12 Hidden
Treasure
While
Mingyur’s visit to Madison had yielded jaw-dropping results, he was not alone.
Over the years in Richie’s lab, those twenty-one yogis have come to be formally
tested. They were at the height of this inner art, having racked up lifetime
meditation hours ranging from 12,000 to Mingyur’s 62,000 (the number he had
accomplished while going through these studies, and before his four-years-plus
wandering retreat).
Each
of these yogis completed at least one three-year retreat, during which they
meditated in formal practice a minimum of eight hours per day for three
continuous years—actually, for three years, three months, and three days. That
equates, in a conservative estimate, to about 9,500 hours per retreat.
All
have undergone the same scientific protocol, those four one-minute cycles of
three kinds of meditation—which has yielded a mountain of metrics. The lab’s
team spent months and months analyzing the dramatic changes they saw during
those short minutes in these highly seasoned practitioners.
Like
Mingyur, they entered the specified meditative states at will, each one marked
by a distinctive neural signature. As with Mingyur, these adepts have shown
remarkable mental dexterity, instantly and with striking ease mobilizing these
states: generating feelings of compassion, the spacious equanimity of complete
openness to whatever occurs, or laser-sharp, unbreakable focus.
They
entered and left these difficult-to-achieve levels of awareness within split
seconds. These shifts in awareness were accompanied by equally pronounced
shifts in measurable brain activity. Such a feat of collective mental
gymnastics has never been seen by science before.
A
SCIENTIFIC SURPRISE
Recall
that at the last minute the bedridden Francisco, just a month before he died,
had to cancel attending that meeting in Madison with the Dalai Lama. He sent
his close student Antoine Lutz, who had just received his PhD under Francisco’s
mentorship, to present in his absence.
Richie
and Antoine met for the first time just one day before that meeting, and from
the start their two scientific minds melded. Antoine’s background in
engineering and Richie’s in psychology and neuroscience made for a
complementary pairing.
Antoine
ended up spending the next ten years in Richie’s lab, where he brought his precision
mind to the analysis of the EEGs and fMRIs of yogis. Antoine, like Francisco,
has been a dedicated meditation practitioner himself, and the combination of
his introspective insights with his scientific mind-set made for an
extraordinary colleague in Richie’s center.
Now
a professor at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center in France, Antoine
continues to pursue research in contemplative neuroscience. He has been
involved from the start in the research with yogis and has coauthored a stream
of articles, with more coming, reporting his findings.
Preparing
the raw data on the yogis for sifting by sophisticated statistical programs has
demanded painstaking work. Just teasing out the differences between the yogis’
resting state and their brain activity during meditation was a gargantuan
computing task. So it took Antoine and Richie quite a while to stumble upon a
pattern hiding in that data flood, empirical evidence that got lost amid the
excitement about the yogis’ prowess in altering their brain activity during
meditative states. In fact, the missed pattern surfaced only as an afterthought
during a less hectic moment, months later, when the analytic team sifted
through the data again.
All
along the statistical team had focused on temporary state effects by computing
the difference between a yogi’s baseline brain activity and that produced
during the one-minute meditation periods. Richie was reviewing the numbers with
Antoine and wanted a routine check to ensure that the initial baseline EEG
readings—those taken at rest, before the experiment began—were the same in a
group of control volunteers who tried the identical meditations the yogis were
doing. He asked to see just the baseline measures by themselves.
When
Richie and Antoine sat down to review what the computers had just crunched,
they looked at the numbers and then looked at one another. They knew exactly
what they were seeing and exchanged just one word: “Amazing!”
All
the yogis had elevated gamma oscillations, not just during the meditation
practice periods for open presence and compassion but also during the very
first measurement, before any meditation was performed. This electrifying
pattern was in the EEG frequency known as “highamplitude” gamma, the strongest,
most intense form. These waves lasted the full minute of the baseline
measurement before they started the meditation.
