,
beginners who had meditated for one month or less, short-term meditators who
had practiced regularly for one to twenty-four months, and meditators who had
practiced for more than two years. Subjects were administered the Shor
Personal Experiences Questionnaire, the Tellegen Absorption Scale, and the
Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. The results indicated reliable
increases in measures of attentional absorption, in conjunction with a reliable
decrement in trait anxiety across groups as a function of length of time
meditating.
Goleman & Schwartz
(1976)
This study compared meditation and relaxation for
their ability to reduce stress reactions in a laboratory threat
situation. Thirty experienced meditators and thirty controls either meditated or relaxed, with eyes closed or with eyes
open, then watched a stressor film. Stress response was assessed by
phasic skin conductance, heart rate, self-report, and personality scales.
Meditators habituated heart rate and phasic skin-conductance responses more
quickly to the stressor impacts and experienced less subjective anxiety (as
indicated by the Activity Preference Questionnaire, State-Trait Anxiety
Inventory, and Eysenck Personality Inventory).
Smith (1975c) In this study, two
experiments were conducted to isolate the trait-anxiety-reducing effects of TM
from expectation of relief, and the concomitant ritual of sitting twice
daily. Experiment 1 was a double-blind study in which forty-nine anxious
college student volunteers were assigned to TM and fifty-one were assigned to a
control treatment, "periodic somatic inactivity" (PSI). PSI matched
form, complexity, and expectation-fostering aspects of TM, but incorporated a
daily exercise that involved sitting twice daily rather than sitting and
meditating. In experiment 2, two parallel treatments were compared, both called
"cortically mediated stabilization" (CMS). Twenty-seven volunteers
were taught CMS 1, a treatment that incorporated a TM-like meditation exercise,
and twenty-seven were taught CMS 2, an exercise designed to be the near
antithesis of meditation (deliberate cognitive activity). The dependent
variables were self-reported trait anxiety measured by the State-Trait Anxiety
Inventory A-Trait Scale and anxiety symptoms of striated muscle tension and
autonomic arousal as measured by the Epstein-Fenz Manifest Anxiety Scale.
Results show six months of TM and PSI to be equally effective and eleven weeks
of CMS 1 and CMS 2 to be equally effective. Differences between groups
did not approach significance. The results strongly support the
conclusion that the crucial therapeutic component of TM is not the TM exercise.
Girodo (1974) In this study, nine
patients diagnosed as anxiety neurotics were monitored for anxiety symptoms
with an anxiety symptom questionnaire before practicing yoga meditation at each
training session. After approximately four months of practice, five
patients improved significantly, while the other four failed to show any
appreciable decline in anxiety symptoms. These four then meditated while
engaged in imaginal flooding, where they imagined the worst thing that could
happen to them. During meditation and imaginal flooding a decrement in anxiety
occurred. Analysis of patient characteristics suggested that yoga
meditation was beneficial for patients with a short history of illness and that
flooding was effective for those with a long history.
Hjelle (1974) Fifteen experienced TM
meditators and twenty-one novice meditators were administered Bendig's Anxiety
Scale, Rotter's Locus of Control scale, and Shostrom's Personal Orientation
Inventory of self-actualization. As predicted, experienced meditators
were significantly less anxious and more internally controlled than beginning
meditators. Likewise, experienced meditators were significantly higher,
i.e., more self-actualized, on seven of Shostrom's twelve subscales.
Nidich et al. (1973) The State-Trait Anxiety
Inventory A-State Scale was administered to eight experimental subjects and
nine control subjects two days before the experimental subjects began learning
the TM technique. Six weeks later the subjects were asked to carry out a
demanding task; immediately afterward the control group was instructed to sit
with eyes closed and the experimental group to meditate for fifteen
minutes. The anxiety scale was then readministered. Mean anxiety
scores for the two groups were not significantly different on the first
administration of this test. At the second administration of the test,
however, the reduction in anxiety was significantly greater for the meditators.
Vahia et al. (1973) In this study, ninety-five
outpatients, diagnosed as psychoneurotic, acted as subjects. All of them
had failed to show improvement as a result of previous treatments. Half
were taught yoga and meditation, and they practiced these techniques for one
hour a day for four to six weeks. The other half, the
controls, were given a pseudotreatment consisting of exercises
resembling yoga asanas (postures) and pranayamas (breathing exercises).
Control subjects were asked to write down all the thoughts that came into their
minds during treatment, and they followed the same daily schedule as the
experimental group. Both groups were given the same support, reassurance,
and placebo tablets, and were assessed clinically before, during, and after
treatment. Following treatment, the experimental group exhibited a
significant mean decrease in anxiety, measured on the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale.
The control group exhibited no significant change on this scale. Overall,
74% of the experimental group were judged to be
clinically improved after treatment as against only 43% of the control group
(improvement in the control group being attributed to a combination of
involvement in research and therapist's time). The authors concluded that
meditation and yoga are significantly more effective than a pseudotherapy in
the treatment of psychoneurosis.
Psychotherapy and
Addiction
Psychotherapy as we know
it now did not exist when the major contemplative traditions developed, so
comparisons between its effects and those of meditation cannot be made
precisely. Contemplative activity, however, has generally been said to
have a healing effect on mind and body. More than fifty contemporary
studies argue for this connection, showing that meditation has helped relieve
addiction, neurosis, obesity, claustrophobia, headache, anxiety, and other
forms of distress. It is important to remember that, although traditional
contemplative teachings may give the same reasons for these healing effects
that contemporary psychology and medicine do, they generally aim at a more
radical liberation from suffering.
Craven (1989) suggests
there are several factors that need to be kept in mind when evaluating various
studies. These include: the length of time and training of meditation;
the context within which it is practiced; personality differences between
meditators and the general population; variability in outcome measures and the
difficulty in operationalizing psychotherapeutic change. Another variable
that should be considered is that various meditation practices may produce
different psychological effects. Epstein (1990a) discusses meditation as
involving two distinct attentional strategies (Goleman, 1977), the first being
concentration on a single object and the second moment-to-moment awareness of
changing objects of perception (mindfulness). The concentration practices
are used to provide enough stability of mind to attempt the second type of
practice (mindfulness). Like free-association and evenly suspended
attention, mindfulness practices encourage the development of an observing self
and initially promote the emergence of unconscious material. As meditation
progresses, however, emphasis shifts from intrapsychic content to intrapsychic
process, and proceeds to illuminating the actual representational nature of the
inner world. In very advanced mindfulness meditation, one can become
aware of the relationships between one’s behavior, physiological functioning,
and mental activity. See Delmonte (1990b) for a discussion of the effects
of concentration and mindfulness practices. As can be seen from the
discussion above, there is a developmental aspect to meditation practice,
therefore, psychological effects can vary with length of practice. See
Shapiro (1992a, 1992b) and Epstein (1990a, 1990b).
Psychiatry and
Psychotherapy
Delmonte and Kenny
(1987) evaluated meditation as an adjunct to psychotherapy. They
concluded that meditation practice may be associated with the acquisition of
useful skills (focused attention) and may be physiologically relaxing.
They also concluded that meditation may decrease anxiety, insomnia, and drug
usage, while enhancing hypnotic induction and self-actualization.
However, they concluded that there is still no compelling evidence that
meditation practice is associated with unique state effects compared with other
relaxation procedures. Furthermore, they concluded that the long-term
objectives of meditation are not generally congruent with those of mainstream
psychotherapy, since they go beyond therapeutic gain in the clinical sense [see
also Delmonte and Kenny (1985)]. Earlier, Delmonte (1986a) concluded that
meditation as an intervention strategy was successful with anxiety and
hypertension, but of doubtful effectiveness in the treatment of most other
therapeutic disorders.
Kutz et al. (1985a)
presented a framework for the integration of meditation and
psychotherapy. The author saw a synergistic advantage in the combination
of the two practices:
The intensification of
the psychotherapeutic process by this ancient/new mind-body discipline should
not be viewed as a revolution in psychotherapy but as an evolution of the ideas
of its founders. Freud and Jung were each searching for more direct ways
of expanding consciousness and self-awareness. With the information available
in their time, they both were justified in disqualifying the nonselective
acceptance of mystical teachings. Such a cultural transformation is as
incompatible with the world view of our time as it was with theirs.
