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Copyright by Amy Jo Holte 2010 The Dissertation Committee for Amy Jo Holte certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: The Experience of Absorption: Comparison of the Mental Processes of Meditation between Emic Yogic and Etic Neuroscientific Perspectives on Ishvara Pranidhana Meditation Committee: ______________________________ Kristin Neff, Supervisor ______________________________ Frank Richardson ______________________________ Martha Selby ______________________________ Walt Wilczynski ______________________________ Theresa Jones The Experience of Absorption: Comparison of the Mental Processes of Meditation between Emic Yogic and Etic Neuroscientific Perspectives on Ishvara Pranidhana Meditation by Amy Jo Holte, B.A.; M.Ed. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2010 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank many people for their help, support, encouragement, and inspiration to make this project possible. First, thank you to my Dissertation Committee for working with me to create an Interdisciplinary Program, and for their generous time and comments: to Frank Richardson and Martha Selby for their careful guidance in the conceptual development of this project; to Walt Wilczynski for a steady hand keeping the project on track; to Theresa Jones for all her clarity and editorial comments; to Leslie Jarmon for teaching me many things; and to Kristin Neff for chairing the committee and seeing this project through to a successful conclusion. To all, thank you for believing in this project. Thank you to a number of faculty members who have also been of great help on this project in different ways, especially Diane Schallert and Edmund Emmer, and to Virginia Stockwell. I wish to also extend gratitude to a few people in my personal life, without whom this project would not have been possible: my parents, Roger and Laurina, and sister, Lee Anne, who have been with me all along my schooling years. A special thanks to Chris Palmer who has been by my side in so many ways throughout most of my graduate school career. Finally, thank you to a dear teacher, Didi Ananda Mitra, whose inspiration and grace has moved me to understand the subject matter of this dissertation. iv The Experience of Absorption: A Comparison of the Mental Processes of Meditation between Emic Yogic and Etic Neuroscientific Perspectives on Ishvara Pranidhana Meditation Amy Jo Holte, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2010 Supervisor: Kristin Neff Modernity has seen the exchange of ideas about cognition between western science and eastern meditation traditions. In particular, western ways of thinking about the natural world have infiltrated Indian theories of yoga. This intersection of ideas in the twentieth-century has resulted in a problematic trend to theorize yogic phenomena, including meditation, in scientific terms. These translations converge on explicating yogic processes within a context of advancing knowledge about the brain. This translational approach to bringing etic and emic perspectives together in the same framework results in interpretations of meditation that succumb to problems cognitive science faces at a broader level in theorizing cognition and mind-body interrelations. In this study, I take a different approach to bringing emic and etic perspectives together by placing a phenomenologically interpreted emic account of absorption (the meditative shift in consciousness) into dialogue with current scientific understandings of three central mental processes of meditation. Specifically, I analyze ways of conceptualizing v attention, memory, and emotion, and their underlying mechanisms as posited in yoga and science, focusing on the problem of how each system interprets the reality of absorption. This comparison suggests a basic similarity between the two systems: theorizing cognition and meditative absorption in terms of embodiment. This finding emphasizes the dual nature of embodiment as both experiential and physical. Finally, I consider this dialogue from an embodied mind perspective, an emerging way of thinking about and theorizing the mind-body in cognitive science, because this perspective challenges longstanding theoretical problems in western understandings of how the mind works. This analysis suggests that theorizing meditation in these dual terms of embodiment potentially solves the reductive challenges of dualistic and materialist philosophy that have plagued both religious and naturalistic attempts to explain absorption. This interdisciplinary dialogue provides a framework with which to think more critically about translational and cross-disciplinary efforts that have previously confused the goals of yoga