Stanford University. Welcome back to Hacking Consciousness. And today should be very exciting because
we will have a live EEG demonstration by Dr. Travis who
came all the way here. It's quite a pleasure to have him here. He's Director of, as you can see, the
Brain, Consciousness and Cognition Center in Fairfield Iowa, of Maharishi
University, where he also got his Masters and PhD. And for the past 23 years he's been
studying brainwaves. He's been studying them so extensively
that he's published over 70 papers on them, and what he's
found is that there's a pattern between what your
frontal lobe coherence is, and your performance in any
field of activity. Whether it's sports, whether it's
business, et cetera. And I'm sure you'll love to talk more
about it. So please welcome Dr. Fred Travis. Thanks for coming. [APPLAUSE]. >> [APPLAUSE]. >> Thank you very much, Michael. I like to have a very interactive
discussion. So I'm going to ask people if you will if
you come down to the first six rows or so, and that when you ask a question I
can hear it and other people can hear it. So we tie in together a lot of the discussion that's happened at
earlier lectures. Specifically around higher states of
consciousness, and we'll be looking at this relative to how the
brain develops, how experience changes the
brain, and putting it in the larger context of we create our
reality. And I'm suggesting this not in the new
age, grand eloquence way, where they say it in
hushed tones. But in terms of the actual mechanics, or
the nerves of the veins, just how your brain is
actually functioning. So, I'm going to talk for 10 or 15
minutes, and then going to to open up for questions,
and talk again, and questions. So, first, how do we process? Whenever we see anything right now,
information comes in and it takes two paths. it's call the low road and the high road. The low road goes to the most primitive
part of the brain, the brain stem. And there's an automatic response. What this does is structures the mood in
the mind. Could be positive, it could be negative. It could be approach, it could be
avoidance. When 4 o'clock came around and you said,
oh yeah. Hacking consciousness. That brought some feeling in the mind,
should I go or should I go to the ocean or should I go out to
the woods. There was some feeling that came. At the same time what happens is the high road is where you're actually process
the information. That's where you actually see what's out
here, but notice what you see isn't really whats
there. What you see is a combination of this emotional tone plus what actually is
there. Now this has very real consequences, especially in in-group out-group type
situations. They looked at sports band, soccer and
baseball, these were New York Yankees, and Red Sox
fans. They had them in a scanner, they showed
them a video, and in the video someone got
hurt. Now, if it was a person that was on your
team, the part of your brain, as you'll see, that
became active is the part of the brain which is empathy, which
is approach behavior, trying to help the situation, experience what the
other the person is experiencing. If it was someone on the other team, the
part of your brain that became active was your
pleasure circuit. >> [LAUGHTER] >> And that structures the mood in the
mind and that's when you have the feeling
coming in. And while you might say, well this might
be true for fanatic baseball players, think of how
you feel when you're going down 101, when everyone else is
trying to get into the city and they're completely blocked
up, and you're going 65. Think of how you feel. You're, you're happy, you're good. This has also real ramifications, racial
profiling. They took policemen, they, they showed
them a video of a youth pulling something from
his pocket, and half the time it was an iPod
and half the time it was a gun. And they asked the police officer to
respond as quickly as possible because they have
to. And they had one other variable and that
was half the time was a youth of color, half the time it was
a white youth. When it was a youth of color, as you can
see here, 85% the policeman saw a gun. Again this is low road, high road. And that's their reality. That's what was really there. 85% of the time if it was a white youth,
they saw an iPod. So this is what we're doing. We, we don't get a neutral picture of the
world and take it into consciousness, but we're
actually creating it. We're creating our reality and based on
what we think is there is how we respond. Now before we go on to talk about the
brain are there questions on this? Michael did you tell everyone they had to
ask one question before they get to leave? [LAUGH] Yes sir? Is your microphone turned on or is it off? [LAUGH]
>> I have no microphone. >> It's actually for recording. There will be interference otherwise. >> Very practical question. So let's go on because there's low road
and high road, it's not, it's not built in, it's not like
a computer. When we get a computer we open up the
case, we pull out the computer. We push the on button, and then it rings
on and away you go. The brain's not like that. When you're born, your brain is
unassembled. Imagine buying a computer, reaching into
the box and pulling out a bag of, of components. That's the baby's brain at birth. They don't see the world, they don't hear
the world as a, as a sequence of sounds. They don't see a head and a neck and a
shoulder. They don't see mama and daddy. It's all disconnected sounds, sights. And what happens is the brain is
developing. Specifically over the first 20 years of
life. What this is looking at is connections
between the neurons, the brain cells. The X axis here is this is time in years. This is, the Y axis is the number of
connections between brain cells. We see it goes up in between zero and
three. It goes up so fast the child is making 24
million new connections every minute. So when your baby's sitting there, lying
there, what are they doing? They're making 24 million new connects
every minute. And that's how they're able to do what
they do, in three years, they get to control and
move the body. They get to parse the sounds into
individual words. They get to attach meaning to the words. And why is this happening? Because of, if the brain is the interface
between inter and outer. That's how we're understanding the world. They have all these possible connections
already made. And then they remain high from about three
to ten. And then there's a process of pruning. And this is happening in all parts of the brain and also in primates as well as
humans. In each of these graphs these are years. They start at age ten, and we see a
decrease. This pruning process going on. Now you may think, that's too bad. You know, how come we're losing
connections? You know is it something bad? Can we do something to keep connections? Is anyone here a gardener? Yeah, what happens when you prune your
bushes, sir? >> They look better and they grow you
know. >> Yeah. Yeah. And it's a little bit counter intuitive. You're cutting off branches, but what
you're doing is you're cutting up the branches that are
not very fruitful. And that's allowing the intelligent and
the nourishment of the plant to go to those areas that are
strong. This is what's happening in your brain. It's very much like pruning analogy,
you're eliminating the connections you have not used during those
first ten years. Now there's physical space. There's also energy to allow the areas
that you have used to get bigger. What you're doing in this whole process
between ten and 20 is that, so you're freeing the
individual from the stone. And if you have children, I have three
daughters, and up to age ten life is just bliss. They like to walk with daddy. They like to hold daddy's hand. At ten they only hold my hand if none of
their classmates are around. At 16, they don't even walk with me. They say dad, I'm fine. Go ahead. [LAUGH] 20 feet behind. And what is happening is as the
connections are dropping off, their sense of self is
beginning to emerge. Now something else is happening. That's the connections between the brain
cell that's called myelination. This is an output fiber here, and it
actually gets wrapped in this fatty layer. And what it does is it speeds up the flow
of the action potential about 20 times. So this is also going on. And it goes on at different rates in
different brain areas. The first part is the sensory system and
the motor system. So the child is born. They don't, they can't move their body,
they can't see the world. The first thing that happens is they get
to deal with the outside concrete world. At about six months of age the brain has been reorganized, so they can see the
world. The ears, by two years, have organized so
you can hear sounds. Now before that time, again the
information goes slowly. You may remember playing catch with your son or daughter when they're three or