However, today the hindsight of more than half a century and its accummulated
alteration of our biological and psychological perspectives offers
a unique vantage point for synthesizing disparate existing constructs into more
comprehensive models of self-exploration in the same way that Freud and Jung
used the knowledge blocks available in their era. [35]
Epstein (1990a) finds
that meditation can be used in the therapeutic setting as an aid to relaxation,
as an adjunct to psychotherapy, as a self-control strategy, for promoting
regression in service of the ego, and for encouraging greater tolerance of
emotional states.
Shapiro (1992a) sees
meditation as being therapeutic in a number of ways including:
1. A self-regulation
strategy in addressing stress and pain management and enhancing relaxation and
physical health (Benson, 1975; Shapiro and Zifferblatt, 1976; Shapiro and
Giber, 1978; Kabat-Zinn et al., 1982, 1985, 1986; Orme-Johnson, 1987);
2. A self-regulation
strategy (cf. Ellis, 1984) comparable to other cognitive focusing, relaxation,
and self-control strategies such as guided imagery, hetero-hypnosis,
biofeedback, progressive relaxation, and autogenic training (Shapiro, 1982,
1985; Holmes, 1984; Dillbeck and Orme-Johnson, 1987);
3. An adjunct to
psychotherapy (Kutz et al., 1985b). Psychodynamic therapists have used
meditation for controlled regression in service of the ego and as a means to
allow repressed material to come forth from the unconscious (Carrington and
Effron, 1975b; Shafii, 1973b). Humanistic psychologists have used it to
help individuals gain a sense of self-responsibility and inner directedness
(e.g., Keefe, 1975; Schuster, 1975-1976; Lesh, 1970c). Behaviorists have
used it for stress management and self-regulation (e.g., Stroebel and Glueck,
1977; Shapiro, 1985; Woolfolk and Franks, 1984).
Recently several researchers
have reviewed previous studies and evaluated the use of meditation in
psychotherapy practice. See Bogart (1991), Delmonte (1990b), and Craven
(1989).
Earlier, West (1979b)
observed that meditation has become increasingly popular as a therapy and that
a number of theoretical papers have appeared in journals comparing Zen and
psychotherapy, including: Dean (1973), Haimes (1972), Van Dusen (1961),
Becker (1961), Fromm (1959), and Sato (1958). Single case studies have
also been published describing the use of meditation; 73); for claustrophobia
(Boudreau, 1972); for insomnia (Miskiman, 1977b and 1977d, and Woolfolk et al.,
1976); for hypertension (see previous section); for headache (Benson et al.,
1973a); and for anxiety (see previous
section).
C.P.
Allen (1979) and McIntyre et al. (1974) reported that stutterers were helped by
TM. More detailed cases of the use of meditation as an adjunct to
psychotherapy have been done by Carrington (1977), Carrington and Ephron
(1975), and Shafii (1973a). West (1979b) cited the work of Vahia et al.
(1973) as an example of a well-controlled study in which meditation and yoga
were shown to be significantly more effective than a pseudotherapy in the
treatment of psychoneurosis. West (1979b) argued that most recent
investigations of meditation's use in the psychiatric setting were inadequately
controlled and conducted [studies by Candelent and Candelent (1976) and Glueck
and Stroebel (1975), which used meditation in psychiatric hospitals, might be
cases in point, because in both cases meditation was taught indiscriminately to
patients representing a broad range of diagnostic categories].
The usefulness of
meditation in psychotherapeutic practice has been much debated, and studies
indicate that whereas it may be helpful in some conditions it is
contraindicated in others. Several researchers warn that meditation is
probably not useful for some patients. Craven (1989)
states that meditation may be contraindicated for patients who are likely to be
overwhelmed and decompensate with the loosening of cognitive controls on the
awareness of inner experience. This would include patients with a
history of psychotic episodes or dissociative disorder. Delmonte (1990b)
states that meditation may not be suitable for patients who are withdrawn or
disengaged from daily activities such as depressed, schizoid, or psychotic
individuals. Engler (1984) believes that meditation will only be effective
when a patient has a relatively intact, coherent, and integrated sense of self,
and thus would not be helpful for autistic, psychotic, schizophrenic,
borderline, or narcissistic conditions.
Miller (1993) warns of
the possibility of emergence of hitherto repressed traumatic memories of abuse
in individuals referred to stress-reduction programs which utilize meditative
techniques.
For a discussion of the
potential misuses of meditation by the person who meditates and possible
psychotherapeutic treatment strategies, see Gregoire (1990). See also Epstein
(1989, 1990), Wilbur, Engler, and Brown (1986), and Epstein and Lieff (1981)
for discussions of psychiatric complications of meditation practice.
It has been suggested
that meditation may have benefits for therapists as well as patients.
Studies suggest that meditation is useful in developing empathy and a quality
of listening ability that emphasizes a detached wide-focus attention as well as
other qualities that may be helpful in therapeutic practice. See Dubin
(1991), Delmonte (1990b), Dreifuss (1990), Sweet and Johnson (1990),
These studies also
examined the usefulness of meditation in psychiatry and psychotherapy:
Kutz et al. (1985b) The authors studied the
effect of a ten-week meditation program on twenty patients who were undergoing
long-term individual explorative psychotherapy. Results obtained from
patients' self-ratings (Hopkins Symptoms Checklist, Profile of Mood States, and
the Table of Level of Activity Interference), and the therapists' objective
ratings (Clinical Rating Scale and an open-ended questionnaire) demonstrated
substantial improvement in most measures of psychological well-being.
Woolfolk (1984) The author reported the
case of a twenty-six-year-old construction worker who suffered from chronic and
debilitating anger. He was taught to meditate twice a day for fifteen
minutes and to employ one or two minutes of self-control meditation whenever
anger might be forthcoming. The overall pattern of results suggested that
the client's ability to cope with anger was unaffected by meditation practiced
in the standard twice-a-day fashion. On the other hand, self-control
meditation seemed to result in substantial alterations in the client's anger.
The author concluded that brief meditation employed within a self-control
framework may be of great clinical value.
Woolfolk and Franks
(1984) The authors see great potential for
cross-fertilization between behavior therapy and meditation research. However,
they believe there is a necessity to divest the scientific study of meditation
from the "shrouds of mystery" that are part of its origin.
Removing meditation from the arcane might enable it to become an integral part
of behavior therapy.
Jichaku et al. (1984) The
author examined the relationship between the Zen koan and the double-bind
theory of schizophrenia, and suggested that koan practice creates a
psychological state in which an individual can reorganize inner psychological
complexities. Meditation's beneficial effects in this regard indicate
that perhaps other pathogenic double-bind contexts might be transformed to
beneficent ones.
Muskatel et al. (1984) The
authors studied fifty-two undergraduates who had volunteered to receive
meditation training and who were placed into either high or low time-urgency
groups based on their scores on Factor S of the Jenkins Activity Survey.
Subjects then received training in Clinically Standardized Meditation followed
by three-and-one-half weeks of practice or waited for training during that
period. Analyses of scores on a time-estimation task and of self-reported
hostility during an enforced waiting task indicated that meditation
significantly altered subjects' perceptions of the passage of time and reduced
impatience and hostility resulting from enforced waiting.
Ellis (1984) The author suggested that
meditation can be seen as one of many cognitive behavioral methods that are
employed in cognitive behavior therapy and rational emotive behavior. He
described it as a mode of cognitive distraction or diversion that enables one
to temporarily interfere with anxiety, self-damnation, depression, or
hostility. He described it as "profoundly therapeutic."
He warned, however, against meditation as a form of spiritual discipline, since
it might interfere with an individual's acceptance of the true human condition,
which is "fallible, screwed-up."
Delmonte (1984g) The author administered
tests to out-patients before learning meditation. High pretest scores on
sensitization, suggestibility, introversion, neuroticism, and perceived
symptomatology predicted a low practice frequency. Gender, expectation,
credibility, locus of control and self-esteem were unrelated to outcome.
