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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While I hope that the field of Transpersonal Psychology will advance so much that in a few decades I'll be able to give great advice to these folks, Transpersonal Psychology is still a tiny, under-supported field and progress is way too slow…..

This is to share an example of the kinds of questions I get and my responses.  I have disguised the identity of this questioner to protect her or his privacy and paraphrased the communication for brevity.

Hello Dr. Tart.

My name is ********* .  I really enjoyed Waking Up and am on my second round with it.  In between I read Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous as it was recommended in Waking Up for people interested in pursuing further Gurdjieff's ideas.

As a Zen practitioner and having had interest in psychology since I was young, you have my attention!  I feel I have well above average perceptive abilities, that is to say, aware of my thoughts, beliefs, distortions, reactions and such. I can see it all very clearly.

The reason I am writing is that, as mentioned in Waking Up, I perhaps have some emotional issues (listed) that I am not sure whether they need to be addressed before seriously going further on this path.

I have been living in Japan for 5 years and although I really enjoy living here (despite the earthquakes), I feel there might not be enough resources for someone like me who wants to find a group and/or therapist to aid in my waking up. There is one Fourth Way (Gurdjieff) group in Tokyo but it's in Japanese (not so much a problem, but I wouldn't want to miss the subtleties as well as specific cultural issues might not apply to me).

I guess there are 2 things I wanted to ask and get your opinion on.

(1) Do you think there are/know of any resources someone in my position overseas could find in terms of a Fourth Way group, or is it best to go back to the States for that?

(2) Being that I have a good degree of self-awareness and self observation, are the emotional issues I have enough to warrant NOT going further down the road of serious work with Gurdjieffian methods?  I know it might be hard to access that not knowing me, but…I guess that disclaimer in the book just gave me pause. [I had noted in Waking Up that serious emotional issues could easily derail what one thinks of as a spiritual search into neurotic activity]  I really feel like between 2 stools as these emotional issues keep pulling me back into patterns that are hard to break on my own.

Well, I am sorry for writing so much as I am sure you are a busy guy. Thanks for your work and insights.. I am really enjoying discovering this work.

Here's how I responded.

———–

Dear ********,

It has taken me a while to answer you, as I cannot give you the answers I would really like to give.

> First, let me say I really enjoyed Waking Up and am on my second round with it.<

You might find my other two books on mindfulness useful.  Same basic subject, different ways of expressing myself.  One is Living the Mindful Life, the other is Mind Science.  It often takes me several different presentations of things, in different styles, to learn them. The latter book may be hard to find though….And remember, my books are introductions, far, far from the final word…..

> There is one Fourth Way group in Tokyo but its in Japanese (not so much a problem, but I wouldn't want to miss the subtleties as well as specific cultural issues might not apply to me).<

That's a realistic concern.  You might learn some things and entirely miss others if the Japanese are as subtle as they are usually depicted.

Getting to the heart of the matter,

>(1) Do you think there are/know of any resources someone in my position overseas could find in terms of a fourth way group, or is it best to go back to the States for that? <

I have no idea about G groups in Japan.  I have written a friend about it who is in the G Foundation, but he's traveling now and I'm not sure he's going to be able to offer any useful advice for your situation.

>(2) Being that I have a good degree of self-awareness and self observation, are the emotional issues I have enough to warrant NOT going further down the road of serious work with Gurdjieffian methods?<

In my ideal world, which I fear has little connection yet with the actual one, although I hope it does someday, any spiritual development group would have both psychological and spiritual work, with enough sensitivity and competence on the teachers of each to know when you need more of the other.  A meditation teacher, e.g., who knows when to say "Don't sit so much, take that up with your therapist," and a psychotherapist who knows when to say "I think that issue is reduced enough that you can go on with the relevant spiritual work, see that teacher for more instruction," or, even more importantly, "I think you are using this spiritual practice as a way of avoiding this basic psychological issue."  (spiritual bypass)