four. They stand like this. The ball hits their chest, it bounces on
the floor and then they close their arms. And you say keep your eye on the ball. Well, they can actually compute the ball
in space as well as your eye at that age. But the connection leaves the brain, it
goes down the neck, goes the spinal cord, goes out to the arm, it takes a long time because those connections are
not myelinated. Similar things happening between the
connection between the left and the right hemispheres of the
brain. They myelinate between age seven and age
ten, and at that time the child can begin to think
more quickly. They can begin to have one specific idea, left hemisphere relative to the larger
idea, right hemisphere. The next area is the core of the brain. It's called the reticular activating
system that helps a child keep their attention at a very set
level. If you go into a group of third graders,
their attention is all over the place. Some people are hyper, some people are
really down. In the fifth and sixth grade they're able to have attention at a more controlled
level. Now the last parts of the brain to
myelinate are the connections between the rest of the brain and the
front of the brain. Front of the brain is important. I put CEO here. That's not a neuroscience term, it's chief
executive officer. That's what this part of your brain does. It gets information from all other parts
of the brain, puts it together, and sends it back
out. Connections between the rest of the brain
and this part of the brain start to myelinate at age 12
continue through age 25. Now this is getting in to the mass media. Here's a cartoon, scientific studies show
that the decision making parts of the human brain aren't fully developed
until the age of 25. Here's two teenagers. They have there skateboard there. This is the next slide in the cartoon. >> [LAUGH]
>> So then we have an excuse for this. We create our reality if your brain
circuits are telling you one thing, that's your
reality. And if for teenagers, the whole rest of
their brain is completely developed. They can see a situation, they can come up
with a plan. It's their plan, they're very passionate. They want to do it. The ability to see the big picture isn't
there. And that's why teenagers, especially 14,
15 year old boys have the stereotype of making
rash decisions. And just think of yourself at that age. Then around 18 or 19 they begin to settle
down, now their into college. But even between college freshman and
senior there's a huge difference. This is showing the changes between
basically high school and college. The changes are primarily with the front
of the brain, the ability to, see the big picture, the
ability to compute consequences. So we create our reality. As your brain is changing, so the reality, what you think is there is constantly
changing. We're also creating the low road response. We're actually programming the low road
response, but this is happening more through
experience. Questions up to this point? Let's move to the second point,
neuroplasticity. Your brain is a river, and not a rock. 70% of your brain connections change every
day. So you're going to leave here at six, and the
world's going to be a different place. Well actually the world's going to be the
same place. But we've considered some ideas here. There'll be some discussion here. There'll be different connections here. What you'll be doing is how you see the
world will be changing. There is a how fairy tales end now they
live happily ever after. Never happens with the brain. From your first breath to your last breath everything you're doing is dynamically
changing the brain. And this is, this is new. Well, it's 15 years, 20 years from now, but it's completely galvanized
neuroscience. Because what is this means is by your decisions, you can decide your brain
connections. This is work done by Michael Merzenik. MIchael, you see San Francisco. He's the one who's done most of the research, that has really brought this to
the fore. What he's did in this, he took aged chimpanzees and he touched their
fingertips, and he looked to see how the brain was
functioning, how the brain was reacting. You actually have a body map up here in
your brain, so when you touch your fingers, your hand, your arm, you
trace out this distorted figure up in your
brain. So there's a very hardwired known
relationship between the brain and, and the fingers. And the research. All he did is he touched the fingertips
with a vibrator for 20 minutes a day for about
three months. And then he asked, now how does the brain
respond when we touch the fingertips? Can you see what's happened? Yeah, it's bigger. Now, it's not as though it's growing. You know, after a while, I just don't have
anymore room. I can't take that next class. It's not as though the brain's growing. But what's happening is we're allocating a
hundred billion processors. Differently moment by moment depending on
what we put our attention on. So those of you that have been to the
ayurvedic consultants and they've taken your pulse, and they told you these
incredible things, but what's happen is that they've been taking thousands and
thousands of pulses and they've actually use more of their brain to process what's coming through their
fingertips. They're actually able to detect more
information. Let me just show you how much the brain
changes. This is from a zebrafish. This is the cell body here. This is the output fiber. These are, the branches, the dendrites,
the input fibers. In a dot, you see here, is a synapse. That's where another cell is talking to
this cell. And I'm going to show you consecutive one minute frames, and notice how this
changes. So notice how the dendrites are moving in space, now zooming in. Notice how they're jumping out. Notice how these dots are dramatically
changing. This is minute by minute. So when you're sitting in class you're
actually changing your brain functioning to take in
the information. And a good professor will repeat it two or
three or four times. And what that does is it helps to make those connections more strong. Here's a real life example, these are law
students who studied for their law exam versus those law students who did
not do any extra work. This is looking at myelination, so myelination
is the white matter, it makes information go
more quickly. It's blue if it's higher. And what we see is many connections with
the frontal areas of the brain have grown just by
adding additional focus. So college is changing your brain. There should be a little disclaimer when
you sign up to come to Stanford, and say this college
education will change your brain. >> [LAUGH]. Because that's what it's doing and it's dependent on where your decisions go it's
going to be art or computer science or management or literature or whatever you'd
be doing. Lets just look at some other examples of
experience changes in the brain this is looking top down back
part of the brain. This is where the visual system and this
is what's active when you or I are reading a book, but what
happens if you're blind? If no information is going from your eyes
to the back part of your brain? Does it just sit there? No this is a blind person reading braille. This is the part of the brain that they
use. Notice the part of the brain that we use
for vision, they're using for touch. This is the plasticity of the human brain. By the way, it takes about a year for this
to happen. They've looked at people who have lost
their sight. And they've seen how long has it taken
them to take information in through their fingertips,
and it takes about a year. But it happens. The brain is a river, and not a rock. We're creating our reality with each experience, were creating different
circuits, which are then determining how we see the
next point in time. Now this also has the other side of the
coin and that is stress. Stress effects brain functioning. They the way that they operationalize
stress is how many times have you heard guns being
shot? Someone being beaten up? Getting stabbed etc, from never to more
than three times. And then they put them into four quartile
and you see the more stress a person has been
under. The lower is their measured IQ also the
lower is their reading. Wats also found is under stress the frontal areas of the brain get physically
smaller. Just living in a big city versus rural
living has its effect. Urban was 100,000 people or more. Rural was 10,000 or less. So more mood disorders, anxiety. The amygdala. The amygdala is our survival signal. So if you’re fighting traffic if you’re
fighting time if there’s noise, the amygdala is just
permanently high. And this leads to long time, brain,
changes in the brain. Now just before I finish this, part on the
neural, plasticity, I want to just dist,
distinguish stress from challenge. Cause somebody might be feeling...
