It strikes me you're getting a lot of advanced tutoring in real science.  Ideal science is done by completely rational people, nobly searching for the truth, with no biases of any sort, and certainly no "lower emotional processes" affecting the quality of their reasoning.  This makes being a scientist an extremely high prestige position, so naturally, since we are attached to our high prestige social positions, no one would want to admit that their practice of science is anything but that.

Then we come to real science, which is done by actual human beings.  Real human beings have emotional brains that operate faster than their rational brains, have needs to succeed and be accepted, fears that they won't succeed or be accepted, etc.  To varying degrees real scientists work to overcome their emotional problems (with various degrees of success) and biases, and, in the long run, the need for replication and reproducibility in science tends to filter out results which really are due to the bias of particular individual investigators.  But the "long run" can sometimes be generations or longer, not one journal issue to the next.

So yes, doing something parapsychological like ESP or PK involves using very delicate psychological faculties, and we don't know anywhere near enough to control all the angles.  Recognizing this is a step in maturity, knowing your own human qualities.

To give you an example of the human factor in science, one of my friends about 30 years ago was a graduate student in geology in a leading department.  Now you don't get a much "harder" science than geology, do you, all those hard, solid rocks?  But he and I had some discussions about the psychological phenomenon of projection, the very powerful human ability to see what you believe, with no idea that you're actually projecting your beliefs into something.  So I mentioned that my wife, who loves geology, would often, on our hikes, say that we were looking at such and such a formation – and I couldn't see it.  What was apparently clear to her was a lot of lines running every which-a-way to me.  She would regard me as ignorant, and I would tease her that maybe geologists were making all these things up.  So my friend mentioned to his geology professors that perhaps they should do some studies to see just how objective and reliable geological classifications were — and they practically threw him out of the department!  He learned to keep his mouth shut after that.

So, we tend to talk about the "hard" and "soft" sciences, physics versus sociology, e.g., but I prefer to talk about the hard and the easy sciences.  Things like physics, chemistry, etc. are the easy sciences.  It doesn't matter what you had for breakfast the morning before you come into the lab, your relationship with your partner, etc., the same old things reliably happen in your experiments.  Sciences like psychology or parapsychology are the really hard, difficult sciences because all these subtle things do matter, and, not only do we not know much about the specifics of that, we don't want to know because we still cling to our feeling that we are superior, objective beings, scientists!

Welcome to reality.  Tread carefully, especially around other human beings who are too invested in their objectivity.

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Mindfulness

Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,

Lecture 5, Part 9 of 18 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: How are people doing in your attempts to practice self-remembering when you’re out in the world? And we’ll allow the world to include ITP outside this particular classroom at this moment too, even though some would question that.

Student: I’ve been hearing that bell. I’m always a little nervous because I thought that maybe it was hearing loss. Just now, when you rang the bell, I thought oh – that’s the same. That’s what I’m hearing.

CTT: Through the walls, you mean. [CTT has used unexpected bell sounds to remind students to self-remember.]

Student: When I’m at home. When I’m nowhere near the bell.

CTT: Uh huh. Ah. Well, I hope it brings you happiness.

Now there is a medical condition called tinnitus, or maybe tinnitus – I’ve never been sure of the proper pronunciation – where you start to hear sounds.

Student: Right.

CTT: And –

(Laughter)

Student: Or you’re just crazy.

(Laughter)

CTT: For a lot of people, I think it’s another excellent example of Shinzen Young’s equation, that suffering equals pain multiplied by resistance, because for a lot of people, tinnitus is a small amount of funny little noises that happen once in a while, but they worry themselves sick about it. And so make what is really a very minor annoyance into an enormous amount of suffering. There can be very serious levels where it actually interferes with hearing, but I don’t know how widespread that is.

Student: It’s pretty pleasant (unpleasant?).

CTT: If you can hear it once in a while, take it as a reminder. There is a whole esoteric branch of yoga devoted to hearing the “astral sounds.” It might mean that there was a bunch of old yogis who all had tinnitus back in ancient India, but they took a positive slant on it, as though they were starting to hear the secret sounds of the cosmos, and let it spur them in their practice. Why not? What the hell?

(Laughter)

Student: And it only happened after they achieved great wisdom because it took so many years.

CTT: There you go. There you go. False correlation.

However, if it ever gets so bad you have trouble hearing ordinary sounds, see your doctor.

Student: Okay.

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From that time on, to greatly oversimplify, you can talk about two main streams of Buddhist activity.  The heart of Buddhism is the monastic tradition, monks and nuns so dedicated to achieving enlightenment for their own sakes and for the sake of others that they devote their entire lives to living in ascetic conditions and practicing meditation and prayer.  The other main stream is the beliefs of the common people, in essence, that the Buddha was some kind of god, or at least had supernatural abilities, as the monks and nuns also do to various degrees.  These people were too busy trying to survive and  earn a living, and so could not meditate very much themselves, but they could earn merit, which would go toward improving their future lives, by worshiping the Buddha and by supporting the monks and nuns with alms and other donations.  I'm speaking very generally, of course, and you can find many variations on these themes.

As Buddhism moved into cultures that were radically different from the Indian culture Buddhism originated in, it often had to make various and sometimes major adaptations to fit into its new culture.  One of the major adaptations some teachers of Buddhism are making in bringing Buddhism to the modern world, particularly the West is to try to reconcile it with what we know from science and psychology.  This has interesting results, some of which will probably make Buddhism more effective in the long run, and others which can greatly undermine the historical form of Buddhism.  In terms of the latter, I'm especially thinking of the way science is so frequently equated with an overarching philosophy of materialism.  It's not essential to equate science with materialism, of course – see my "The End Of Materialism: How Evidence Of The Paranormal Is Bringing Science And Spirit Together" book-  but science has had, by far, its greatest successes in learning about the material world.  We all like success, so an attitude of materialism, only what is material – known physical objects and physical energies – is real, pervades most of modern life.

From this materialistic perspective, Buddhism may be psychologically effective in reducing individuals' suffering, ultimately through meditation's physiological effects on the brain.  But it carries an enormous amount of superstitious baggage with it.  There are no divine beings, Gautama Buddha is not some kind of god, e.g., or bodhisattvas may be real historical people who reduced their own suffering and helped others, but they have not become minor gods that are worth praying to, or worshiping the Buddha is a useless and misleading thing to do except insofar as it may psychologically sooth you – albeit at the cost of having a fundamentally wrong belief about the nature reality, which will probably lead to a variety of negative consequences.

Incidentally, I have nothing against materialism per se as a philosophical approach to the world.  What I object to is the shortsightedness and arrogance that allows too many believers of it to believe that all truth is encompassed by this view, and thus that there's no need to actually check in with reality to see how well this kind of explanation actually works.  Many things can be explained completely and controlled effectively by material means, and I'm all for progress continuing on these fronts, but many important things can't be.

What led me to these thoughts today is thinking about the idea that traditional Buddhist monasticism is tremendously threatened by an attitude of materialism.  If you're very rich, of course, it's no big deal to help to support a few monks or nuns.  But for the majority of people, why should they spend significant amounts of their very limited resources supporting people who sit around trying to get enlightened and pray, when prayer is one of those superstitions we need to discard?  From a materialistic point of view, praying is talking to yourself.  Perhaps psychologically the monks praying is good for them, even if it involves a major illusion about the nature of reality, but why should we give donations for them to pray for us?  Wouldn't it be better to spend our money on socially useful projects, building schools and hospitals, e.g., or on our own security and pleasure?

