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Can Anyone Meditate? (Norman Costa)

Spect_images_at_baseline_and_during_meditation_frontal_lobe_pet1b

The Effect of Meditation on the Brain activity in Tibetan Meditators: 
Frontal Lobes

Spect_images_at_baseline_and_during_meditation_parietal_lobe_pet1b
The Effect of Meditation on the Brain activity in Tibetan Meditators: 
Parietal Lobes

Andrew_newberg_md

Can Anyone Meditate? (Norman Costa)

This video is an excerpt from an interview of Andrew Newberg, conducted by Robert Wright.

Andrew Newberg teaches at the university of Pennsylvania both in the medical school and in the dept. of Religious Studies. He is a co-author, along with the late Eugene D'Aquili, of "The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience."

Robert Wright ("The Moral Animal," "Nonzero," and "The Evolution of God") interviewed Dr. Newberg at the University Of Pennsylvania Medical Centre and focused mainly on this new book, "Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief," also co-authored by the late Dr. Eugene D'Aquili. 

Here are other video excerpts from the interview.

Can anyone meditate? – 01m:46s 

Is religious experience “real?” – 05m:57s 

Mystical experiences – 02m:34s 

Religion as pathology – 02m:36s 

The biology of religion – 01m:59s 

The Godhead – 01m:34s 

Why meditate? – 03m:00s

For a transcript of the entire interview…

Robert Wright: Andrew Newberg teaches at the university of Pennsylvania both in the medical school and in the dept. of Religious Studies. He is a co-author, along with the late Eugene D'Aquili, of "The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience." I interviewed Dr. Newberg at the University Of Pennsylvania Medical Centre and focused mainly on this new book, "Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief," also co-authored by the late Dr. Eugene D'Aquili. 

0:00:32

Thanks for letting me come here and talk to you.

Andrew Newberg: My pleasure.

Robert Wright: …here at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Centre where you teach and do research. 

Andrew Newberg: Correct. 

Robert Wright: And one of the kinds of research you do is to take pictures of brains while brains are engaged in various activities.

Andrew Newberg: Right. 

Robert Wright: And one activity that you've gotten particularly interested in is the religious experience.

Andrew Newberg: That's correct.

Robert Wright: And in the course of taking pictures of brains that are having religious experiences, you've come up with a few interesting conclusions. One is that, although if you look at religious experience around the world, people seem to be doing very different things in different cultures when they are practicing religion. You contend that there is actually an underlying unity there. When you look at the biology of religious experience you see something that people everywhere have in common.

Andrew Newberg: That's correct. 

0:01:30

Robert Wright: You… a lot of people would look at what you do when you take these pictures of the brain and say "Here's what's actually going on when someone has a religious experience,” particularly mystical experience which you paid special attention to, and they might say you are reducing religion to mere biology and in that sense, devaluing religion and suggesting that in some sense religious experience is not true. You argue that that would be misinterpretation. 

Andrew Newberg: Absolutely. 

Robert Wright: Ok. Now before you explain why, tell us why you paid special attention to the mystical experience. Tell us what is a mystical experience as kind of classically defined?

0:02:12

Andrew Newberg: When we look at a mystical experience as being a very profound spiritual state they’re usually associated with very powerful emotional responses whether they are ecstatic responses or very powerful quiescent kind of response or even some kind of combination of the two, they often are associated with a strong sense of becoming one with or becoming unified with God or the Universe or some absolute nature of the world. Those are probably the main defining characteristics of the most profound types of mystical experiences. But we also look at all types of spiritual experiences along a continuum where we start with base-line reality and the individual discreetness of things in reality — tables, chairs, cars and things like that — all the way through very mild experiences that someone may have looking at a sunset or listening to a beautiful Mozart concerto. And then finally, on up to the very powerful kinds of experiences people get after many many years of meditation or prayer and where they ultimately do become absorbed into their object of meditation or prayer. 

Robert Wright: So there's this spectrum…

Andrew Newberg: Absolutely.

Robert Wright: There's this intense mystical experience at one end that very few of us have been privy to…

Andrew Newberg: Correct. 

Robert Wright: And you have a name for that.

Andrew Newberg: Absolute Unitary Being. 

Robert Wright: Absolute Unitary Being. That sounds like a desirable state. 

Andrew Newberg: It's a very nice thing…

Robert Wright: Do you know from first hand experience?