I need stress to get going. You know I don't unless I have that pressure, I don't really start to do
anything. I think what your talking about is
challenge. Under challenge what happens is, the core
of the brain, the brain stem activates the
whole brain. Under challenge this sensory system is
firing more quickly. The CEO of the brain pass information more
quickly. We know the feeling of challenge, we have
lots of creative ideas, lots of mental energy,
lots of physical energy. What happens when the challenge gets too
high and we say its too much the brain actually down shifts
and is a stress response. To see here its turned off the medulla,
the fear centre is turned on. Sympathetic fight or flight response. And now you've gone from lots of creative
ideas to no creative solutions at all. From lots of mental and physical energy to
just no energy at all. So the challenge for today's world is
raise this challenge stress. Line. And this is something which, I think
meditation contributes towards, to allow us to take on more challenge without
it becoming stress. Questions? [LAUGH]
Yes sir. >> Myelination? >> Myelination? >> [Inaudible student question]. >> Yeah. How can it happen quickly? >> [INAUDIBLE]. >> It is myelination, but it's also the connection between brain cells, the
number and when we looked at the zebrafish, and you saw
the branches moving, and the actual dots
coming and going. That's more of what they see for the 70
percent of the brain changing. The myelination is fat and it needs it in
your diet. So if you don't, if you're malnourished
what happens is that part of the, that part of the brain breaks down and it leads to cognitive problems because information
starts going more slowly. Yes mam? >> Now I have several questions. With the myelination does that occur on
the, the main part of the, of the neuron or does it include all
the ingress of every single section of it? >> Only the output fiber, the axon. And what it's, the way it works is, when
the axon isn't coded with fat, the action
potential creates a change. Sequentially each point on the axon, it
takes a long time. When it's myelinated, of course that keeps
water or soluble things away. So the changes only happen between the
myelodes. And so it actually, it jumps from point to point, and that speeds up the whole
process. Yes mam. >> I have a question about the decision. Sorry I should have asked this in the last
section. About the decision making capability at 25. Is there scientific research which
says, which explains why we are allowed to drive At 16 and make decisions at that time
but you are not allowed to drink until 21, is there some, something that connects it
to how they arrived at that? >> Not to brain development, but notice
that you can't, rent a car until you're 25. The actuaries looked at incidents of
accidents and founds that when it acetones off. >> On that basis should the license to drive also be given at 25? [LAUGH]. >> They often most states now have
graduated driving laws and also as parents you want to institute things like first your kid
drives for a year without nobody else in the car. Because the frontal lobe primarily are
taking care of distraction. And there was a video on YouTube of these teenagers driving and there was a camera
in the back. They went through red lights, they ran
stop signs. And they're just talking, having a grand
old time. So first thing is not to have the
distractions, and then two people in cars, and, and so
on. Because what you want, remember experience
changes the brain, you want him to develop the driving habits and unfortunately, the
only way to do it is by driving. But you have to make sure they're in a
safe, structured situation, so that if they do make a mistake, it's
not too terrible. And this understanding of the brain is coming into, especially into law
situations. No that someone who's a teenager should
not be blamable for what they do but they're more adaptable, the brain is still changing and so rehabilitation can
actually help. And so that should be more in line of what
you sentence the person to. That's good other questions? Yes sir. >> Question on mialating. I, I, I believe part of the brain is not myelinated, [Inaudible student question] But I believe they're not mialating. So what is the function of myelination? >> Well sympathetic or parasympathetic when you
get out into the periphery so then the myelin can or
cannot be there. But definitely the brain is there. When you think about the sympathetic
nervous system, it leaves the brain and it goes right outside the
spinal cord. And there's groups of neurons, they're
called ganglia. And these are not myelinated. But then where they go to the target
organ, that is myelinated. It's actually a different type of myelin. It's called a Schwann cell. But the fact is, that myelization is a way for the body, to speed up, to optimize
it's function. At birth. You don't have it because that would
deprive the mother of all the fat that is in her and so that's why kids
like to eat butter. And we told our girls don't eat the butter
right from the plate. They would take it, so they would take it,
they would put it on their plate and then
they'd eat it. And they craved these omegas because
their, their body is adding so much fat. So much myelin to all parts of the body. There's another question? Yes Christa. >> This is back on the racial profiling
research that you showed. >> Yes. >> So has this research been shown to you
know police departments nationally? And if so have there been any programs to
help retrain police officers? >> Yes it has been shown. I don't know about. Any programs. I did go to the FBI for three consecutive
years for conferences to see how spiritual experiences could help reduce the toxic
effects of their day to day experience. 'Cause experience changes the brain and if
what you see is crime and abuse. And negativity, that's what's being
structured in your brain. It's like being fed a constant stream of
nightly news, and you think that's the reality of the world,
when it isn't. So there's a realization of this amongst law enforcement, because they have
bulletproof vests and it keeps the bullets from coming in,
but the toxic effects on the person's. Spirit needs to be dealt with as well
other questions? Yes sir. >> How do you maintain a consistent sense
of identity if your brain is restructured 70
percent everyday. >> Great question how do you maintain a
consistent sense of identity. The way it's done is through not structure but function. So you and what I mean by that is that
you're having continual activation primarily from the brain stem
up to the cortex and back to excuse me to the thalamus up to the cortex
and back to the thalamus and that can be maintained even
if some individual cells are dropping out. Here we have the thalamus. And there's two parallel roads that go
through the thalamus. We talked about low road and high road,
these are two other roads. And that is, the information comes in from
outside, and that gives us content. So that's me, that's the power point. That goes up to the brain, and this is one
level of how the brain is changing. The actual ongoing experience is changing
that. But there's also wakefulness coming up
through the spinal chord. Up to the thalamus. And what comes from outside goes to a
specific nuclei. What comes from down below goes to. It's distributed throughout the whole
thalamus. And what this does is it creates loops
with a cortex. But this is maintaining wakefulness. So these two things are coming together,
content and wakefulness. The wakefulness is your sense of self. And that wakefulness is, it's a distributed functioning, of, throughout
the thalamus to all parts of the cortex which is just
maintaining being awake. You know how you feel at nine, or ten, or
eleven, you just find that you're less able to, at night, you're
less able to deal with the world. That's because the wakefulness circuits
are slowing down, even though the content circuit is
remaining the same. So what is changing as we're growing up,
is the character of these wakefulness. Circuits are changing from a five year old