This
was the very EEG wave that Mingyur had displayed in that surprising surge
during both open presence and compassion. And now Richie’s team saw that same
unusual brain pattern in all the yogis as a standard feature of their everyday
neural activity. In other words, Richie and Antoine had stumbled upon the holy
grail: a neural signature showing an enduring transformation.
There
are four main types of EEG waves, classed by their frequency (technically,
measured in hertz). Delta, the slowest wave, oscillates between one and four
cycles per second, and occurs mainly during deep sleep; theta, the next
slowest, can signify drowsiness; alpha occurs when we are doing little thinking
and indicates relaxation; and beta, the fastest, accompanies thinking,
alertness, or concentration.
Gamma,
the very fastest brain wave, occurs during moments when differing brain regions
fire in harmony, like moments of insight when different elements of a mental
puzzle “click” together. To get a sense of this “click,” try this: What single
word can turn each of these into a compound word: sauce, pine, crab?fn1
The
instant your mind comes up with the answer, your brain signal momentarily
produces that distinctive gamma flare. You also elicit a shortlived gamma wave
when, for instance, you imagine biting into a ripe, juicy peach and your brain
draws together memories stored in different regions of the occipital, temporal,
somatosensory, insular, and olfactory cortices to suddenly mesh the sight,
smells, taste, feel, and sound into a single experience. For that quick moment
the gamma waves from each of these cortical regions oscillate in perfect
synchrony. Ordinarily gamma waves from, say, a creative insight, last no longer
than a fifth of a second—not the full minute seen in the yogis.
Anyone’s
EEG will show distinctive gamma waves for short moments from time to time.
Ordinarily, during a waking state we exhibit a mixture of different brain waves
that wax and wane at different frequencies. These brain oscillations reflect
complex mental activity, like information processing, and their various
frequencies correspond to broadly different functions. The location of these
oscillations varies among brain regions; we can display alpha in one cortical
location and gamma in another.
In
the yogis, gamma oscillations are a far more prominent feature of their brain
activity than in other people. Our usual gamma waves are not nearly as strong
as that seen by Richie’s team in yogis like Mingyur. The contrast between the
yogis and controls in the intensity of gamma was immense: on average the yogis
had twenty-five times greater amplitude gamma oscillations during baseline
compared with the control group.
We
can only make conjectures about what state of consciousness this reflects:
yogis like Mingyur seem to experience an ongoing state of open, rich awareness
during their daily lives, not just when they meditate. The yogis themselves
have described it as a spaciousness and vastness in their experience, as if all
their senses were wide open to the full, rich panorama of experience.
Or,
as a fourteenth-century Tibetan text describes it,
… a state of
bare, transparent awareness;
Effortless and
brilliantly vivid, a state of relaxed, rootless wisdom;
Fixation free
and crystal clear, a state without the slightest reference point; Spacious
empty clarity, a state wide-open and unconfined; the senses unfettered …1
The
gamma brain state Richie and Antoine discovered was more than unusual, it was
unprecedented—a wow! No brain lab had ever before seen gamma oscillations that
persist for minutes rather than split seconds, are so strong, and are in
synchrony across widespread regions of the brain.
Astonishingly,
this sustained, brain-entraining gamma pattern goes on even while seasoned
meditators are asleep—as was found by the Davidson group in other research with
long-term vipassana meditators who have an average of about 10,000 hours
lifetime practice. These gamma oscillations continuing during deep sleep are,
again, something never seen before and seem to reflect a residual quality of
awareness that persists day and night.2
The
yogis’ pattern of gamma oscillation contrasts with how, ordinarily, these waves
occur only briefly, and in an isolated neural location. The adepts had a
sharply heightened level of gamma waves oscillating in synchrony across their
brain, independent of any particular mental act. Unheard of.
Richie
and Antoine were seeing for the first time a neural echo of the enduring
transformations that years of meditation practice etch on the brain. Here was
the treasure, hidden in the data all along: a genuine altered trait.
