Consciousness & Physiology - Tony Nader of Maharishi University

Tony Nader is an MD and has a PhD in cognitive science from MIT, and despite this solid education, he has become a leader of the Transcendental Meditation movement surrounding the figure of  Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. 

I have nothing against TM as a meditation technique (aside from its tendency to promote spiritual bypass of hard emotions), but the cultish qualities of the "movement" are troubling, not least of which is need to buy your mantra from them to receive teachings.

Nader has a good grasp of the science, but he makes some leaps of faith in making the science conform to the Vedic context in which TM exists.  

Consciousness & Physiology

Published on Aug 1, 2014

Dr. Tony Nader, MD, PhD (MIT, Harvard) reviews scientifically hard and easy problems surrounding consciousness in biology and cognitive science. He proposes that consciousness is primary and only appears as matter.

Part One:


Part Two:

• Link to part one.
• Link to part two.

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Dr. Tony Nader’s lecture on consciousness

In this lecture given during a course at Stanford University, renowned brain scientist Dr. Tony Nader takes us on a journey of research on the understanding of consciousness: What happens, really, when we are looking at a red flower?

Nature is structured in layers – it starts with a gross layer visible to the naked eye, goes down to the molecular level, atomic level, subatomic level. At the basis of all of that is the unified field of consciousness. Within that field is a programming code which structures all the other layers of nature.

What is consciousness?

“Science in the past has limited itself to things usually considered ’physical’. More recently, in the past 40-50 years, we are starting to realize that there are laws which control and manage not only the physical, but also the mental field. Even consciousness – which  is something very abstract – has become interesting to the scientist.

What is consciousness? We can define it as an ability to be conscious about something. But is there then a difference between consciousness and awareness? Alertness? Vigilance? Focus? Wakefulness?“

States of consciousness

“In transcending, people can experience not a specific object, but consciousness itself. There are millions of people who have reported this experience – through particularly the Transcendental Meditation technique. That is consciousness looking at its own self.

What is interesting that in these states you also have different physiology. There is different brain functioning.

So we can talk about relative states of consciousness – changing, object-referring states – and about absolute states – non-changing, self-referring. The question is, for us: Is consciousness a something? Or is it just a product of language, brain activity, circumstances etc?“

Individual consciousness

“When I look at a red flower I can tell that there are photons of a certain frequency which travel in the electromagnetic field. They travel through my eyes, hit my retina, excite some neurons which release some chemicals leading to an electrical activity which, in turn, goes to a specific part of my brain and combines with my memory bank. After association, I can know that this in front of me is a red flower.

Yet all of this is the easy problem. Science is well on its way to describing all the details of this process.

The hard problem is: How do I subjectively experience the redness of the red flower? How do I become conscious of what I’m doing? Where comes the abstract reality of this seemingly very physical reality of our nervous system?“

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Tony Nader earned his PhD in Cognitive Brain Sciences at MIT, and continued with post-doctoral studies at Harvard University. An expert in neurophysiology, his quest for total knowledge led him to co-operation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Frederick Travis, PhD - We Create Our Reality

Frederick Travis, PhD, is the director of the Center for Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition at the Maharishi University of Management, an institution dedicated to promoting transcendental meditation (TM [image a copyright symbol here]) in all possible venues.

This talk was given at Stanford University.

We Create Our Reality

Published on Aug 1, 2014


Frederick Travis, PhD, director of the Center for Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition, explains that the concept "We create our reality" is more than a philosophical statement. It is a physical reality driven by neural plasticity—every experience changes the brain. Therefore, choose transcendental experiences and higher states of consciousness naturally unfold.

About the Center for Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition

The Center for Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition was created in 1972 when Maharishi University of Management was founded.  The purpose of the Brain Center was to delineate brain and physiological functioning during higher stages of human development. We have focused our research on practice of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique, because this meditation practice readily leads to the state of Transcendental Consciousness, pure self-awareness or inner wakefulness.  With regular TM practice, meditation experiences become integrated with waking, sleeping and dreaming.  The co-existence of these states is described in the Vedic tradition as the first stabilized state of enlightenment, called Cosmic Consciousness. 

Our research has delineated:

1. sub-stages during Transcendental Meditation practice (Travis 2001);

2. brain patterns and subjective experiences of Transcendental Consciousness, defined as “pure self-awareness” free from the processes and contents of knowing, a proposed fourth state of consciousness (Farrow and Hebert, 1982; Travis and Wallace 1997; Travis and Pearson 2000);

3. distinction between TM and eyes closed rest (Travis and Wallace 1999);

4. brain patterns and subjective experiences of  the first stabilized state of enlightenment called Cosmic Consciousness during sleep (Mason, Alexander et al. 1997) and during activity (Travis, Tecce et al. 2002; Travis, Arenander et al. 2004).

This research has culminated in a Brain Integration Scale that quantifies the progressive integration of experiences during Transcendental Meditation practice with waking—becoming more in touch with ones inner resources.  Scores on the Brain Integration Scale systematically increase with TM practice in college students (Travis and Arenander 2006; Travis, Haaga et al. 2009).  Brain Integration Scale scores are also higher in professional athletes who won medals in the Olympics, World Games or National Games for three consecutive years compared to professional athletes who did not consistently place (Harung, Travis et al. in press).   Thus, higher scores on the Brain Integration Scale may reflect greater connection with ones inner resources and so be more successful in life.   