to a ten year old to a 15, to a 20. And as that is happening, your sense of
self is becoming deeper and deeper. And it's actually the next point that
we're speaking about is just growth of higher states of
consciousness. Growth of higher sense of self. Other? That was a very good question. Other questions? Let's go to higher states of
consciousness. The point I'd like to make is they're
inherent in the human nervous system. You don't have to bring anything from the
outside in, all you need are the proper experiences to
build the circuits to support. And let's take a step back. When we were growing up, from
sensorimotor, when we were kids, from three or four, to five or
10. Language is an important tool for
developing abstract thinking. Vygotsky ties development very much into
language, that we internalize the culture. And the way we internalize a culture is
through language. And what it's doing is it's creating a symbolic form that frees us from the
object. But now what happens is, we're identified
with, we're caught in, this symbolic form. We're caught in our thoughts, our
categories. We're caught in our paradigms. And so to continue to grow we need
something which will transcend that. Charles Alexander, a very systemic
thinker, tied Piaget's stages of cognitive development with
different levels of functioning. But what we have is when a child is two or
three or four, their sense of self is very much in
terms of their senses. And that's where their primary locus of
functioning is. Everything is in terms of objects. And if you're, if you're taking care of a
two or three year old, and they're unhappy, you give them something new, and their unhappiness
disappears. Because, whatever is on the screen, is, is
where their awareness is. And this is correlating with just the
increasing of connections. And then between three and seven, the next
level is preoperational. Preoperational, this child doesn't really
yet have operational thinking, but what they have is the beginning of it,
and they be, can begin to take a symbol, and realize the symbol has real reality to
it as well. You give a child at this age a box with a
present, and they look at the present, throw it out and
play with the box. because with a box, they can conceive it
as being many different things. This is this period, this is a time of
having maximum number of connections. Now, as the right and left part of the
brain begin to myelinate, we see the emergence of the
next Piaget stage, concrete operations. Now, you can think about external objects
and you realize that objects maintain their
identity as they change shape. To get from sensorimotor to here you need
language. You need to be able to have the symbol for
an object. As they continue to grow prefrontal
connections, we come up with Piaget's formal
operations. And formal operations, you can think about
thinking. And for Piaget, this is the highest form
of human development. Highest form of adult development. I mean, it really leaves a lot out. And, and what's happening in formal
operations is you get stuck in your ideas, and you get academics very angry at
each other because of their ideas. You get wars because of ideas. We're stuck in thoughts, we're stuck in concepts, we're stuck in our symbolic
representation. So what Charles Alexander says is we need
to transcend language. This is his quote. I'll let you read it. To continue development, to allow the self
to continue to expand, you need to transcend
thought. You need to transcend concepts. That's why he talked about transcendental
meditation. I like to just talk about different
meditations and see why he might have said this. Meditations fit into at least three categories, focused attention open
monitoring, automatic self-transcending. Focused attention is as it sounds, it's
voluntary focusing on a specific object. Open monitoring is non-reactive monitoring
or dispassionate observation of the content of experience from moment
to moment. In focused attention, you keep one thing
in the lens of experience. In open monitoring, you just allow
everything to pass through experience. These two have been delineated by Anton Lutz to describe meditations in the
Buddhist tradition. Jonathan Shear and I added this third
category, automatic self-transcending, and this is any meditation that transcends
the steps of meditation. Meditations in the first two categories
keep you involved in thinking. Automatic self-transcending, you start
with thinking and you just go to being, wakefulness. You transcend thought, transcend content. So once we have these descriptions, we ask
what does neuropsychology say happens in the brain
in terms of EEG. When you're focusing this is what you see,
it's called gamma. It goes up and down 20 to 50 times a
second. When you're just, following internal
processing you see theta two, this is it here, it's primarily in the front of
the brain. When the attention is turned within, and
you're just awake, alert, this is a brain wave you
see. This is time here this is a second. It's called alpha one. Goes up and down, eight to ten times per second, and notice it's over the whole
brain. As the mind is settling down to the state
of just wakefulness without thought, so we see the brain is settling down to a state
which is seen over the whole brain. So then we asked, what are the meditations
that report gamma? And they include Zen, compassion,
compassion Qigong. Theta is mindfulness, Kriya Yoga. Alpha one transcendental meditation. Also a 45 year case study of a Qigong
master. It's an interesting collection here when this person first started his Qigong
practice it was gamma, because it's a controlled
process of moving energy through the body. After 45 years, once he started to
practice, he reported this alpha one EEG. And it's bringing out how automaticity can
be gained. Automaticity is something psychology has
talked about for 30 or 45 years. Any controlled process can become
automatic with lots of practice. And automatic just means that it goes by itself, it doesn't take additional
resources. So we see where this Qigong master, going through a very focused, controlled
process over and over, was able to achieve this value of automatic self-transcending, to
go beyond thought. Transcendental meditation, it's built into
the process. So it happens very quickly in the first
week or so. So then we ask, what's happening in neural
imaging? So we looked at this is concentration
meditation, top down. PET scan, large areas of the brain are active because you're using lots of
resources. This is mindfulness meditation compared to
math. Brain is looking that way, this is the
part of the brain that's called the anterior cingulate
gyrus, it's your attention switcher. And so if you're moving your attention
from experience to experience, that's the part of the brain
that you would use. Transcendental meditation, what we find is
an interesting, pattern where the front of the brain, the CEO of the brain, the part of the brain that's putting everything together,
there's increased blood flow. The core of the brain, the brain stem,
that's breath rate, heart rate, activation, primitive
response, blood flow is lower. We talk about this experience as restful
alertness. This is the rest for the mind and the
body, this is the alertness. And again, experience changes the brain. So the value of whatever meditation you're doing is bringing that state into daily
activity. >> What's the significance of the
difference in colors, yellow, red, and green, yellow,
red, and green? >> okay. This blue means, red means increase, blue
means decrease. Here they show the increase with this
yellow color. Here it's, red is again high. It's the opposite and blue is low. So it's confusing isn't it? I didn't notice that before. This is usually what they do with PET,
this is typically what they do with MRI. To understand these different meditations,
meditations and focused attention and open monitoring teach you to construct
mental tools to better cope with life. Be it, being mindful so you have some
space between you and whatever experience you're in, so you're
