Did Buddhist monks ever feel this way? You think of the Dalai Lama's face lit with some soft knowing smile, placid and meek. Only recently have scientists discovered the source of that smile. Sixteen years ago, his Holiness invited a neuroscientist to prod, electrify and sensor his eight favorite Ngyingmapa and Kagyupa meditators at a lab at the University of Wisconsin.
Everybody expected that the monks wired brains would slow down to a pretty alpha state of consciousness, slow and steady, while they concentrated on unconditional love. Instead after just 15 seconds, the EEG monitors noted an increase in brain activity during meditation. Bursts of high gamma-band activity grew to unprecedented levels, higher than ever predicted. Dr. Richard Davidson and his colleague reported these Buddhist monks showed "the highest measures of gamma activity ever recorded among people who were not insane." "The heightened state also produced permanent emotional improvement, by activating the left anterior portion of the brain -- the portion most associated with joy. The monks had conditioned their brains to tune into happiness most of the time." *
Unprecedented bliss.
Well, there's a great reason to get meditating!
If you need another reason, don't let the quiescent smiles fool you into thinking that these pacifists hide behind simple minds. Did you know that meditation can help you reduce or reverse the aging process of your brain? In 2000, Sara Lazaar, at Massachusetts General Hospital mapped the brain regions that are active during simple meditation, comparing real devotees with the more ordinary among us. She discovered an increase in signalling in neural structures that equated to mega-brain exercise during meditation. The cortical thickness of attention regions of the brain were actually thicker among devotees of kundalini and Buddhist mindfulness meditations, and increased with practice and age. They were not only more aware of details in hyperspace, with heightened powers of observation, but also operated at peak attention, with greater mindfulness than ordinary folks can achieve without practice in meditation. And their brain-power was getting better with age, not worse.
It appears that scientists have been very busy prodding and measuring psychics as well. Ingo Swann is respected as one of the best remote viewers in the world, even employed by the US government. So, what's up with his brain? Dr. Micheal Persinger from Laurentian University in Canada wired Swann up and tested his skills, which proved true and showed bursts of high beta and gamma activity similar to the Tibetan monks. Through brain monitoring, Persinger saw Swann enter a "superconscious state" that enables him "to receive information impossible to access during normal waking consciousness." He had an unusually large parieto-occipital right hemisphere lobe where sensory and visual input is processed, that allowed him to "see beyond the limits of time, distance and the five major senses."
This is from bonafide laboratory researchers not X-files story writers nor psychic fanatics.
Even med-school graduates are turning on to this. Cancer specialist and psychologist Dr. Lawrence LeShan published research as to how gifted healers work. He discovered that they also enter states of altered consciousness, and visualize themselves as uniting with the person and something often described as "the absolute."
"I'm aware of the process just being beyond me," one healer told him. "My conscious control is completely side-stepped, like I'm standing, watching. Then something else takes over."
Healers describe feeling their bodies change with shifts of energy "suffused with an expanded sense of pure present" and reduced awareness of time and self. "They felt taller, lighter, almost as though they were out of their physical being, engulfed by a sense of unconditional love... , observing themselves as "a kind of core that remains." Many identify with guardian spirits, guides or angels which take over to do the work.
McTaggart says she's encountered two types of healers in her extensive studies. Those who regard themselves as the source of healing and those who channel energy from a greater force beyond themselves. Elisabeth Targ who recruited 40 "healers of every persuasion" for her AIDs project discussed the common thread she discovered among diverse approaches to healing. "Loving compassion or kindness was essential in sending out a positive intention to heal," she said. "But no matter what their approach, most of them agreed on a single point: the need to get out of the way. They surrendered to a healing force... a request (like) 'please may this person be healed' -- then stepped back." Successful healers do not believe they possess the power themselves.
One of the most respected healers, Harry Edwards, agrees that a healer works "by handing over his will and his request for healing to a greater power." It is "as if a blind had been drawn over his normal alert mind," he says. "In its place he experiences the presence of a new personality, one with an entirely new character, which imbues him with a super-feeling of confidence and power."
"The healer may be dimly aware of normal movement taking place around him. If a question is addressed to him about the patient's condition he will find himself able to respond with extraordinary ease and without mental effort -- in other words, the more knowledgeable personality of the Guide provides the answer." Edwards would surrender, drop personal ego, move aside, and merge with the higher entity to become part of a larger whole.
Researchers have also given healers personality tests, of course, and discovered they possess "thin boundaries: open, unguarded and undefended." By contrast, people with "thick boundaries," according to the Hartmann Boundary Questionnaire, are "well-organized, dependable, defensive and... well-armored."
Sharing characteristics with artists and musicians, healers are "sensitive, vulnerable and creative." They "tend to get involved quickly in relationships" and "easily flit between fantasy and reality," sometimes not differentiating well between the two. They do not "repress uncomfortable thoughts or separate feelings from thoughts," and are more comfortable with "using intention to control or change things around them."
This is how researchers and scientists can explain why healers are able to do what they do. They must have the ability to surrender, to give up cognitive control, to channel pure energy. They suspect that "during altered states of consciousness, the body switches off certain neural connections including an area near the back of the brain that constantly calculates a person's spatial orientation." They explain that "during a transpersonal or transcendent experience, the boundary between self and the other blurs." Those poor Tibetan monks, rigged up to the EEGs demonstrate an increased activity in the brain's frontal lobes. Their intense focus "on some other being appears to switch off the amygdala and so remove a neural sense of self," doctors explain.
Which leads me to question why these modest monks are willing to leave their relative seclusion, fly to these universities and hospitals, allow themselves to be rigged and poked and measured? Why, especially, after a few thousand years of secrecy and protection? Why now?
The answer comes from His Holiness the Dalai Lama himself who understands that since the Chinese occupation in Tibet fifty years ago, his days, and those of his holy followers are drawing to an end. He has encouraged a generous spirit of cooperation from his followers and sharing with all those who believe.
This is why we can all learn to open ourselves to something greater than any of us could ever be alone. By their smiling examples these quiescent Buddhists -- who can boil freezing water through the power of their thoughts -- show us, scientifically, that we, too, can be happy most of the time, that we, too, can obtain peak awareness and can even reverse the course of our aging brains. They patiently answer our foolish questions.
All we have to do is surrender.
All we need do is to let go of our ego, get out of the way and welcome the light.
All we need is love.
*PRIMARY SOURCE: Lynne McTaggart, Entering Hyperspace, The Intention Experiment 2008
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