Chapter 11: From esoteric science to neuroscience

In name, at least, a science of meditation has existed since the early nineteenth century.

Since the turn of the millennium, neuroimaging techniques have revolutionized meditation research and shown that nondirective meditation stimulates the retrieval of memories and the processing of emotions through healthy mind wandering (Xu, 2014). Thirty years earlier, physiological research and the study of brain waves had demonstrated that nondirective meditation initiates a comprehensive relaxation response far beyond ordinary rest (Benson, 1974; 1975; Solberg, 2004). These two approaches represent the beginnings of modern meditation research.

The idea that meditation can be studied scientifically, however, is much older. It has existed at least since the beginning of the nineteenth century, though in ways that would hardly qualify as “scientific” according to current standards. Even these early attempts to develop a science of meditation left lasting traces that still influence scientific approaches to meditation research. This chapter provides a sketch of the various lines of development of this research, including esoteric science, the psychology of meditation, and various forms of laboratory research. Much of the discussion is indebted to Holen (2016b) and, for the older material, Baier (2009).

Esoteric science

The earliest attempts to link meditation with science were not based on actual meditation research, but on ideas and concepts that were at least partly conceived of as having scientific status. At the same time, they also often involved notions that delved far into the realm of the supernatural. This combination of science and the esoteric has never ceased to exist and still exerts considerable influence on popular ideas of meditation.

Mesmerism and hypnotism Some of the early attempts at scientific explanations of meditation were linked to the ideas of the German physician Franz Mesmer (1734–1815). Partly inspired by Newton’s discovery of gravitation, Mesmer suggested that a “natural magnetism” exists between all objects, including living beings, and that both physical and mental illness can ensue when the flow of this “magnetic fluid” is obstructed. A physician can help the patient overcome such obstacles by inducing in him or her an “animal magnetism.” As a part of the healing process, the patient would be brought into various sleep- or trance-like states, similar to what we now refer to as hypnosis.

In the context of meditation, the most interesting aspect of mesmerism (which animal magnetism often came to be called) lies in its strong interest in the various mental states that its healing procedures would bring about. For instance, the German surgeon and professor of medicine Carl Alexander Ferdinand Kluge (1782–1844) described in detail several such states or stages:

• initial phase: full awareness but with sensations of lightness and well-being • magnetic half-sleep: still aware of near environment, but no normal eyesight, just visions of light • magnetic sleep: no awareness of environment • simple somnambulism: no external senses, but a kind of sleep-internal wakefulness in which the patient may communicate with the healer • higher somnambulism: inner clarity, sense of light, bliss, and ecstasy, sometimes ostensibly accompanied by supernatural abilities to read minds and look into the past and future This interest in mental states coincided with the discovery in Europe of Indian texts on meditation. Both the Indian cosmologies and the various meditative techniques and states described in these texts were often understood in terms of mesmerism. The notion of “magnetism” was seen as a parallel to the Indian concept of prana, which refers to the cosmic “breath” that is believed to flow through the human body as well as the entire universe. The focus in some Indian texts on the concentration of prana in the heart and its ascent to the crown of the head was seen as a parallel to similar physical experiences in the mesmeric healing process. The gradual weakening of the external senses and the intense inner experience of clarity, light, and bliss were also seen as points of convergence. In addition, the idea that one could practice mesmerism on oneself, without the help of a healer, made the practice of mesmerism and the practice of yoga and meditation seem to resemble each other even more strongly.

In 1841, the Scottish surgeon James Braid (1795–1860) attended a public performance by a traveling “magnetist.” While he was convinced that the changes he observed in the patients were real, he refused to accept the esoteric theory of animal magnetism. Instead he went home and practiced what he would later call “hypnotism” on himself, thereby laying the ground for a purely physiological understanding of the phenomenon. And while earlier attempts at understanding meditation in terms of mesmerism had been based on ancient textual sources, Braid tried instead to account for contemporary reports of yogis who were buried alive without being injured as examples of self-induced hibernation, by which all bodily activity was brought to a low point. Meditation, he said, has in common with “hypnotism” the use of a strongly focused awareness, which would gradually shut the external world out.

While mesmerism in its traditional form no longer has a place in scientific medicine, the more down-to-earth theories of hypnosis do. Attempts at explaining meditation as a form of hypnosis also continue to exist, as when the historian of religion Livia Kohn (2008, p. 3) says that meditation is “a close companion of hypnosis,” basing her argument on the widespread notion of cultural constructivism. More recently, however, Amir Raz and Michael Lifshitz (2016) have collected a large number of essays discussing the similarities and differences between meditation and hypnosis. Most of these conclude that the differences are more numerous than the similarities.

