--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, William Parkinson <ameradian2@...> wrote: > > Hi Rob. What I found interesting in the pronunciation was simply this: books > on mantra meditation that I have state very emphatically that the mantra must > be pronounced absolutely clearly and correctly. I assume because they believe > that the mantra is some sort of sonic representation, if not sonic > manifestation, of the deity. Yet in TM we are told the mantra might will > change as we use it. And the mantra should ideally be a faint thought--not > something clear and strong in our minds.This was part of my interest in this > varient ways of saying the mantras. Â
I don't know if this is the "ideal" or just what happens for many people. Setting up an "ideal" certainly sets one up to add effort. Also, see my comment to Vaj: as the nervous system changes during meditation, the perception of the mantra may change as well. Does this mean the mantra changed, or only that the perception changed? How can you tell? Insomuch as TM is about rest, then worrying about such things is counter restful and therefore counter TM. And, it is easy to make the case that Pure Consciousness is the most restful (least stressed) state of the nervous system: stress interferes with the ability of the pre-frontal cortex to moderate the activity of the rest of the brain. During TM, the signs of restful alertness (high coherent alpha EEG) become very great, in the pre-frontal cortex AND between the pre-frontal cortex and the parts of the brain that generally don't have that good a connection to the pre-frontal cortex during stress. Anything that you do that interferes with this resting state (e.g. being judgmental about the strict pronunciation of the mantra) is going to be detrimental to the rest gained during TM and subsequently to the long-term effects outside of TM. Another way of looking at things is to consider the neural-feedback model that MUM researchers have proposed for how TM works: the effortless introduction of the mantra helps set up an inhibitory feedback loop in the thalamus which reduces the likelihood of sensory info passing throughout the brain. This includes the sensory info from our external senses as well as the internal thalimic-cortical loops we associate with thought, imagination, feelings, etc. This leaves the brain in a state of only optimizing its own internal state. Attempts to control the pronunciation of the mantra involve larger, higher-order functioning of the brain which tends to reduce the localization of the inhibitory effect. Note that this inhibitory effect doesn't have to be profound (and probably shouldn't be!). Meditators can respond to novel outside sensory input. Their brains still send signals to the heart to keep beating. They are not bound into this no-thought state, and when optimization activity starts to interfere with the inhibitory loop they are drawn outwards into normalish waking state where they perceive thoughts which signals them to start the process all over again. L.