My own understanding, drawing from my 50+ years of knowledge of research within scientific parapsychology, is that we have very high quality, scientific evidence that, for example, our minds are more than just the material functioning of the brain, that some things like prayer and psychic healing can sometimes have real effects in the real world, or that telepathy could be a mechanism for prayer to have real effects beyond the person praying, and so materialism is only a partial view of what reality is, it's foolish and unscientific to discard everything spiritual in a wholesale manner.

All religions, including Buddhism, are undoubtedly full of superstitions that are factually wrong, but to totally throw them out, to assume that anything about the spiritual is inherently nonsensical, is a major mistake.  It's not only a mistake in scientific terms – you don't ignore or irrationally reject data just because it doesn't fit with your other beliefs – it's something that psychologically harms many people.  That's because many people have various kinds of spiritual experiences, and to then have scientific Authority Figures say this is all error and nonsense on their parts is to devalue and reject some of their most essential aspects of their lives.  I've spoken and corresponded with innumerable people who have had this happen to them.  It hurts!

I'm hardly the first person to notice that these two extremes of uncritical credulity for anything labeled spiritual on the one hand, and total rejection of spirituality for materialism on the other hand, are not very healthy for the human spirit.  Too many of our values are based in our spiritual and religious views, and to declare them  all superstition is to reduce us to the level of animals.  If we think we are nothing but animals, we are more likely to act that way, with the consequences of such actions.  The founders of the Society for Psychical research in England, more than 125 years ago, saw this problem and advocated that the methods of science could be used to start separating the true from the false, the wheat from the chaff in the sphere of religion.  I'm sad to say there has not been much progress yet.  We have slowly accumulated high quality, laboratory evidence of the reality of things like telepathy, so I have argued in my "The End Of Materialism" book, that it is scientifically invalid to simply throw out all spiritual and religious ideas without examination.  But there is so much more we need to know, so much more that research about the spiritual could clarify!

The basic theme running through my career has been to try to build bridges between the best of science and the best of spirituality.  Both these fields have much nonsense in them, although science has vital self-correcting mechanisms usually not found in religion and spirituality.  I have basically proposed that the testing methods of essential scientific inquiry be used to refine and clarify religious ideas, but I suspect that this proposal is too threatening to many people.  For those who have a strong investment in some religious or spiritual path, they may well see science as the enemy which has ridiculed their beliefs, and so want nothing to do with it.  Further, because spiritual beliefs are so important to our emotional well-being, the idea that some of them might be wrong, or that all are subject to examination by scientific method, might be very threatening to people.  Many scientists, on the other hand, have actively rejected religion in favor of a materialistic, but apparently scientific, worldview, and do not like the idea that they have been making a major mistake by not actually examining the phenomena of religion scientifically.  Or they have not so much made an active decision to ignore or reject the spiritual so much as this attitude has been conditioned into them by modern life and their conventional scientific education.

Coming back to traditional Buddhism, Western ideas, with their heavy materialistic bias, are spreading more and more over the world.  Traditional Buddhism, which supports monastics for the supposed benefit of their prayers, may go on for a long time in some parts of the world, but have little power to establish itself in the more modern world.  Personally I think this would be a great loss.  My best understanding of the parapsychological evidence to date is that monks and nuns praying for us may actually be doing something useful in reality, it's not simply a form of delusion.

As a scientist, that view is, of course, always subject to further test.  Some of what I believe along these lines may turn out to be correct, some research may produce further evidence supporting it, and, even more importantly, as we gain a better scientific understanding of what, for example, makes prayers (or psychic healing in general) more likely to be effective, we may be able to greatly increase the usefulness and efficacy of monastics (and us ordinary people) praying for the world.

Is there much chance of applying the essence of science, "essential science" as I called in my book, to improve our knowledge of and efficacy of spiritual work?  Good question!  I've worked to promote this idea in many rational ways, and I pray for it, in the hope that my prayers are somehow effective in reality, not just a psychological phenomena within me.  The chance of success?  Good question!

Finally I will note that my understanding of Gautama Buddha's ideas is that they were compatible with a basically scientific approach to reality.  In his Sutta to the Kalamas, for example, he constantly tells people to check ideas and beliefs against their experience, against what actually can be observed to work, rather than simply whether they are popular or supported by authorities (including himself), etc.  That's probably the most important part of essential science: all ideas must constantly be checked against observable, experiencable reality, and must be modified when new observations require us to go beyond the current conceptions.  Unfortunately I often get the impression that as Buddhism as became an established institution for many centuries, this call to check ideas against reality has been turned into a too fixed belief that Gautama Buddha's understandings were the last word on ultimate reality, he was omniscient, and so new observations and ideas are simply checked back for doctrinal compliance with what the Buddha thought about things, rather than against a wider observation of reality.  This is one of the things that I'm sure will have to change as Buddhism becomes more important in modern culture and tries to be more compatible with science.

Some modern teachers promote an atheistic kind of Buddhism.  Meditation practices have effects on your brain which make you happier.  I am all for anything which makes people happier in a healthy way – but if you reduce the effects of meditation to brain functioning then, as a scientifically inclined Westerner, my response is fine, the drug companies should be able to develop a pill to produce the same happiness, I hope they develop it soon as all that meditation can be pretty tedious……  But all I know, my "best estimate" as a widely-informed scientist, is that there's more to spirituality than nothing but particular electro-chemical patterns in the brain, and we need to understand that "more" to really benefit others and ourselves…..

(added 1-28-12)

A while after posting the above, I had a "vision" (small v, image arising, rather than big V, Vision from Above) of where Buddhism without any reality to the spiritual, Materialistic Buddhism, could go with the right research.  It's a sarcastic, critical vision in some ways, as well as humorous – but insofar as it could reduce human suffering, I'm all for it!  As long as it doesn't further distract us from the vitally needed research on what's real about the spiritual and how to optimally live with it…..

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Notes on an event in a 50+ year attempt to learn and benefit from spiritual practices….

For some years now, I have been trying various meditation techniques from many world traditions, particularly techniques which meditation teacher Shinzen Young has modified in various ways to make more sense to and be more doable by modern people.  A month ago, I was participating in one of Shinzen's monthly telephone retreats.  For these, 20 to 50 people telephone  into a conference call number and Shinzen leads us in some guided meditation for 2 to 4 hours.  There's time for reports and questions at the end, and often individual phone consultation with him during a break in the middle of the period.  These "mini-retreats" are a very useful way to stay connected to intensive meditation practice, and much more convenient, inexpensive and practical than flying off to some residential retreat site.

On this particular day, I was participating in a two-hour guided meditation session on a technique Shinzen calls "Do Nothing" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ6cdIaUZCA).  The basic instruction here is that you don't attempt to do anything in particular, to have any kind of particular meditation experience, or to "correct" or guide what happens in your mind during the meditation.  Indeed, the instruction is that if you sense that you intend to change something, relax that intention.  You're not actively looking for such intentions – that would be doing – but, if intentions are noticed, you drop them, relax them.

This is a technique I have not tried much and which I find rather difficult.  But I also find it quite interesting, as I think becoming aware of intentions, especially subtle intentions, as they first well up my mind, is an important factor for my spiritual growth.