There are many G groups, so there might be some that have more psychological savvy, but maybe there aren't…..So I can't recommend any in particular.  On the other hand, you say you have emotional issues, but so does everybody.  Are they strong enough to seriously hinder your ordinary living?  If not, you can probably profit to at least some degree from G work – although some of the G groups are, of course, cultish.  I rather wish we had the spiritual equivalent of Consumers' Reports magazine, "Group M has a cheerful tone but most people leave after a few months, undamaged but with little growth.  Group N is unpleasant in tone, but those who stick it out claim significant growth, although about 5% are psychologically damaged by the work……"

Sorry I can't be more helpful.  I am glad when I can get people interested in spiritual growth, and frustrated that after giving them a start I can no longer be of much help……

Charles T. Tart

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Lecture 4, Part 15 of 19 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: One of the jobs of the field of Transpersonal Psychology will be to someday find ways to evaluate the actual kind of changes that take place in people as a result of spiritual pursuits, and then start correlating those with what kind of techniques we use to bring them about, what kind of people they were in the first place, what their teachers were like, their support structures, and things like that. So that some day we won’t just kind of expose people to a hodge-podge of spiritual growth techniques and hope something takes, but be able to give something that is suitable for a particular person.

My fantasy research project for you young folks to devote your lives to is to take the next million people who go into various spiritual paths and test the hell out of them! And I say test the hell out of them because we don’t know what test is going to have any relevance at this point, but we can get a lot of data and eventually empirically find out. Then follow these people up every five years. What percent are still happy in the particular path they’re on? What percent of suicides in a particular path? Which ones have left it, denounced the whole thing? What kind of actual personality changes, hopefully for the better, have taken place in these folks?

Follow them up every five years, something like that. Do this for the next 30, 40, 50 years. Eventually you’ll be able to empirically condense this down into a test where if someone says “I want to become more spiritual,” you’ll be able to give them a test and then say something like, “Well, with 80 percent confidence, I warn you to stay clear of Zen because the psychosis rate for your personality type is too high with Zen. But Sufism works very well for your type.”

But the next person that comes in, you say, “You’re a natural for Zen. For your type, there’s only a 1 percent psychosis rate and a 20 percent enlightenment rate.” That’s a pretty good deal to be able to say things like that.

(Laughter)

Student: Does that take away the fun of finding out for yourself?

(Laughter)

CTT: Well there is the fun of finding it out for yourself, but then I think there are too many people who come toward the end of their life and find they’ve wasted it. Because they wanted to grow spiritually and they feel like they haven’t done that.

Student: Arms and legs, Charley.

[Retrospective comment: I consider my teaching of mindfulness quite successful when students are able to spot when I've lost it, instead of demonstrating it!]

It would be nice if we had tests that were already developed that could tell you a person’s spiritual strengthens and weaknesses, and be able to then rationally suggest particular things that they should do. But we don’t really have anything like that and we’re not sure how you could develop them. I mean, eventually we can develop them, but meanwhile this could be done in a purely empirical way. One of the most widely used psychological diagnostic techniques is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). I used to know it pretty well because where I went to graduate school, a couple of people who were the main developers of it were on the faculty. So we MMPI’ed the hell out of everybody.

The MMPI was developed empirically. That is, they gave up ideas of, “If you answered true to liking roses, that means you’re more likely to be schizophrenic.” Who the hell knows what a liking for roses has to do with schizophrenia or hysteria or manic depression or something like that?

But working at the Minnesota General Hospital, they had hundreds of people in each category already diagnosed through intensive psychiatric interviews. Here were the manic depressives. Here were the hysterics and so forth. They gave them, I don't know, something in the order of a thousand true/false questions, all sorts of ways and then they simply saw which questions did the schizophrenics generally answer as true, especially as compared to a control group?

The control group being the visitors to the hospital who were, by and large Minnesotans, right? So Minnesotans were taken as a standard of normality.

(Laughter)

Something to be said for that!

And eventually narrowed this down into 400 and some questions which turned out to be one of the most valid tests around for being able to diagnose somebody. And you paid no attention to the meaning of any particular question. You just knew that if they answered true to a lot of these questions on the schizophrenia scale, the probability was getting higher and higher that they were schizophrenics.

