--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "sparaig" <LEnglish5@> wrote: > > > > > > > http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/cgi/reprint/44/2/133.pdf > > > > > > Whether or not this is "real" pure consciousness or not, who can say? > > > > > > Lawson > > > > Yup, that is the bottom line. All we know is that some transcendental > meditators suspend breathing for a period of time, most for some > seconds and one person for an entire minute and there is a correlation > with a mental experience they describe as "pure consciousness." These > brief holding periods were not extensive and even untrained healthy > people can hold their breath for up to a minute. Because the time > periods of apnea were not long, I am not surprised to see no adverse > or compensatory effects. > > I would note: CO2 will accumulate after a period of time. > Hyperventilating before holding your breath can minimize that, purging > CO2. So, were the meditators doing breathing exercises before their > meditation session? If not, it would be an interesting experiment to > see if those doing the breathing exercises first had longer breath > suspensions. > > It would be interesting to read accounts of divers who are experienced > at apnea. What kind of mental experiences do they have? >
Don't know, but your comment on CO2 is spot on. Kesterson (another pure consciousness researcher) found that there was no sign of reduced O2 consumption during those periods, but there WERE signs of slightly increased CO2 levels. He speculated that whatever state of consciousness was induced by meditation practice (remember, these were *spontaneous* breath suspensions) was slightly changing CO2 sensitivity as a side effect of the state of consciousness. IOW, the significance of the breath suspension was that it was merely an obvious side effect of the altered state, not some profound mystical correlation with the universe or something. Now, yogic tradition holds that some breath exercises may induce samadhi, and perhaps for something of the same reason, but again, its held to be a *spontaneous* phenomenon, rather than some attempt to stop breathing. The breathing exercise might not even directly alter CO2 sensitivity, but alter some neurological pattern in the libmic system, setting up up the same inhibitory feedback loops in the thalamus that TM is thought to. Or.. t might be some combination of CO2 sensitivity and related neural functioning that induces this situation. BTW, in the most extreme case in that study, the breath suspensions were up to a minute, and the total breath suspension state was more than 50% of the total meditation time. That should be seen as somewhat unusual, given there was little or no compensatory breathing afterwards and that the subjects were all in good health. Another point or so to keep in mind: measurement of airflow indicates that they were not holding their breath and that here was still a 1-2 hz respiration rate with exceedingly reduced breath flow. My own belief: the diaphram relaxes during this time (as evidenced by a slow inhalation over the entire "suspension" period in another study), while the beating of the heart against the lungs creates enough compression/ decompression to cause air flow at the observed rate. Yogic tradition holds that someone "enlghtened" can remain in this state indefinitely while meditating. Given the above minute respiration, I don't see this claim as implausible. Recall that it is the *state of consciousness* that is supposed to be the important thing here. Travis' model (taken, perhaps, from Austin's model in his books about the physiology of Zen) predicts that TM induces feedback loops that inhibit the free flow of data from the senses through the thalamus to the cortex and from the cortex through the thalamus BACK into the cortex. IOW, a state of "no thought" as understood by many Western physiologists. At the same time, the brain remains in an alert state, so all that is going on is normal alpha EEG restful alertness activity, but on a very large scale. Since the neurons of the brain are always attempting to optimize their connectivity regardless of what state of consciousness someone is in, samadhi can be seen as large scale optimization of the brain in an alert state without sensory or mental content. The primary place where this optimization seems to take place is in the frontal lobes, which is where we get our sense of "self," so the meditator's impression that this state is "pure self" is not unexpected. The finding that this idling state in the frontal lobes can persist in outside of meditation in long-term meditators can certainly explain why they claim to have an omnipresent Self that is not overwhelmed by daily activity. Fun stuff. Lawson
