Introducing the brain: deepest meditation (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, December 29, 2023, 15:06 (120 days ago) @ David Turell

In Tibetan traditions:

https://psyche.co/ideas/what-happens-to-the-brain-during-consciousness-ending-meditatio...

"There’s a meditative state described in ancient Buddhist scriptures that is hard to imagine because it is not something – but nothing. Referred to as nirodha-samāpatti, it roughly translates as ‘the cessation of thought and feeling’, and it is the highest meditative state possible in Theravada Buddhism, following eight others called jhānas. Each jhāna requires deepening levels of concentration, and a retreat into the mind, away from typical consciousness.

"According to David Vago, a psychologist at Vanderbilt University, nirodha-samāpatti refers to a ‘state of profound concentration or absorption in which all mental activity is temporarily suspended’. It’s said the state leads to a total absence of sensation and awareness, which would help explain the stories of monks who stayed in this deep trance while fires burned around them.

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"Ruben Laukkonen, who researches the psychology and cognitive neuroscience of insight and meditation at Southern Cross University in Australia, heard about the man who could ‘turn off his consciousness’ through a friend of a friend.

"This man was Delson Armstrong, a meditation teacher with extensive training in various forms of the practice, who could reportedly enter nirodha-samāpatti for durations that he determined beforehand. The longest he had ceased to be conscious was six days. (It’s been recommended that meditators don’t stay in nirodha-samāpatti for longer than six days, because it could be harmful to the body.) ‘It’s like a shutting off of functions,’ Armstrong described in a recent interview. ‘The mind just disconnects completely from all perception and tension, and then it’s like you’re sinking into something.’

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"For a recent paper in Progress in Brain Research, Laukkonen and his colleagues published the first preliminary data using scientific methods to investigate nirodha-samāpatti, as practised by Armstrong. They used electroencephalography (EEG) to record Armstrong’s surface electrical brain activity during ‘cessation events’.

"In the paper, the researchers report measuring many aspects of Armstrong’s physiology, such as his heart rate, breathing, eye movement, temperature and brain activity, and comparing them with the same measures taken during other states, including a nap.

"The researchers found some notable brain changes while Armstrong was in a state of nirodha-samāpatti. Specifically, his overall brain synchronisation was reduced. Usually, certain parts of the brain are active at the same time, firing electrically together. ‘One part of the brain has a relationship with the activity of another part of the brain in a way that’s predictable,’ Laukkonen says. These parts of the brain are usually communicating with each other, but the new findings suggest that during nirodha-samāpatti that feature quietens down. Similar brain desynchronisation has been observed when people are given anaesthetic doses of propofol or ketamine, but not during sleep.

"If you watched a person in nirodha-samāpatti, they might appear so still and serene that you would worry that they were dead. Although Armstrong’s physiological readings were all reduced during nirodha-samāpatti, his brain didn’t ‘turn off’ and his breathing didn’t stop. This would appear to be consistent with some of the ancient teachings. For instance, according to the Maha Vedalla Sutta: ‘In the case of a monk who has attained the cessation of perception and feeling … his vitality is not exhausted, his heat has not subsided, and his faculties are exceptionally clear.’

"Laukkonen and his co-authors offered some theories about how we might understand the neuroscience behind these cessations. It could be that, when brain activity is desynchronised in this way, our brains can’t build a coherent model of the world anymore. The way we experience the world is thought by some scientists to come from predictions we’re making based on experience – called predictive processing. The cessation could represent a breaking down of that process, and a resulting loss in conscious experience.

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"‘The goal is not to validate the existence of the state,’ Laukkonen says, but to show that there is an unusual subjective experience unfolding, and some associated brain activity that might reflect how it is happening. And if nirodha-samāpatti does have the benefits that are reported by many meditators (upon awakening, Buddhists report undergoing a profound reset, and describe a sense of clarity and relief, ease and peace), Laukkonen says it makes it even more worthwhile to understand how exactly those feelings of relief and insight come to be.

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{"Laukkonen himself has experienced nirodha. He describes it as a gap in his conscious experience. Afterwards, ‘everything was brand new. Quite literally all my problems disappeared (for a while). My subjective reality was never the same. It was like waking from the longest sleep of your life after just milliseconds of absence.’"

Comment: that consciousness is controllable to this extent is amazing, but still does not explain it. How could Darwinian evolution develop such a process? Why would a God-designed brain have this function, possibly a way to reach a God level of reality ?