The notion of nondirective meditation points in the opposite direction of hypnosis, toward non-suggestive rather than suggestive working mechanisms, and toward changes that emerge from within as opposed to external stimuli. The famous historian of religion Mircea Eliade (1990, pp. 78ff., 99ff.) argues strongly against the Swedish scholar Sigurd Lindquist’s (1932) attempt to demonstrate “the hypnotic nature of yogic [or meditative] experience.” Eliade points out that ancient Indian sources clearly distinguished between hypnosis and meditative processes, and quotes the historian of Indian philosophy Surendranath Dasgupta (1974, pp. 352ff.) to this effect. Hypnosis, Eliade says, leads only to a provisional “damming of the ‘stream of consciousness’” and “paralysis … of the mental flux,” comparable to the “easy extinction of consciousness” brought about by “trances and ecstasies obtained from intoxicants, narcotics, and all the other elementary means of emptying consciousness.” Unlike hypnosis, he says, yoga and meditation (at least of the nondirective type) do not reach for a “ given situation,” but establish “a new and paradoxical mode of being.”

Theosophy Initial attempts to unify spiritual phenomena and science began to appear toward the end of the Enlightenment, not least in the ideas of the Swede Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). It was in the second half of the nineteenth century, however, that the idea of an “esoteric science” became popular both in Europe and, in particular, America. A colorful representative of this trend was the Russian-born Madame Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891), who was one of the founders of the Theosophical Society in New York City in 1875. The Theosophical Society emphasized both Asian meditation and Western science.

In her writings, Madame Blavatsky discussed meditation, contemplation, concentration, prayer, yoga, dhyana, samadhi, and a number of other terms that refer to meditative practice. She sought the sources of meditative wisdom in Buddhism, Yoga, Tantra, Christianity, and ancient Greek philosophy. Quite often, the actual meditation procedures remained vague. However, the repetition of the mantra om or om mani padme hum every morning and evening was recommended, as was the semantic meditation on phrases such as “I am all Time and Space.” Moral self-reflection and the ability to distinguish between “white” and “black magic” were considered essential.

Since the technical details of Theosophical meditation were not always clear, it is difficult to know whether their methods were directive or nondirective. Probably both forms existed side by side. What seems obvious, however, is that the many highly suggestive elements within Theosophical spirituality, such as the focus on supernatural powers and higher states of consciousness, may have often induced a strong goal orientation reminiscent of directive meditation.

Madame Blavatsky also frequently referred to science. However, while the “science” she discussed did include natural science, she was much more concerned with the esoteric, secret, occult, religious, sacred, and archaic sciences, and she spoke disparagingly of materialistic science: “Scientists, wedded to their materialistic views, have endeavored, ever since the day of Newton, to put false masks on fact and truth.” (Blavatsky, 2016)

In general, the nineteenth century interest in science and meditation was not followed up by actual scientific studies. To the extent that science in the modern sense was involved at all, it was usually in the form of arguments for the convergence of scientific and spiritual or religious truths. For this scientific orientation by no means excluded religious or even occult phenomena, but rather sought to integrate both science and the esoteric within a single vision. Thus, Madame Blavatsky’s two-volume work The Secret Doctrine of 1888 was subtitled The Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy.

While the nineteenth-century interest in science did not lead away from religion, it did lead away from traditional religious institutions, in particular the established church. In accordance with ideas that had long been accepted in Asian cultures, it was now often claimed that the various religions and meditative practices were but different paths toward the same goal. Hence, the individual could pick and choose in an eclectic way from a vast repository of religious doctrines and practices.

This combination of science and spirituality continued to exert considerable influence on both Asian and Western ideas concerning meditation. Already in the late nineteenth century, the esoteric science of Theosophy spread from America to Europe and Asia, and made a lasting impression on the spiritual cultures of India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Burma (Myanmar), Indonesia, and a number of other countries. During the first half of the twentieth century, the East Asian meditative practice of “quiet sitting” was successfully presented in Japan and then China as a means to improved health (which was considered to be in line with science) rather than spiritual awakening (which was not). In India, “science” became a common term in presentations of meditation and yoga. In some cases, the use of scientific vocabulary was only a thinly veiled attempt at cloaking traditional spiritual notions in the more respectable clothing of science.

This esoteric line of thinking has never entirely disappeared. When meditation became a core ingredient in the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, Western science was the target of much criticism. At the same time, it was also used to attempt to validate spiritual truths from Asian traditions, as in the case of Mahesh Yogi discussed below. The continuation of the nineteenth-century interest in the convergence between science and spirituality is evident in Fritjof Capra’s (1975) book The Tao of Physics, which has the subtitle An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism. In the twenty-first century, similar ideas continue to flourish under the umbrella term New Age.