STATE
BY TRAIT
In
one of the many studies Antoine spearheaded, when volunteers new to meditation
were trained for a week in the same practices that the yogis do, there was
absolutely no difference between the volunteers’ brains at rest and when they
were trying to meditate on cue, as the yogis did.3 This contrasts with the
remarkable difference between resting and meditation in the yogis. Since any
learnable mental skill takes sustained practice over time to master, given the
massive hours of lifetime meditation among the yogis, we are not surprised by
this vast difference between novices and masters.
But
there’s another surprise here: the yogis’ remarkable talent at entering a
specific meditative state on cue, within a second or two, itself signals an
altered trait. This mental feat stands in stark contrast to most of us
meditators who, relative to the yogis, are more like beginners: when we
meditate, it takes us a while to settle our minds, let go of distracting
thoughts that overwhelm our focus, and get some momentum in our meditation.
From
time to time we may have what we consider a “good” meditative experience. And
now and then we might peek at our watch to see how much longer the session
should last.
Not
for the yogis.
Their
remarkable meditation skills bespeak what’s technically known as a “state by
trait interaction,” suggesting the brain changes that underlie the
trait
also give rise to special abilities that activate during meditative states—
here, a heightened speed of onset, greater intensity, and extended duration.
In
contemplative science, an “altered state” refers to changes that occur only
during meditation. An altered trait indicates that the practice of meditation
transformed the brain and biology so that meditation-induced changes are seen
before beginning to meditate.
So
a “state-by-trait” effect refers to temporary state changes that are seen only
in those who display enduring altered traits—the long-term meditators and the
yogis. Several have shown up during the research in Richie’s lab.
One
example. Recall that the yogis show a pronounced elevation in gamma activity
during the open presence and compassion meditations, far greater than in the
controls. This elevation in gamma activity was a change from baseline, their
everyday levels—marking another state-by-trait effect.
What’s
more, while they rest in “open presence,” the very distinction between a state
and a trait blurs: in their tradition, the yogis are explicitly instructed to
mingle the state of open presence with their everyday life—to morph the state
into a trait.
READY
FOR ACTION
One
by one they lay in the scanners, their heads held firmly in place by cumbersome
earphones. There was one group of meditation novices, and another of Tibetan
and Western yogis (lifetime average 34,000 hours); each one had his or her
(yes, there were female yogis) brain scanned while doing a compassion
practice.4
The
specific method they deployed was described by Matthieu Ricard, who
collaborated on the study, as follows. First bring to mind someone you care
about deeply and relish the feeling of compassion toward that person— and then
hold that same loving-kindness toward all beings, without thinking of anyone in
particular.5
During
the session of loving-kindness each person heard at random a series of sounds,
some happy, like a baby laughing; others neutral, like background sounds in a
café, or still others, sounds of human suffering (like screams, as in the
studies in chapter six). Just as in previous studies of empathy and the brain,
for everyone the neural circuitry for tuning in to distress activated more
strongly during compassion meditation than when those vocal signals of
suffering came while the person was at rest.
Significantly,
this brain response for sharing another person’s feelings was greater in the
yogis compared to beginners. In addition, their expertise in compassion
practice also upped action in circuitry typically involved while we sense
another person’s mental state or take their perspective. Finally, there was a
boost in brain areas, especially the amygdala, key for what’s salient; we feel
another person’s distress is of compelling importance and pay more attention.
Tellingly,
the yogis but not the beginners showed the final part of the brain’s arc to
action, a jump in activity in the motor centers that guide the body when we are
ready to move—to take some decisive action to help, even though the subjects
were lying still in a scanner. The yogis showed a huge boost in these circuits.
The involvement of neural regions for action, particularly the premotor cortex,
seems striking: to emotional resonance with a person’s suffering it adds the
readiness to help.