By two years, 54% had stopped meditating. Meditation appeared to be more
rewarding for subjects with milder complaints.
Delmonte (1980) The
author conducted a prospective study in which personality scores taken prior to
meditation initiation were used to predict responses to meditation.
Eysenck's Personality Inventory, Byrne's Repression-Sensitization Scale,
Rotter's Locus of Control, and Barber's Suggestivity Scale were completed by
fifty-five prospective meditators. Subjects were recontacted after
eighteen months and grouped according to how frequently they meditated as
"regulars," "irregulars," and "drop-outs."
Eight subjects remained "uninitiated." Statistical analysis of
preinitiation scores and frequency of meditation practice showed: (1) Frequency
of meditation was negatively correlated with both neuroticism and
sensitization. (2) Neuroticism and sensitization were positively
correlated independent of meditation practice. (3) Prospective dropouts
scored significantly higher on both neuroticism and sensitization than prospective
regular meditators and uninitiated subjects, and were signifi cantly more
neurotic than Eysenck's norms. (4) Scores of regular meditators and
uninitiated subjects were not significantly different from Eysenck's norms for
neuroticism. (5) Regular meditators and uninitiated subjects did not
differ significantly with regard to neuroticism and sensitization. (6)
Meditators-to-be were significantly more neurotic than uninitiated subjects and
than Eysenck's norms. No significant differences were found for
extraversion, locus of control, and suggestivity. The maintenance of the
practice of meditation was not related to one's gender, but dropouts tended to
be younger. More recently, Delmonte (1983a) concluded that there was no
evidence to support the claim that the "it" between mantra and
meditator is of central importance to the effects of meditation practice.
Zuroff and Schwarz
(1980)
The authors conducted a questionnaire survey to measure the outcome among
twenty students randomly assigned to muscle relaxation training and nineteen
assigned to Transcendental Meditation at one year and two-and-one-half
years. At both follow-ups there were no differences between the groups in
frequency of practice or satisfaction. In both groups, less than 25%
reported more than moderate satisfaction, and less than 20% practiced as much
as once per week. Subjects' expectancies at nine weeks predicted their
satisfaction and frequency of practice at two and one-half years. The
authors concluded that, although some subjects (15-20%) do enjoy and continue
to practice Transcendental Meditation, it is not universally beneficial.
Solomon and Bumpus
(1978) The authors studied the combination of slow, long-distance running with
Transcendental Meditation as a way of enhancing peak experiences and altered
states of consciousness, and suggested that this combination could be used as
an adjunct to formal individual and group psychotherapy.
Lazarus (1976) The author stated that,
although TM proves extremely effective when applied to properly selected
psychiatric cases, there are clinical indications that the procedure can
precipitate serious psychiatric problems such as depression, agitation, and
even schizophrenic decompensation.
Smith (1975b) The author claimed that
research on meditation has yielded three sets of findings: (1) experienced
meditators who are willing to participate without pay in meditation research
appear happier and healthier than nonmeditators, (2) beginning meditators who
practice meditation for four to ten weeks show more improvement on a variety of
tests than nonmeditators tested at the same time, and (3) persons who are
randomly assigned to learn and practice meditation show more improvement over
four to ten weeks than control subjects assigned to some form of alternate treatment.
However, he suggested that meditation's benefits might come from expectation of
relief or from simply sitting on a regular basis.
Addiction and Chemical
Dependency
The following studies
have evaluated meditation's effectiveness in treating various types of
addictions and drug use:
Gelderloos et al. (1991)
The researchers reviewed twenty-four studies on the benefits of TM in
treating and preventing misuse of chemical substances. All the studies
showed positive effects of the TM program. The authors speculate that the
results of these studies and other studies indicate the TM program
simultaneously addresses several factors underlying chemical dependence
providing not only immediate relief from distress but also long-range
improvements in well-being, self-esteem, personal empowerment, and other areas
of psychophysiological health. Psychological and physical mechanisms that might
be involved in the effects of TM on substance usage are discussed.
Royer-Bounouar (1989) This
study examined the effect of practice of the TM technique on smoking behavior
during a period of twenty months. Of 7,070 subjects who attended
introductory lectures on the TM technique, 13% learned the TM technique and 87%
did not. When quit and decrease rates were combined, it was found that
90% of those who practiced TM twice each day had quit or decreased smoking by
the end of the study vs 71% for the once each day TM meditators, 55% for those
who were irregular or no longer practiced TM, and 33% for the non-TM group.
Klajner et al. (1984) This survey reviewed the
efficacy of relaxation training as a treatment for alcohol and drug
abuse. The authors concluded that the anxiety that precipitates substance
abuse is limited in interpersonal-stress situations involving diminished
perceived personal control over the stressor, and that alcohol and other drugs
are often consumed for their euphoric rather than tranquilizing effects.
Consequently, the empirical support for the effectiveness of relaxation
training as a treatment for substance abuse in general is equivocal. As
well, the existing outcome studies suffer from numerous methodological and
conceptual inadequacies. In cases of demonstrated effectiveness,
increased perceived control is a more plausible explanation than is decreased
anxiety.
Marlatt et al. (1984) In this study, potential
subjects were recruited by administering a Drinking Habits Questionnaire to
1,200 undergraduate students at the
Wong et al. (1981) In this study, a
non-self-selected sample of 200 chemically dependent people was instructed in
the practice of meditation as part of an ongoing rehabilitation program, and
compared with a noninstructed control group, both at the termination of
training and six months later. Differences established upon termination
were no longer evident in the instructed group after six months. Subjects
who reported continuing at least minimal meditative practices, however, showed
improvements in social adjustment, work performance, and use of drugs and
alcohol when compared with nonpractitioners. These differences were more
pronounced than those established for ongoing Alcoholics Anonymous members.
Parker and Gilbert
(1978) The authors investigated the effects of progressive
relaxation training and meditation on generalized arousal in alcoholics.
Thirty subjects were selected from an in-patient alcohol treatment unit of a
Veterans Administration hospital, and randomly assigned to progressive
relaxation training, meditation, or a quiet-rest control group. The
groups met three times per week for three weeks. The measures of arousal
employed were state-anxiety tests (Spielberger, Gorsuch, and Lushene), systolic
and diastolic blood pressure, heart rate, and spontaneous GSR. These
measures of generalized arousal were collected once each week at a specified
time for all subjects. Of the measures taken, only systolic and diastolic
blood pressure was significantly different across the groups. Although
the progressive relaxation and meditation training groups remained
approximately the same on the systolic blood pressure measures across trials,
the quiet-rest group increased significantly prior to the second measurement
period. On the diastolic measures across trials, the quiet-rest group
again increased significantly prior to the second measurement period, while the
progressive relaxation and meditation groups showed significant decreases
before the end of the training period. The authors believe that the
therapeutic potential of this finding is significant, since level of anxiety at
the point of discharge from an in-patient substance-abuse program may be
related to rehabilitation success rates.
Winquist (1977) In this study, a
questionnaire requesting information on amount and type of drug use before and
after beginning the practice of TM was distributed to 525 subjects attending an
advanced course on TM. Of 143 subjects who had been regular users of
marijuana, hallucinogens, or "hard drugs" before beginning TM, 119
had discontinued all drug use and twenty-two had reduced drug use 50% or more,
while only two continued regular drug use.
Brautigam (1977) In this study, ten
experimental and ten control subjects matched for past drug use were monitored
for drug consumption over a three-month period. Subjects in the
experimental group, who were instructed in the TM technique, showed a marked
decrease in drug usage, while the control subjects maintained a high usage
level. Psychological tests administered to both groups indicated that the
meditators showed increased self-acceptance, increased satisfaction, increased
ability to adjust, and decreased anxiety in comparison to the nonmeditating
controls. The meditating group expressed increased joyfulness and
fulfillment, moreover, as well as improved mental and physical well-being.
Lazar et al. (1977) In this study, an
anxiety test and a questionnaire concerning drug use, cigarette smoking, and
alcohol consumption were administered once to a control group of twenty-four a
few days before they received instruction in TM and to experimental groups
before and again either four weeks (N=13), eight weeks (N=9), or twelve weeks
(N=14) after instruction in TM. The meditators sharply and significantly
decreased their use of drugs, their use of marijuana, their cigarette smoking,
and their alcohol consumption. Analysis suggested an initial rapid
decrement in drug use followed by a continuing but more gradual decline.