You could do this sort of thing for various spiritual paths. You could find out that lots of true answers or particular choice answers to this question correlates with the fact that people who do a Zen path feel pretty enlightened after 15 years or something like that.

You could find it out empirically and, of course, you couldn’t help but analyze this stuff, and think about it, and come up with some ideas that way.

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Lecture 4, Part 12 of 17 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: You’re getting at the balance between an experience that is being relatively directly created by what’s actually happening at the moment, and starting to superimpose concepts of what should be happening over it. Those concepts can be very intriguing, but they’re never quite the same as the actual experience. So you can go through life, in a sense, ruining your actually experience.

…..Okay, how do I want to say this…..?

One of my qualities that I’ve had to work with all my life is gluttony, to use an old-fashioned word for it. And for my particular personality type, gluttony manifests as, “Whatever experience is happening to me, it could be better!” Which means it’s never quite enough for what it is. For me to learn to simply accept experience as it is – which mindfulness practice is very good for – makes experience much more rewarding than constantly thinking, “This could be better!”

Knowing that you’ve turned your attention away from sensing what’s actually going on and are now investing in words about it or images about it – those are the main ways that concepts are done – allows you to not get so carried away by these things. But it’s so easy to get carried away.

An example came to mind while we were talking about it. There was a world religious leaders’ conference in Switzerland some years ago. One of the delegates there was a famous Zen teacher, who was quite old at the time. He looked so relaxed that everyone figured the old guy is dozing…

The person who was writing about it was describing an afternoon session. The delegates were all gathered around a long conference table in this beautiful room. The windows were open and someone was giving the most elegant lecture about the nature of spirituality and all that when a gust of wind blew in the window, took the speaker’s papers, and blew them down the table real fast.

While all these people caught up in their words did nothing at all, the Zen master simply reached out and caught the papers as they went by, because he hadn’t been caught up in the words.

Concepts, beliefs, ideas about reality vs reality….

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Lecture 3, Part 1 of 13 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

(Lively discussions going on before class)

CTT: All right. Steady. Okay.

There are some times, like this moment when I feel rather scattered, that I feel very hypocritical in teaching the mindfulness course. But then there are moments when I’m mindful, and it reminds me that mindfulness makes a difference.

Last week I introduced you to Vipassana, insight meditation, and in a minute I’m going to ask you how your initial practice during the week went so I can see if there’s any further suggestions I need to give. But first I want to follow up on one thing that was asked last week. Somebody asked me where does Zen meditation fit in this continuum of concentrative meditation, where the focus is on the very narrow range of experience with equanimity, versus the full scale of Vipassana, where it’s open minded, equanimous attention to everything. And I think I pretty much avoided answering it because I felt like I really didn’t know.

So I talked to a friend of mine who did Zen for many years and asked him where he would put it in this kind of a classification. From his experience, but again remembering there are a lot of varieties of Zen besides the two main styles, Zen training starts with concentrative meditation, with a big emphasis on learning to follow the breath, and then it moves into a wider focus that eventually is what we might call a full scale Vipassana , that is, not just the most prominent body sensation, but open minded attention to whatever is happening.

And Zen shikan taza, this full scale kind of thing, is called just sitting, because there comes a point in the Vipassana where you want to transcend having a task orientation, because the task orientation automatically narrows your focus. So they call it just sitting, but of course you really do have an intention of being open and equanimous about what happens. But, if possible, all of that becomes background and you’re just clearly conscious of the flow of experience, of whatever is happening.

I’m still not satisfied that I quite understand that, so I’m going to have a conversation sometime soon with Shinzen Young – who is a Zen student himself, even though he teaches Vipassana, because he thinks Vipassana is much more teachable than Zen – and get his feelings about where on this kind of continuum you would place Zen, or if it’s simply inadequate to place it on that kind of continuum. So I’m following up on that loose end.

Body signals and pain

CTT: So how did people do in practicing Vipassana during the week? Let me get a little feedback here on what’s happening. Yes?

Student: When I started practicing, I noticed that there were these sensations of that, and then I would look at that, and then there would be this, and then there’d be this and this and this. And it was like really, really rapid. And I thought, “Is this right that it’s so rapid?” But then it seemed to slow down, and then it would be just this for awhile, and then this for awhile. And then it got to the point where it was just the aching in my inner thigh for a long time. I just sat with that and then the meditation ended.

