‘Flashback Friday: Perspectives on Mystical Union’

     
You’ve heard of Throwback Thursday? Well, this is Flashback Friday, the second post of a hopefully weekly feature that will discuss topics from the past that I didn’t get around to writing about in a timely manner.


Today we revisit October 16 of last year on the campus of New York University, where the Mindfulness Project at NYU hosted the Psychology Department’s Dr. Zoran Josipovic, who presented “What Is Nonduality: Perspectives on Mystical Union” to an audience of about thirty students of neuroscience—and me. I ask that as you continue reading, please know that I am no scholar of any kind on this amazing subject, and that any errors discerned by the knowledgeable reader are attributable to me, and not to Dr. Josipovic.

Okay, so what is Nonduality? The Nonduality Institute says:

Nonduality is understood as the realization of a very subtle, non-conceptual, unbounded consciousness that is experienced as the essence of one’s own being and of all life. This is a mutual transparency of self and other, in which everything, including one’s own being, is revealed as made of a single, vast expanse of consciousness. It arises together with phenomena; it pervades the movement of perceptions, thoughts, emotions and sensations. This nondual consciousness is not known as an object separate from ourselves; rather, it knows itself.

This level of consciousness has been regarded as the source of positive qualities of being, in the sense that such qualities as compassion, insight, joy and equanimity manifest spontaneously when one realizes it. These qualities are experienced as non-referential, in other words, not a specific compassion for someone, but an open-ended state of compassion that pervades one’s entire field of experience….

Approaches to nonduality that focus on recognizing and dissolving mental constructions also de-construct the notion of the self. Any fixed ideas of the self, such as "I am a teacher" or "I am a good person" will obscure our realization of nondual consciousness. However, when we realize nondual consciousness pervading our body and environment, we uncover a qualitative, authentic sense of our individual self. Nonduality is neither the subject nor the object of experience. It is the unity, the oneness of subject and object.

Courtesy Dr. Zoran Josipovic

Buddhist monk exits MRI machine as part of the
neuroscience research of Dr. Zoran Josipovic, at right.

If you’re like me, you had to read that a few times, and that is largely because we Westerners are imbued with a tradition that makes us dualists by default. It dates back to the ancient Persian religion Manichaeism, a belief that existence is starkly divided into two struggling forces: spiritual light of good versus material worldly darkness. Manichaeism spread far, taking root throughout the Near East, in Africa, and even China. In the early centuries of the Common Era, Manichaeism was the principal rival to Christianity as inheritor of the pagan world about the Mediterranean. While it did not outdo either Judaism or Christianity, it did influence both to varying degrees; so it is in our collective consciousness today. (I won’t go into manifestations of Manichaean belief in esoteric symbolism, but it’s there.) Perhaps Manichaean thought is illustrated best by the archetypal image of the little angel on one’s shoulder imparting moral guidance while the little devil on the other shoulder encourages something else. I don’t mean to say Nonduality is exactly the opposite of Manichaean duality because Nonduality aims for the transcendent—achieving oneness with the world.

Powerpoint slide courtesy Dr. Zoran Josipovic.

Back to the Nonduality Institute:

Nondual awakening is not dependent upon a particular spiritual lineage. When we realize nonduality, we are not realizing Buddhism or Hinduism. We are realizing our own fundamental nature—the spiritual foundation of our being is self-arising. It is naturally there, and it appears spontaneously as we become open enough to uncover it. Although the different spiritual lineages describe nondual awakening in different ways, the arising of nonduality itself is unmistakable.

And now back to the lecture.

Zoran Josipovic, Ph.D., is the director of the Contemplative Science Lab in the Psychology Department at NYU, and an adjunct assistant professor for cognitive and affective neuroscience. He is the founding director of the Nonduality Institute in Woodstock, New York. His research interests are states of consciousness cultivated through contemplative practice, what these states can tell us about the nature of consciousness and its relation to authentic subjectivity, and the relevance they have for understanding the global and local organization in the brain. He is a long-time practitioner of meditation in the nondual traditions of Dzogchen, Mahamudra and Advaita Vedanta.

The substance of the lecture explained how mindfulness exercise, or meditation, helps reorganize the brain. It is not a secret that Buddhist monks achieve higher attentional skills, and greater tranquility and happiness thanks to their meditations. Josipovic’s research into the neuroscience of all that is unlocking the very real secrets of blood flow in the brain and other activities of the cerebral cortex during the act of meditating. In other words, the human brain is capable of Nonduality; the question is, how to master the practice of achieving it.

Powerpoint slide courtesy Dr. Zoran Josipovic.