Those subjects who meditated regularly showed substantially greater reductions
in anxiety and drug use than those who were irregular in their practice.
The subjects' decreased anxiety was correlated with their decreased use of
drugs.
Katz (1977) In this study, a drug history
questionnaire was distributed to 269 high school and college students who had
decided to learn the TM technique and to a control group of 198 subjects
matched by age and sex. After the experimental group received instruction
in the TM technique, identical questionnaires were administered three times to
both groups at two-month intervals. Subjects practicing the TM technique
significantly decreased their use of marijuana, hashish, wine, beer, and hard
liquor in comparison with the control group. Fewer TM subjects who were
initially nonusers of marijuana and hashish subsequently began the use of these
drugs than did nonmeditating subjects who were initially nonusers.
Subjects regularly practicing TM decreased their use of marijuana, hashish, wine,
beer, and hard liquor to a greater degree than did subjects who practiced the
TM technique irregularly.
Schenkluhn and Geisler
(1977) A longitudinal study of seventy-six subjects at a
drug rehabilitation center in
Shafii et al. (1975) The
authors of this study surveyed the frequency of alcohol use in 126 individuals
identified as practitioners of TM and a matched control group of ninety.
No control subjects reported discontinuation of beer and wine use, while 40% of
the subjects who had meditated for more than two years reported discontinuation
within the first six months. After twenty-five to thirty-nine months of
meditation, this figure increased to 60%. In addition, 54% of this group,
versus 1% of the control group, had stopped drinking hard liquor.
Shafii et al. (1974) In
this study, the effect of TM on subjects' use of marijuana was analyzed using a
questionnaire survey. While only 15% of a nonmeditating control group had
decreased or stopped their use of marijuana during the preceding three months,
one-half to three-quarters of the meditators (depending on the length of time
since their initiation) had decreased or stopped their use during the first
three months after their introduction to meditation. The authors found
that the longer a person had practiced meditation the more likely it was that
he or she had decreased or stopped the use of marijuana.
Marcus (1974) After
summarizing research concerned with TM and drugs, Marcus argued that the
release of stress and tension in the nervous system and the physical and mental
well-being produced thereby are apparently responsible for the very encouraging
reduction in drug abuse among meditators.
Benson and Wallace
(1972b) In this study, questionnaires given to 1,862
subjects who had practiced TM for at least three months revealed that since
they had started TM these subjects used and sold fewer drugs and tended to
discourage others from doing so. They had decreased their consumption of
"hard" alcoholic beverages, moreover, and smoked fewer cigarettes.
The magnitude of these changes increased with the length of time that the
subject had practiced TM.
West (1979b) pointed out
a number of methodological problems associated with studies of meditation and
addiction, suggesting that since many of the studies involved TM, whose
practitioners are required to abstain from nonprescribed drugs for fifteen days
prior to learning the technique, the samples in these studies have been
biased. For those who take up TM may have a predisposition to reduce
their drug usage anyway. And since many such studies use retrospective
questionnaires administered during TM training courses at TM centers, subjects
are exposed to social pressure to give up (or not admit) drug usage.
Shapiro and Giber (1978) felt that research studies using retrospective
sampling in the form of questionnaires were subject to three possible problems:
subjects' reports on a paper-and-pencil questionnaire may be inadvertently
inaccurate, subjects' memory may be faulty, and subjects may try to deceive the
experimenters to gain experimenter approval. In addition, since the
questionnaires were given only to long-term meditators and not to the 30% who
dropped out, there may have been a subject selection bias. Shapiro and
Giber (1978) pointed out that more recent studies, because of methodological
problems in retrospective sampling, have employed longitudinal designs.
Although this method is an improvement, it is not definitive because other
methodological problems exist, including self-reporting without concurrent
validity, combination treatments, lack of control for demand characteristics,
expectation effects, and subjects' motivation. Furthermore, the studies
often suffer from a lack of clear theoretical rationale between the independent
and the dependent variables.
Maliszewski (1978)
investigated the relationship between meditation and an organism's need for
stimulation using the sensation-seeking scale, the kinesthetic after-effects
test, and the magnitude estimation task for auditory intensities. This
investigation tested the hypothesis that meditators may reduce stress and the
intake of substances that stimulate the organism physically and
psychologically. He found that no significant changes in need for
stimultion were observed over time between beginning meditators and
nonmeditators.
For other studies
examining the relationship between meditation and chemical dependency, see:
O’Connell (1991), Clements et al. (1988), Delmonte and Kenny (1987), Delmonte
(1986), Murphy et al. (1986), Towers (1986), Delmonte and Kenny (1985), Ganguli
(1985), Cohen (1984), Jewell (1984), Matheson (1982), Neurnberger (1977),
Parker (1977), and Ottens (1975).
Sleep
Zen Buddhism and other
traditions clearly differentiate various degrees of wakefulness, in both
ordinary activity and meditation (though they did not have
electroencephalographs to measure the differences between them), maintaining
that awareness of them was crucial to spiritual growth. The contemporary
Zen Buddhist teacher Suzuki Roshi, for example, taught his students to sit
through episodes of sleep that appeared during their meditation, holding the
half-lotus position while maintaining as much awareness as they could until
their drowsiness and dreaming "cleared up." In one Vedantic
classification, four states of consciousness were distinguished: jagrat,
the ordinary waking state, swapna, dreaming, sushupti, dreamless sleep, and turiya, union with the
Brahman. And in some schools, such as Gurdjieff's, ordinary consciousness
itself was regarded as a form of sleep from which we must awake to achieve true
awareness.
In the contemporary
studies we review below, drowsiness or light sleep has been compared with
meditation. In some of them, the difference is determined when skilled
EEG researchers rate EEG records to identify which represent drowsiness and
which represent meditation.
West (1980a) The author reviewed
previous research on meditation and the EEG and concluded that, on the basis of
existing EEG evidence, there is some reason for differentiating between meditation
and drowsing. He suggested that meditation is, psychophysiologically, a
finely held hypnagogic state. He felt, however, that more precisely
formulated research was needed.
Banquet and Sailhan
(1977) The authors analyzed the results of Banquet's (1973) study using
computerized spectral analyses and qualitative reports, and found differences
in EEG records between TM, various sleep stages, and wakefulness in meditators
and controls.
Fenwick et al. (1977) A consultant
neurophysiologist, when asked to allocate the EEG records of twenty-four
subjects, correctly identified thirteen records and incorrectly identified
eleven control records as meditation. This result would have been
expected by chance, and the authors concluded that there was no evidence that
EEG changes were different from those observed in stage "onset"
sleep. The authors did report, however, that myoclonic jerks observed
during meditation are different from those seen in normal drowsing, the former
being repetitive, large, well-organized bodily movements, usually confined to a
limb or the trunk, whereas in drowsing the jerks are usually single,
stereotyped, and simple. They also reported that four subjects displayed
a significant increase in abnormal paroxysmal theta bursts during meditation.
Hebert and Lehmann
(1977)
The authors found that twenty-one out of seventy-eight
advanced practitioners of meditation demonstrated intermittent prominent bursts
of frontally dominant theta activity during meditation. The subjects'
reports suggested that these theta bursts were not related to sleep.
During relaxation and sleep onset, fifty-four nonmeditating controls showed no
similar theta bursts. The authors suggested that these theta bursts might
be evidence of a state adjustment mechanism that comes into play during
prolonged low-arousal states. They hypothesized that this mechanism might
prevent the drift into sleep by widespread, brief, rhythmic neural activation.
Elson et al. (1977) The authors reported
that meditation may be the art of postponing the moment of sleep or freezing
the hypnagogic process at later and later stages. They studied eleven
Ananda Marga meditators and eleven controls. Six of the controls fell
asleep despite a charge to remain in a state of relaxed wakefulness. The
meditators did not fall asleep, but entered a nondescending theta state, with
the most advanced meditator showing the greatest predominance of theta
brainwaves.