The
yogi’s neural profile during compassion seems to reflect an endpoint of the
path of change. For people who have never meditated before, absolute beginners,
the pattern does not show up during their meditation on compassion—it takes a
bit of practice. There’s a dose response here: this pattern shows up a bit in
beginners, more in people who have put in more lifetime hours of meditation,
and to the greatest extent in the yogis.
Intriguingly,
yogis hearing sounds of people in distress while they were doing loving-kindness
meditation showed less activity than others do in their postcingulate cortex
(PCC), a key area for self-focused thought.6 In the yogis, hearing sounds of
suffering seems to prime a focus on others.
They
also show a stronger connection between the PCC and the prefrontal cortex, an
overall pattern suggesting a “down-regulation” of the “what will happen to me?”
self-concern that can dampen compassionate action.7
Some
of the yogis later explained that their training imbued them with preparedness
for action, so the moment they encounter suffering they are predisposed to act
without hesitation to help the person. This preparedness, along with their
willingness to engage with someone’s suffering, counters the normal tendency to
withdraw, to back away from a person in distress.
That
seems to embody the advice of Tibetan meditation master (and Matthieu’s main
teacher) Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche to yogis such as these: “Develop a complete
acceptance and openness to all situations and emotions, and to all people,
experiencing everything totally without mental reservations and blockages ….”8
PRESENCE
TO PAIN
An
eighteenth-century Tibetan text urges meditators to practice “on whatever harms
come your way,” adding, “When sick, practice on that sickness …. When cold,
practice on that coldness. By practicing in this way all situations will arise
as meditation.”9
Mingyur
Rinpoche, likewise, encourages making all sensation, even pain, our “friend,”
using it as a basis for meditation. Since the essence of meditation is
awareness, any sensation that anchors attention can be used as support—and pain
particularly can be very effective in focusing. Treating it as a friend
“softens and warms” our relationship, as he puts it, as we gradually learn to
accept the pain rather than try to get rid of it.
With
that advice in mind, consider what happened when Richie’s group used the
thermal stimulator to create intense pain in the yogis. Each yogi (including
Mingyur) was compared to a meditation-naive volunteer matched for age and
gender. For a week before they came to be studied, these volunteers learned to
generate an “open presence,” an attentional stance of letting whatever life
presents us come and go, without adding thoughts or emotional reactions. Our
senses are fully open, and we just stay aware of what happens without getting
carried away by any downs or ups.
All
those in the study were first tested to find their individual maximal heat
point. Then they were told they would get a ten-second blast of that fiery
device, which would be preceded by a slight warming of the plate—a ten-second
warning. Meanwhile, their brain was being scanned.
The
moment the plate heated a bit—the cue for pain about to come—the control groups
activated regions throughout the brain’s pain matrix as though they were
already feeling the intense burn. The reaction to the “as if” pain—technically,
“anticipatory anxiety”—was so strong that when the actual burning sensation
began, their pain matrix activation became just a bit stronger. And in the
ten-second recovery period, right after the heat subsided, that matrix stayed
nearly as active—there was no immediate recovery.
This
sequence of anticipation-reactivity-recovery gives us a window on emotion
regulation. For instance, intense worry about something like an
upcoming
painful medical procedure can in itself cause us anticipatory suffering, just
imagining how bad we will feel. And after the real event we can continue to be
upset by what we have gone through. In this sense our pain response can start
well before and last long after the actual painful moment—exactly the pattern
shown by those volunteers in the comparison group.
The
yogis, on the other hand, had a very different response in this sequence. They,
like the controls, were also in a state of open presence—no doubt one some
magnitudes greater than for the novices. For the yogis, their pain matrix
showed little change in activity when the plate warmed a bit, even though this
cue meant extreme pain was ten seconds away. Their brains seemed to simply
register that cue with no particular reaction.
But
during the actual moments of intense heat the yogis had a surprising heightened
response, mainly in the sensory areas that receive the granular feel of a
stimulus—the tingling, pressure, high heat, and other raw sensations on the
skin of the wrist where the hot plate rested. The emotional regions of the pain
matrix activated a bit, but not as much as the sensory circuitry.