Fairly far along in meditation, after a little period of quiet, Shinzen instructed us that the search was over, we didn't have to do anything, we didn't have to try to make anything happen or not happen.  As he said that, a deep feeling of sadness suddenly welled up in me and tears came to my eyes.  I realized that I have never stopped trying! My entire life, from childhood on, has been spent trying to do the "right thing" at practically every moment!  Even though I appear to be a relaxed and easy-going person, even though I think I'm actually quite relaxed compared to people in general, in the background I'm always trying to figure out what the right thing to do is and to do it.  Not that this was and is a "bad" thing to do, but I just suddenly realized how very, very tired of trying I was!  I hoped that someday I would be able to stop for a while and get some rest.  But it was a very faint hope, I was always, always trying, why would anything change?

After a few moments the feeling passed, the tears dried, and I went back to the do nothing practice.  At the end of this telephone meditation retreat I didn't think anything special about it, other than that this insight about how tired I was of always trying, had happened.

Rancho Palos Verdes Retreat – Flow

Two weeks later, my wife Judy and I are at a Catholic nunnery and retreat Center in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, for a 12 day retreat with Shinzen.  While I know he will present a variety of techniques for people to try, with the aim of finding what works well for you or simply making your mind more flexible, I've already decided that I'm going to concentrate on meditation procedures for sensing "flow."  That is, whatever sensory channel I'm paying attention to, input from the five classical senses or the actions of my mind (visual imagery or internal talk), I'm going to try to be aware, with concentration, clarity, and equanimity, not only of the particulars of the content at any moment, but of the way it changes from moment to moment, its flow.  Flow is Shinzen's modern term, which he thinks covers most, if not all, understandings of the crucial concept of "impermanence" in Buddhism.

If I happen to be meditating with my eyes closed, for example, observing visual imagery on my inner mental screen, I might notice that it's relatively restful at this moment, mainly black-and-white or faintly colored dots flickering on and off, like looking at static, "snow" on a TV set tuned to a channel which has no broadcast on it.  But the flickering on and off of these dots can actually be seen as flow, one momentary pattern changing into another.  Indeed, more specific imagery will almost certainly appear as I continue to pay attention, and one image will morph, will flow into another and another and other.  A brief image of a car driving along a highway, e.g., morphs into a forest, which morphs into clouds in the sky, which morphs into a wall, etc., etc.  Keeping aware of these changes, with equanimity, concentration, and clarity, is what Shinzen describes as meditating on flow or impermanence.

Peace – Resting in the "Nature of Mind?"  Or?

To my surprise – except I didn't really feel surprised at the time – I had five or six experiences, each 5 to 20 min. or so long, that were, from their own internal perspective, nothing special, but, from the perspective of my ordinary mind activity, were extraordinary!  I didn't do anything that had the intention of bringing these specific experience or states on, or to maintain them, or to prolong them.

While there is much formal meditating in the zendo (meditation hall) during Shinzen's retreats, one can attend these or not, as one wishes, and I often skip a number of these formal sessions in order to meditate outside in nature.  The retreat center is very pleasant that way, located in the hills above Los Angeles, and having a relatively undeveloped area off the parking lot with bushes, pine trees, etc. as well as more formal gardens and lawns.  In these "extraordinary but nothing special experiences," I would be sitting in a chair, looking off into the distance or at nearby pine trees or bushes, and practicing the previously described observation of flow meditation.  With my eyes open there was always flow in the sensory world: the movement of tree branches in the wind, occasional people walking at a distance, changing automobile noises from cars passing on a nearby road, etc.  With my eyes closed there was always plenty of flow in terms of morphing body sensations, morphing internal visual imagery and morphing internal talking.

Then I would notice, usually when my eyes were open, that I was "at peace."  That phrase doesn't quite describe it accurately, but I'm at something of a loss for words here – which is unusual for me, a champion talker.  I would be just sitting there, looking at the pine trees, for example, and find I was just contentedly sitting there looking at the pine trees.  I was awake and alert, but no longer doing any kind of technique, I was not wishing for anything in particular to happen or not happen.  I wouldn't say I was practicing the "Do-Nothing" technique, rather I wasn't striving to do or not do anything at all, I was just here, and now.  There was no effort, no striving involved in maintaining this feeling of peace, of calm presence.

I'm tempted to describe this as an experience of Peace, capital P, but from the inside it simply wasn't any big deal.  It's only from my ordinary perspective of knowing how incredibly rare an experience like this is in my life, especially one lasting more than a few seconds, that I realize how extra-ordinary it was.

I think I have experienced something like this only once before in my life.  Several summers ago my wife and I were on a Dzogchen retreat with lama  Tsoknyi  Rinpoche at his country center, Rangjung Yeshe Gomde, in northern  California.  After one of the teaching sessions one afternoon, we found ourselves just sitting on the hillside, watching the clouds move, feeling the wind blow, and the touch of the sun on our skins.  It was just so very peaceful and natural.  Again I make that statement as if this were very special, a retrospective judgment, but at the time it was just natural to simply be there for a few minutes, enjoying the sun, the wind, and the sights.

Although Shinzen's was a silent retreat, I did have my little pocket voice recorder with me, and since I was far enough away from others to not disturb their silence, I dictated occasional notes, trying to capture something of the essence of the experience.  Here's one dictated after several previous occurrences of this sort.

A moment outside that I think of as a Dzogchen moment.  I'm relaxed and enjoying the touch of the sun on my skin, the warm temperature.  The sound of a chain saw being used nearby is just the sound of a chainsaw, I'm not taking it as annoying, "What a horrible noise spoiling this peaceful place!"  My mind is spacious.  I'm not particularly trying to improve things.  I wouldn't say I'm Here and Now in any profound sense, I'm just here and now, quietly enjoying sitting or walking around.  I didn't do anything in particular to bring it on, except perhaps expected it, as it's happened several times already on this retreat.  I was doing a meditation, mainly on flow, a few minutes ago.

Rigpa, or Resting in the Nature of Mind?

Although I've been a student of lama Sogyal Rinpoche for many years, primarily trying to understand and practice his Dzogchen teachings about rigpa, the ultimate nature of mind, I've always had trouble, though, understanding what "rigpa" means, what "resting in the nature of mind" means.  Sometimes I think I basically understand it, sometimes I'm not at all sure that I understand any aspect of it.  The last few years I've felt that any intellectual attempt of mine to evaluate whether a particular experience is indeed "rigpa" or "resting in the nature of mind" always has the answer, "No."  If I'm trying to intellectually pin it down, I am in an ordinary intellectual state, not in rigpa.

As Sogyal Rinpoche's translation of a Tibetan prayer, Dudjom Rinpoche's Calling the Lama from Afar puts it,

Buddhahood is not attained by fabricated Dharmas;

Meditation made by the mind, fabricated by the intellect, is the deceiving enemy.

During these periods of peace, I felt that this was it, or at least a small manifestation of resting in the nature of mind…..

Because I hadn't done anything specifically aimed at bringing these episodes on, one of my notes concluded:

So an important part of "resting in the nature of mind" is not wanting it to be anything in particular.

Thoughts

As I understand it at this time, one of the clearest understandings Buddhism has is that our thoughts often run wild and both delude us and create all sorts of unnecessary suffering.  In my experience, though, this insight is linked to other teachings in many sources about thoughts that make it sound like a state with no thoughts at all is the ideal one.  I know intellectually this is an extreme I think is wrong, for as Sogyal Rinpoche has often taught it's not the arising of thoughts that's a problem, it's the "running after them," getting identified with them and tangled up in them in maladaptive and crazy ways that's the problem.