Miskiman (1977a, 1977b,
1977d)
Subjects in control and experimental groups (N=5 for each group) were deprived
of one night's sleep and, as an index of recovery, were tested for paradoxical
(REM) sleep on the two following nights. The experimental groups
practiced the TM technique for twenty minutes twice a day, and the control
group sat with eyes closed and rested for the same period. Meditators
showed a much lower total amount of paradoxical sleep on both nights following
sleep deprivation and returned to their predeprivation level on the second
recovery night, indicating a rapid elimination of fatigue through the practice
of TM.
Pagano et al. (1976) The authors studied the
EEGs of five experienced practitioners of TM and found that the subjects spent
considerable parts of meditation sessions in sleep stages two, three, and
four. The time spent in each sleep stage varied both between sessions and
between subjects. In addition, the authors compared EEG records made
during meditation with those made during naps taken at the same time of
day. The range of states observed during meditation did not support the
view that meditation produces a single, unique state of consciousness.
Younger et al. (1975) The authors recorded EEGs
and EOGs during TM for eight experienced subjects. The records, scored
blind, showed that all but two subjects spent considerable portions of their
meditation periods in unambiguous physiological sleep.
Banquet and Sailhan
(1974) The authors measured the EEG during TM for a group of fifteen meditators
and a group of controls, and found significant differences in the amount of
wakefulness between the meditation group and the control group as measured by
the proportion of alpha to delta waves. The meditators appeared to remain
wakeful during meditation, while the controls drifted toward sleep during a
comparable period of rest.
Otis (1974) The
author recorded the EEGs of twenty-three TM meditators and twenty-one controls
who received no training. After learning TM, the TM group displayed
significantly more sleep stage-one activity during meditation than they had
displayed in a premeditation rest period, and significantly more than the
controls. There were no baseline differences between the groups prior to
the TM group learning meditation.
Banquet (1973) The
author studied twelve TM practitioners and twelve controls who were about to learn
TM. He found that subjects practicing TM had distinctive EEG changes,
including slow high-amplitude alpha activity extending to anterior channels,
theta activity different from sleep, rhythmic amplitude-modulated beta waves
present over the whole scalp, and synchronization of anterior and posterior
channels.
Fenwick et al. (1977) The
author compared meditation and drowsing by having three experienced EEG
researchers rate the records of twelve subjects. The most experienced
rater achieved the best score, with ten out of twelve records being correctly
identified. The least experienced rater correctly identified eight out of
twelve records. Overall, the success rate was twenty-seven correctly
identified records and nine incorrectly identified records. The raters
identified one of the main differences as the relative stability of the alpha
rhythm during meditation. The author concluded that the success rate
suggests there are clear differences between the EEG rcords of those meditating
and those drowsing.
Sex Role Identification
D.H. Shapiro et al.
(1982) assessed the impact of a three-month meditation retreat on fifteen
respondents' self-perceived masculinity and femininity using the Bem Sex-role
Inventory before and after the retreat. As hypothesized, male and female
subjects, who on pretest perceived themselves to be more stereotypically
feminine than normative samples, on posttest reported a significant shift to
even greater endorsement of feminine and less endorsement of masculine
adjectives.
We may account for such
shifts in attitude, among men at least, by assuming that meditation helps its
practitioners accept a fuller range of their potentialities. Such an
increase in self-acceptance, perhaps, facilitates the development of attributes
normally excluded by common stereotypes of masculinity. Qualities such as
surrender, empathy, and sensitivity, more often associated with women than men,
have been cultivated in most contemplative traditions, some of which even hold
up the androgyne as a symbol of spiritual perfection, e.g., in the legend of
the Buddha's sixty-four attributes, of which half are male and half female, or
in various Gnostic visions of Christ. [36]
The ideal of completion through sexual biunity appears in Greek myth and
Hindu-Buddhist imagery, and was highly developed during the Middle
Ages by men and women in the Christian Monastic tradition. Both Anselm of
Canterbury and the anchoress Julian of Norwich spoke of "mother
Jesus." In the last century, Mary Baker Eddy wrote of
"Father-Mother God" at the same time that the Indian saint Sri
Ramakrishna underwent the discipline of identifying with the feminine aspect of
the divine. And Tantric ritual, ancient and modern, emphasizes the creation of
male-female fullness, rather than seeking relief from it.
Chapter 4:
Subjective Reports
[Subjective report,
traditionally rejected as a viable source of scientific information by the
reductionists, holds a central place in phenomenology and the new movement in
the social sciences emphasizing qualitative methods. The subject matter
included here clearly challenges the epistemology of traditional definitions of
experimentalism and, to an even greater extent than in 1988 when the first
edition appeared, presages the outline of a potential psychology to come.
Ed.]
Equanimity
Equanimity is regarded
in many contemplative traditions as both a first result of meditation and as a
necessary basis for spiritual growth. There are various stages of its
development, though, and like empathy and detachment it deepens with practice
into states and qualities that require various names to identify them.
The philosopher Sri Aurobindo, for example, has written at length about its cultivation,
differentiating its various aspects. [37]
Contemporary
researchers, however, have only begun to chart the gradations and varieties of
such experience. Kornfield (1979), for example, reported that mindfulness
practice frequently enhances adaptation to a large range of fluctuating
experiences. Goleman (1978-79 and 1976a), Pelletier (1976a, 1978), Walsh
(1977), and Davidson (1976) discussed the tranquility of mind and body, the
detached neutrality, the experience of global desensitization, and the greater
behavioral stability reported by meditators. Other studies have reported
similar findings [see Pickersgill and White (1984a, 1984b), Kornfield (1979),
Davidson and Goleman (1977), Woolfolk (1975), Hirai (1974), Boudreau (1972),
Kasamatsu and Hirai (1966), and Anand et al. (1961a)].
Detachment
Contemporary meditation
researchers have described the detachment experienced during meditation,
characterizing it as disidentification from pain or inner dialogue, sensory
detachment from the external world, full awareness of the outside world while
remaining unaffected by it, paring away of attachments, or a growing sense of
being the witness. Brown et al. (1982-1983) compared the phenomenological
differences among 122 subjects engaged in meditation, self-hypnosis, and
imaging, and reported that the meditators' mental processes seemed to slow
down, and awareness assumed an impersonal quality [see Goldstein (1982),
Pelletier (1976a, 1978), Goleman (1977), Walsh (1977), Davidson (1976), and
Mills and Campbell (1974)].
Such reports resemble
the descriptions of holy indifference and nonattachment made by contemplative
masters of the past. The Taoist sage Chuang Tzu said, for example:
By a man without
passions I mean one who does not permit good or evil to disturb his inward
economy, but rather falls in with what happens and does not add to the sum of
his morality. [38]
Or
Disquietude is always
vanity, because it serves no good. Yes, even if the whole world were
thrown into confusion and all things in it, disquietude on that account would
be vanity. [39]
Or St. Catherine of
We must not wish
anything other than what happens from moment to moment all the while, however,
exercising ourselves in goodness. [40]
Or the Bhagavad-Gita:
Not shaken by adversity,
Not hankering after happiness:
Free from fear, free from anger,
Free from the things of desire.
I call him a seer, and
illumined. [41]
Like equanimity,
detachment from the contents of our mind and from the contradictory impacts of
the external world conforms us more closely to the
unbroken wholeness of our spiritual ground. It enables us to approach and
become the internal freedom we seek.
Ineffability
Meditators often report
experiences so different from ordinary experience that they defy
description [see Goldstein (1982), Kornfield (1983 and 1979), Pelletier (1976a,
1978), Shapiro (1978d), Goleman (1978-79), Walsh (1978), Welwood (1976),
Davidson (1976), Schmidt (1976), Woolfolk (1975), Shafii (1973b), and Murphy
(1973)].