This
suggests a lessening of the psychological component—like the worry we feel in
anticipation of pain—along with intensification of the pain sensations
themselves. Right after the heat stopped, all the regions of the pain matrix
rapidly returned down to their levels before the pain cue, far more quickly
than was the case for the controls. For these highly advanced meditators, the recovery
from pain was almost as though nothing much had happened at all.
This
inverted V-shaped pattern, with little reaction during anticipation of a
painful event, followed by a surge of intensity at the actual moment, then
swift recovery from it, can be highly adaptive. This lets us be fully
responsive to a challenge as it happens, without letting our emotional
reactions interfere before or afterward, when they are no longer useful. This
seems an optimal pattern of emotion regulation.
Remember
the fear we felt when we were six years old about going to the dentist to get a
cavity filled? This could mean nightmares at that age. But we change as we grow
older. When we are twenty-six, what might have loomed as a trauma in childhood
becomes ho-hum, an appointment to schedule in the midst of a busy day. We are a
very different person as an adult than we were as a child—we bring more mature
ways of thinking and reacting to the moment.
Likewise,
with the yogis in the pain study, their many years of meditation practice
suggests the state they were in during the pain reflects enduring changes
acquired through their training. And because they were engaged in the open
presence practice, this, too, qualifies as a state by trait effect.
EFFORTLESS
As
with any skill we sharpen, within the first weeks of meditation practice,
beginners notice increased ease. For instance, when volunteers new to
meditation practiced daily for ten weeks, they reported the practice
progressively got easier and more enjoyable, whether they were focusing on
their breath, generating loving-kindness, or just observing the flow of their
thoughts.10
And
as we saw in chapter eight, Judson Brewer found a group of longterm meditators
(with an average lifetime practice of about 10,000 hours) reported effortless
awareness during meditation in association with decreased activity in the PCC,
that part of the default network active during “selfing” mental operations.11
When we take the self out of the picture, it seems, things go along with little
effort.
When
long-term meditators reported “undistracted awareness,” “effortless doing,”
“not efforting,” and “contentment,” activation in the PCC went down. On the
other hand, when they reported “distracted awareness,” “efforting,” and
“discontentment,” activation of the PCC went up.12
A
group of first-time meditators also reported an increase in ease, though only
while they were actively being mindful—a state effect that did not persist
otherwise. For the beginners, “increased ease” appears very relative: going
from exerting great effort—particularly to counter the mind’s tendency to
wander—and getting a bit better at it as the days and weeks go on. But the
easing of their effort goes nowhere near the effortlessness found in the yogis,
as we’ve seen in their remarkable performance in the on/off lab protocol.
One
metric for effortlessness here comes down to being able to keep your mind on a
chosen point of focus and resist the natural tendency to wander off into some
train of thought or be pulled away by a sound, while having no feeling of
making an effort. This kind of ease seems to increase with practice.
Richie’s
lab group initially compared expert meditators to controls in the magnitude of
prefrontal activation during focused attention on a small light. The long-term
meditators showed a modest increase in prefrontal activation compared with the
controls, though the difference was, strangely, not very impressive.
One
afternoon as Richie and his lab team sat around a long conference table
pondering these somewhat disappointing data, they began to reflect on the large
span of expertise even within the so-called expert meditator group. This expert
group actually ranged in practice hours from 10,000 to 50,000 —a very large
spread. Richie wondered what they would find if they compared those with the
most versus least amount of practice. He had already found that with higher
levels of expertise, there’s an effortlessness that actually would be reflected
in less rather than more prefrontal activation.
When
the team compared those with the most versus those with the least amount of
practice, they found something truly striking: all of the increase in
prefrontal activation was accounted for by those with the least amount of
practice. For those with the most lifetime hours of practice, there was very
little prefrontal activation.