CTT: So with practice you learned to be aware of an ache for a long period of time?

Student: Yeah.

CTT: Okay. Yeah. Things do change rapidly most of the time. And how fast they change is partly a function of the reality of what’s actually going on in your experiential stream, and partly the implicit focus you have. You know, although you say “I’m just going to pay attention to the strongest body sensation,” there tend to be implicit intentions about how fast you want things to change or not.

I’ve noticed sometimes, and maybe this is something you eventually see when you’ve done this for awhile, that I’m kind of semi-subconsciously willing my body changes to slow down so I can watch them better. Which, when you see something like that, that’s something to be aware of also that you’re putting little intentions into it. But you’re doing fine. Yes?

Student: Actually, that comes back to a question that we raised last week. Say you’re uncomfortable or you feel a back pain or a foot falling asleep, feeling that as sensation and then sometimes actually intending to change that sensation, as opposed to just purely being aware of it. How much of that is within the range of body mindfulness? It seemed to me that if I was in pain, then my body was telling me something and so I should react. But at the same time I thought that that would be less mindful, not exactly just purely being aware of it.

CTT: Well I think you’re thinking in the right direction. I mean let’s face it, our bodies tell us all the time, “I’m uncomfortable.” And you are already extremely good at following those instructions. But if all you do is automatically follow them, you’ll spend your whole life twitching, to use a “technical term” for that kind of motion, and it’ll be very seldom that you’re perfectly comfortable, and you’ll always want to change.

To not respond to the urge to move to make yourself more comfortable is, in a sense, artificial. But to develop the talent to be able to not do that, in the service of some higher purpose, is to develop a very valuable skill. I’ve never seen it expressed quite this way before, but I think one of the foundational principles beyond Vipassana is that if you simply give in to all your twitches, you’ll never start seeing below the surface of your own mind and body experience. You’ll never start seeing the deeper stuff.

So you have to learn to not react automatically; and to practice the attitude of equanimity also means, in a sense, to not react automatically. When you’re not practicing that, you know, if I’ve got an itch I want to scratch it and I scratch it. If I’m practicing equanimity and curiosity, then what I’m going to do is turn my attention toward the itch and ask myself, “What exactly does an itch feel like?” Not that I ask myself that question verbally, but that’s the attitude I take toward it.

And in terms of things that might be painful and the like, use your common sense. By and large, in the comfortable position you sit in when you’re doing meditation, you’re not going to have any sensations develop that pertain to a lethal event any time soon! So you can go much further than you ordinarily would, of just looking at it even though your conditioned mind is saying, “Well I’ve got to react to this or my leg will dry up and fall off,” or something like that.

Student: I’ve been experiencing a lot of back pain, so it was pretty easy for me to focus on that. But I don't know if it was my expectations, I was just sitting there thinking, “All right, I feel it throbbing. It’s not moving anywhere. I feel it getting more intense, less intense.” Why won’t it go away?

(Laughter)

I thought that by being aware of it I was able to separate the pain from my reaction. I mean, for that time period I didn’t move, where normally if I did feel a jolt, I would definitely move. So am I moving along the right path?

CTT: It sounds like you’re practicing very well. But don’t expect to “transcend” pain the first week. Okay? Maybe not the first year. And also, if you’re sitting in some really weird posture that’s putting a lot of unnecessary strain on your back, sit more comfortably! If you’re doing the full lotus or something like that, maybe that’s pushing it a little bit too far. I’m told pain does have an advantage as a focus for concentrative meditation or body Vipassana, because it’s intense and it’s localized and so it’s easy to stay focused on it.

One can take feelings of pleasure as the focus of meditation, but it’s much harder to actually meditate because we tend to get carried away on the pleasure. That’s why when I remember to go get a massage once in awhile, I don’t just “enjoy” it. I try to make it into a Vipassana meditation and follow it, every moment, with equanimity. But it does make it more enjoyable.

(Laughter)

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