Mahesh Yogi The Indian guru Mahesh Yogi (1918?–2008), widely known as Maharishi, is famous for having brought Transcendental Meditation (TM) to the West and for having emphasized its nondirective or nonconcentrative nature. While actively using references to science in the promotion of meditation, he combined this with a clear sense of the superiority of the wisdom of the Indian Vedas. In this attitude, he resembled many other Asian teachers of meditation in the West. At the same time, he encouraged and often referred to physiological studies of meditation.

After having toured South India and Southeast Asia, Mahesh Yogi arrived for the first time in the United States in 1959, with the aim of spreading what he then called “deep meditation” to the West. His message soon caught on, especially in the second half of the 1960s, when the Beatles, Mia Farrow, Donovan, the Beach Boys, and other pop stars learned to practice the technique. TM stood at the center of the enormous interest in meditation in the counterculture of the 1960s.

Mahesh Yogi’s attitude toward science contains some apparent paradoxes. In 1959 he told a group of American students that there was “no mysticism involved in this.... The whole march is a scientific march” (Olson & Olson, 2000, p. 262). In 1963, he published a book titled The Science of Being and Art of Living, and some years later he launched what he called “Vedic Science” and the “Science of Creative Intelligence.” This did not prevent him, however, from using terminology that most people would conceive as religious: “We go to the Divine and bring the Divine into the world and then the world becomes Divine.” (Olson & Olson, 2000, p. 264) Learning TM continued to involve ceremonial offerings of fruit and flowers to Mahesh Yogi’s teacher Guru Dev, with recitations in Sanskrit and the use of incense and camphor. One of the states of mind to which TM was supposed to lead was called “God consciousness.”

The term “science,” therefore, while clearly meant to evoke positive associations, did not refer to science in its conventional form. Rather, the idea seemed to be that the knowledge represented by ancient Indian writings, and Mahesh Yogi’s interpretation of these, was somehow superior to conventional scientific thinking. As we shall see, Mahesh Yogi was not the first proponent of meditation to cherish such notions of superiority.

Mahesh Yogi also wanted to explore the human mind. Nevertheless, in line with his notion of the superiority of Vedic wisdom, he was very dismissive of psychology as a discipline: “The present field of psychology is just skimming the surface of the ocean of mind.” (Olson & Olson, 2000, p. 262) In a lecture he gave in

Stuttgart on October 22, 1963, he called psychotherapy “a play of children in the field of the psyche; not much is there of value.” For a long time, initiators of the Transcendental Meditation movement were not allowed to teach meditation to psychoanalysts (Holen, 2016b, p. 232). The development of communication groups and a psychology of meditation within the Acem school of meditation was looked upon as a deviation.

As we shall see, however, Mahesh Yogi did not entertain the same negative attitude toward physiological studies of meditation. He encouraged them, and some of his adherents became pioneers in the field. Therefore, rigorous laboratory research came to go hand in hand with the speculative esotericism surrounding the Transcendental Meditation movement. At times, though, the former was freely interpreted in terms of the latter. Thus, the “wakeful hypometabolic physiologic state” that Transcendental Meditation was found to initiate (Wallace et al., 1971) was often understood in semi-spiritual terms. And when, much later, research on brain activity during meditation revealed a higher amount of activity in the default mode network of the brain than during ordinary rest, this was linked to “the experience of contentless thought with continued self-awareness during TM practice.” It was suggested that this state was both different from and more “foundational” than the kind of autobiographical or mind-wandering thoughts that occur during ordinary rest (Travis et al., 2010a, p. 28).

Like Eliade and his Indian predecessors, Mahesh Yogi explicitly repudiated the view that meditation builds on hypnosis, concentration, and mind control. “Don’t try to concentrate,” he told his audience in a lecture at Hochgurgl in Austria in 1962. In another lecture in 1966, he said: “Any concentration has strain built into it [and] is designed to keep the mind on the same level. … You don’t try to be blissful—that’s hypnosis—the mind is [naturally] drawn towards blissfulness.” While articulating some of the principles of what we would now call nondirective meditation, he claims that Transcendental Meditation is unique in this respect: “This is the major difference between Transcendental Meditation and any other system.” In a lecture in Wales in 1965, he distances himself from the “philosophy of control” that has allegedly led “thousands of generations” to seek to “control the mind from the outside” rather than letting things happen naturally. In India in 1966, he invokes science by comparing what he sees as his own discovery to Newton’s discovery of the law of gravitation. The mind “gravitates” toward blissfulness by “natural law.”