The neural networks in experienced meditation practitioners change as they lower the psychological wall between themselves and their environments, Josipovic explained, and this “reorganization” in the brain is believed to cause what meditators describe as the harmony between themselves and their surroundings that they enjoy. Scientists refer to this as the brain’s “default network.”

Powerpoint slide courtesy Dr. Zoran Josipovic.

Josipovic defined the brain as being two networks: the extrinsic, which concerns things like motor skills, and the intrinsic—or default—network, which is actuated by mental reflection and emotions. The two do not work in conjunction for most people, and take turns in being active. They are in competition. This permits people to focus intently, being free from daydreaming, but can this competition be affected by cognitive strategy, such as meditation? Among the Buddhist monks participating in Josipovic’s research, there is evidence of the two networks being active together during their meditations, the key to the monks’ sense of oneness with their environs.

Powerpoint slide courtesy Dr. Zoran Josipovic.

Additional benefits to this research include gaining greater understanding of Attention Deficit Disorder, in which the internal goes uninterrupted with no balance with the external; and of autism, which is somewhat the opposite in that there is no internal awareness. Study into Alzheimer’s Disease also profits from this work.

For further reading into Josipovic's research, especially the specifics on the cognitive exercises, see his paper, Influence of Meditation on Anti-Correlated Networks in the Brain here.

Powerpoint slide courtesy Dr. Zoran Josipovic.

Powerpoint slide courtesy Dr. Zoran Josipovic.

Powerpoint slide courtesy Dr. Zoran Josipovic.

   

‘Cosmos Becomes Man’

     
I had been planning on checking out the open house at the Center for Symbolic Studies at New Paltz on Saturday—a program on neuroscience on the agenda—but instead I’ll stick to the city, and return to Centerpoint. You should check it out also. The second installment of the “In the Midst of Life” lecture series will be presented. (The temperature is forecast to rise to a tropical 42 degrees, so there’s no problem there.)

From the publicity:

Mr. Eugene Schwartz

Eugene Schwartz will continue his four-part lecture series “In the Midst of Life: Understanding Death in Our Time” on Saturday evening at seven o’clock. In case you missed the first lecture, here’s the overview of his whole series: Rudolf Steiner spoke frequently about the importance of understanding the role of death and the Dead, but the subject remains unpopular among American anthroposophists. Eugene explores Steiner’s often surprising and sometimes counter-intuitive indications about the nature of life after death, and suggests how much help they may provide as we face the challenges of modern life.

Lecture 2: “Cosmos Becomes Man” – This lecture will focus on the “second half” of our life after death, beginning with what Rudolf Steiner termed the “Midnight Hour” and ending with our new birth. As we examine this lengthy descent into matter, Steiner grants us insights into such issues as heredity and individuality, love and gender, and karma and human freedom.


Lecture 3, titled “Life Against Death,” is scheduled for Saturday, April 5.

In other news is this announcement:

Ryan Freeman and Paul Hertel are launching a new weekly study group Wednesdays, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. (following the St. Marks Group), “to begin humble, slow, but reverent work with the supersensible.” The first text is What is Anthroposophy?

The New York City Branch of the Anthroposophical Society is located at 138 West 15th Street, between Sixth and Seventh avenues.

     

‘Theosophical Society to host Mitch Horowitz’

     
I still haven’t gotten around to reading Horowitz’s book Occult America, but I do have this lecture on my calendar. His new book, which will be released January 7, appears to be another take on Kabbalist thinking. I’ll report back after the lecture.

From the publicity:

The Secret History of Positive Thinking

A Presentation by Mitch Horowitz

Sunday, January 26

2 p.m.

New York Theosophical Society

240 East 53rd Street

Manhattan

Can the power of our thoughts shape our lives? From the essays of Emerson to the mega-sensation of The Secret, Americans have long wondered about the hidden potentials of the mind – particularly whether “the power of positive thinking” can bring us wealth, health, and happiness.

Mitch Horowitz

Most serious people view positive thinking as an immature or unrealistic response to life. But award-winning author and lecturer Mitch Horowitz asks us to look again. In this lively and intellectually substantive presentation, Mitch explores themes from his new book, One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life (“brilliant” – Deepak Chopra), to seriously consider the remarkable history, astonishing impact, and compelling possibilities of positive thinking.

Rather than being a soft-headed philosophy based in bromides and page-a-day calendars, positive thinking, which began with mental-healing experiments of the mid-nineteenth century, has shown remarkable foresight in contemporary advances in neuroscience, addiction and OCD treatment, stress and recovery programs, and in today’s most intensely debated findings within quantum physics.