and science and their respective foci on practice and mechanisms. I conclude that bridging ideas in this dialogical way reveals a complementary perspective between phenomenological and biological ways of understanding the mind that both hinge on embodied cognition. vi Table of Contents PART I.................................................................................................................................1 Chapter One: Experience and Physicality: Dual Processes of Meditative Absorption…...2 Theorizing Meditation…………………………………………………………….4 Purpose of the Study……………………………………………………………..12 Analytic Method: Explicating and Comparing Emic and Etic Interpretations of Absorptive Meditation…………………………………………………………...13 Overview of Dissertation Chapters………………………………………………26 Chapter Two: Defining Absorptive Meditation and Anandamurti’s Tantric Yoga Meditation Method of Ishvara Pranidhana…………………………………...…………29 What is Absorptive Meditation………………………………………….……….29 Two Paths of Absorptive Meditation: Object and Objectless……………………31 Scientific Study of Meditation and Some Examples of Absorptive Meditation Techniques……………………………………………………………………….33 Anandamurti’s Absorptive Meditation Method of Ishvara Pranidhana..……….36 PART II..............................................................................................................................43 Chapter Three: Neuroscience Perspectives on Absorptive Meditation and Ishvara Pranidhana…..…………………………………………………………………………..44 Introduction to the Neuroscientific Study of Meditation………………………...44 Imaging Evidence for a Neurocircuit of Ishvara Pranidhana…..……………….47 Cellular Level Activity during Meditation....……………………………………62 Summary of Neuroimaging Studies of Tantric Absorptive Meditation Similar to Ishvara Pranidhana…………….………………………………………………..64 Applying Neuroimaging Studies to Ishvara Pranidhana…………………..……68 vii EEG: Evidence for Oscillatory Neural Synchrony in a Neurocircuit of Absorptive Meditation……………………………………………………………………….70 Effects of Meditation on Brain-Body Relationships…………………………….80 Analyzing Neuroscience Perspectives on Meditation: Positioning Claims for Comparison with Yoga……………………...…………………………………...85 Chapter Four: Meditative Consciousness and the Yogic Body of Tantra……………….90 Methodological Considerations………………………………………………….91 Ishvara Pranidhana in Patanjali's Yoga Sutra and Classical Yoga……………...95 Relational Dynamics and Gaining the Qualities of Ishvara…...………………...98 Traditional Views of Tantric Yoga Meditation and States of Absorption……...101 Tantric Embodiment of Yogic Praxis: Explicating Samadhi and Stages of Embodied Absorption…………………………………..………………………119 Meaning and Visualization: The Chakra System of the Tantric Yoga Subtle Body…………………………………………………………………………….132 Chapter Five: Rethinking Modern Yoga………………………………………………..147 How Ishvara Pranidhana Fits into the Modern Yoga Framework………..........147 “Yogic Science” and the “Science of Yoga”…………………………………...152 Key Translations of Traditional Interpretations of Yoga……………….............159 Reconsidering Ishvara Pranidhana………………………………………….....171 The Central Problem of Reference and Reality Depiction………………….….173 PART III.........................................................................................................................177 Chapter Six: Concentrated Attention…………………………………………………..178 1. Types of Attention……………………………………………………………...178 2. Mechanisms of Concentrated Mind and Attentional Processes………………..188 viii 3. Ways to Sustain Concentrated Attention……………………………………….207 4. Implications: Amplification and the Overlap between Imagery and Perceptual Processes………………………………………………………………………..221 Chapter Seven: Memory and Knowledge………………………………………………228 1. Types of Memory and Resulting Types of Knowledge………………………...229 2. Mechanisms of Memory………………………………………………………..251 3. Overall Comparisons and Implications…………………………………………277 Chapter Eight: The Embodied Feeling of Meditative Absorption……………………...281 1. Types of Emotion: Emotion Programs…………………………………………284 2. Mechanisms of Emotional Experience and Perception………………………...290 3. Implications: The Role of Appraisal Processes in Emotion Generation………..306 4. Meaningful Outcomes of Yogic and Neuroscientific Processes of Meditation………………………………………………………………………319 CONCLUSION...............................................................................................................326 Chapter Nine: Towards a Theory of Meditation……………………………………….327 The Naturalistic Approach……………………………………………………...328 Conditions versus Causes………………………………………………………338 Meditation and the Embodied Mind……………………………………………350 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...357 Appendix………………………………………………………………………………..358
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