Alison Motluk has an interesting piece in New Scientist on how meditation does more than just make you feel good. It actually helps you perform better, and even alters the structure of the brain.

Of course, it has been known for a while that regular meditative practice confers mental and bodily benefits in good measure. Now, it seems, a daily dose can actually increase the size of parts of the brain. “Many studies have reported that the brain works differently during meditation ~ brainwave patterns change and neuronal firing patterns synchronise. But whether meditation actually brings any of the restorative benefits of sleep has remained largely unexplored.”

Bruce O’Hara and colleagues at the University of Kentucky have investigated this phenomenon.

Ten volunteers were tested before and after 40 minutes of either sleep, meditation, reading or light conversation, with all subjects trying all conditions. The 40-minute nap was known to improve performance (after an hour or so to recover from grogginess). But what astonished the researchers was that meditation was the only intervention that immediately led to superior performance, despite none of the volunteers being experienced at meditation.

“Every single subject showed improvement,” said O’Hara. “Why it improves performance, we do not know.” The team is now reported to be studying experienced meditators, who spend several hours each day in practice.

In other tests, Sara Lazar at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, used MRI to compare 15 meditators, with experience ranging from one to 30 years, and 15 non-meditators.

They found that meditating actually increases the thickness of the cortex in areas involved in attention and sensory processing, such as the prefrontal cortex and the right anterior insula. “You are exercising it while you meditate, and it gets bigger,” she says. The finding is in line with studies showing that accomplished musicians, athletes and linguists all have thickening in relevant areas of the cortex. It is further evidence, says Lazar, that yogis “aren’t just sitting there doing nothing”.

[Source: New Scientist]

Syntagma Media is going into book publishing. The first two titles will be by yours truly. These have been hanging fire for a while under different projects, and it’s time I got them published.

First : Nirvaneans. Jan/Feb 2006. This covers my extensive research over many years into the concept of Nirvana, and the people who have experienced it. It contains a number of compact biographies of Nirvaneans from various cultures, and charts their lives and work in respect of the Nirvanic path.

Second : COSMOSITY. Apr/May 2006. A book that started out as Mind Beyond Brain and shows how the “extended mind”, or Nirvanoception operates in normal life in the West as well as the East.

The following is a short introduction to COSMOSITY by John M Evans.

Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death.
The Gospel of Thomas

Two mighty legends bestride the stage of spiritual history: Nirvana and the Holy Grail. Nothing stirs our imagination, or our endeavour, more than these enduring mysteries.

Nirvana arose in India in Vedic times and remains the goal of some Buddhists and Hindus. The Holy Grail originated in the Islands of Britain among the Celtic druids, but took on Christian colouring through the Arthurian connection and the influence of later French writers. I believe the two legends are intimately interconnected, not by direct link, but because they refer essentially to the same thing: a mystical state which reveals to us our essential nature, and demonstrates that consciousness continues after death. Nirvanic-type experiences are the source of many tales of immortality, including the Grail story and the Philosophers’ Stone.

For thousands of years we have explored every physical facet of the planet we live on. In the 20th century we began afresh, searching deeper into outer space for ever-remoter clues to the nature of our being and its primordial history. It is my belief that the real exploration of the 21st century will be an interior one, into consciousness and beyond : Cosmosity.

The basic premise of this book is that “Nirvanic experience” is more common than we might suppose, but often goes unrecognized. Moreover, it is not an abnormal event, but a sudden emergence of our subtle background consciousness: our Nirvanoception.

I was surprised to find Deepak Chopra’s book SynchroDestiny out of print just two years after publication. In some ways it shows the difficulty of selling books on spirituality, however excellent. It may also confirm my own belief that writing too many books devalues an author’s “brand”.

Nevertheless, this is a really worthwhile piece of work on a difficult subject : “nonlocal” intelligence. The subtitle, “Harnessing the infinite power of coincidence to create miracles”, was probably written by the marketing department rather than Chopra himself. It very nearly put me off, and I’m an aficionado of this type of book.

There are two facets to his thesis : synchrodestiny, a state of infinite potential, and nonlocal mind, or the virtual domain, which is co-terminous with God, and other names expressive of the same.

Interestingly, at least for me, the two concepts make a good fit with the two cornerstones of my forthcoming book, COSMOSITY. They are similar to what I call Cosmosity ~ near enough the state of enlightenment beyond time and space; and Nirvanoception, the way we enter Nirvanic experience. Chopra’s effortless grasp of these concepts suggests someone who has experienced the state in full measure (see previous post : Nirvana and Nirvanic Experiences).

The second part of the book presents a programme of practise and activity for attaining synchrodestiny and knowledge of nonlocal intelligence. A very worthy exposition.

Despite being out of print, some used copies of SynchroDestiny are still available at Amazon. Check out the latest situation. Otherwise, you might try a library stack.

I posted a piece on Intelligent Design over at Syntagma a while ago. Since it fits better into the topic of this site, I’m reprising it here.

If you live outside the USA, you may not have heard of this. Briefly, the tired old tussle between the Creationists ~ who believe Genesis almost intact ~ and the Evolutionists ~ who support a range of variants on Darwin’s ideas ~ has been blown wide open by the “new” theory of Intelligent Design (I.D.).

Actually, I.D. is present in many types of esoteric literature, including the Prajnaparamita sutras of Mahayana Buddhism. Its latest incarnation, so to speak, has been through the work of the Oxford biologist, Rupert Sheldrake, whose “morphogenetic fields” carry the patterns of what we see around us. Essentially, when we look at someone we’re not seeing a “physical” body in the concrete sense we mean, but a field of consciousness with the patterns embedded in it. A human then is a concentration of consciousness produced with a purpose and by intelligent design.

This theory, backed up by countless “spiritual experiences” documented over the past 5000 years, places consciousness above matter. Matter arises from it in complete dependency.

Mainstream science, which believes the reverse, tells us that consciousness develops out of matter. So enough complexity in matter, produces thought and awareness. The mechanism which gives rise to the complexity in the first place is held to be the blind force of “natural selection”. The British astronomer, Fred Hoyle, likened this to a hurricane blowing through a scrapyard and producing a jumbo jet.

Sheldrake’s experiments, however, show that the “mind” extends beyond the body in remarkable ways. In his book, The Sense of Being Stared At, he demonstrates how the Extended Mind works, and explains it by his concepts of morphic and morphogenetic fields.

Some years ago I wrote a book called Mind Beyond Brain which covered the same ground, but based on personal experiences rather than scientific experiments. The book has not been published because I’ve been adding to it for years. It’s now morphed into COSMOSITY, and should be published soon.

Anyway, back to Intelligent Design. It has now been picked up by the Creationists in America because it speaks a more modern language than the Bible and has a lot of support among scientists and philosophers. There are doubts, though, among I.D.aficionados about the true motives of the Creationists. Could they be trying to get their ideas back into the school curriculum by the back door? Evolution is coming under sustained attack now for the crudeness and mindlessness of its approach to life.

Intelligent Design might well be the metaphor of choice for explaining who we are in the 21st century. I hope so. It’s time has come.

[Via Syntagma]