The psychology of meditation

The twentieth century saw the birth of a number of psychological and psychotherapeutic approaches to meditation: early attempts at viewing Buddhist meditation from the point of view of psychoanalysis, more recent attempts at combining mindfulness practices with cognitive psychology and cognitive therapy, and the development of a user-oriented psychology of meditation linked to Acem Meditation. As the following account of these three approaches reveals, they approach their subject from quite different angles and in very different ways.

Buddhist meditation and psychoanalysis One of the earliest articles on meditation in a Western scientific journal was published anonymously in 1936, under the title “Buddhist meditation in the southern school” (Anonymous, 1936). It was not a scientific study of actual practice, but a book review that attempted to understand Buddhist meditation in terms of modern psychology. In practice, this meant juxtaposing Buddhist concepts with central notions from Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis, which was seen by many as representing the most advanced scientific knowledge of the human mind. Methodologically, this was parallel to nineteenth-century attempts at understanding meditation in terms of mesmerism and hypnotism. The review asked whether replacing thoughts of ill will with thoughts of benevolence, as recommended by a Buddhist master, would not easily become “the pathway to a reaction formation” (one of the traditional Freudian defense mechanisms) and whether the Buddhist notion of tanha (desire) can be restated in Freudian terms as “faultily attached libido.” The article argued that Buddhist meditation “creates a situation rather like free association [one of the main methodological approaches of psychoanalytic therapy].”

The questions asked in this early review are actually quite relevant to a discussion of nondirective meditation. If Buddhist meditation involves reaction formation, it is directive—it actively attempts to lead the mind away from some of its spontaneous impulses and to bring forth their opposites. If on the other hand Buddhist meditation amounts to a form of free association, it is much closer to nondirective meditation and the principles of psychoanalysis. However, both this review and similar articles that followed were too brief to delve deeply into the issue.

The most influential comparisons between Buddhist meditation and psychoanalysis were published in the book Zen and psychoanalysis (Fromm et al., 1960), based on a one-week workshop arranged by the famous psychoanalyst Erich Fromm in 1957 and including contributions by the most prominent spokesman for Japanese Zen Buddhism in the West, D. T. Suzuki, as guest of honor, and one of his disciples, Richard de Martino.

By now, the interest in Zen had spread beyond the Orientalist milieu and had included prominent psychoanalysts such as Karen Horney (who, however, died in 1952) and Fromm himself. Several scholarly articles on meditation in Western journals of psychology or psychiatry discussed the relation between Zen Buddhism and psychoanalysis.

Suzuki largely managed to portray Zen Buddhism as more “scientific” in its approach than other religious schools. His tone, however, was often slightly condescending, and by no means did he give up his belief in the superiority of Zen over Western thinking. To a large extent, Western scholars, including many psychoanalysts, inherited this attitude. Zen theory was typically perceived as rational—or anti-rational and anti-logical, but from a higher level of rationality. Zen practice, including both meditation and other methods, was seen as a form of psychotherapy that superseded the neurotic narrowness of the Western discipline, built on a theory of the mind that was more sophisticated than Western psychology or psychiatry. Mindfulness and cognitive therapy By the end of the 1970s, the enchantment with the counterculture of the 1960s had waned considerably, as had the popularity of the teachings of Mahesh Yogi. As a result, interest in meditation waned in many parts of the Western world. Around 1990, however, the tide turned once again, and a new wave of global meditation interest gradually began to take shape: the mindfulness wave.

This time, the interest in meditation was no longer based on the alleged wisdom of Indian or East Asian masters, but was closely linked to academic scholars and institutions in America and Europe. Most notably, professor Jon Kabat-Zinn, who had founded the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School already at the end of the 1970s, combined various forms of Buddhist meditation and yoga in teaching people how to cope with stress, pain, and illness. His methodology was gradually synthesized into the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program. His first book on the topic, Full catastrophe living: Using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain, and illness (Kabat-Zinn, 1990) sold well, and his second book, Wherever you go, there you are (Kabat-Zinn, 1994) became a bestseller. He also published a number of articles in scientific journals on the effects of mindfulness meditation on pain, anxiety, and psoriasis. His combined image of a scientist and a clinician, and his appearance on popular American TV programs, stimulated the interest in mindfulness meditation, first in America, then in the rest of the world.