Curiously,
the activation tended to occur only at the very beginning of a practice period,
while the mind was focusing on the object of concentration, that little light.
Once the light was in focus, the prefrontal activation dropped away. This
sequence may represent the neural echoes of effortless concentration.
Another
measure of concentration was to see how distracted the meditators are by
emotional sounds—laughing, screaming, crying—which they heard in the background
while focusing on the light. The more amygdala activation in response to those
sounds, the more wavering in concentration. Among meditators with the greatest
amount of lifetime practice hours—an average of 44,000 lifetime hours (the
equivalent of twelve hours a day for ten years) the amygdala hardly responded
to the emotional sounds. But for those with less practice, (though still a high
number—19,000 hours) the amygdala also showed a robust response. There was a
staggering 400 percent difference in the size of the amygdala response between these
groups!
This
indicates an extraordinary selectivity of attention: a brain effortlessly able
to block out the extraneous sounds and the emotional reactivity they normally
elicit.
What’s
more, this means traits continue to alter even at the highest level of
practice. The dose-response relationship does not seem to end even up to 50,000
hours of practice.
The
finding of a switch to effortlessness in brain function among the most highly
experienced yogis was only possible because Richie’s group had assessed total
lifetime hours of meditation practice. Lacking that simple metric, this
valuable finding would have been buried in the general comparison between
novices and experts.
THE
HEART-MIND
Back
in 1992, Richie and that gallant band of researchers brought their tons of
equipment to India, hoping to measure the most seasoned meditation masters near
where the Dalai Lama lives. Next to his residence sits the Namgyal Monastery
Institute of Buddhist Studies, an important training ground for monk-scholars
in the Dalai Lama’s tradition. Richie and his researcher friends, you’ll
remember, were unable to collect any real scientific data from the
mountain-dwelling yogis.
But
when the Dalai Lama asked Richie and his colleagues to give a talk on their
work to the monks in the monastery, Richie thought maybe the equipment they
schlepped to India could be put to some good use. Rather than just a dry
academic talk, they would give a live demonstration of how brain electrical
signals can be recorded.
And
so, two hundred monks were dutifully sitting on cushions on the floor when
Richie and friends arrived with their suitcases filled with EEG equipment. To
place a headful of electrodes takes quite a bit of time. Richie and the other
scientists worked as quickly as possible to secure all the electrodes in place.
The
demo that evening used as subject the neuroscientist Francisco Varela. As
Richie placed the electrodes on Francisco’s scalp, the view of Francisco was
blocked. But when Richie completed his task and moved out of way, a loud chorus
of laughter erupted from the usually very staid monks.
Richie
thought the monks were laughing because Francisco looked a bit funny with wires
coming off his scalp electrodes like a big bundle of spaghetti. But that was
not what the monks found funny.
They
were laughing because Richie and his team had told them of their interest in
studying compassion—but they were placing electrodes on the head, rather than
the heart!
It
took Richie’s group about fifteen years to see the monks’ point. Once yogis
started to come to Richie’s lab, the group saw data that made them realize
compassion was very much an embodied state, with tight links between the brain
and body, and especially between the brain and the heart.
Evidence
for this linkage came from an analysis that related the yogis’ brain activity
to their heart rate—a follow-up to the unexpected finding that the yogis’
hearts beat more rapidly compared to novices’ when they heard sounds of people
in distress.13 The yogis’ heart rate was coupled with the activity of a key
area in the insula, a brain region that acts as the portal through which
information about the body is conveyed to the brain and vice versa.
In
a sense, then, the Namgyal monks were right. Richie’s team had data suggesting
that with yogic training the brain becomes more finely tuned to the
heart—specifically during compassion meditation.
Again,
this was a state-by-trait finding, one that occurred in the yogis only when
they meditated on compassion (and not during other kinds of meditation, at
rest, or among those in a comparison group).
In
short, compassion in the yogis sharpens their sense of other people’s emotions,
especially if they are distraught, and heightens sensitivity to their own
bodies—particularly the heart, a key source of empathic resonance with the
suffering of others.