As I noted during one of these episodes at the retreat,

It's not like I don't have any thoughts.  Thoughts come occasionally, but not steadily, not all the time.  They're not terribly "loud," they don't automatically dominate my mind.  I still maintain some touch with the world around me, and can easily let the thoughts go.

Physical Pain

One of the reasons I had decided to focus on meditation on flow on this retreat was that I thought developing more skill at it would be helpful in dealing with my chronic, daily headaches.  If I could focus on various aspects of pain with concentration, clarity, and equanimity, and then see how these characteristics continually changed, either slowly or rapidly, I think the physical pain would create less suffering.  And indeed, I have found this to be true to some extent, although I'm not that good yet at meditating on flow.  The suffering is definitely reduced during a headache while I concentrate on observing flow.  Unfortunately, as soon as I stop doing the formal meditation technique, the headache comes back with its previous intensity, but Shinzen agrees with me that there will probably eventually be carryover from developing skill in meditating on flow that will reduce headache pain.  Here's a note I made on this during one of these peace episodes.

As I sit here, mainly just being present, looking out at the trees and grounds, I feel a headache coming on.  I can feel that the pain that kind of "squeezes," contracts my head is also kind of "squeezing," contracting my consciousness, reducing its clarity and scope.  I don't know whether it's "squeezing" it directly, or just triggering worries that the pain will get worse, so I worry that I should hurry to take some medication.  But it will be interesting to see if I can stay in this nature of mind – dare I use that phrase?  …..   Wow, the pain still builds some…

It's a few seconds later and I'd say yes, I can stay in this "nature of mind," at least temporarily.  I say that because it's easier to just relax, to just let go of a train of thought and come back to the present moment.

Comparison of Peace and Self-Remembering

This is not like Gurdjieffian self-remembering, sensing looking and listening (SLL) usually is for me.  SLL involves a deliberate distribution of attention, a small part of my attention keeping track of body sensations (usually those of the arms and legs), more devoted to listening to the qualities of whatever sounds occur, and, since vision is our dominant sense, most devoted to attentive looking at sight qualities.  For SLL, there is a small effortful quality to it, you have to do it, and when you stop doing it, it's effects (usually but not always aliveness and sensory clarity) stop.  These peace experiences, though, were spontaneous.  I didn't "start" them, I didn't "end" them.

What's amazing to me now is how it (this state) just goes on relatively continuously, rather than being (when I make deliberate attempts to rest in the nature of mind at other times) just sort of a second or so long, being rather undefined, being hard to see whether I've made any change as a result of my making an effort to turn my mind inward.  I guess I'm blest!

Dzogchen teachings, as I understand them, typically say that when you are resting in the nature of mind, there's no need to do anything else, no need to apply some specific meditative technique, but that if you do engage in such a technique, it is more effective than if you are in your ordinary state of consciousness.  I recalled this during one of these peace states, and decided to try a specific technique.

I just did the hundred syllable mantra, intending it as a blessing on the world, while I was resting in this nature of mind.  It's different than when I do it normally, it just flows more naturally, without being such a big deal.  Yet it takes away from the resting in the nature of mind to some degree to try to do it deliberately, to do a directed practice like this.  Perhaps it would get easier with practice, with "getting used to."  There's that wonderful phrase that Sogyal Rinpoche uses all the time, "getting used to."

Cessation of the Experience of Peace

Anything that starts also ends, and so

I'm now feeling, maybe half an hour after this clarity began, that it's starting to fade.  It doesn't particularly matter to me, it's just change….

But given how satisfying these experiences were, wouldn't I very much want them to continue?

One of the curious things about my experiences of peace is that I'm not particularly attached to them.  I sort of hope they will occur once in a while again, but it's no big deal!  It's nice to know I can be like that.  I don't think I'd want to be like that all the time, though, I don't think it would be very good for doing my primary work on bridging science and spirituality, writing, and so forth.  Curious that I'm not feeling attached.

Knowing With Words and Intellect, Deeper Knowing

Finally I should note how intellectual knowledge can long precede direct knowledge.  That's not bad, but it's not the same thing at all.  

Many years ago, intellectually I had the understanding that it was good to develop an "observer" separate from the ongoing content of experience, as it increased your freedom, but that this observer could indeed ossify and turn into something rigid itself, which prevented freedom, so you later had to break loose from this.  Perhaps I'm now ready to see it on a deeper level than just intellectually

And So……

All this reminds me of Gurdjieff's admonition to work as if everything depends on work, pray as if everything depends on prayer.  Do what I can and do it well, and be open to "gifts."  My intellectual mind that likes to understand things (on its own terms!) can't see a clear reason why these peace experiences happened.  Oh a vague one, yes, all these years of a variety of psychological clearing and spiritual development practices laid the groundwork, but that's not at all specific.  So perhaps I should just relax and accept that, in some deep sense, this was a gift?  And while I want to continue my work of bringing science and spirituality closer, knowing that it's possible to be at peace like this sometimes is indeed a great gift…..

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Mindfulness

Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,

Lecture 5, Part 8 of 18 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: And that’s the problem with concentrative meditation. With concentrative meditation, some people can develop an enormous amount of concentration power, and they can get rid of pain because basically they’re focused here, and the pain’s there, so it’s gone. They’re all here.

But what else are they missing if they’re all focused here? That’s why the Buddha, who had mastered concentrative meditation, realized this was not a real end to suffering. When you were in these concentrative states – these jhana states – you got away from all ordinary pains, but eventually you had to pee, to come back from your abstracted, concentrated state to the ordinary, bodily world, and the same chronic problems were still there waiting for you. That’s what spurred him to develop Vipassana, the insight kind of meditation.

Student: I got food poisoning a few years ago, and I actually tried to go into it briefly. Instead I ended up whining like a baby for several hours. So with something really intense like that, I’m just curious. What if the pain is driving you to delirium; is that still handle-able?

CTT: I’d say head to the ER instantly so somebody can be checking you from the medical side, and meanwhile you can be doing your internal practicing. In the case of chronic pains, where you know it’s not a medical problem that needs external attention, then sure, the internal approach is fine. But I mean, common sense would suggest that when you get some sudden, strong pain, that says something is wrong! Maybe something is badly wrong. So, again, we’ve got a lot of experts around here in modern life, doctors, who can check that for us.

Student: This discussion has made me think about – I haven’t been through this experience, but I can imagine childbirth is incredibly intense, and there’s a –

CTT: My women friends told me my kidney stone was like childbirth.

Student: Oh, is that right?

CTT: It’s a much smaller baby, but it’s a much smaller “birth canal!”

Student: I can only imagine.

CTT: And they routinely give twice the analgesic Demerol for kidney stones that they do for childbirth.

Student: Yeah. Yeah. Okay –

CTT: But I’d just as soon leave these woman’s mysteries to you ladies!

(Laughter)

Student: I can only imagine. But there’s a whole movement now around the mindfulness technique. Obviously a lot of women opt for natural childbirth, but now there’s this newer component of the mindfulness training – mindful birthing.

Apparently, if you are really present with it, the oxytocin rush after the contraction is just, like, really blissful. That is, you can actually feel how good it is after the contraction. Because if you’re resisting the pain the whole time – this is apparently the premise, and the people who have gone through it have said that it’s true – there’s resisting, resisting, and that’s your posture through the whole thing.

CTT: Yes.

Student: Whereas if you’re really mindful and get through the contraction, then you actually enjoy the – you know, your little gift after each one.