Andrew Newberg: Well I can't really say. One of the obviously one of the problems with any of these types of states is that when you have a complete loss of a sense of self you basically have transcended a subjective and objective components of the state so there is no self that can come back and say Yes I was there or No I wasn't there. It's a … from sort of phenomenological perspective, it's a very difficult state obviously to describe. That's also one of the characteristics of mystical states, that they are ineffable and indescribable. 

Robert Wright: Right.

Andrew Newberg: So, to a certain extent, if anyone came and told me, “Yes, I had a mystical experience and was part of Absolute Unity Being,” I would certainly have to question whether or not that was actually the case because they are extremely difficult to understand and interpret and analyze. So most people who have had these kinds of experience one are in some senses a little reluctant to go into great detail knowing that whatever they say is going to be far short of what the actually experience was.

0:04:42

Robert Wright: So, what are some feelings an ordinary person might have had that in your view moved them somewhere some distance along the spectrum toward the Absolute Unitary Being?

Andrew Newberg: Right. Well very very obvious example is when people go to a church on synagogue and participate in some type of service where they may experience a fairly strong sense maybe of awe, of God, a very strong sense of love, a sense of community with the people that they are with as well as the sense of becoming part of something greater than themselves even tho it doesn't necessarily mean that they have a complete loss of that sense of self. They do get some…

Robert Wright: What about with team sport? When you’re…

Andrew Newberg: Absolutely.

Robert Wright: When your basketball team is doing well and there's a sense…

Andrew Newberg: When you're "in the zone," as they say. I mean I think that there is certainly a relationship along that continuum for being at sporting events or participating in sports and any # of different types of ritualistic activities can potentially provide at least some component of that experience from a biological perspective and from an experiential perspective. I think that's why people do these things, that's why they are continually repeated throughout societies and cultures that there is a special feeling of being together with other people that are all in it together. In fact, we frequently talk about ritual as not being as being a sort of morally neutral technology, ritual in and of itself does not have to used for the positive kinds of practices that we thing of when we look at Nazi Germany.

Robert Wright: Nazi Germany had rituals … very much involved in the dissolution of self.

Andrew Newberg: Absolutely, they brought an entire society or state together in one common goal and even though it was extremely negative towards everyone else in the world it was extremely powerful for the people who participate. That actually is we think one of the goals of ritual, especially group ritual, which is that within the group itself you have increased cohesion, increased unity, but anyone who is not a part of that group then will be perceived as being extremely negative and you actually create animosity towards those people.

For the rest of the interview go to HERE.


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9 responses to “Can Anyone Meditate? (Norman Costa)”

  1. Ruchira

    Sorry to disappoint you, Norman. I may not endure as a Buddhist monk for many reasons but not for my inability to meditate because I can do that. If Newberg interprets my brain scan in that state as a religious experience, he will be wrong. He may have no better word for it but religion it ain’t. The problem that the faithful seem to have with the non-believers is that they just can’t visualize any meditative, mystical, deeply awe inspiring experiences without a role of god or religion. Hence they assume that the non-religious are incapable of those emotions or brain activities. But that is getting into the same circular argument that has happened many, many times here as well as on 3 QD. But thanks for the post.

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  2. Norman Costa

    Ruchira, actually Newberg does not refer to the brain scan itself as a reflection of religious experience. It is a neurological correlate of what others call a religious experience. It is clear that, for at least 5,000 years, man has been compelled in one form or another to entertain the seeking of transcendence and being moved by a sense of awe, mystery, and fear. There is now evidence that some of it, at least, is ‘hard wired.’ Is a personal God on the other end of the firing neurons? Newberg is very clear in saying that his science cannot inform on that matter. The rare experience of profound oneness with the universe is very much a human experience.

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  3. Sujatha

    The sense of unity with the greater set of people experiencing the same neurological correlate is an interesting construct to dissect. What happens to those who cannot and will not enter into those kinds of group states? Are they doomed to be alone in the crowd, in it, yet not of it? I would definitely qualify, I guess. Earlier, it used to bother me, now not so much.