Other proponents of mindfulness have been more directly focused on psychotherapy and cognitive science. The most famous program is Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), which was developed in the 1990s by Zindel Segal, Mark Williams, and John Teasdale to help people who suffer from repeated bouts of depression (Segal et al., 2013). MBCT is based on the theory that the mind has several “interacting cognitive subsystems” (ICS), in particular the goal-oriented “doing” mode and the acceptanceoriented “being” mode, of which the former is often too dominant, so that the latter needs to be strengthened. Letting negative thoughts and feelings pass through the mind with an accepting attitude is thought to strengthen the “being” mode and thereby reduce the kind of rumination that easily leads to depressive periods. The actual program consists of eight weekly sessions as well as homework that includes mindfulness exercises and guided meditations. Studies have indicated that the program does have a certain therapeutic effect, in particular with patients who have had three or more depressive episodes.

Another mindfulness-based form of psychotherapy is Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) developed by Marsha M. Linehan (University of Washington), a Roman Catholic and a Zen master. This form of therapy consists of a large number of therapeutic techniques or “skills” inspired by cognitive behavioral therapy, combined with many Buddhist-inspired mindfulness exercises. It was originally designed to help suicidal patients, and has reportedly also been used successfully in the treatment of borderline personality disorder (from which Linehan herself once may have suffered) and other complex mental disorders (Linehan, 2015a; 2015b).

Mindfulness meditation resembles nondirective meditation in that it emphasizes acceptance of thoughts and feelings that come and go, even when they are unpleasant. While mindfulness meditation frequently focuses on the breath, and nondirective meditation is based on the repetition of a sound, both methods may be practiced with a free mental attitude. As discussed in chapter 14, however, mindfulness meditation, like many types of cognitive therapy, often involves a tendency to interfere with the spontaneous content of the mind, for instance by actively focusing on the present rather than the past or the future, by telling oneself to “let go” of a thought rather than letting it stay until it goes away by itself, or by introducing active techniques for the regulation of emotions. Some mindfulness practices have clearly suggestive elements, such as many of the attempts at establishing a “loving-kindness” attitude and one of Linehan’s breathing exercises, which promotes a “wise mind” by saying “wise” during inhalation and “mind” during exhalation. Furthermore, the practice of mindfulness is often accompanied by the idea that the coming and going of thoughts will eventually subside, and in effect this may sometimes make mindfulness more goal oriented than it often professes to be. This may even apply to forms of meditation based on an “open awareness” or on “opening the mind,” since “getting caught up in thoughts, emotions, or sensations” is seen as a disturbance in the practice of “observing or watching whatever comes into awareness as it comes in and as it goes out of awareness” (Linehan, 2015a, p. 180). For many, the focus on selfobservation and “meta-cognitive awareness” also introduces an element of control that differs from nondirective meditation. In terms of effects, while both mindfulness and nondirective meditation are said to bring about stress reduction, mindfulness does so primarily by means of increased attention, while nondirective meditation does so mainly by setting in motion a relaxation response.

Acem’s user-oriented psychology of meditation Long before the mindfulness wave, Acem Meditation distanced itself from the utopian metaphysical teachings of the meditation movement of the 1960s and began to develop a psychology of meditation with no link to Hindu or Buddhist mysticism. When Acem was established in 1966, its founder Are Holen was a student of psychology, and he later earned degrees in both psychology and medicine and became a psychiatrist and a professor of behavioral science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. In 1970, Acem held its first communication group, an interactive approach based on group-psychological processes. In the following years, beginner’s courses and follow-up courses based on a psychological understanding of meditation were developed. In 1976, the first book on Acem Meditation, Psychology of Silence, was published in Norwegian and became a bestseller in its home country. The book sees meditation from several points of view: cultural, technical, medical, and, most importantly, psychological. This down-to-earth approach to meditation had effects. While the late 1970s and early 1980s saw a drop in meditation interest in most Western countries, the opposite happened in Norway. A revised version of the book was published in English in 2016 (Holen, 2016a).

The psychology of Acem Meditation differs from the mindfulness approaches discussed above in that it primarily addresses itself to healthy people who seek to enrich their lives rather than patients in need of therapy or treatment, though both groups may benefit from the technique. A major focus is on what the meditator does during meditation rather than on particular feelings, states, or experiences. The way the meditator repeats the meditation sound while spontaneous activity unfolds in the mind is seen as a reflection of general patterns of perception and behavior, and subtle changes in one’s meditation practice may therefore help the meditator to overcome personality-induced limitations and to make better use of his or her inner resources. For instance, a tendency to use too much effort when repeating the sound may reflect a tension that is present in many parts of the person’s life, and meditation may help to alleviate it. The psychology of meditation seeks to interpret such meditative processes on the basis of experience and general psychological knowledge:

From the start, Acem has been devoted to establishing an understanding and teaching of meditation that is based on first-hand experience and in line with modern thinking and psychological perspectives. (Holen, 2007, p. 41)

Acem’s psychology of meditation is a practical, user-oriented tool rather than an abstract theoretical construct, designed to help the meditator make good use of the method.