able to have some perspective on it. It's almost like you being used to being
taught how to use a knife in a different way. Your mind is like a tool. Meditation as in automatic
self-transcending, rather than teaching you how to use a knife in a different way, you stop using
the knife and you sharpen it. And then when you take the sharp knife
back to activity, everything is improved. Everything is enhanced. And I think that's why in this, Sedlmeier
did a meta-analysis of 23 psychological
variables, and just the effect size, the X-axis here is effect size, what's the
magnitude of the effect, was just much greater from transcending
during TM versus other meditations. I'm going to stop and take questions and
then just go a little bit more deeply into this experience of pure consciousness, as it relates to higher
states. Yes ma'am. >> Make a little, few more statements
about coping with content, and I don't know that second thing was,
that you just said. >> Constructing mental tools versus
changing mental state? >> The one right after that, the coping
with content. >> I see, yeah. >> Changing mental state. Just say a little more about that. >> Yeah. So coping with content, meaning it's using
a cognitive tool to deal with a specific
situation. And so it may be in compassion meditation
where you develop a very positive, strong experience of inner compassion, so
that's there when you're dealing with outer
activity. That's versus changing mental state, is
you're actually changing what is the field upon which the content
is falling. What is the, the state upon which ongoing
experience is falling? It's very much as we were talking about
these different sensorimotor and so on. What is the sense of self upon which the
experience is falling, and depending on that will depend upon how you see the
world, how you respond to the world. Good. Yes, ma'am. >> Just, just wondering. If the brain doesn't stop developing until
about the age of 25, has it always been that way during
our evolution? And if so, I'm, I'm wondering why we were
created to go through puberty and have the ability to have children at
13, 14, 15, or whatever. [LAUGH] [CROSSTALK] And then to be parents
for ten years, while our brains were still lacking,
lacking ability. >> It's a very [LAUGH] very real question. I don't know the answer to it. >> [LAUGH]
>> Has it always been that way? I think it has. they, this whole change of increase and
decrease in connections is seen in primates as well as
in humans. And so it seems like it's, what this
nervous system is built to do, to allow us to shape it to fit into whatever
the situation is that we're in. And, why did, why does it take that long for full common sense to come to the
brain? It may be that it allowed people to try
things that an adult would, would never try. That's foolish, you don't want to do that. A teenager tries it and it might work. So it may have been nature's way to
continue to allow change and new thinking to come into
the, the process. Yes. >> And the other thing is, why is it then, what happens to the brain when we
get wisdom? Like I know I've heard CEOs say, you know,
you don't know what the hell you're doing
until you're 60. You know, does, does wisdom have something
to do with, the brain development? >> Yes. What I'm going to be showing you is
thickness of the brain, if it's blue or purple it's very thick, if
it's red it's very thin. And it's going to be over, it starts at
age seven. And what you're seeing here is these are
all sensory areas. What you see here is this is where you
create a concrete picture of the world, now the
brain's looking at you. Notice how the frontal areas remain thick
throughout life. So this is 27, 37, 47, 57, 67, 77, 87. So this is temporal area, this is details
of experience. That's very thin, suggesting that that's
not being used much in processing. This is touch. This is cross-modal matching, this is
where you take the outside information and create a picture, but notice the input
to that is, is diminished. This is the CEO. So what is happening is as you get older,
when you look at the world, you're seeing it less and less as an objective
fragmented, isolated, picture. What you're seeing it more and more is in
terms of its symbolic content. You see it more in terms of the flow,
where this happened ten years ago. This happened 30 years ago. You have that whole picture of time, and
you can see how each event is part of the
whole. And so I think that's why this, this idea
of wisdom comes out is because how you are experiencing the world has
fundamentally changed. Good, other questions? Let's continue to go down the road of
higher states. So the process of transcending, to
understand it we need to understand that the, the brain, the mind
is, has a vertical dimension. Surface level is conscious thoughts. At the depth is where we have intuition,
creative ideas. What we're doing with transcendental
meditation is taking a specific thought, experiencing it at earlier and
earlier levels of development. What's happening is the content is
becoming less primary and the underlying field of consciousness, we call it pure
consciousness, is becoming more primary. The underlying field of wakefulness, which
is putting things together, is becoming more the major
content of experience. I ask students to write their descriptions
of these experiences. And I ask them their deepest experiences
during TM practice and I told them I didn't want to hear
jargon. I wanted to hear what it felt like. What it is it like to eat a strawberry? You know tell me what it feels like. Then we did something called content
analysis. Content analysis you take phrases and
you'll see what's the idea that they encode. And then you see how many times those
phrases are used. And these are the three phrases we saw most, these experiences characterized
by the absence of time, space and body sense: absence of time, absence of space, absence of body
sense. Now these three matrices is what gives
meaning to waking. The experience we're having right now is
time. It's early evening. It's in this space in Jordan Hall. And there's some body sense. You're experiencing it from where you're
sitting. Now notice this experience of
transcendental consciousness, the very framework of waking state, has
disappeared. Let's just see the relationship of this
experience of pure consciousness with waking, sleeping, and dreaming using
this two by two grid. Sense of self, yes or no. Content, yes or no. What would be this one here? Where there's no sense of self, no
thoughts? Sleep. Very good. You know you've had a good night's sleep
when you've lost awareness, unconscious. How about here, sense of self and
thoughts? >> Waking. >> Waking, yeah, that's what we're in
right now. Yes, you hope. There's content coming in, but there's you
who's experiencing it, reflecting on it. I'd like to suggest that this is dreaming,
where you have these vivid dream images. Typically the self is completely lost. You're just identified with that. That leaves this cell, sense of self but
no thoughts. Now if you ask any psychologist they'll
say, that's not possible. That's what William James said. He says, I don't see an abiding sense of
self, all I see is changing streams of
consciousness, changing content. Psychologists, Ned Solis, were saying, how
can you be aware of yourself if you're not aware of some aspect of your individuality, the
fact that you're thinking or experiencing and
so on. But meditation practice gives this
experience, transcendental consciousness. And notice it's qualitatively different
than the other four. Also, we looked at brain waves. This is a, a more full
representation again, the x axis is time, each line is a different
part of the brain. This is a second. This is the alpha activity, it goes up
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
nine times. It's at eight to 10 hertz output. Notice it's over the whole brain. What we're going to do now is Louise, you
can come up. >> Hoping everybody's wake. [LAUGH]
Okay, have a seat. [LAUGH]