The ineffability of
mystical experience has been noted by philosophers and
contemplative masters since ancient times. William James wrote, for example,
that:
The handiest of the
marks by which I classify a state of mind as mystical is negative. The
subject of it immediately says that it defies expression,
that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words. It
follows from this that its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be
imparted or transferred to others. [42]
And Lao Tzu:
It was from the Nameless
that Heaven and Earth sprang; the named is but the mother that rears the ten
thousand creatures, each after its kind. [43]
And
A man, then, is
decidedly hindered from the attainment of this high state of union with God
when he is attached to any understanding, feeling, imagining, opinion, desire,
or way of his own, or to any other of his works or affairs, and knows not how
to detach and denude himself of these impediments. His goal transcends all of
this, even the loftiest object that can be known-or experienced.
Consequently, he must pass beyond everything to unknowing. [44]
And the contemporary
Indian sage, Ramana Maharshi:
Strictly speaking, there
can be no image of God, because He is without any distinguishing mark. [45]
Bliss
West (1980b, 1980c) said
his subjects used these terms to describe their meditative state: feelings of
quiet, calmness, and peace; pleasant feelings; warm contentedness; relaxation
beyond thought; and a feeling of being suspended in deep warmth. Kornfield
(1979) said that rapture and bliss states are common at insight meditation
retreats and are usually related to increased concentration and
tranquility. Goleman (1978-79) said that meditation brings about
rapturous feelings that cause goose flesh, tremor in the limbs, the sensation
of levitation, and other attributes of rapture. He said that sublime
happiness sometimes suffused the meditator's body, accompanied by an
unprecedented never-ending bliss, which motivates the meditator to tell others
of this extraordinary experience. Farrow (1977) said that during the
deepest phases of meditation, subjects report that thinking settles down to a
state of pure awareness or unbounded bliss, accompanied by prolonged periods of
almost no breathing.
These reports by
contemporary researchers echo many traditional accounts of meditation's
delight. The Vedas, for example, claim that through spiritual discipline
"Man rises beyond the two firmaments, Heaven and Earth, mind and body . .
. to the divine Bliss. This is the `great passage' discovered by the
ancient Rishis." [46]
Elsewhere Aurobindo writes that "A Transcendent Bliss, unimaginable and
inexpressible by the mind and speech, is the nature of the Ineffable.
That broods immanent and secret in the whole universe. It is the purpose of
yoga to know and become it." [47]
And in the Taittiriya
Upanishad it is said that "For truly, beings here are born from bliss,
when born, they live by bliss and into bliss, when departing, they enter."
[48]
Energy and Excitement
Kornfield (1979)
reported that spontaneous body movements, often
described as unstressing and releasing, along with intense emotions and
mood swings, are common during insight meditation retreats. Shimano and
Douglas (1975) described a remarkable build-up of energy during zazen that
often became apparent after several days of a meditation retreat. Others
have reported the increased energy released by
meditation [see Kornfield (1979), Krippner and Maliszewski (1978), Piggins and
Morgan (1977-78), Davidson (1976), and Maupin (1965)].
Altered Body Image and
Ego Boundaries
Kornfield (1979, 1983)
reported that during insight meditation some people experienced an altered body
image. Goleman (1978-79) stated that by continually focusing on the
object of meditation, one sometimes makes a total break with normal
consciousness. The mind sinks into the object and remains fixed in it,
and the awareness of one's body vanishes. Woolfolk et al. (1976) noted
that certain subjects experienced a complete loss of body feeling. Deikman
(1966a) reported that meditators sometimes experienced alterations in ego
boundaries, all in the direction of fluidity and breakdown of the usual
subject-object differentiation. Others have commented on these phenomena
[see Shapiro (1978a), Krippner and Malizewski (1978), and Piggins and Morgan
(1977-78)].
Again, we can find
countless descriptions like these in the traditional contemplative
literature. The sukshma sharira, or "experience body,"
of certain Hindu schools was distinguished from the shtula sharira, the
body observed through our exteroceptors. In meditation, it was said, the sukshma
sharira passed through many shapes, sizes,
and densities. The "experience body"
in this sense was often equated with the koshas or kayas (subtle
bodies) of Hindu-Buddhist teachings, [49]
which could be more easily altered during spiritual practice than the physical
frame. The experience of boundary loss and boundary flexibility from
which these doctrines arise strongly resemble the altered body images reported
in contemporary studies.
The sense of ego or body
image may disappear completely during intense realizations, moreover, as it did
for the Indian saint Ramakrishna's disciple Narendra:
During his second visit,
about a month later, suddenly, at the touch of the Master, Narendra felt
overwhelmed and saw the walls of the room and everything around him whirling
and vanishing. "What are you doing to me?"' he cried in terror.
"I have my father and mother at home." He saw his own ego and
the whole universe almost swallowed in a nameless void. With a laugh the
Master easily restored him. Narendra thought he might have been
hypnotized, but he could not understand how a monomaniac could cast a spell
over the mind of a strong person like himself. He returned home more
confused than ever, resolved to be henceforth on his guard before this strange
man. [50]
Hallucinations and
Illusions
Kornfield (1979, 1983)
noted that there was a strong correlation between student reports of higher
levels of concentration during insight meditation, when the mind was focused
and steady, and reports of altered states and perceptions. He reported
that unusual experiences, such as visual or auditory aberrations and
hallucinations, and unusual somatic experiences, are the norm among practiced
meditation students. Walsh (1978) reported that he experienced hypnagogic
hallucinations, and Goleman (1978-79) reported visionary experiences during
deep meditation. Shimano and Douglas (1975) reported hallucinations
similar to toxic delirium during zazen.
The studies of both Kohr
(1977a, 1977b) and Osis et al. (1973) reported that there was almost no
correlation between meditators' moods before and after meditating, indicating
that meditation produced a different state of consciousness. Kubose's
(1976) data revealed that meditators categorized most of their thoughts along a
present-time dimension, whereas control subjects categorized their thoughts as
past or future. In an unpublished paper Deikman has described vivid,
autonomous, hallucinatory perceptions during meditation. Earlier, Deikman
(1966a) reported that during meditation on a blue vase, his subjects'
perception of color became more intense or luminous, and that for some of them
the vase changed shape, appeared to dissolve, or lost its boundaries.
Maupin (1965) reported that meditators sometimes experience "hallucinoid
feelings, muscle tension, sexual excitement, and intense sadness."
The contemplative
literature contains numerous descriptions of the perceptual distortion produced
by meditation. It is called makyo in Zen Buddhist sources, and is
characterized in some schools as "going to the movies," a sign of
spiritual intensity but a phenomenon that is regarded to be distinctly inferior
to the clear insight of settled practice. In some Hindu schools it is
regarded as a product of the sukshma sharira, or "experience
body," in its unstable state, and in that respect is seen to be another
form of maya, which is the illusory nature of the world as apprehended
by ordinary consciousness.
In a similar manner,
Dreams
Kornfield (1979, 1983)
reported that exceptionally vivid dreams and nightmares are common during
insight meditation retreats, along with a general increase in awareness before,
during, and immediately following sleep. Faber et al. (1978) compared the
dreams of seven experienced meditators with a group of matched control subjects
on measures of dream recall, amount of dream material, and archetypal dream
content. The dreams of meditators contained significantly more archetypal
elements, reflecting universal moral themes, than did those of the
nonmeditators, which were characterized by personal and everyday issues.
The researchers also found a significantly higher recall rate and amount of
content in the dreams of meditators. Meditators' archetypal dreams, moreover,
were longer than their nonarchetypal dreams. Reed (1978) analyzed the
effect of meditation on the completeness and vividness of intentional dream
recall, using approximately 400 subjects who recorded dreams for twenty-eight
consecutive days and voluntarily recorded the results. He found that when
subjects meditated the day before dreaming, they had significantly greater
completeness of dream recall on the following morning. The regularity of
a subject's meditation was also associated with improved dream recall. On
the other hand, Banquet and Sailhan (1977) reported that dream phases become
shorter or less frequent in practitioners of TM. Fuson (1976) observed that
subjects practicing TM reported improved quality of sleeping and dreaming.