(Laughter)

Apparently it’s the chemical part, which it’s really interesting how so many people go through it and the whole thing – three, four, or six hours, however long – is really painful and difficult. Whereas just the shift of being present with it allows your body to actually experience what the chemicals are trying to help your body experience.

CTT: Oh. Yes. In Buddhist cosmology – and don’t ask me to check this against Gurdjieff’s various levels in all this, because I don’t know if this is true; it’s just interesting – they talk about different realms of existence, which some Buddhists take them as literally existing: the god realm, the demigod realm, the hungry ghost, the hell realm, things like that. Other Buddhists talk about them as if these are really psychological analogies. You know, you can find the warring “demigods” on Wall Street, struggling desperately against each other to make more money and all that.

But Buddhism does teach that the human realm, here, where we are, has the right balance of happiness and pain to be the optimal place to seek enlightenment. There’s enough suffering here to motivate you to want to do something, but there’s enough opportunity here to be able to do something effectively about it.

Pain is one of those inevitable things, you know. You’ve got a body. You’re going to get some pains occasionally. We can’t really forget about it – not that we have any choice, since we’re all here in the human realm – so let’s make the most of it.

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Dr. Charles Tart

Mindfulness

Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,

Lecture 5, Part 8 of 18 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: This third method, doing Vipassana meditation on unpleasant sensations and going into them, is a very interesting method. I strongly recommend Shinzen Young’s book, Break Through Pain, I think it’s called. He specifically tailors the instructions for Vipassana for dealing with pain, especially chronic pain that you can’t do anything about. You’re not going to get a medicine for it, or get better; you’re going to have to live with it.

And he thinks this meditative approach is a pretty universal cure. I don’t know if it’s a universal cure. I personally do not want to find out if it’s a universal cure! I don’t want to ever get some pain that can’t be fixed in any other way so I have to develop meditative skill to deal with it.! I’d prefer that to remain in the realm of theory for me rather than practice.

But it’s certainly true that bringing mindfulness and openness to sensations that are painful can change the way you experience them enormously. At least in some cases, judging from my own experience, that’s a very effective way to deal with pain.

But it’s a tricky attitude. It’s not like, “Well, here’s this pain. I’m going to pay attention to it in order to make it go away,” because that’s not really being equanimous about it, or really open-minded about it. That’s saying I think I know a way to sneak up on this thing and get rid of it, which is back into a forceful approach.

Forcefulness is appropriate sometimes, but really being open to the pain can change things enormously. Again, that equation we've talked about earlier – suffering equals pain multiplied by resistance. Now that can be expanded out to cover so many dimensions, and even the attitude of “I want to get rid of this” can be seen as a form of resistance that creates more suffering than is really necessary for the pain. And the equanimity part of it, I guess, also involves the fact that sometimes we just have to accept the fact that we’re in pain. That’s how it is.

I remember I was in horrible pain once. My wife ended up calling an ambulance, and they took me to a hospital up in Northern California. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, and I wanted them to give me something. To take away the pain! But they couldn’t give me something until they knew what it was, because otherwise giving me something might be bad for it. So whether I wanted to be accepting or not, I had to be accepting. It turned out to be a kidney stone that was passing, and they’re pretty awful. But when they finally diagnosed it and gave me a double shot of Demerol, I really liked that!

While I was in this horrible pain and trying to be cooperative and a good patient, the doctor from the next cubicle in the ER comes over and says, “You may not remember me, but I was in one of your altered states classes at UC Davis ten years ago, and I thought you’d enjoy knowing at least one of your students turned out to get into an honest profession.”

(Laughter)

And I’m thinking, “Is this social time here? What the hell?”

(Laughter)

So sometimes – what’s the saying? – if you use force and it doesn’t work, you need a bigger hammer. That’s what’s necessary sometimes. But if that’s the only way you can deal with things, by forcing it – you’re limited.

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One of the first ways this became clear to me was when I began training in the Japanese martial art of Aikido back in the 1970s.  I had been impressed with a demonstration of the art, and invited a black belt instructor, Alan Grow, to come to UC Davis twice a week to give instructions.  I started a student club, of which I was faculty adviser, to justify getting space on the mats in the gymnasium for this.

To my surprise and consternation, I could immediately "explain" Aikido far better than my black belt instructor.  As I would later put it, I had a "Black Belt in Talking" by the time I was twelve!  That's an amusing way of saying I was very glib.  But while I could verbally explain Aikido better than my instructor, I couldn't do anything, whereas he could toss me across the mat with what seemed a flick of his wrist.  It took me several years to learn how to learn in a different way.  What was required for Aikido was body-instinctive intelligence, not intellectual, verbal intelligence.  Eventually I learn to pay attention from my body, as it were, and actually begin to really grasp what Aikido is about.

Emotions were even more difficult, as, like most people, when an emotion arose it tended to hijack all of my consciousness, and then make all my perceptions and thoughts centered around and reinforcing that emotion.  If something had aroused a fear response in me, for example, I saw things as more threatening than they probably were, I had thoughts about other times I was afraid, and, of course, my body sensations reinforced the fear.  A fearful stimulus that may have lasted only a few seconds produced a self-reinforcing reaction that could go on for minutes or hours.

I engaged in many personal growth activities in the 70s, 80s and 90s, aspects of the Humanistic Psychology movement as well as a spiritual quest, and gradually learn more about what my emotions were and to be accepting of them.

I would not claim to have become particularly emotionally intelligent, but at least I was no longer really dumb and neurotic about emotions, and, similarly, because of Aikido training and meditation training later, I became more aware of what my body-instinctive intelligence was telling me at a particular time.

This morning I had a particularly clear example of how emotions ought to work when they are reasonably intelligent, rather than undeveloped or neurotic.  My wife Judy and I were having a silly quarrel on a topic we've had silly quarrels about many times over the years, and she mentioned that if she died before I did, I wouldn't have to do the things she expected me to do.  I responded, from an intellectual stance, that this was indeed true, but, on balance, the gains from this would be nothing compared to the loss of her.  To my astonishment, before I could finish that sentence I was all choked up and crying!  And a few seconds later, it was all over!  My emotional intelligence had risen and taken over my consciousness, reminded me of what was really important in my life, and, having perceived that I got the message, had then become quiet again.

This is my understanding of what Gurdjieff had to say about the intelligent way for emotions to function.  Emotions give you a different perspective on situations than intellect or body-instinctual intelligence, they come on powerfully to make sure you notice that perspective, and then, if you've got it, they quickly cease.  On the other hand, undeveloped emotions not only force a message on you, they kick off associations to all sorts of things that have ever felt like this, and you could easily have what I've called in the title of this note, "emotional seizures."  That is, instead of you getting the message right away, so you can act more appropriately, you go on and on with the emotion kicking off thoughts which reinforce the emotion which generate appropriate body sensations which kickoff more related thoughts which reinforce the emotion, on and on and on.  Your mind is seized!  Modern neurological research about emotions talk about how the emotional part of the brain "hijacks" the thinking part.

This is not to say that there are no long-lasting emotions which are useful, necessary and realistic.  Some aspects of life require long consideration, emotionally as well as intellectually and bodily-instinctively.  But most ordinary emotions, when they become intelligent, can indeed, from Gurdjieff's perspective, only last a few seconds, just long enough for you to get that message clearly.

It amazed me that in less the second I became so deeply emotional and was crying, and that it was all over a few seconds later.  But I'm glad to have had this very clear example to share some of my understanding about the nature of personal and spiritual growth, and hope this might be useful to others someday.