>> Get to see some fine brainwaves. >> Exactly. >> Now, I'll record them so you can
actually see them later. >> Okay. >> I did, yeah, about a month ago, I think
it is. Three weeks or a month ago. Yeah, that's what I did. >> So what we'll do is we'll look under the hood. [LAUGH] And we'll look at the Louise's
brainwaves between just sitting, her eyes are open and then we'll have her
start TM practice. And then we'll look more globally about
what's seen. So these first two lines is electrical activity coming from this sensor and this
sensor. This one's a ground. This line here is looking at something
called coherence. Remember when you're looking at all the
electrical activity, it tended to be going up and down
together. Mathematically, you can calculate the rise
and the fall of each wave. And you ask, how is that related? And that gives us coherence. So coherence is. You're going to have to look at the
people. >> Okay. >> [LAUGH]. >> Coherence goes from down here is zero,
up here to one. And notice it's highly variable. This is a healthy brain. What is happening is when 50 people are
looking at you, you're seeing them you're processing them,
some friends, some strangers, colors, memories, all these things are going on
and we're seeing that coherence is just going up and down and up
and down. These are eye blinks. Here you can blink you eyes, Louise. Now this isn't actually coming from the
brain, it's the eye muscles. The eyelids when they up, they shear off
some electrons at it makes that shape. This is, this is very fast, so here's a
second. You see this is going up about 20 or 30
times per second. This is a typical brain wave when the brain's awake and you're processing
the world. >> What kind of brainwaves are we seeing
now? I mean is it predominantly gamma or how
would we distinguish? >> Yeah, predominantly gamma. Gamma would be going up 20 to 50. So when you get it pretty much like a
solid line, that's gamma. So can she close her eyes for us? >> Sure. >> Just close my eyes [INAUDIBLE] >> Yeah, close your eyes and keep your
mind active. >> Okay. >> So her mind is just at ease now. >> You can. >> Am I thinking about something or no? It's okay. You can open your eyes. It's good. So notice, even with the eyes closed, this
is continuing to happen because when your eyes are
closed, you're still thinking. I'm going to record this so we'll have it. You're still thinking. You're still processing what is it going
to look like, etc. So now we'll have Louise close her eyes. Louise. And she'll start her TM practice. Thank you, Louise, and now you can stop
meditating. Sit easy for a minute and open your eyes. Good, thank you. So notice, during when the TM practice
when she it went up and it still oscillates but it
went up to the stop and stayed for a length of
time. It went down. It went down as she starting thinking
about different things. It went back up to the top again. What you're saying is the brain is very
easily moving into a state, a state of restful
alertness. It's different brainwaves which are being
activated there. Thank you very much. Any questions for Louise? Just the question in general
is, for example, the first part of it looks like it goes up is and then that is
greater when she has her eyes open. >> Is that just an illusion or? >> What it is, is when ever there's an eye
blink, it stops calculating the coherence. >> because you notice the coherence in one
between them. So that's what happens. So this is, it's waiting for the, that's
why I asked her to look at the crowd. because we can look at the crowd and then
it can actually calculate the EEG. That was great. There you go. Yes. >> [NOISE] >> Now Louise, Christa will help you take
the sensors off. Thank you. it possible to see a summary of the, of
what you just recorded? >> To compare before and after. >> I don't have the ability to do that,
but I do have some data which we can give you an example
of it would look like. Excellent. So what we, we're doing for Louise is just
looking at these two sensors here. And that was just for demo, for actually
research, we used 32 sensors and this is looking at brain
waves during TM practice. A dot is where you record brain waves. There's a line between dots, if those
parts of the brain are working together 70 percent
or more. You notice with TM there's very little
coherence in the Gamma and Beta region, because it's not a
process of effort or control. The coherence is in this alpha one. It's primarily in the front of the brain
but also extending over the whole brain. And the reason you want to add that is to
bring it into activity. This experience I suggest is, and you've heard before, is a fourth state of
consciousness. What's the criteria of a higher state is to be subjectively distinct from waking,
sleeping and dreaming. And we saw that. Yes, that this sense of self, no thoughts. It's a state which is unlike what you'd
see in waking, sleeping and dreaming. It's not a altered state of waking. It's a completely different subjective
experience. Greater breadth or sense-of-self, the self
is less in terms of outside activity and your experience and your social fame,
more in terms of inner wakefulness. And it's physiologically distinct, as
we've seen. But by going back and forth and back and
forth we should be able to integrate transcendental
consciousness with the other states. And that would look like, if we could turn
this into a cube and turn it on its corner, it would
look like this. Let me do that again. That's so much fun. And this is called the fifth state, cosmic
consciousness. Now that state of pure consciousness, of
inner silence which is just there for a few moments during
meditation is there 24/7. It's completely underlying waking,
sleeping, and dreaming. And let's see how that grows. This is looking at the EEG of someone
meditating for four months. So this would be Louise. Or someone meditating eight years. In each case, TM on the left, eyes open is
on the right. In each case, it's the front center back
of the brain and this is time. Each line is a different part of the
brain. Notice how the EEG patterns during TM are
very similar. This is eight years. This is four months. This is bringing out that idea of how we
transcend with TM is effortless. We use the natural tendency of the mind. Remember, we talk about automaticity. The automaticity is built in. Look at the eyes open. Here's our gamma EEG. The person's thinking. Here's someone eyes open eight years TM. You see what's happened? Four months, eight years what do you notice? Four months, eight years? How are you going to, when you're at the
soda fountain having an ice cream sundae and talking about this
talk, how would you describe this? What's happened? Yes, ma'am. >> I just have a question, I wonder about,
are you saying that's TM, that's eye-opened or
eyes-closed while practicing TM? >> This is TM, eyes are closed, transcending, they're going down the
bubble diagram. This is eyes open in activity, reading
books, talking to people. >> The TM states and eyes open states are
more similar in the person who's been doing it for longer,
right? >> Yeah, good observation. This is experience changes the brain. This is neuroplasticity. You move the brain back and forth. You go to that state of pure consciousness
to develop those brain circuits so that it can become part
of your daily life. And notice, the alpha activity in the back
and the center and the front is there while the person is waking,
while the person is in class. That's when you need that state. That's when you need that breath of awareness, that inner silence, that
restful alertness. And that gives you the basis for being
most successful in what you're doing. Now for the scientists in the group this
is individual data. This is the group data. So these are less than one year, eight
years. Solid line is eyes open. Cross hatch bar is, is TM. This is cross sectional data so we look
longitudinally. We had people coming to Maharishi
University of management. And we looked at their EEG. This is actually eyes closed, and during a
task. And then we looked at them at 2, 6, and 12