The discovery that awareness of dreams is enhanced by meditation conforms to
assertions by traditional teachers that contemplative activity introduces
fuller consciousness into sleep. Sri Aurobindo, for example, wrote:
As the inner
consciousness grows . . . dream experiences increase in number, clearness,
coherency, accuracy and after some growth of experience . . . we can come to
understand them and their significance to our inner life. We can by
training become so conscious as to follow our own passage, usually veiled to
our awareness and memory, through many realms and the process of the return to
the waking state. At a certain pitch of this inner wakefulness this kind
of sleep, a sleep of experience, can replace the ordinary subconscious slumber.
[52]
Awakening consciousness
during sleep is part of the more general process in spiritual practice by which
awareness is enhanced in all activities. Traditional teachings maintain that
we can reclaim that full and eternal awareness that is our fundamental ground
and source, in all of our experience.
Synesthesia
Walsh (1978) reported
that meditators sometimes experience synesthesia, or cross-modality perception,
where a sight is smelled or a sound is felt. His report resembles many accounts
by contemplatives that their perception blossomed through prayer and meditation
so that epiphanies were triggered by the slightest sensory impact.
Extrasensory Experiences
Lesh (1970c) reported that
certain experiences occur during the practice of meditation that seem to be either unexplainable or indicative of a higher
potential of perception, bordering on the extrasensory or
parapsychological. As we have already pointed out, many of the siddhis
or supernormal powers, and vibhutis, or perfections, of Hindu Buddhist
practice are paranormal. Similar powers have long been reported in the
Christian tradition, in Taoism, in Sufism, and in other contemplative
traditions. [53]
Clearer Perception
Forte et al. (1984-1985)
studied seven advanced meditators and reported that the practice of mindfulness
meditation enabled them to become aware of some of the visually preattentive
processes involved in visual detection. Unusual perceptual effects were
also reported.
Brown et al. (1982-1983)
compared the phenomenological differences among 122 subjects engaging in
meditation, self-hypnosis, and imaging. They reported that meditators
learn greater awareness of bodily processes and experience changes in the
perception of time and self.
Kornfield (1979, 1983)
noted the increased frequency of mindfulness as
an insight meditation retreat continued, through which meditators became aware
of greater sensory and mental detail. Goleman (1978-79) reported that
meditators reach a state in which every successive moment is clear and
distinct. Walsh (1977) reported that he was more mindful of all primary
sensations and more sensitive to neurocybernetic signals, and that his
intellectual understanding was deepened. Kornfield (1983) suggested that
meditators begin to clarify their perceptions of their own motivation and
behavior.
Such experience is a
fundamental aspect of all contemplative practice. Because the enhancement
of awareness is central in all forms of meditation, and because it is part of
the goal all contemplatives seek, the traditional literature is filled with
statements describing clarities of perception like those reported by contemporary
meditation researchers. As William Blake wrote, "If we would cleanse
the doors of perception, we would see things as they are, Infinite."
Negative Experiences
Otis (1984) described a
study done at Stanford Research Institute in 1971 to determine the negative
effects of Transcendental Meditation. SRI mailed a survey to every
twentieth person on the Students International Meditation Society (TM's parent
organization) mailing list of 40,000 individuals. Approximately 47% of
the 1,900 people surveyed responded. The survey included a self-concept
word list (the Descriptive Personality List) and a checklist of physical and
behavioral symptoms (the Physical and Behavioral Inventory). It was found
that dropouts reported fewer complaints than experienced meditators, to a
statistically significant degree. Furthermore, adverse effects were
positively correlated with the length of time in meditation. Long-term
meditators reported the following percentages of adverse effects: antisocial behavior, 13.5%; anxiety, 9.0%; confusion, 7.2%;
depression, 8.1%; emotional stability, 4.5%; frustration, 9.0%; physical and
mental tension, 8.1%; procrastination, 7.2%; restlessness, 9.0%;
suspiciousness, 6.3%; tolerance of others, 4.5%; and withdrawal, 7.2%. The
author concluded that the longer a person stays in TM and the more committed a
person becomes to TM as a way of life, the greater is the likelihood that he or
she will experience adverse effects. This contrasts sharply with the
promotional statements of the various TM organizations.
Ellis (1984) stated that
meditation's greatest danger was its common connection with spirituality and
antiscience. He said that it might encourage some individuals to become
even more obsessive-compulsive than they had been and to dwell in a ruminative
manner on trivia or nonessentials. He also noted that some of his clients
had gone into "dissociative semi-trance states and upset themselves considerably by meditating." Ellis
views meditation and other therapy procedures as often diverting people from
doing that which overcomes their disturbance to focusing on the highly
palliative technique itself. Therefore, although individuals might feel
better, their chances of acquiring a basically healthy, nonmasturbatory outlook
are sabotaged.
Walsh (1979) reported a
number of disturbing experiences during meditation,
such as anxiety, tension, and anger. Walsh and Rauche (1979) stated that
meditation may precipitate a psychotic episode in individuals with a history of
schizophrenia. Kornfield (1979 and 1983) reported that body pain is a frequent
occurrence during meditation, and that meditators develop new ways to relate to
their pain as a result of meditation. Hassett (1978) reported that
meditation can be harmful. Carrington (1977) observed that extensive
meditation may induce symptoms that range in severity from insomnia to
psychotic manifestations with hallucinatory behavior. Lazarus (1976)
reported that psychiatric problems such as severe depression and schizophrenic
breakdown may be precipitated by TM. French et al. (1975) reported that
anxiety, tension, anger, and other disturbing experiences sometimes occur
during TM. Carrington and Ephron (1975c) reported a number of complaints
from TM meditators who felt themselves overwhelmed by negative and unpleasant
thoughts during meditation. Glueck and Stroebel (1975) reported that two
experimental subjects made independent suicide attempts in the first two days
after beginning the TM program. Kannellakos and Lukas (1974) reported
complaints from TM meditators. Otis (1974) reported that five patients
suffered a reoccurrence of serious psychosomatic symptoms after commencing
meditation. Maupin (1969) stated that the deepest objection to meditation
has been its tendency to produce withdrawn, serene people who are not
accessible to what is actually going on in their lives. He said that with
meditation it is easy to overvalue the internal at the expense of the external.
These and other negative
meditation outcomes are described in traditional sources. The path is
"sharp like a razor's edge" says the Katha Upanishad. [54]
References
1. For analysis of some
cultural forces supporting this interest, see E.I. Taylor. "Desperately
Seeking Spirituality." Psychology Today, Nov.-Dec. 1994, p. 56.
2. Monier
Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary: Etymologically and
Philogically Arranged with Special Reference to Cognate Indo-European Languages.
3. H. Zimmer. The Philosophies of
4. Mircea Eliade. Shamanism:
Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated from the French
by Willard R. Trask.
5. Mircea Eliade and
Joseph M. Kitagawa, eds. The History of Religions:
Essays in Methodology.
6. Frederick J. Streng. Understanding Religious Life. 2d ed.
7. See, for instance, Studia
Mysticorum, Newsletter of the Mysticism Study Group within the
8. The following section
has been complied from E.I. Taylor. "Asian Interpretations: Transcending
the Stream of Consciousness." In K. Pope and J. Singer, eds.
The Stream of Consciousness: Scientific Investigations into the Flow of
Human Experience.
9. Charles Alexander.
10. The following is
based on interviews with Jon Kabat-Zinn and his colleague Ann Massion, March
1996.
11. William Mikulas,
"Behaviors of the Mind." Unpublished course materials, Department of
Psychology,
12. See, for instance,
W.L. Mikulas. Concepts in Learning.
Philadephia: W.B. Saunders, 1974; W.L. Mikulas. Behavior
Modification.
13. See, for instance,
M. Epstein. Thoughts Without a Thinker:
Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective. Foreward by
the Dalai Lama.
M.G.T. Kwee, ed. Psychotherapy,
Meditation, and Health.
14. Dean Ornish. Stress, Diet, and Your Heart.
15. As another example,
one of the largest pain clinics in the world, the Diamond Headache Clinic in
16. Published by
InnoVision Communications, 101
17.
18. Investigations of Qi
Gong are being carried out in
19. Yoga Biomedical
Trust,
20. H.R. Jarrell. International Meditation Bibliography, 1950-1982.
21. In addition to this
international bibliography, forthcoming, and an unexpected boon to future
experimental investigations, will be Prof. Y. Haruki's Meditation
Researchers around the World: An International
Overview, published by the Masara Ibuka Foundation and the
22. American Psychiatric
Association, unsigned statement. American Journal of Psychiatry, 134
(1977): p. 720.