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  4. kochuthresiamma p j

    Ruchira
    meditation, mystical experiences – they are not the prerogative of the religious alone. wordsworth talks of it in tintern abbey lines. the burden of the extract from the interview cited in this post forms the subject of wordsworth’s lines.
    ‘But we also look at all types of spiritual experiences along a continuum where we start with base-line reality and the individual discreetness of things in reality — tables, chairs, cars and things like that — all the way through very mild experiences that someone may have looking at a sunset or listening to a beautiful Mozart concerto. And then finally, on up to the very powerful kinds of experiences people get after many many years of meditation or prayer and where they ultimately do become absorbed into their object of meditation or prayer.'(A Newberg)
    wordsworth explains how he achieved the mystical state by being ‘absorbed into their object of meditation’. with wordsworth the ‘object’ is nature, and the ecstatic experiences it affords are carried back with him to the city and the whole experience is relived, creating what religion would label as visions(?) – religious experiences. here’s an extract from wordsworth’s tintern abbey lines:
    Though absent long [FROM TINTERN ABBEY]
    These forms of beauty have not been to me
    As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye;
    But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
    Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
    In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
    Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
    And passing even into my purer mind
    With tranquil restoration; feelings too
    Of unremembered pleasure — such, perhaps,
    As may have had no trivial influence
    On that best portion of a good man’s life,
    His little, nameless, unremembered acts
    Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
    To them I may have owed another gift,
    Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood
    In which the burden of the mystery
    In which the heavy and the weary weight
    Of all this unintelligible world
    Is lightened — that serene and blessed mood
    In which the affections gently lead us on
    Until the breath of this corporeal frame
    And even the motion of our human blood
    Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
    In body, and become a living soul;
    While with an eye made quiet by the power
    Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
    We see into the life of things.
    He tries to explore anatomy of the mystical experience which has dual influence on him 1. make him a ‘good’ person (best portion of a good man’s life,His little, nameless, unremembered acts, Of kindness and of love), and a nirvanic experience (see into the life of things). both claimed by religion.
    the long and short of it is, the goals set by religions are achieved by ww without any divine intervention.
    also, the fact the experience does not yield comprehensive results under a microscope in a science lab does not justify the trivialisation of the whole experience.
    and finally, not every truth, every experience, every phenomenon in the cosmos is explained by science – yet.till such day comes around, are we going to be dismissive about them?

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  5. Ruchira

    and finally, not every truth, every experience, every phenomenon in the cosmos is explained by science – yet.till such day comes around, are we going to be dismissive about them?
    Even fewer are explained by religion, except in the minds of those who choose to “understand” without “understanding.” Yet religion has not been dismissed by the vast majority of adherents. Therefore it is legitimate to suspect that faith is about fear and comfort and not so much about knowing the “truth.” Let’s just define things as they are without trying to gild the wilting lily. After all, there is nothing wrong with seeking comfort even when the source of it is a figment of our imagination.

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  6. Ruchira

    KPJ: If you read my opinions with some care, you will notice that I never trivialize awe, beauty, kindness, love, amazement, admiration, fear or gratitude. This is the problem we non-believers have with the believers. Our rejection of a divine hand is seen as rejection of the emotions themselves. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our differences arise from what we attribute those emotions to. But what the heck. I have had this conversation before. It’s never got me anywhere.

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  7. kochuthresiamma p j

    Ruchira
    you got me wrong. i never thought you trivialised the emotions. No personal remarks made or intended.
    all i’m talking about is trivialisation of and ridiculing the believers’ explanation of mystic experiences. And I’m not saying you did it either. Apparently, you didn’t read my comment closely enough:-)
    I’m speaking of the general battle of factions over this unknown regions of the mind.
    We do not know what it is. umpteen explanations are given for it. it’s still a gray area. all i’m trying to say is in this gray area which all sorts of people – the believeers, non believers, rationalists – are trying to explore and trying to get a break through, we should adopt a live and let live attitude. that’s all. I closely read and follow research studies in this area and find them exceedingly interesting, and follow them with the greatest of interest. but here also there is a lacuna. so i want to do some exploration myself, however presumptuous that might sound..
    you talk about the problem with believers. believe me, i’m not one such believer who is dogmatic, and intolerent of nonbelievers. but i wonder if you know how some of these nonbelievers react if we so much as suggest that there could be some contribution about mystic experiences if we look at certain religious writings. someone just stopped short of saying i’m mentally challenged – which, i believe, i am not!
    The unknown region is a free for all. A live and let live policy will bring some order – and perhaps light into this area.

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  8. Ruchira

    Thanks for the clarification, KPJ.

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  9. Elatia Harris

    Thanks, Norman and others. Holy Week is killing me (the lamb, the LAMB!), so I am coming late to this. I am, until Easter is over, smart enuf for FB but not AB. All I can possible add is that the author photo of Dr. Newberg inspires instant, total distrust.

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