Meditative States of Consciousness

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Meditative States of Consciousness
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Types of Meditation

• Concentrative meditation
• Emphasis on limited attentional focus
• Mindfulness meditation
• Emphasis on heightened attentiveness
• Common Goal
• Break down habitual modes of thinking

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Concentrative Meditation

• Buddhist traditions
• Zen meditation
• koan, a riddle that is used to focus thought
• satori, sudden alteration of awareness
• Hindu traditions
• Yoga meditation
• mantra (words of significance)
• mandala (images of significance)
• Transcendental Meditation
• Muslim traditions
• Sufi meditation

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A Story

• One day a man of the people said to the Zen
  master Ikkyu Master, will you please write for
  me some maxims of the highest wisdom?
• Ikkyu immediately took his brush and wrote
  Attention
• Is that all?, asked the man.Will you not add
  something?
• Ikkyu took his brush and rapidly wrote
  Attention. Attention.
• Well, said the man, I really dont see
  anything deep or subtle in what you are saying.
• Ikkyu took his brush and wrote three times
  Attention. Attention. Attention.
• Angry, the man demanded, What does that word
  attention mean, anyway?
• Ikkyu said gently, Attention means attention.

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Elements of Zen

• Erect sitting posture
• Focus on breathing
• Concentration of mind

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Elements of Yoga

• Control of body
• muscle control
• autonomic control
• Release of energy
• chakras

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Types of Yoga

• Bikram (hot) yoga
• yogic exercises done in a heated room
• Hatha yoga
• Kundalini yoga
• Tantric yoga

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Elements of Sufism

• The spiritual path (tariqah) of Islam
• Seeks to apprehend divine reality
• esoteric branch of Islam

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Mindfulness Meditation

• Shikan-taza
• opening up awareness
• rightmindedness
• acute consciousness of current activity
• The Witness in yoga
• observe oneself as if you were an other
• karma yoga
• full attention to everyday activity

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Theories of Meditation

• Deikman (1971) Ornstein (1986)
• active mode
• analytic, sequential, discursive
• receptive mode
• intuitive, timeless, direct experience
• deautomatization
• stop shifting between modes
• perceive without habitual constraints

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Theories of Meditation Welwood

• 4 Levels of Awareness
• situational ground
• preconscious awareness
• personal ground
• awareness of individualized environment
• transpersonal ground
• basic ground
• awareness of object as the environment
• Meditation diffuses information so as to uncover
  basic ground

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Theories of Meditation Washburn

• 3 levels of awareness
• defocalization
• loss of selective focus of attention
• reduction of intensity threshold for awareness
• possible to be aware of less noticeable things
• immobilization of psychic operations
• motionless attention to experience

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Meditation and Physiology

• Meditation has measurable effects on bodily
  function
• Most effects of meditation are not clearly
  different from other activities, like relaxation
• Some practiced meditators can change autonomic
  functioning

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Mystical Experiences

• Ineffable
• Noetic
• Transient
• Passive
• Real
• Unusual perception

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Significance of Mystical States

• Authoritative
• truth of mystical experience transcends reason
  and logic
• Revelatory Insularity
• No obligation on part of nonmystic to accept the
  mystics revelation
• Alternate Source of Belief
• Revelation provides a basis for belief other than
  ordinary experience