months. They learned TM. Here they've been meditating for 2 months,
6 months, 12 months. And then we had them do a task each time,
and this is what we found. TM EEG coherence went up during TM
compared to eyes closed. But noticed it's 6 and 12 months it's at
the same high level. What continues to grow is during the day. Just because transcending isn't involving
individual attention effort ability. It's using the natural tendency of the
mind, and once we are able to allow nature to take its course, it's going to give to the same effect, the benefit is being seen in
activity. So let's look at the experience of cosmic consciousness when you have inner
unboundedness all the time. This is the experience of someone during
sleep, I'll let you read it. This person is a high school teacher at the high school associated with
MUN. Able to come up this very concrete picture
of soda and fizzing on the soda activity it's like fixing on a soda there's
activity there so theirs something to experienced so he goes to sleep and the
fizzing just settles down the soda remains that underlying basis that
continuum he's talking about is just there the whole
time. This is what the brain waves look like. This is sleep brain waves. These are people having this experience of
inner wakefulness. This is a second here. This is delta activity. It's the brain waves when the body's
repairing itself. Notice what we have here is there's a lot
of these large brain waves. But also this looks more ragged. Just going up and down, and indeed you can
see that there is this alpha activity riding
on this delta activity. Here's a delta wave, one cycle per second,
then there's a one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
eight, an alpha wave. So you questioned earlier, what's
happening here? The delta is actually produced in the
cortex itself, in layers. 2, 3 and 5. And that's where sleep is repairing
itself. The alpha is just a constant communication
between the core of the brain and the cortex. It's that level of wakefulness which is
now self-sustaining. These are group data on non-meditating. There is a group of short-term TM practitioners and those people are
reporting cosmic consciousness. And this is looking at how much of this alpha activity that we see here is there
during sleep. Notice that it's already growing in the
people who have been meditating an average of
four years. Growth towards cosmic consciousness is not
at 01. But it's a gradual unfolding. It's like a flower opening up. And it opens up based on experience. The experiences you have during meditation
during the day. This is someone's description of their
experience. Of and during the day. And we looked at what the brain wave is
like. We gave them tasks, 17 people, not
practicing any meditation, 17 practising TM but not reporting higher states, 17
people reporting, cosmic consciousness. And the differences we found were the
front of the brain. And it was, coherence across all
broadband, across all frequency bands, so the frequency of transcending was there,
plus the frequency of thinking and acting. Overall there is much more alpha activity, alpha is more of a self referral
frequency. Faster brainwaves are more object
referral. And how their brain actually started to
respond in a task was different, the blue is the non meditating
the yellow is the people reporting higher states, you notice its a mirror
image, a simple task is you know what you have to do, its the same
response each the time. The choice task is. You get some information but you have to
wait for the second piece of information. We see the people reporting higher states
are more balanced. They're not starting to, respond, until
actually they have sufficient information. So we added those up, and these differentiated the groups, quite
significantly. This idea of brain integration, we call
it, because it involves coherence. And these other measures. HIgh brain integration correlates with
positive things, moral reasoning is higher, emotional stability,
and so on. The way to understand this is this is a
correlation coefficient. If you square it it's the amount of
variance that this predicts of the other. So if you square 0.66 it comes out to be
about 40% so 40% of the change in moral reasoning could be predicted by the level of brain
integration. Again, the brain's the interface between
inner and outer, and as the brain is, is a more integrated
platform, it's able to give. A much broader integrated picture of the
world. So, I have two more slides. This is taking this question out of
meditation and into the world. What does brain integration really mean? Well, we thought what it really means is
you're in contact with your inner self. So, you should be in contact with inner
resources. So it should be more successful so he
looked at athletes. These are 66 athletes, 33 are world class. They finished in the top ten for three
consecutive years in Olympic games, world games, compared to control athletes,
and they had higher levels of brain
integration. This isn't a meditation study. This is more human success, human
performance study. Managers, same thing. Top level managers, 18-year CEO. The company had grown. Higher levels of brain integration. We're on a roll so lets look at classical
musicians. We look at amateur and classical musicians
and they both have eye levels of brain
integration. And we looked into the literature and it's
founded as a child if you learn music, youre brain patterns
are different as an adult. Because experience changes the brain. You're not only focused on numbers and
words, but you're focusing on [COUGH] sounds, music,
integrating your sound with other sounds. Also, this division, it was a flawed
design because an amateur musician is not a less effective, a, a, a
less developed musician. They just don't make their money. from music. Now I put short term and long term TM here
not to suggest that if you practice TM you're going to be a great physician, a great manager, and a great
athlete. But do suggest that experience changes the
brain. Transcending thought is developing a
specific style of brain function and it's going to help you be
more successful. Wherever you turn your attention. >> How do you define the Z score exactly? >> A Z score is the mean divided by
standard deviation so it's taking a number and putting it in
standard deviation units. >> Yeah, exactly. And we do that because coherence. Power and CMV are different units so being
able to put them together. Could change into Z scores so cosmic
consciousness this is also this is a fifth state of
consciousness. Subjectively it's distinct from other states that experience of the
transcendent. Is now there while we're waking sleeping
and dreaming. Involves greater breadth or sense of self. The self is now completely outside of
change, outside of time. Physiologically distinct. My conclusion. Higher states to be the natural extension of development that's been going on since
birth. We landed in this world and we have this
body, we can't even control it. The first thing we do is we control
matter. We control the body. We're able to see objects. And then we start transcending and then we
can have some desire what we would like it to
be. And then we transcend a little bit more
and we can think about the world outside of
ourself. You transcend a little bit more and we can
think about thoughts. This process, if you get the necessary
experience, continues until CC where I'm now who you are, the self of who
you are is something which is full, unchanging,
outside of time and space it's full, while all of activity is just
going on by itself. Thank you very much [NOISE]
That's my email if you have any questions. Any questions? Yes sir. We have heard so much about TM throughout the very
speeches of the seminar but I've heard not very much about the details about the actual experience and the
process. Can you talk a little bit about what those
detail in practice are and what they, how they manifest
themselves per you and your practice? >> yes. Can you repeat the question please? >> The question is about the details of