Surveying the history and growth of positive thinking, and the myriad forms it has taken, Mitch squarely considers the all-important question: Does it work? As he shows, a thoughtful consideration of the background, methods, and results of positive thinking make a blanket dismissal virtually impossible. He also looks critically at the internal contradictions and ethical dilemmas of positive-thinking philosophy – and considers how these shortcomings can be fixed or reformed to remake positive thinking into a persuasive and mature approach to life.

This journey through the positive-thinking revolution also highlights:

• How the now-familiar injunction to “think positive” bubbled up from occult and mystical subcultures of the mid-nineteenth century before becoming the closest thing America has to a national creed.

• How this once-outsider philosophy has revolutionized mainline faith – including today’s evangelical culture.

• The remarkable personas that shaped positive-thinking, such as philosopher William James, the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, and French therapist Emile Coué (who coined the world-famous but misunderstood mantra: “Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”)

• The iconic figures whose lives were impacted by positive-thinking philosophy, including suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Black Nationalist pioneer Marcus Garvey, and President Ronald Reagan.

This unforgettable presentation will give you a wholly new outlook on the history – and possibilities – of a belief system you only thought you knew.

Mitch Horowitz is the author of One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life (Crown, Jan. 2014). His previous book, Occult America (Bantam), received the 2010 PEN Oakland/ Josephine Miles Award for literary excellence. Mitch is vice-president and editor-in-chief at Tarcher/Penguin, the division of Penguin books dedicated to metaphysical literature. He frequently writes about and discusses alternative spirituality in the national media, including CBS Sunday Morning, Dateline NBC, All Things Considered, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, BoingBoing, Time.com, and CNN.com. He appears in recent mini-documentaries on the history of positive thinking; Ouija Boards; and occult New York.

Visit him at www.MitchHorowitz.com; on Twitter @MitchHorowitz; and on Facebook at Mitch Horowitz. He and his wife raise two sons in New York City.
     

‘NYU: Perspectives on Mystical Union’

     
And speaking of New York University and neuroscience, an interesting discussion is scheduled for next Wednesday night, hosted by the Mindfulness Project at NYU.

From the publicity:

What is Non-Duality?
Perspectives on Mystical Union

from Philosophy, Psychology and Neuroscience

Wednesday, October 16

6:30 to 8 p.m.

238 Thompson Street, Room 475

Anecdotal reports of contemplative experiences often describe a sense of unity that transcends self-object dichotomy and subsumes the multiplicity of phenomena in a unified field of awareness/consciousness. This talk will explore different perspectives on nonduality. The neuroimaging data will be discussed in light of experiential meditation, and the different models for the neural correlates of nondual awareness will be presented, including the recent research from our lab at NYU (Josipovic et al., 2012; Josipovic, 2013).

Zoran Josipovic, Ph.D., is the director of Contemplative Science Lab in the Psychology Department at NYU, and adjunct assistant professor for cognitive and affective neuroscience. He is the founding director of Nonduality Institute in Woodstock, New York. His research interests are states of consciousness cultivated through contemplative practice; what these states can tell us about the nature of consciousness and its relation to authentic subjectivity; and the relevance they have for understanding the global and local organization in the brain. Zoran is a long-time practitioner of meditation in the nondual traditions of Dzogchen, Mahamudra and Advaita Vedanta.


Reservations are required, so click here. I do not know why the flier says Room 451 and the press release says Room 475, but we’ll figure it out when we get there.
     

‘Peel your own image from the mirror’

     

So I did make it to the movies yesterday to see Free the Mind, (see post below) which turns out to be as frustrating as it is remarkable. The frustration isn’t the fault of the film; it is simply a fact that the neurology research into how governing one’s thoughts may beneficially impact the functions of the brain and body is merely beginning. (Of course, practitioners of Eastern spiritualities know something about that, but this documentary does not come from that vantage point.) What is remarkable is what we see on the screen, as three people who introduce meditative practices into their lives experience relief from severe symptoms of stress and anxiety. Long story short: two combat veterans, at risk of not getting their pre-war lives back, and one boy, approximately age five, show stunning advancement in reducing the psychological terrors plaguing them after seven days of practicing meditative and mindfulness exercises.

There is more to the movie, and the marvels are in the telling, but it is mentioned repeatedly that the science is incomplete, which is important to remember as you watch. “The brain is the most complicated organ in the universe,” says Dr. Richard J. Davidson, the lead researcher in the film. “We’ve only taken the first very, very small baby step. We’re just beginning this journey.” The scientists do not know why those who meditate enjoy more favorable preventative results from flu vaccination than those who do not meditate. Does meditation produce more neurons? They don’t know, and sometimes they don’t want to know. Davidson, based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (and a self-described “closet meditator”), explains how, when he decided to explore professionally meditation’s possible neurological benefits, he was cautioned against making a poor career choice. He ignored that advice, and has gone on to receive the acclaim of his peers in the forms of numerous appointments, awards, and fame based on his fruitful research.