These ideas will seem quite sensible and have practical implications when you are in a calm state, and probably be forgotten when a strong emotion takes over: it happens to me that way a lot.  A strong emotion screams "This is the Truth, you feel it, it's Real!!!"  When that happens I try to note what the actual message of the emotion is and also remember about emotional hijack.  It's like a very loud alarm siren is shrieking and it's hard to think, but don't feel too bad about yourself during that alarm….

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Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,

Lecture 5, Part 7 of 18 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: I think at this point we can open it for discussion about the review, your current experience, the readings – what have you. But do try to stay focused in the present. It’ll make it more fun.

Student: My experience right now is in something that I’ve been thinking about recently. Right after meditation like we just did, I’m much more aware of my bodily movements. For example, sitting in class, I adjust all the time. I think I wasn’t aware when I was adjusting, yet it happens all the time. You just move a part of your body, don’t even think about it. But right after we did that, I moved my arms up to my legs and felt like I knew it was happening the whole time.

CTT: Mm hmm.

Student: That’s it.

CTT: If you look at other people, or if you begin to see yourself, we fidget all the time! Constant movement. You begin to think it must be really uncomfortable to be a human being in a body, judging by how we’re constantly adjusting ourselves to get more comfortable.

And yet when you sit still for a few minutes, it’s not that bad. I mean, there’s the occasional itch that you know you’ll die from, but by and large, it’s not that bad.

I heard that given as an example of the Buddhist emphasis on suffering the other day, that this is one of the subtle signs of how pervasive suffering is in our life – constantly fidgeting and adjusting, trying to make things better. Or maybe we’re desperately seeking the optimal pleasant position.

But if you’re here, in the vipassana sense, it’s not so bad.

Student: During my experience just now, I had an itch that I chose not to go into. However, I have a pretty strong body reaction to itches. There was a time in Marine Corps boot camp when itching was not allowed, and sometimes we’d be standing at attention for –

CTT: Itching was not allowed?

Student: Well, if you’re standing at attention, you –

Another Student: Scratching.

Student: – don’t do anything. So –

CTT: I would think scratching was not allowed. They can’t give you an order not to itch.

(Laughter)

Soldier! Don’t itch!

(Laughter)

Student: So I developed the ability to legislate that I would not itch, and used my will to do that. I can see a difference between just accepting that feeling and seeing where it goes. So I can see the difference between those two, and yet I still have this intense body reaction that surrounds itching – that seems to be experiential and historical – and I was curious of how –

CTT: Is it like you were traumatized in some way by having to ignore prolonged itches?

Student: Yes.

CTT: Yeah. Maybe you can sue the government on it.

(Laughter)

Probably not.

Once you see the many – I want to say the suffering in human life, but let’s make it milder – the many sources of “discomfort,” you can see the usual way of dealing with discomfort is to try to actively fix it. When you have an itch, you scratch it. When you get cramped, you stretch. When you’re tired, you sleep. When you can do things, and they’re effective, that’s pretty good. Most itches go away when you scratch them.

But there are a lot of circumstances in life where we can’t do anything about something that’s bothering us. You know, like we’re all going to get old and sick and die at some point, and not much we can do about it. Not to mention many other discomforts along the way.

So how do you deal with those things? You can deal with them as Bob illustrated in his story, by developing a kind of willpower. “I’m going to power my way through this and not show any reaction!” And that’s a skill, and it develops willpower, and it’s something we all need. Because there will be emergencies where it’s the only thing you can do and it may save your life. You know? Don’t move, because that will attract the attention of the sniper.

You can say, “Oh, but I itch. I’ve got to scratch.” Not unless you want to get killed.

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Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,

Lecture 5, Part 6 of 18 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: Now having said that by way of review, let’s try a little Vipassana for a few minutes.

I’m going to suggest relaxed Vipassana. You’ve just heard some specifics and details of creating spaciousness and ironing out the kinks in your flow and all that. I don’t want you to now sit and think “I’m going to create the perfect space and no kinks!” Just be curious as to what actually happens in your experience. Use the flow of the dominant sensation in your body as a convenient point to focus around so you don’t just drift away down Association Lane. But don’t try to do it perfectly. Don't do it tensely! That way lies madness!

So we’ll sit for five minutes.

[Begin exercise][Put a minute or two of practice between each of the following instructions]

Just be relaxed and curious about whatever body sensation is strong. Look at it to see what it is. Let it do what it wants to.

[Continue exercise]

If you find you’ve drifted way off from body sensation, just gently come back.

[Continue exercise]

If you find yourself talking to yourself in your head about what a sensation is like, it’s all right. Just gently bring your attention back to the sensation itself. Focus on sensing the actual feelings rather than secondary things like talking about them, thinking about them

[Continue exercise]

We’ll end now, so come back to sensing, looking, and listening. You’re in this room, attentive, curious, keeping a little bit of attention in the body, that grounds you here, mainly having an attitude of curiosity about what’s happening.

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When I become the Czar of Worldwide Words, I'm going to abolish the word "meditation."

Isn't that an odd way to start a blog on meditation?  Gets your attention, though.

I will write mainly from my role as a scientist, as a psychologist, as one of the founders of a relatively new branch of psychology, Transpersonal Psychology, although as a student of meditation and spiritual paths all my life, my perspective is "inside" and well as "outside."

As a field, mainstream psychology pretty much accepts the materialistic assumptions that dominate in most fields of science today, that only what is material is real, matter and physical energy.  The physical matter and electrical and chemical processes of your brain are real, consciousness is nothing but a secondary derivative of those physical processes.  From this perspective, all those things called "meditation" are indirect ways of controlling your physical brain's functioning, and so someday you won't have to spend all those (too often boring) hours sitting, because science will develop a pill that directly puts the brain in the best "meditative" state.  "Spirit" or "spirituality," from the materialistic perspective, is simply old fashioned nonsense, superstition, and best dispensed with, as it interferes with our rational functioning.

There certainly is a lot of nonsense associated with the spiritual, as there is with all fields of life, but in Transpersonal Psychology we think, to use that powerful old image, the baby has been thrown out with the bath water.  We believe that there is something real to the spiritual, and that its recognition and development are vital to individual and societal welfare.  Denying this hurts people.  If we totally accept materialism, there is no inherent meaning to life, and the only "sensible" thing to do is get as much of riches and resources for yourself as you can to maximize your pleasure and minimize your pain.  Then we all die anyway, and it means nothing.  (See my recent The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together for elaboration and evidence about this, and why genuine science actually shows the spiritual has reality to it.)  Where is culture going, when greed is a primary motive and nothing really means anything?  If we are really some sort of spiritual beings, though, and mystical experiences of, say, our inherent unity, the power of love, etc. are about realities, our relations to our fellow beings are quite different.  As just one example, what hurts you hurts me in some real sense, and cooperation and kindness are natural things to do, not some "should" imposed from outside.

Transpersonal Psychology is not a religion which thinks it knows the answers to all of this, but believes that applying the tools of (a more enlightened) science and scholarship to the spiritual can result not only in a better understanding of what's real and what's not, and how we can evolve, but in more effective ways to help people have genuine spiritual experiences and integrate them into their lives in a healthy way.  Yes, this is a noble goal, and yes, my life has been and is dedicated to promoting it.  Too, in contrast to a common belief in some spiritual systems that we were once much more spiritually evolved, I believe in and try to promote progress: we can evolve forward, not just hope to go back to what it was like in some more enlightened past time.  Who knows, perhaps there are even more spiritually evolved states than "old-time enlightenment?"

