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The Study Societ Soc etyy tud S 57 y Contact non-duality language games neural hermeneutics meditation & the brain consciousness in the arts poetry, books, EVENTS The Study Society Newsletter Spring 2012 Contact The Study Society Newsletter What a criminal invention it is, that calendar! You live a little while and then you have to die because you are a hundred years old. I am the same as I always was. I could slip back into the skin of a sixty – or a thirty – or a twenty-year old any time I like. I have no sense of ‘time’. Time is an artificial construction. The experiences which count, for me, are the ones that wake me up and stick in my mind... When I say that I have no sense of time I mean that I don’t link my experiences in a straight line. They form a kind of net, a three-dimensional space that nourishes me from all sides. My awareness of that space is so strong that it could make me deny a whole world, the whole world. I’m a strict unbeliever in everything except what has got through my own skin . Not that I’m a reformer. Reformers are the wildest criminals, all of them. You can only reform yourself. You can never reform others. That was the Greek ideal, to get to know yourself. I’m an old Greek, so I stick to it. Oskar Kokoschka Cover Illustration Languedoc Vertes—oil on canvas with gold leaf— © Henrietta Stuart see more at www.henriettastuart.com CONTENTS 3. From Beatles to Brain Benefits Peter Fenwick 5. Neural Hermeneutics Chris Frith 8. Grammatically Speaking Wei Wu Wei 9. First Rule of the Game Gerald Beckwith 12. Consciousness in Art Caiger-Smith, Gregory, Simmons, Brignull 17. Non Duality Simplified Norman Alderton INSERT: Summer Diary & Information pages 19. Perfection of the Art Fiona Stuart 21. Why is Space Big? Martin Redfern 23. Sacred Space Clive Hicks 27. Books Kennedy, Nadler, Caiger-Smith 31. Short Story Competition 32. Three Questions Leo Tolstoy 34. Events 2 from BEATLES TO BRAIN BENEFITS At the first Monday meeting of term, our Chairman, Peter Fenwick, reminded us that 2012 is a special year. It is 60 years since the Society was founded in its present form – this year’s AGM will be the 60th – and it is 50 years since we were given the Meditation and when Dr Roles met His Holiness Shantanand Saraswati. It is, he said, a year to remember, an important year when we come together to work on ourselves... an important year for the School. He has written this article for the first Contact of 2012. Maharishi with the Beatles and their partners. Bangor, Wales, 1967 WHEN I FIRST JOINED COLET, OVER 40 YEARS AGO, the The situation now is very different. Take for example, esoteric world was very different. The Maharishi had PubMed. This is the international medical index of only just persuaded the Beatles to go to Rishikesh with refereed medical journals. As of today there are 2,293 him and learn to meditate. Colet, under Dr Roles, was a papers on meditation listed there. The first paper in † wonderful place to be. We had freedom to explore today’s index comes from Switzerland and shows ideas, but yet within a secure setting. I couldn’t talk through high tech analysis that meditation decouples about meditation to my colleagues, but the groups at one area of the brain from another. But more important, Colet were a lifeline as they allowed the unspeakable to this finding is common to meditators from five different be spoken. Dr Roles was forever stressing science but traditions. It’s worth taking a closer look at this paper, as science had very little to say. It was just coming out of it reports some very interesting findings. Most of the the phase when consciousness was always described as changes seen are in the slower electrical frequencies of ‘levels of alertness’. It seems unbelievable now that the brain – the delta band. These frequencies are physiologists should have thought that way, particularly important as they link large areas of the cortex together. as consciousness has such a long history in the But the authors note that it is when going into and out of philosophy of science. But it is worth remembering that meditation that this decoupling and recoupling occurs, back then the philosophy of science was seldom taught, and to quote them in their scientific speak, they say: and I don’t know any of my contemporaries who fully The globally reduced functional interdependence understood the important part that consciousness between brain regions in meditation suggests that played in the philosophical tradition. † See, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22266174 3 interaction between the self-processed functions is Atman and filters it through our psychological minimised and that constraints on the self-process by structures. As HH has pointed out, when true other processes are minimised, thereby leading to the knowledge is given by a realized man, it is immediately subjective experience of non-involvement, detach- distorted by those of us in the ordinary level of ment and letting go, as well as of all oneness and consciousness, so that we can’t perceive the truth, but dissolution of ego boundaries during meditation. only our version of it. This again is another way of saying how pervasive the self is. This stress on changes in brain mechanisms which Dr Roles always stressed HH Shantanand process self and the ego is now central to our Saraswatis’s seminal advice that we should strive to understanding of spiritual growth. come out of what we were not into what we are. He had When I was first at Colet we attended groups, read A a wonderful description of the meditation leading us out New Model of the Universe, were given the meditation and of the small room of our limited self into the gap practised coming out of ourselves. You will recall that between that self and the full universal consciousness of Mr O said if you remember yourSelf for 20 minutes you the large room. This is, however, only for two half hours will reach a permanent state of higher awareness. a day. What science is telling us is that these two half Attempting to put this into practice very rapidly showed hours restructure the way our brain works and attenuate that the mind could not be led or dragooned so easily, the limitations of the ever-present self. It is only through and after a few minutes one was back in one’s turning continual practice every moment of the day that we can thoughts again. At that time we knew nothing about the attenuate the instinctive, selfish attributions of our systems in the brain which underpin the construction of ‘sleeping’ awareness and permit transient awakenings to self, and their linking to the fundamental structures of occur. This is done by letting circling thoughts go and the brain which continually alert them. This alerting never giving house room to negative thoughts, watching process is left over, it is argued by James Austin, a carefully to see how pervasive our self of limited ‘I’ is, prolific writer on the relationship of Zen practice, to how insistent it is in controlling and colouring what we changes in brain states from when we were in the earlier do, and how involved we are in controlling the moment stages of evolution and the preservation of the self was rather than letting the moment arise, and living just one of the primary aims of the central nervous system. there and not in the future or the past. Introspection during the day shows that the self Meditation, it has been shown, changes the brain, comes into play with almost every sensation that we and we are lucky to have it. But mindfulness throughout recognise. ‘I don’t like this.’ ‘That’s too hot.’ ‘Why does the day is also essential if we seriously want to progress she say that?’ It is there at very subtle levels and only on the path to losing the ego and achieving a state of accurate observation will reveal how pervasive it is. This wider consciousness. of course, as we all know, colours the light of the true Peter Fenwick 4 Neural Hermeneutics Chris Frith is Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychology at the Wellcome Centre for Neuroimaging at University College, London (UCL), Niels Bohr Visiting Professor in the Interacting Minds project at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, and Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Since completing his PhD in 1969, he was funded by the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust to study relationships between mind and brain. He is a pioneer in the application of brain imaging to the study of mental processes. He has contributed more than 400 papers to scientific journals and is known especially for his work on agency, social cognition, and understanding the minds of people with mental disorders such as schizophrenia. For this work he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the British Academy, and has been awarded honorary degrees by the University of Salzburg and the University of York. He has published several books, including, (with Eve Johnstone) Schizophrenia: A Very Short Introduction (2003), and (edited with Daniel Wolpert) The Neuroscience of Social Interaction: Decoding, Imitating and Influencing the Actions of Others (2004). His latest book, Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates our Mental World (Wiley-Blackwell 2007), was long-listed for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books, 2008 and received the 2008 Book Award from the British Psychological Society.

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