References:
Farrow, J. T. and J. R. Hebert (1982). "Breath suspension during the Transcendental Meditation technique." Psychosom Med 44(2): 133-53.
Harung, H., F. Travis, et al. (in press). "High Levels of Brain Integration in World-class Norwegian Athletes: Towards a Brain Measure of Mental Fitness." Scandanavian Journal of Exercise and Sport.
Mason, L. I., C. N. Alexander, et al. (1997). "Electrophysiological correlates of higher states of consciousness during sleep in long-term practitioners of the Transcendental Meditation program." Sleep. 20(2): 102-10.
Travis, F. (2001). "Autonomic and EEG patterns distinguish transcending from other experiences during Transcendental Meditation practice." International Journal of Psychophysiology 42(1): 1-9.
Travis, F. and A. Arenander (2006). "Cross-sectional and longitudinal study of effects of Transcendental Meditation practice on interhemispheric frontal asymmetry and frontal coherence." International Journal of Neuroscience 116(12): 1519-38.
Travis, F., A. Arenander, et al. (2004). "Psychological and physiological characteristics of a proposed object-referral/self-referral continuum of self-awareness." Consciousness and Cognition 13(2): 401-20.
Travis, F., D. A. Haaga, et al. (2009). "Effects of Transcendental Meditation practice on brain functioning and stress reactivity in college students." International Journal of Psychophysiology 71(2): 170-6.
Travis, F. and C. Pearson (2000). "Pure consciousness: distinct phenomenological and physiological correlates of "consciousness itself"." The International Journal of Neuroscience. 100: 77-89.
Travis, F. and R. K. Wallace (1997). "Autonomic patterns during respiratory suspensions: possible markers of Transcendental Consciousness." Psychophysiology. 34(1): 39-46.
Travis, F. and R. K. Wallace (1999). "Autonomic and EEG patterns during eyes-closed rest and transcendental meditation (TM) practice: the basis for a neural model of TM practice." Consciousness and Cognition 8(3): 302-18.
Travis, F. T., J. Tecce, et al. (2002). "Patterns of EEG Coherence, Power, and Contingent Negative Variation Characterize the Integration of Transcendental and Waking States." Biological Psychology. 61: 293-319.

 

John Hagelin is a particle physicist and director of the Transcendental Meditation movement for the United States. When he was still a serious physicist, he was a researcher at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) (1981–1982) and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) (1982–1983).

Hagelin is now Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy at Maharishi University of Management (MUM). In recent years, his research has focused on connecting consciousness and the unified field theory. His ideas are considered fringe by the physics community and by cognitive scientists.

Despite this (or maybe because of this), he is widely cited by those who believe consciousness is primary to the existence of the universe, a position I have often criticized here. For example, he was featured in two of the most popular New Age "woo" movies, What the Bleep Do We Know? and The Secret - the first an example of how failing to understand science allows one to make all kinds of silly claims (as well as being a front for JZ Knight's Ramtha nonsense), and the second an example of how materialism and narcissism can be made to appear spiritual.

This summary is from Wikipedia:

Efforts to link consciousness to the unified field

Hagelin has attempted to combine his two area of expertise, linking Transcendental Meditation's view of consciousness with physical cosmology. Science writer Chris Andersen, Dallas Observer political reporter Jonathan Fox and physicist Peter Woit have written critically about Hagelin's research and publications in this area.[14][16][20]

In a 1992 news article for Nature about Hagelin's first presidential campaign, Anderson wrote that Hagelin, was "by all accounts a gifted researcher well known and respected by his colleagues" but that his effort to link grand unified theories of physics to Transcendental Meditation "infuriates his former collaborators."[20] He cited physicist John Ellis' fear that "people might regard [Hagelin's assertions] as rather flaky, and that might rub off on the theory or on us."[20] Fox observed that, while "once considered a top scientist, Hagelin's former academic peers ostracized him after the candidate attempted to shoehorn Eastern metaphysical musings into the realm of quantum physics."[16] In his book, Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and The Search for Unity In Physical Law, Woit acknowledged that Hagelin had published papers in prestigious journals that would eventually be cited in over a hundred other papers, but that identification of a unified field of consciousness with a unified field of superstring theory was wishful thinking and that most physicists thought Hagelin's views on this topic were nonsense.[14]

Hagelin's linkage of quantum mechanics and unified field theory with consciousness was also critiqued by University of Iowa philosophy and sociology professors Evan Fales and Barry Markovsky in 1997, in the journal Social Forces. They wrote that the connection relied on similarity between properties of quantum mechanical fields and consciousness, but that the parallels Hagelin highlighted between unified field theories and the Vedas rested on ambiguity, obscurity and vague analogy supported by the construction of arbitrary similarities.[26]

Hagelin was featured in the movies What the Bleep Do We Know!?,[27] and The Secret.[28] What the Bleep Do We Know? was described by Michael Shermer, writing in Scientific American, as being filled with "New Age scientists whose jargon-laden sound bites amount to little more than what California Institute of Technology physicist and Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann once described as 'quantum flapdoodle.'"[29]

In a sense, it's sad that Hagelin is where he is now. Prior to leaving the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in 1983, he had authored a couple a very highly cited papers in particle physics. One wonders what may have been possible if he had not gone off into the wilderness.

This talk was given at Stanford University, interestingly enough.

John Hagelin - Consciousness, a Quantum Physics Perspective

Published on Aug 1, 2014


Renowned quantum physicist, John Hagelin (PhD, Harvard), presents the thesis that consciousness is a unified field that contains nature's programming code and transcending through meditation is a pathway to hack / access consciousness.