So what does all this have to do with my opening statement that I'd like to abolish the word "meditation?"

One of the questions I like to ask my friends and colleagues in various religions and spiritual traditions – and I must admit there's a certain impish quality behind it – is "Has there been any progress in spirituality in the last couple of centuries?"  There's been enormous progress in the various sciences.  In areas like physics, chemistry, medicine, we know enormously more, and can do enormously more than we could a couple of centuries ago.  So, are more people who enter a particular spiritual path today getting "enlightened," "saved," or whatever?  There is usually an embarrassed silence in reaction to my question.

One of the primary ways that has allowed scientific pursuits to progress so much has been clear communication.  In chemistry, biology or physics, for example, whenever the word "water" is used, it is quite clear that what is specifically meant is a molecular compound made up of two atoms of hydrogen to one of oxygen, which is liquid in a certain temperature range, vaporous in another temperature range, turns to ice in  another temperature range etc.  Nobody confuses coffee, tea, battery fluid, brandy, or anything else with water simply because they are liquids.  But, when somebody uses the word "meditation," what do they mean?

Within the particular teachings of the Sogyal Rinpoche's Tibetan Buddhist Rigpa organization, for example, there will be a relatively specific meaning attached to words like "meditation," "consciousness," "attention," "mindfulness," "awareness," etc.  But as soon as you go outside that particular teaching, all these words may carry different explicit and implicit meanings.  Now if we knew that all the time, it would not be too much of a problem – "Ah, we are talking about type 3 attention now as a basis for type 5 meditation" – but most of the time people are not too sensitive to the different meanings of the same word within different traditions.  But we think we know what is meant because the words are familiar.

Thus when someone tells me, for example, "I meditate each day," I really have almost no idea of what they actually do or mean.  At a minimum, it probably means that it is something they consider different from their ordinary life activities, but that's about it.

As a transpersonal psychologist and scientist, looking at how "meditation" is taught and practiced across many traditions, there are many, many definitions of what it means, and often no clear definition at all of what it means.  Further, the actual techniques for particular forms of meditation may be described in certain words, but any practice is learned within a context, and the subtle hints and cues and expectations in that context may greatly change the meaning of the particular words for a learner.  So the same set of instructions in terms of words, in different contexts, may mean people do entirely different things.

Another of the main reasons science progresses is that it looks at data about things from a wide variety of perspectives, then looks for essential commonalities to get at the essence of things.  But if you look at "meditation" to try to find such commonalities, you may find a few – sitting still, e.g. is quite common – but probably almost none that are universal -some "meditations" involve standing and movement – and many that have concepts and practices that are contradictory to other traditions.  You can't, to go back to our example, make a lot of progress in understanding the chemistry of water if some people who report the results of their study of "water" are using battery fluid, others are using coffee, and others are using brandy.

Now, fortunately for the world, I will never be appointed as czar of anything!  That's good, giving me too much authority tends to go to my ego, and I use authority badly.  Practically, I have gone on what I call "semantic crusades" several times in my career, trying to introduce more precise terms in psychology and parapsychology, and only occasionally been successful.  So I know that, realistically, nobody's going to stop using the word "meditation."  And usually using it to mean what they want it to mean!  So what I'm advocating, is that if you want to learn something about meditation in a particular tradition, try to get clear what's meant by the terms within that particular tradition, and try to put that meaning aside when you study in a different tradition.

The situation is further complicated because meditation is often defined in terms of words like "attention," "mindfulness," "concentration," etc., yet while these words are in common use, they often mean different things to different people.

If this is starting to make your head hurt to think about how complex this gets, I'm with you!  The important thing is not the words per se but learning how to direct your attention in specific ways, and what you see as a result of that, but, as in so many areas of life, words can help us begin to use our attention in the desired way.

The things these words refer to are important and vital realities, and it helps us if we can have clear definitions of what we're doing or trying to do, but I suspect with some of these very basic things like "mindfulness," are never going to be able to totally defined in logical and grammatical terms.  The old Zen saying, "The finger pointing at the moon is not the Moon," is so true!  But the finger pointing at the moon may be helpful.  If the moon is in the west and we're looking toward the east, the finger pointing toward the west may get us turn around, and that certainly increases our chances of seeing the moon.  Or we may stare at the finger……

Here's an example where I have particular problems with words.  This problem may be more acute with me because, as a transpersonal psychologist, I have to look at a lot of different spiritual traditions and techniques, but many people may have a similar problem.

Sogyal Rinpoche teaches about three components of meditation.  The terms he uses are "mindfulness," "awareness," and "remaining spaciously."  He's talking about three aspects of your mental functioning in trying to do the Rigpa system of meditation.  He is giving them specific definitions in terms of the Rigpa process of meditation, which is very good.  But I get "mindfulness" and "awareness" confused all the time unless I make a special effort to get them straight, because I hear these same words used with different meanings in other contexts.  Indeed, unless I go back to my notes, I may make a mistake in the next sentence about what he means by "mindfulness" or "awareness."  But one of them means "What is the meditation object that is focused on?"  That might be an external object, such as a picture of a spiritual master, or an internal visualization, but it's the focus point you try to keep in mind.  In my own mind I translate it as the "focus point."  Another part of your mental process, which may be what he calls "awareness," is a monitoring of the process:  "How am I doing?  Am I actually paying attention to the focus point, or has my mind wandered off on something else?  Am I successful in bringing it back to the focus point, or do I have to do it again?"  Rinpoche speaks of about 25% of your attention being on process monitoring, about 25% on the focus point, and the balance restfully remaining open.

I had been trying to meditate in various ways for many years before hearing this particular way of describing how to meditate, and I find it very helpful, and use it when I teach basic meditation.  But, as I said, given my background, I have to translate the terms he uses into "process awareness" and "focus point" in order for them to make sense for me, and to not get confused by the many other meanings of these words in both ordinary and psychological use.

So perhaps the moral of this post is as you begin to read any particular post or article or book about "meditation," figure out as soon as possible what the author means by key terms like "meditation," and it's probably a good idea to write those definitions down right away and keep them in front of you as you read on.  This won't guarantee that you become extremely good meditator, but will certainly avoid a lot of wasted time brought about simply through unnecessary confusion.

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Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,

Lecture 5, Part 5 of 18 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: Now once in a while, the transpersonal does get through to us. So one way to grow is to hope to have an overwhelming transpersonal experience that will force a new way of looking at reality on you, that’s going to be such a revelation that – wham! – it’s got your attention, and you feel a need to try to center your life around it, to live in accordance with that.

Probably the most certain way to induce that – more certain than all the usual mystical paths – is to have a near-death experience (NDE). Most people who have a near-death experience find their life tremendously changed. They’ve been talking with God for a while. Even the atheists. They have an especially hard time when they’ve been talking with God in terms of reconciling what they are experiencing with their belief system…..

The trouble is, the near- part is very tricky! So it’s not a method I recommend at all.

(Laughter)

Most people who get that close to death don’t tell you about a fantastic transpersonal experience. They get buried. So you don’t want to go that way. If life pushes you that way – okay. C’est la vie. But the more gradual spiritual paths are attempts to induce transpersonal experiences that can break through. That’s one of the routes.