Acem Meditation is a nondirective technique. It builds not on concentration, hypnosis, or suggestion, but rather on a relaxation response set in motion by the gentle repetition of a meditation sound. Thoughts and feelings are allowed to come and go freely during the repetition of the sound, and they sometimes take over as one forgets to repeat the sound. This is not seen as a problem, but as an integral part of the method. Beyond the basic relaxation effect, however, the deeper psychological effects of meditation do not necessarily come automatically, not as a result of “gravitation” or any other “natural law,” but requires regular practice and a form of guidance that helps the meditator modify patterns of tension or other personality-induced limitations.

Laboratory research

From the 1970s onward, meditation has not only been pulled out of its original Asian and religious contexts and relocated within modern Western secularity, but has also been removed from the everyday sphere and drawn into the laboratory. So far, there have been three basic types of laboratory research: the physiological study of relaxation, the study of brain waves, and studies of brain activity using new neuroimaging techniques, so-called brain scanning.

The relaxation response Though we have seen that Mahesh Yogi’s notion of science was based on ideas far removed from ordinary scientific thinking, he also had an interest early on in actual scientific studies of meditation. The scientific work on Transcendental Meditation became the core of the first wave of research interest in meditation, which started in 1970. Mahesh Yogi’s optimism and eagerness would sometimes lead him and many others in the organization to over-interpret the results of this research—caution wasn’t his strongest virtue. Some researchers were highly critical of the way the TM movement used the results in their promotion of meditation (Holmes, 1984; 1985a; 1985b). Nevertheless, this first wave of scientific interest in meditation produced a number of results that have proved to be solid and lasting.

One of the central concepts emerging from this research was the Harvard professor Herbert Benson’s (1975) notion of a “relaxation response.” Benson had gone from studying blood pressure in apes to a tentative interest in the effects of meditation on stress. He and others found that Transcendental Meditation and other, similar techniques not only had a positive effect on blood pressure, but also affected a number of other physiological measures: reduced heart rate, reduced oxygen consumption, increased galvanic skin response, reduced production of stress hormones, and so on. This influence was exactly the opposite of the so-called fight-flight response produced by stress. From the point of view of nondirective meditation, the most interesting part of this is perhaps the fact that these results come not as a product of attempts to relax but as a reflexive result of a certain kind of inner behavior, such as the gentle repetition of a sound while thoughts are allowed to come and go.

The first similar studies of Acem Meditation started to appear in the mid-1990s. In a number of published studies that eventually earned him a Ph.D., the Norwegian physician Erik Ekker Solberg studied “the psycho-biological effects of meditation” (Solberg, 2004). In general, the studies confirmed the relaxation effect of meditation and showed that relaxation was much more pronounced during meditation than during ordinary rest. There were also indications of a reduced tendency to react with stress in sports contexts. In one of the studies, this is seen as an explanation for the improved shooting performance of marksmen in competition, as compared to marksmen who did not learn meditation. While his studies showed no effect of meditation on short-term post-exercise recovery, meditation reduced the lactate response to standardized physical exercise sessions. There were also meditation-specific effects on melatonin levels, though in ways that were difficult to interpret.

In another study, the Norwegian cardiologist Anders Nesvold and co-workers (2011) found that the relaxation effect of Acem Meditation was linked not only to reduced activity in the sympathetic (stress-oriented) nervous system, but also to increased activity in the parasympathetic (rest-oriented) nervous system. The Nesvold study also showed that meditation led to increased heart rate variability, which is usually seen as a healthy outcome, associated with youth and general fitness.

Mindfulness meditation has been subjected less often to such physiological studies of relaxation. This may be in part because it is a relative latecomer in the field of meditation studies, but it may also be due to the lack of interest in relaxation within Buddhist meditation and cognitive psychology. Much of the research interest in mindfulness meditation has instead focused on issues of attention and the regulation of mood and emotions, both of which may also contribute to lower stress levels.

Alpha waves Before the advent of various neuroimaging techniques, the main way of monitoring brain activity during meditation was by means of electroencephalography (EEG). EEG measures electrical activity in the brain by placing electrodes at various points along the scalp. The result is described as waveforms of different frequencies, amplitudes, and synchronization. Different waveforms are associated with different types of activities or states of mind.

