:: TIME Magazine: The Science of Meditation
TIME Magazine: The Science of Meditation From July 2003, but a decent mainstream summary of meditation in society.
Why this obsessive fascination to put electrodes on meditators heads? Certainly researchers and many who come into meditation believe mediation revolves around the mind, with thinking, or not thinking. Certainly there are meditative states that transcend thinking, but even for lifelong meditators, thoughts persist in marching across the inner sky. However, to pursue meditation from a mental place is, in my opinion, misleading.
I'd like to offer this: meditation is largely about matter, the matter of the external world, the matter of your body. The mind is where perception is processed, but the mind-- the perceiver and deceiver-- is third in line after the world (stimulus), your body (receptor). The brain, the part getting electroded is a part of that body, one that has an uncanny way of deceiving us. Reality transcends all three of these, but that is another matter.
I don't want to complicate things because I also believe "it" is really far more simple than would be made from a tangle of electodes pasted on a scalp, measurements of heart rate and alpha-delta-theta waves, and wanna-be yogi arguments over what constitutes "blissing out", samadhi, and transcendence.
Your body tells you all you need to know, and it is grand. Just check out these kids.
image by Robert A Davis for Time, Inc.