The
variety of compassion may matter. Here the practitioners were engaged in
“nonreferential” compassion. In the words of Matthieu, they were “generating a
state in which love and compassion permeated the whole mind with no other
discursive thoughts.” They were not focusing on any specific person, but rather
were generating the background quality of compassion; this may be especially
important in engaging the neural circuits that tune the brain to the heart.
Being
present to another person—a sustained, caring attention—can be seen as a basic
form of compassion. Careful attention to another person also enhances empathy,
letting us catch more of the fleeting facial expressions and other such cues
that attune us to how that person actually feels in the moment. But if our
attention “blinks,” we may miss those signals. As we saw in chapter seven,
long-term meditators have fewer such blinks in their attention than do other
folks.
This
cancellation of the attentional blink numbers among a host of mental functions
that change with rigorous mind training—and which scientists had thought to be
frozen, immutable, basic properties of the nervous system. Most of these are
little known outside scientific circles, where they are taken as strong
givens—a challenge to that status jars the assumptive system of cognitive science.
But discarding old assumptions in light of new findings is the motor of science
itself.
Another
point. We expect that the lightening of self and lessening of attachment in the
yogis would correlate with a shrinking of the nucleus accumbens, as was found
in long-term Western meditators. But Richie has collected no data on this from
the yogis, despite the falling away of attachments being an explicit goal of
their practice.
The
discovery of the default mode and how to measure it, as well as its crucial
role in the brain’s self-system, has come so recently that when the yogis were
coming one by one through the lab, Richie’s team had no inkling they might want
to use the baseline to measure this shift. Only toward the tail end of this
stream did the lab get the resting state measures needed—and on too few yogis
to have robust data for the analysis.
Science
progresses in part through innovative measures that yield data never seen
before. That’s what we have here. But that also means the slices of findings we
have on the yogis have more to do with the serendipity of measures available to
us than with some careful assay of the topography of this region of human
experience.
This
highlights a weakness in what otherwise might seem quite impressive findings on
the yogis: these data points are but glimpses of the altered traits that
intensive, prolonged meditation produces. We do not want to reduce this quality
of being to what we happen to be able to measure.
Science’s
view of these yogis’ altered traits is akin to the parable of the blind men and
the elephant. The gamma finding, for instance, seems quite exciting, but it’s
like feeling the elephant’s trunk without knowing about the rest of its body.
And so, too, with their missing attentional blink, effortless meditative
states, ultrarapid recovery from pain, and readiness to help someone in
distress—these are but glimpses of a larger reality we do not fully comprehend.
What
matters most, though, may be the realization that our ordinary state of waking
consciousness—as William James observed more than a century ago—is but one
option. Altered traits are another.
A
word about the global significance of these yogis. Such people are very rare,
what some Asian cultures call “living treasures.” Encounters with them are
extremely nourishing and often inspiring, not because of some vaunted status or
celebrity but because of the inner qualities they radiate. We hope nations and
cultures that harbor such beings will see the need to protect them and their
communities of expertise and practice, as well as preserve the cultural
attitudes that value these altered traits. To lose the way to this inner
expertise would be a world tragedy.
IN
A NUTSHELL
The
massive levels of gamma activity in the yogis and the synchrony of the gamma
oscillations across widespread regions of the brain suggest the vastness and
panoramic quality of awareness that they report. The yogis’ awareness in the
present moment—without getting stuck in the anticipation of the future or
ruminating on the past—seems reflected in the strong “inverted V” response to
pain, where yogis show little anticipatory response and very rapid recovery.
The yogis also show neural evidence of effortless concentration: it takes only
a flicker of the neural circuitry to place their attention on a chosen object,
and little to no effort to hold it there. Finally, when generating compassion,
the brains of yogis become more connected to their bodies, particularly their
hearts—indicating emotional resonance./.
13