EEG technology has the advantage of being silent and nonintrusive. It shows fairly well how brain activity develops over time, though less well exactly where in the brain it takes place, beyond the basic distinction between frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital areas (see Figure 11.1). Moreover, it can only measure surface activity and is unable to enter into the deeper recesses of the brain.

Figure 11.1. The main brain areas that EEG studies may localize: frontal lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe, and temporal lobe. (Figure designed by Freepik, modified by Tongtos Mahasuwan.)

The typical brain wave patterns of meditation were first identified in a study of meditating Zen monks by Akira Kasamatsu and Tomio Hirai (Kasamatsu & Hirai, 1966). When the monks had been meditating for less than a minute, alpha waves already began to occur regularly and rhythmically. Alpha waves are slow brain waves that typically occur during wakeful relaxation with closed eyes, though in this case the meditators actually had their eyes open, as is common in some types of Zen practice. During meditation, the frequency of the brain waves continued to decrease, and the amplitude of the brain waves continued to increase. Before half an hour had passed, some of the Zen monks had phases of theta waves, which are even slower than alpha waves.

This brain-wave pattern is clearly different both from active wakefulness, which is dominated by the faster beta waves, and sleep, which is dominated by the slower theta waves and the even slower delta waves. The meditation pattern also differs from hypnosis.

While we do not know whether the Zen monks described above practiced nondirective meditation, that is quite clear in the highly influential studies of Transcendental Meditation by Robert Keith Wallace (Wallace, 1970; Wallace et al., 1971). The pattern observed was the same: alpha-wave activity that progressively decreased in frequency and sometimes, in some meditators, entered the even slower theta-wave pattern. In these studies, such changes in EEG patterns were shown to co-occur with physiological changes in heart rate, oxygen consumption, galvanic skin response, etc., and were eventually described as part of the relaxation response (Benson et al., 1974). Alpha waves may also occur during ordinary rest with closed eyes, but less consistently and with wave patterns of higher frequency and lower amplitude.

These results were further corroborated in a study of Acem Meditation by Jim Lagopoulos and co-workers (Lagopoulos et al., 2009). As expected, both alpha and theta waves were significantly more dominant during meditation than during ordinary rest. In addition, the study found that the alpha waves were strongest in the posterior part of the brain, possibly reflecting a deep relaxation in the brain areas that have to do with perception and mind wandering. The theta waves were strongest in the frontal and central parts of the brain, which may reflect an increase in the processing of memories and emotions, as well as the higher synaptic plasticity associated with cognitive change.

Some types of mindfulness meditation also seem to stimulate alpha-wave activity. Different data on mindfulness, however, point in different directions. This may be partly due to the fact that the term “mindfulness” covers several different practices. According to Travis and Shear (2010b), mindfulness meditation based on focused attention on a variety of different meditation objects tends to stimulate beta waves, which is the high-frequency wave pattern associated with everyday wakefulness, and gamma waves, which have an even higher frequency; while mindfulness based on the open monitoring of thoughts and feelings passing through the mind tends to stimulate the much slower theta waves. Since it places less emphasis on relaxation, it would not be surprising if mindfulness meditation is less consistent than nondirective meditation in displaying the regular pattern of alpha waves interspersed with occasional theta waves.

The default mode network The third and most recent phase of laboratory research on meditation takes one step further into the world of neuroscience. This phase started around the turn of the new millennium with the development of innovative neuroimaging techniques, most importantly functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), but also other technologies, such as positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT).

In this phase of meditation research, the main research focus has been on mindfulness practices. After the discovery of the brain’s default mode network—the parts of the brain that increase their activity during rest—and the link between this network and the coming and going of spontaneous thoughts during mind wandering, much of the research has centered on the ability to focus the mind and avoid digressions.

In line with its Buddhist origins, mindfulness has often been presented as a way to counter the mind’s tendency to wander, and some of the research seems to confirm the reality of such effects (Brewer et al., 2011; Sood & Jones, 2013). This view of mind wandering has also had an impact beyond meditation circles (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010). More recently, however, many researchers have questioned this negative view of mind wandering, which typically focuses on the negative impact of depressive rumination rather than on more healthy types of mind-wandering linked to creativity, empathy, the processing of emotions and memories, and the anticipation of future scenarios (Smallwood & Schooler, 2015). It is also worth noting that most of the mindfulness research ostensibly showing a reduction in mind wandering builds on selfreports rather than objectively observable results.

