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Experimental Study of Mystical States
...First and foremost, we emphasize again, and again as in the case of genius, the vital importance of focusing more future research on the real thing—here, genuinely deep meditative and mystical states and persons who experience these—rather than on conveniently available but inadequate surrogates. Furthermore, although it would now be technically possible and certainly worthwhile to carry out more comprehensive and penetrating field studies of the Das and Gastaut sort, it should not really be necessary to travel to places such as India or Japan to find suitable subjects. One longterm consequence of the culture wars of the 1960s is the creation throughout the Western world of sizeable cadres of individuals seriously engaged with meditation and other transformative practices, at least some of whom would surely be willing to participate in meaningful scientific research conducted by sympathetic investigators.
Second, collection of new data should be far the highest priority until we really know something about what is going on in these unusual individuals and states. Most of the theorizing that we have seen so far is very premature, and implicitly presupposes that information derived from neurophysiological and neuropsychological investigations of “ordinary” cognitive functions can be extrapolated freely and without limit to “extraordinary” ones. This approach fails to take into consideration recent neuroscientific research revealing a previously unrecognized degree of plasticity even in the adult nervous system. The human brain is heavily weighted toward top-down anatomical connectivity and shows remarkable functional adaptability at all time scales, from milliseconds upward, with numerous mechanisms available to make some of these functional changes—for good or ill—persistent or even permanent (Gilbert, 1998; Kohn & Whitsel, 2002; Merzenich, Recanzone, Jenkins, Allard, & Rudo, 1988; Taub, Uswatte, & Elbert, 2002; see also Chapter 1). Such effects seem a priori likely to be reflected in the anatomical structure and functional organization of the brains of longterm practitioners of meditation and other transformative disciplines (as well as in persons who have undergone powerful mystical-type experiences), and indeed some evidence of topographically specific anatomical changes in meditators has recently appeared (Lazar et al., 2005). We should study these anatomical and functional arrangements directly, and with minimal presuppositions regarding their possible form.
This need for better empirical grounding also bears strongly upon our final suggestion, which is this: The more we can learn about the nature of essential physiological changes associated with deep meditative and mystical states, the better will be our chances of learning how to encourage or reproduce these states under controlled experimental conditions, which in turn will permit us to study both the states themselves and associated supernormal phenomena in greater detail. What is to be avoided here is the premature closing of scientific accounts that gave rise in the 1970s to the first generation of EEG biofeedback devices...
Second, collection of new data should be far the highest priority until we really know something about what is going on in these unusual individuals and states. Most of the theorizing that we have seen so far is very premature, and implicitly presupposes that information derived from neurophysiological and neuropsychological investigations of “ordinary” cognitive functions can be extrapolated freely and without limit to “extraordinary” ones. This approach fails to take into consideration recent neuroscientific research revealing a previously unrecognized degree of plasticity even in the adult nervous system. The human brain is heavily weighted toward top-down anatomical connectivity and shows remarkable functional adaptability at all time scales, from milliseconds upward, with numerous mechanisms available to make some of these functional changes—for good or ill—persistent or even permanent (Gilbert, 1998; Kohn & Whitsel, 2002; Merzenich, Recanzone, Jenkins, Allard, & Rudo, 1988; Taub, Uswatte, & Elbert, 2002; see also Chapter 1). Such effects seem a priori likely to be reflected in the anatomical structure and functional organization of the brains of longterm practitioners of meditation and other transformative disciplines (as well as in persons who have undergone powerful mystical-type experiences), and indeed some evidence of topographically specific anatomical changes in meditators has recently appeared (Lazar et al., 2005). We should study these anatomical and functional arrangements directly, and with minimal presuppositions regarding their possible form.
This need for better empirical grounding also bears strongly upon our final suggestion, which is this: The more we can learn about the nature of essential physiological changes associated with deep meditative and mystical states, the better will be our chances of learning how to encourage or reproduce these states under controlled experimental conditions, which in turn will permit us to study both the states themselves and associated supernormal phenomena in greater detail. What is to be avoided here is the premature closing of scientific accounts that gave rise in the 1970s to the first generation of EEG biofeedback devices...