In the case of the young boy, named Will, it is explained how he had a sorry story of foster home placements due to his behavior. At age three, the Big Nurse juvenile welfare and healthcare establishment diagnosed him with ADHD, and decided he had to be zonked into conformity with the drugs they use today to turn young boys into inanimate objects. The foster parents who intended to raise Will recognized that for what it is, and set about finding an alternative to solve Will’s problems. His behavior is shown a few ways: some difficulty getting along with others (as if that is unique among humans), an inability to focus (Ibid.) and, most significantly, an abject terror of riding in an elevator.

Needless to say, imparting the concepts and methods of meditation to a young boy with Will's history requires a delicate approach, and that patient touch comes in the forms of exercises that show why and when compassion can be expressed, and some practical lessons in the very basics of meditative practice. In the end, Will overcomes his elevator-phobia; where once the mere mention of an elevator would induce tears and anxiety, he concludes the movie, taking a ride up six stories, thanks to his new understandings of how to control thoughts and regulate breathing.

Naturally, the two soldiers have more serious problems to overcome. Their war-related Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms differ. Veteran Steve is haunted by the moral discrepancy between having been the good man he was before combat, and having become someone else during his service. Everything you’re not supposed to do in civil society, he explains, becomes what you have to do in wartime to survive. “The person I had to be to do my job was a horrible person in my eyes. A horrible person. And I was good at it.” Returned home safely, he struggles to assimilate into his own domestic life, which means overcoming anxieties and regaining the ability to sleep without reliance on Ambien. Veteran Rich is plagued with guilt, believing he could have saved comrades who were killed in action when their Humvee was destroyed by an Improvised Explosive Device. He says he ought to have died in their place. He cannot share his wartime experiences with family or friends, and his domestic life comes apart when his wife leaves him. “Maybe I haven’t really lived since I’ve been back,” he says. “I’ve been just kinda...here.”

The two are shown being instructed in processes more involved than what Will explored. The breathing exercises alone: In through the nose; out the back of the throat. In through the mouth; out the back of the throat. Close mouth, breathe through the back of the throat. Yoga stretching exercises have the men folding and crossing their forearms behind their heads, elbows pointed to the sky and hands placed between the shoulder-blades. (Something I can’t do.) “There’s a region of the brain called the insula that’s literally used for interacting between the mind and the body,” Davidson explains. “This area is dramatically enhanced in its activation during compassion meditation and will enable practitioners who practice compassion meditation regularly to feel the emotion of others more easily.” The brain’s prefrontal cortex, that anterior portion of the frontal lobes which is thought to process actions such as personality expression and discerning good from bad, is shown to have more pronounced activity during the subjects’ meditation. By the end of the documentary, Steve’s and Rich’s symptoms are shown, according to clinical data, to have decreased by about 40 percent after seven days of the meditation therapy. Steve finds enough peace of mind to sleep at night without taking sedatives; Rich says he is experiencing changes he didn’t think possible, that he is happy, feeling “like a kid again.”

As a kind of coda, Davidson finishes the movie reading this poem:

Love After Love

By Derek Walcott

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

     

‘Free the Mind film’

     
This afternoon I plan to catch the 2:45 screening at The Quad of Free the Mind, the documentary by Phie Ambo released last year that explores research into how the human brain affects the physical body, and the difference meditation may make.

From the publicity, a note from the director:

We are entering a new era – a renaissance where everything gets turned upside down. In all fields, science makes new discoveries that constantly change our world view and leave nothing the way we first assumed. Our knowledge expands and gets more complex. Constantly, new fundamental questions are raised about who we are as human beings. The more questions asked, the more obvious it is to me how many things we still don’t understand. I find that very inspiring!

Free the Mind is the second part of my trilogy on the fundamental human questions. The first film Mechanical Love (2007) was about robot science. Characteristic for both films is their location in the field where science meets reality and where scientists use dashes and question marks instead of dots. In Free The Mind the central questions are: What is a thought, and how does it create a manifestation in the body?

Can we make a physical change of the brain only by the power of thoughts? My personal reason for choosing this subject was sudden panic attacks a couple of years ago. It was a very physical experience, and I felt as if the record in my mind was stuck and that it took a physical effort to get the pick up back in the groove. I found that meditation could be the push I needed, and I became interested in understanding how it was linked. It made me want to open up the skull and look into the brain and see what was really happening during meditation.

Free the Mind is the result of that study. The film is not an answer, but the beginning of an ongoing debate on what is the human being.

Phie Ambo,
May 2012


Maybe I will see you there.