Defining meditation has proved a difficult challenge for modern researchers. Conceptual definitions of meditation vary widely but generally lack empirical confirmation. The authoritative National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (a department of the National Institutes of Health) in the United States in 2006 defined meditation as “a conscious mental process that induces a set [...]
In his study of 1,599 members of the baby-boomer generation conducted in the US in the early 1990s, the American researcher Roof (1993) demonstrated that there had been major defections from organized religion in the 1960s and 1970s, coupled with an increase in New Age type movements which emphasized the superiority of direct spiritual experience [...]
Eastern mystics have often asserted that the presence or absence of altered states of consciousness (such as mental silence) comprise the crucial difference between religious ritual and religious experience. Western scholars such as William James (1902) mirror the Eastern ideas:
In just the degree that we come into a conscious realisation of our oneness with the [...]
In traditional cultures around the world, spirituality has been associated with better health. Both Eastern and Western historical traditions closely linked physicians with the religious establishment. In the East, Traditional Chinese and Indian medical systems clearly describe, even today, the idea that the mind/soul is an important influencing factor in health is integral to their [...]
The emphasis on personal development of consciousness and experience in Eastern religiosity creates a paradigm in which the achievement of health (in all its dimensions), is one stage on a more fundamental continuum of “consciousness development”. The starting point of this continuum is mundane, everyday life and the endpoint is variously described as enlightenment, sahaja [...]
While Western consumers generally perceive yoga as a system of physical exercises, the tradition is quite different. The term is derived from the Sanskrit yoga, meaning “to join” or “union”. Its aim was and is to achieve the perfect union of body, mind and spirit through a system of physical, mental, behavioural and ethical disciplines. [...]
In this excerpt from his thesis, Dr Ramesh Manocha highlights the scientific importance of religious and spiritual traditions.
The notion that religious and spiritual traditions have somehow evolved knowledge and methods to exploit the most potent of these mind body pathways is fascinating and provocative. Importantly these biological explanations might help to understand the mechanisms [...]
Dr Ramesh Manocha is a regular contributor on the blog Researching Meditation. The site explores the scientifically associated phenomena associated with mental silence based meditation. Much of Dr Manocha’s research is published on the site, including extracts from his research and graphs of his results.
The blog can be found at www.researchingmeditation.org.
In this excerpt from his thesis, Dr Ramesh Manocha discusses two studies which found adverse effects resulting from meditation.
Despite the very positive perception enjoyed by meditation, there is a small but significant literature describing both serious and non-serious adverse reactions. In 1971 at the Stanford Research Institute, Otis (1971, 1984) conducted a follow-up survey [...]
Dr Manocha explores the Eastern and the Western views of meditation in this excerpt from his thesis.
The traditional Indian idea of meditation is of a qualitatively unique phenomenon, involving a state of awareness, or mental silence. The highly developed meditator who attains this state, is not only less stressed and more relaxed, but has also [...]