There are, however, also meditation studies that point in the opposite direction, toward an increase rather than decrease in mind wandering during meditative practice. This is particularly true of studies of nondirective meditation techniques such as Acem Meditation, which has been shown to bring about a clear increase in default-mode network activity in brain areas involved in memory retrieval and emotional processing (Xu et al., 2014). This objectively observable change in brain activity presumably reflects an increase in healthy mind wandering. A study of Transcendental Meditation, which used EEG rather than fMRI, also shows increased activity in the default mode network, though this is interpreted as reflecting “the experience of contentless thought with continued selfawareness” rather than plain mind wandering (Travis et al., 2010a). In both cases, default-mode network activity is significantly higher during meditation than during ordinary rest with closed eyes.

Another interesting result of neuroimaging studies concerns the connection between meditation and habituation. It has often been assumed that the continuous repetition involved in meditation has a habituating effect on the mind, and that this partly explains the relaxation response. However, Svend Davanger and co-workers (2010) found that the meditation-specific brain activation pattern during Acem Meditation increased rather than decreased in strength with continuous meditation sessions. Similar effects have been noted by other researchers, for other forms of meditation, including mindfulness, using other techniques, including EEG (Antonova et al., 2015).

Ideas, experience, and measurements

This chapter has divided the science of meditation into esoteric science, the psychology of meditation, and laboratory research. An alternative way of dividing the field is to distinguish between a science based on ideas, on experience, and on measurements. Very roughly speaking, the two sets of terms are closely related:

Table 11.1. Different orientations within the science of meditation.

However, these correlations are by no means absolute. While laboratory research is based on the use of technical instruments for objective measurement, the interpretation of the results often owes a lot to subjective self-reporting and even ideas that have been handed down from various traditions. For instance, high activity in the brain’s default mode network is thought to reflect mind wandering not because of the measurements alone, but because subjects tend to report this type of mental activity in periods where the default mode network is shown to be active (Mason et al., 2007). Furthermore, there are examples of meditation studies that show a decrease in mind wandering during meditation, but where the actual data is much more ambiguous, and where it is likely that the conclusion has been reached based on preconceived ideas about the effects of meditation (Fox et al., 2014). In other words, both subjective experience and ideas and ideologies play a central role even in laboratory research. The strength of this kind of research lies not so much in the elimination of idea-based and experience-based elements, but in the inclusion of advanced measurements that put preconceived ideas to the test and may potentially falsify them.

While in many ways more objective than experience-based and especially idea-based investigations, laboratory research also has its own unique limitations. In particular, the conditions of the laboratory often disturb the actual meditation process. For instance, neuroimaging takes place in a machine that is not very conducive to meditation. The meditator has to lie down instead of sitting upright and the entire body is transported into a massive tube-like cover. He or she will be told to avoid making any movement with the head, which is fastened between two cushions. When the machine starts its work, it makes an intense and ugly noise at irregular and unpredictable intervals and interrupts whatever mental activity the meditator is involved in, not to speak of inner calm. Mentally repeating a meditation sound easily becomes a competition with external noise. Hence, while neuroimaging technology allows us to observe brain activity during nondirective meditation in unprecedented ways, it may affect the process and outcome of the meditation practice.

The experience-based understanding of meditation is usually qualitative rather than quantitative, but this does not mean that it has no mechanisms for correcting erroneous assumptions. For instance, the acceptance of mind wandering in modern forms of meditation is a product of the experience that everyday meditation does not usually empty the mind of thoughts, as promised in many traditions. In addition, in contrast to laboratory research, experience-based understanding produces a type of knowledge that is of direct significance to the actual practice and teaching of meditation. (Quantitative research based on questionnaires and other forms of self-reporting is located somewhere in between measurement-based laboratory research and experience-based qualitative studies.)

Of course, there is also nothing inherently wrong with attempting to place one’s understanding of meditation within larger webs of ideas. On the contrary, such perspectives may provide meaning and motivation, and link the meditation practice to one’s general life orientation. The only problem arises when these ideas become more important than experience and hard facts, with the result that preconceived ideas are upheld in the face of evidence to the contrary, as is sometimes the case with the notion that meditation empties the mind of thoughts. In some cases, adherence to orthodox ideas is even more strongly emphasized than actual practice, with the result that such ideas are never confronted with counterevidence arising from experience and quantitative measurements.

By current standards, the first beginnings of an idea-based understanding of meditation in nineteenth-century mesmerism and Theosophy was not very scientific. The same may be said about the early attempts at a psychoanalytic understanding of Buddhist meditation in the 1950s. However, with the measurement-based approaches that started around 1970, meditation became an object of serious scientific research. During the same period, a practical psychology of meditation based on the systematization of experience was developed in relation to Acem Meditation and then Clinically Standardized Meditation and Mindfulness Meditation. Though there is still a long way to go, research on nondirective and other forms of meditation has made great strides.

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