I believe there is a huge and fruitful area of research concerned with meditation (which I think is a somewhat 'religiousy' term; I tend to call it, quite simply, "quiet thinking" or "thinking about nothing in particular").
Here are three interesting facts about quiet thinking and perception:
1. If the perceptual field is unchanging (e.g. "when staring into space" as in meditation) then the receptor cells (e.g. in the retina of the eye) go into a quiescent state called habituation. They stop functioning except for an occasional maintenance spike. The reason for this is: Why should the nervous system waste energy when nothing is changing?)
2. The eye can actually see individual photons -- which is a most remarkable thing, because it literally takes us through into the world of quantum physics. Those of you who are old enough might remember the watches with luminous radioactive dials (that is, before they were made illegal for safety reasons). If you took a watch that was almost at the end of its (luminosity) days and took it into a very dark place then it was possible to see an individual spark of light, or photon, every so often.
3. An individual photon striking an habituated retinal cell will cause it to explode into activity immediately. Not only this, but the photon will be photomultiplied tens of thousands of times in booster stages on its way along the optic nerve to the visual cortex of the brain. You may not be conscious of this but in a situation of perfectly balanced competing networks in your brain (e.g. you have a problem), the effect of that single, albeit multiplied, photon can have a decisional effect.
I believe that life can only be understood in terms of its ability to be "in communication with" (whatever that may mean) the quantum world, and this applies whether we are talking of the simplest unicellular creature such as a bacterium or of our own very advanced brains. There are some extremely brilliant scientists who are approaching this whole subject of life-consciousness-quantumfield interaction with great interest. Two books I would recommend are "Shadows of the Mind" by Roger Penrose, Prof of Mathematics at Oxford U, and Johnjoe McFadden, Prof of Molecular Microbiology at Surrey U. The latter is somewhat more relevant to present discussion.
You -- Selma -- mention "about incorporating meditation into our everyday lives". And why not? Every morning, I puff and pant my way to the kitchen, make a pot of tea and then puff and pant my way to my office. After I've got my breath back and poured a cup of tea, I sit there in no particular pose (usually slouching!), and find myself staring into space, thinking about nothing in particular. And then I might take a pinch of snuff (or three) and pour a second cup of tea and resume thinking about nothing in particular. It's the sweetest time of the day. And often the most productive.
Don't worry about those clever people who pour scorn on quiet thinking. There are others, as mentioned above, who are far cleverer who take the subject very seriously.
Keith Hudson
At 14:02 16/09/2003 -0400, you wrote:
Arthur,
Thank you so much for posting this.
I was particularly struck by the comment at the end about incorporating
meditation into our everyday lives in the same way we are now urged to
incorporate exercise.
Selma
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Subject: [Futurework] Scientists Meditate on Happiness
> Scientists Meditate on Happiness (Culture 2:00 a.m. PDT)
> http://go.hotwired.com/news/culture/0,1284,60452,00.html/wn_ascii
>
> Buddhism and science come together as the Dalai Lama looks for a way
> to relieve the world's suffering. Turns out researchers think they can
> learn a lot from monks. Kim Zetter reports from Boston.
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Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