23. Now, in a
forthcoming lead article in the American Psychologist Shapiro, Schwartz,
et al. present an even more detailed picture of meditation in the context of
cognitive strategies for self-control. D.H. Shapiro, C.E.
Schwartz, and J. A. Austin. "Controlling
Ourselves, Controlling our World." American Psychologist 51,
no. 12 (1996): 1213-1230.
24. Daniel Druckman and
John A. Swets, eds. Enhancing Human Performance: Issues, Theories, and
Techniques (1988) and Daniel Druckman and Robert A. Bjork, eds. In the Mind's Eye: Enhancing Human
Performance.
25. This lone researcher
had originally based his own conclusions on only 300 of the 1,253 entries he
had taken from Murphy and Donovan's first edition. For an analysis of their
analysis, see E.I. Taylor. "Radical Empiricism and the Conduct
of Research." In Willis Harman and Jane Clark, eds.
New Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science.
26.
NIH Technology and Assessment Panel. The Integration of
Behavioral and Relaxation Approaches into the Treatment of Chronic Pain and
Insomnia.
28. Wenger and Bagchi,
1961. Wenger, Bagchi, and Anand guessed that these three subjects used the
Valsalva maneuver, consisting of strong abdominal contractions and breath arrest, to reduce venous return to the heart.
"With little blood to pump the heart," they wrote, "sounds are
diminished . . . and the palpable radial pulse seems to disappear. High
amplification finger plethysmography continued to show pulse waves, however;
and the electrocardiograph showed heart [contractions]." During such
breath retention, moreover, their subjects' hearts changed position so that the
potentials in one of their EKG leads decreased, which led Wenger and Bagchi to
suggest that Brosse's earlier demonstration of complete heart cessation might
have resulted from her use of a single EKG lead that lost its potentials when
her subject's heart position shifted.
29. Satyanarayanamurthi
and Shastry, 1958. Anand and Chhina, again, investigated three yogis who said
they could stop their hearts. They found that to accomplish this, all three
increased their intrathoracic pressure by forceful abdominal contractions with
closed glottis after inspiration or expiration. Like Bagchi and Wenger, they discovered
that their subjects' heartbeats could not be detected with a stethoscope after
such a maneuver and that their arterial pulse could not be felt, though EKGs
showed that their hearts were contracting normally with a deviation of axis to
the right when the subjects held their breath after inspiration, and a
deviation to the left after expiration. Furthermore, X-ray examinations showed
that each subject's heart became narrower in transverse diameter and somewhat
tubular while he was trying to stop it. The three yogis "could not stop .
. . their heart beats," Anand and Chhina wrote, "[but] they greatly
decreased their cardiac output by decreasing venous return [and] the decrease
in cardiac output is responsible for the imperceptible arterial pulse. This practice
of yogis is identical with the Valsalva maneuver." Like Bagchi and Wenger,
they suggested that Brosse's experiment had been flawed because she had used a
single EKG lead with her subject.
30. Anand et al., 1961.
A second study with an airtight box reported by P. V. Karambelkar and
associates compared the reactions of an accomplished yogi, a yoga student, and
two controls during confinements ranging from 12 to 18 hours. The box used in
this experiment was closely monitored for oxygen and carbon dioxide content,
having been thoroughly tested for leakage, and the subjects were attached to an
EKG, a respiratory strain gauge belt, an EEG, a blood pressure recording
device, and a measure of their galvanic skin response. Each subject stayed in
the box until its CO2 level caused him discomfort. The yogi remained
for 18 hours, until the air he was breathing reached 7.7% CO2, while
the other three stayed from 12 1/2 to 13 3/4 hours, when their CO2
levels reached 6.6 to 7.2%. The yogi stayed longer, the authors suggested,
because he was habituated to such situations. But their yoga student, not their
professional yogi, showed the least reduction in oxygen consumption as his CO2
levels increased. He could withstand higher levels of CO2, the
authors argued, because for three years he had practiced the kumbhaka or
breath-holding exercise of pranayama, which had trained his body to function
with the increased alveolar CO2 the exercise produces. Subsequently,
the professional yogi increased his pranayama practice and exhibited improved
adaptation to CO2 (Karambelkar, Vinekar and Bhole, 1968; and Bhole,
et al., 1967).
31. I.K. Taimni. Patanjali's "Yoga Sutras," Book I, verses
2-4. In The Science of Yoga.
32. Swami Nikilananda, tr. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.
NY:
34. In the Sutras of
Patanjali, for example, it is said that success in yoga requires dharana,
a term derived from the Sanskrit root dhr, to grasp or seize, and dhyana,
a flowing into the object that is grasped, which results in samadhi. In
the Visuddhimagga, one of the great texts of Theravada Buddhism, a
similar emphasis is placed on ekagrata, one-pointed attention, as the
basis of higher states attained in meditation. And for the Christian
"prayer of quiet," during which one
apprehends the simple unity of God, single-minded attention is the fundamental
requirement. All the great books of contemplative activity emphasize this
effect of meditation practice.
35. [Freud and Jung
were, of course, not the originators of psychotherapy. Their immediate
precursors were the French psychopathologists, such as Charcot, Ribot, Binet,
Janet, and Bernheim. See H. Ellenberger. Discovery of the
Unconscious.
36. John S. Anson,
"The Female Transvestite in Early Monasticism: The Origin and Development
of a Motif," in Viator, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Vol. 5.
37. Sri Aurobindo. Collected Works.
38. Aldous Huxley. The Perennial Philosophy.
41. Swami Prabhavananda
and Christopher Isherwood, tr. The Song of God: The Bhagavad-Gita, with an introduction by Aldous
Huxley.
42. William James. The Varieties of Religious Experience.
45. T.M.P. Mahadevan. Ramana
Maharshi: The Sage of Arunacala.
46. Sri Aurobindo. Ibid., vol. 10, 43.
47. Sri Aurobindo. Ibid., vol. 21, 568.
48. S. Radhakrishnan, tr. The Principal Upanishads.
49. Sri Aurobindo.
Ibid., vol. 12: 450; vol. 18: 220, 259-60; vol. 19: 749; vol. 20: 12, 435; vol.
21: 668; vol. 23: 1018; vol. 26: 497; vol. 27: 217.
50. Swami Nikhilananda, tr. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.
51.
"One of the means
with which the devil readily catches uncautious souls, and impedes them in the
way of spiritual truthfulness, is the supernatural and extraordinary phenomena
he manifests through images, either through the material and corporal ones the
Church uses, or through those he fixes in the phantasy in the guise of a
particular saint. He transforms himself into an angel of light for the sake of
deception . . . . The good soul should consequently be more cautious in the use
of good things, for evil in itself gives testimony to itself" (p. 279).
"Since the devil
transforms himself into an angel of light, he seems to be light to the soul.
But this is not all. In the true visions from God, he can also tempt in many
ways, by causing inordinate movements of the spiritual and sensory appetites
and affections toward these visions. If the soul is pleased
with these apprehensions, it is very easy for the devil to occasion an increase
of its appetites and affections and a lapse into spiritual gluttony and other
evils" (p. 228).
Louis J. Puhl. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.
John, Bunyan. The Pilgrim's Progress.
52. Sri Aurobindo. Ibid., vol. 23, p.1024. For further references in Aurobindo's
works to conscious sleep see vol. 18: 425; vol. 23: 1017; vol. 24: 1479-1483.
53. For a description of
paranormal elements in Christian contemplative practice, see Herbert Thurston. The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism.
54. Eknath Easwaran, tr.
Katha Upanishad.
55.
56. Sri Aurobindo. Ibid. See vol. 30, Index and Glossary, for references to
"difficulties," "fear," "contradictions," and
other categories of spiritual problems.
57. Aldous Huxley. The Perennial Philosophy.
58. William James. The Varieties of Religious Experience.
Refer: http://www.noetic.org/research/medbiblio/ch_intro1.htm
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