practice of TM process. It does involve a sound, a mantra. The mantras that we use in TM don't have
meaning. We just use their sound value. And what you learn is how to appreciate
that at earlier levels. Now it's not something that can be taught
by words or instructions. Like do this, do that, do this. Put your feet on the floor. Feel the chair against your back. You can't do that because that's keeping
the mind engaged in localized processes. So, what you do when you learn TM, it's. It's almost like how I taught my girls how
to ride a bike, I didn't give my girls a
PowerPoint lecture. Went down to the field, the got in the
bike, I took the seat and the shoulder, the handle bars, and ran
really fast and they got the feel of it. This is how you learn transcendental meditation, it's always from a trained
teacher. They give you an instruction, you have an
innocent experience. They give you another instruction, another
innocent experience. Just like riding on a bike, you get a feel for what it's like to let the mind settle
down. Why will the mind settle down? Because this level of pure consciousness
is free of boundaries, it's creative, it's dynamic,
it's what the mind wants. Once it knows it's there, it goes there by
itself. So that's the process of learning it. My own experience it's, it's just great. It, it gives a buffer a different place to
live the world, rather than lost and change and activity, and what's going
on outside, there's something inside which is
very stable. So things happen on the outside. But they're changing. You might make money. You might lose money. You might get an A on a paper. You might get a C on a paper. These things are always changing, but
something inside is not changing. And that becomes a very stable basis and
what it does is it, remember the challenge
stress threshold? The only way you feel you can't make it is
if you feel that yourself is going to be
threatened by the outcome. When you realize that who you are is this
field that's outside of time and space, there's nothing that can give you that feeling, that feeling of worry or
anxiety. Yes, you may be more or less successful,
but the self is always going to be there, it's
always going to be full. So what that does, it changes life, from
having. Serious obstacles suggest a series of
challenges. It's almost you go into the day thinking
what's going to happen today, cause you know you can
deal with it. You know that you have the ability to come
up with a creative solution. You have the mental energy, the physical
energy and the whole process is life flowing through time anyways and this
is just what you're experiencing now. So you get a whole different orientation. I finally got a whole different
orientation to what, what it means to, to be alive. Other questions? >> Is it possible for us to acquire the. The EEG system that you have as a way to test our
ability to TM successfully or not? >> Very good. Wil this two channel thank you. The question was can the the two channel
EEG machine that we used here is it available yes you can buy
it it's third party. Can you use it to, address, your growth
through TM practice? That, I don't think it will work. And the reason is, is because what's
occurring is, over the whole brain. And, what you have is an electrical, field
over the whole brain. Okay where is this? Here we go. What we have is this electrical field over
the whole brain. If you have two sensors here, you're not really seeing the dynamics of what's
happening. And so, to actually look at change over
time you need more sensors. >> Bottom line, to see eyes closed TM, we
can say, oh! Yeah, so this was happening during eyes open, this happened eyes closed, this
happened TM. We see that yes, there's something
different there. And that was just to give you a sensory
experience. Yes there's something different but to
really plot growth sixteen channels, other questions? Yes sir. So have you done this sort of analysis
with other forms of meditation? >> I have not, I have been involved in two conferences with 19 other
meditation researchers. Across the gambit zen,
mindfulness, contemplative, compassion meditation, and we're beginning to talk,
beginning to pull results, I haven't looked
systematically at other meditations, I just use what's in the
literature. Behind, yes. >> You mentioned, or you showed the graph
for the coherence of the brain. There's a yellow line down at the bottom during, during wakefulness increases, for
the 12 month period. But I'm wondering what happens over a lifetime
of meditation. >> They intersect, and so you see the. This quality of coherence is seen, you
know, somewhere down the line. That's cosmic consciousness. And that's when you have inner stability,
inner wholeness along with outer activity at the
same time. So have we gone longer than a year? No. Just hard enough to do this between six
and 12 months is summer vacation. [LAUGH] Yes John? >> We heard from Craig Pierson that there are other states of consciousness above
these five. Has any research. Preliminary sort of studies in this brain
area on those, and how would you characterize an
outcome? >> We haven't done other research simply
because we don't have enough people that are in
those, in those categories, and the research that
I showed you here, the 17 people reporting
higher states. Three of four of them are I also asked
them to describe themselves and three of four of them seem to be
having experience of the next state refined cosmic consciousness were the,
the one lady said she knew the chairness of a chair she was just so
intimate with the objects around her. And another woman said she looks out and
sees this beautiful divine intelligence. Reflected back at her through the trees
and the sky, and the birds, and it's herself. Seems to be a very rich description of
unity consciences where is seemed to be a fluctuation of
underlying wholeness. So there's a few people, but there weren't
enough to actually. Document them. This was done in 2000. Were now redoing this. We have 42 people now. And with that the experiences are becoming
richer, we might be able to separate them out. Other questions? One more minute. Is there another last question? Yes, ma'am. >> What is that
higher states of consciousness? When you talk, when you use the term,
higher state of consciousness, are you talking about
something that is constant, throughout, I mean, from, for the rest of
the person's life, or are you talking about these peak
experiences that are. that, that will cover a limited period of
time which may vary greatly, but? >> Excellent question. TC is, comes and goes. It's peak experiences. When Maslow was talking about peak
experiences, he was looking at people spontaneously having
this state. because what is this state? It's just the state of the mind. Just to stay at the source of thought. And it can happen it's there right now. It's there right now and that's why you
can hear me and you have all these ideas, you have
wakefullness, it's coming from that feel, but if our brain doesn't have
the ability to maintain unbounded silence and focused
activity if it can't maintain that range. We tend to just get whatever is a focused
activity level. But what can happen spontaneously the, the
thoughts, the veils can part and we experience pure
consciousness, and so on. So, yes, this is momentary and it comes
and goes. The cosmic consciousness is something
which is permanent now. This is 24/7. And it's an interesting point, because if experience changes the brain, could you
lose that? You know, could something happen to the
brain, and so the question you were asking
originally. What is supporting and unbounded in your
experience? I'd like to think that it wouldn't happen simply because you'd be making
right decisions. And so you would be always having those experiences to strengthen the circuits of
higher states. I'm going to end now, because I believe we
end at six, and so you've been a very
attentive audience. I'm happy to be here to answer any further
questions. Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE] >> For more, please visit us at
stanford.edu