The other route is what you might call the noise reduction route. The quieting down of the cocktail party so there’s going on in your head to give you chance to “hear” those higher kinds of things, and that’s what the mindfulness techniques do. That’s what certain kinds of psychotherapy do. They try to produce space between your thoughts and feelings and images, so that you can hear more subtle kinds of things

That’s the thing we’ve been focusing on. None of the stuff I teach in the mindfulness course really has anything to do with directly trying to induce transpersonal experiences, per se. It has an indirect effect of making it more likely that such an experience might happen because it cuts that noise level way down. That’s where we’re focusing. But if the higher experiences come, learn from them.

Student: I was wondering if your concept of noise here is analogous to Gurdjieff’s concept of the number of forces that are acting in a particular plane, or realm. He advocates cutting the number of forces by half, making the material world less dense. I’m looking for the connection to that thought.

CTT: You can make that connection if you want. It's interesting, but I didn’t make it.

Student: Okay.

CTT: Gurdjieff’s idea of the number of laws acting at various levels and all that – that always struck me as intellectually interesting, but something I would have no idea of how to find out whether it was true or false.

I mean, it’s true in a general, psychological sense. The more neurotic you are, the more restrictions there are on your experience and behavior. The more laws you’re limited by, in a sense. But whether these are specific laws – you know, whether there’s a book somewhere that states what these particular laws are and that they divide strictly by halves or – I don’t know, and I don’t know how to figure it out.

So if you find that sort of stuff useful to help you move along, great. But I don’t know what to make of it. Sometimes I think Gurdjieff made it all up to get Ouspensky, who was so compulsively intellectual, off his back!

(Laughter)

You know, Ouspensky was such an intellectual. Oh, he wanted everything explained in precise intellectual terms, and sometimes I think this laws and forces stuff was a sop Gurdjieff threw to Ouspensky…..but probably not. Probably he thought this was the real stuff……. and maybe it is.

Student: My impression in reading it is that he was creating a symbolic representation of an individual, just like you alluded to in answering my question.

CTT: Yeah. It’s certainly true psychologically, that the more neurotic and conditioned you are, the more laws restrict your behavior, even if they’re nonspecific. Well, they’re specific for you. You may be conditioned in a certain, specific way that, say, closed doors make you nervous. That puts a restriction on your ability to use rooms in an efficient, comfortable kind of fashion. When you have some therapeutic insight into what’s behind that, and kind of let go of that mechanism, it’s like you gained another degree of freedom, because now closed doors don’t bother you.

Student: Whew. Thank God he opened that!

(Laughter)

So that’s the little review I wanted to give you. Okay? We’ve been working with the three boxes in the left and upper part. The fourth one is there. We hear more about the fourth one in other kinds of courses. If any of you take the altered states course next quarter, we’ll be talking some about altered states that have some things to do with these higher sorts of things, but I’m functioning as a “noise reducer teacher” in this particular class.

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One of these paths, centered around the vipassana-type meditations I've learned from Shinzen Young, is about exploring the deeper nature of my mind.  On it, typically I'm sitting still with my eyes closed, observing some set of internal reactions.  If I'm paying attention to external sensations, like sound, still, my primary interest is in the internal reactions that are created, and in learning how to observe them with concentration, clarity and equanimity.  On this path, I learned a lot about how my mind works, either in response to sensory stimuli, or how it functions when it's not being driven by external stimuli, not being engaged in coping with the external world, but running on its own.  For example, I've learned how difficult it is for me to follow the simple instruction to simply pay equanimous attention to the qualities of sensation X, without getting lost in acceptance or rejection, or trying to change X, or trying to prolong or shorten it.  One of the most insightful things I see, even after years of practice, is that there are usually subtle biases to try to make my experience be of such-and-such quality, rather than simply observing it as it is.

I feel like this exploration of the inner workings of my mind gives me a deeper understanding of myself, and I have some faith that, as Shinzen says, paying equanimous and clear attention to these internal processes eventually clears out a lot of junk in the way the mind functions.  It also trains the skills of concentration and clarity.

The other main line is centered around my Dzogchen practice with Sogyal Rinpoche.  Now I should qualify what I'm going to say by noting that I consider myself a "poor" student in terms of what I think is the standard model of a "good" Vajrayana student.  I don't do the various sadhana, mantra-type practices, simply because I have no real faith that they will somehow make me acquire a lot of merit which will automatically up the quality of my spiritual life.  It would take a lot of time and energy to do 100,000 of this, that, or the other practice, and I think that, for me, that time is better spent in my work advancing knowledge as a transpersonal psychologist.  These kind of practices undoubtedly work for other people, but they just don't appeal to or resonate with me.  At times I worry that this means that I'm never going to make much spiritual progress because I am a "bad" student and I'm not following the basic instructions.  At other times I remember, because of course I'm motivated to remember this, that Sogyal Rinpoche says he offers a lot of practices, and while he recommends them all, he also strongly recommends that you find the practices that inspire you and work for you, and concentrate on them.

I should also add my usual qualification that my feeling of whether I understand the basic Dzogchen approach varies wildly, ranging from "I think I basically understand the main practice" to "I have no idea what they are talking about!"  So I need to occasionally evaluate what I think I do or don't know, but not get too attached to such evaluations…..

The Dzogchen practice which is of most concern to me is that of suddenly turning the mind inward, instead of being lost in the ongoing contents of mind, lost in one's "story."  This is based on the traditional teaching that samsara is mind turned outward, lost in its projections, nirvana is mind turned inward, directly seeing its own true nature.  When I take a moment to turn the mind inward, there is usually a brief moment to a few seconds in which the ongoing stories and reactions I was having to various content before, my "story," dies back down, and I'm simply here, now.  The vast majority of the time, my experience is that it's nothing "special."  I'm just here, now.

This is, in one way, a great disappointment to me in terms of my expectation that Dzogchen, touted as a fast path to enlightenment, would produce all sorts of wonderful spiritual experiences that would reassure me that I was on The Path and doing the right thing.  But I've decided that, in general, I'm not the kind of person who has extraordinary experiences, but I am a sensible, grounded person, able to be somewhat helpful to others.  Whether this is a rationalization for my inability to practice in a way that produces "spiritual" experiences, or whether it's the truth, I don't know.  Again a concept that is useful in some ways, but which I had better not got too attached to…..

On the other hand, since my usual state is to be lost in my thoughts and reactions to external situations, samsara, these occasional moments of simply being calmly here and now are rather extraordinary, extra-ordinary, outside or beyond the ordinary.

I'm seeing my current spiritual practice, then, as following these two main paths.  Usually I sit for 20 minutes or so each day to do eyes closed, vipassana-type meditation, and sometimes when doing this I learn something new about the nature of my mind.  Usually it's just a calming, restful period of time.  As to its long-term "purification" effects, I'm not sure, I hope that's what's happening, as Shinzen believes.  The Dzogchen practice of turning the mind inward, on the other hand, I find useful primarily in the midst of ordinary life.

Although it would probably be a mistake to totally equate them, I find this Dzogchen turning inward practice ("resting in the nature of mind" or "rigpa") to be like Gurdjieffian self-remembering practice.  In both cases I deliberately use my attention and intention to stop being caught up in the ongoing, unceasing story of reactions of my mind and come to the present.  As I've written elsewhere, when I first began doing this Gurdjieffian practice, for many years the immediate effect was a feeling of not only being here-and-now but of being much more alive, much more in contact with my environment and with myself.  Now it seldom seems that special, it's just here-and-now, but that's still quite good!

Okay, this is all very nice, but I must remember that the primary point is learning to be in the present, here-and-now, accurately perceiving what's happening outside and inside, rather than coming up with more and more clever sets of words and concepts about what's going on!

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