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Mindfulness Meditation: Deconditioning and Changing View

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Mindfulness Meditation: Deconditioning and Changing View Neuroscience, Consciousness and Spirituality Studies in Neuroscience, Consciousness and Spirituality Volume 1 Series Editors Harald Walach, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany Stefan Schmidt, University Medical Center, Freiburg and European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany Editorial Board Jonathan Schooler, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA Mario Beauregard, University of Montreal, Canada Robert Forman, Jerusalem Institute of Advanced Studies, Israel B. Alan Wallace, Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies, CA, USA For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/10195 Harald Walach • Stefan Schmidt Wayne B. Jonas Editors Neuroscience, Consciousness and Spirituality Editors Harald Walach Stefan Schmidt Institute for Transcultural Health Science Department of Environmental European Universtiy Viadrina Health Sciences Frankfurt (Oder), Grosse Scharrnstr. 59 University Medical Center Freiburg 15230 Frankfurt (Oder) Breisacherstr. 115b Germany 79106 Freiburg [email protected] Germany European University Viadrina Wayne B. Jonas Frankfurt (Oder) Samueli Institute Germany King Street 1737 [email protected] Alexandia, VA 22314 USA [email protected] ISSN 2211-8918 e-ISSN 2211-8926 ISBN 978-94-007-2078-7 e-ISBN 978-94-007-2079-4 DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-2079-4 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2011936020 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Foreword of the Series Editors “Neuroscience, Consciousness and Spirituality” was born out of the vision to build bridges and get different disciplines to talk to each other. We have been observing these disciplines for quite a while, doing empirical research in the field of mindful- ness meditation, conceptual, psychological and philosophical issues, as well as spiri- tuality. We were struck by the lack of communication between different pockets of research cultures. We thought that neuroscience researchers could learn from phi- losophers and from those dealing with issues around spirituality and mystical expe- rience, and vice versa. We felt that the philosophical discourse around the issue of what constitutes consciousness and how it can be explained would benefit from hard neuroscientific data on the one hand and from insights stemming from first- person experience on the other hand, as it is the currency of spiritual traditions. Science within the comfort zone of unidisciplinarity is always nice and easy, and cosy, too. Stepping beyond is not only challenging, it is nothing short of madness and professional suicide. Yet, we felt it is necessary. Spirituality seems to be a nec- essary ingredient in the scientific debate. Talking about consciousness without tak- ing into account exceptional experiences and personal accounts of conscious states that are beyond the ordinary is a bit like trying to do physics with the constraint of only studying crystal lattices. That won’t yield a valid theory of matter. Neither will philosophising about consciousness without taking into account different aspects, especially extraordinary and even rare states of consciousness. Plasma states of matter are rare and not normally observed in our everyday world. Yet, they teach us a lot about matter. In the same sense, extraordinary states of consciousness as reported in the spiritual literature, by those practicing spiritual methods such as meditation, can teach us more about consciousness than thousands of discussions of what consciousness is like in a normal day in the supermarket. Meditation research is a kind of focal point that has established itself as a new scientific “hot topic” over the past decade. It is done from various angles: Neuroscientists try to map different meditation states using various imaging methods. Sometimes psychologists join in or neuroscientists also use psychological methods trying to tap into the experience of those having such meditation experiences. William James marked the beginning of the scientific study of psychology by v vi Foreword of the Series Editors defining it as the science of consciousness, and the beginning of consciousness research by studying spiritual experiences. It is this unifying approach which we are trying to regain by fostering dialogue and discourse across the boundaries of disciplines. It has to be regained, because in the beginning of the scientific study of consciousness, in the legacy of Wilhelm Wundt and Sigmund Freud, the study of such exceptional experiences was explicitly banned and this ban has haunted the field like a posthypnotic command. Consciousness studies cannot be complete without also facing the philosophical question: What, actually, is the stuff consciousness is made of? Is the current main- stream model that favours some sort of emergentist approach that has consciousness arise as an emergent property of complex neuronal systems sufficient to explain conscious experience, especially if we look at spiritual experiences from a phenome- nological point of view? Does this phenomenology suggest otherwise? If so, how could we envisage such a model of consciousness? Can we align it with what we know from neuroscience? Since these are important questions, we will, every now and then, also digress into the philosophical field and discuss models of consciousness that challenge the mainstream view or bridge gaps. We do not do that out of a spirit of dissidence, but of constructive criticism and dialogue. We developed these ideas a couple of years ago and found sponsors, the Samueli Institute in Alexandria, VA, USA and the Theophrastus Foundation in Germany, both of which were enamoured with them. So it happened that we were able to invite a small and select group of scholars and scientists to our first meeting in Freiburg in 2008 for an open discussion, the proceedings of which we present here. Some guests elected not to publish their ideas and others have changed them considerably in the face of the discussions. We were able to follow on with a second meeting 2010 with the specific topic of meditation research, and we hope to be able to present this volume soon as well. The third in the series is likely to be a piece of discussion by one of us, Harald Walach, that puts forward the argument that spiritu- ality has to be taken into the realm of discourse within academia to proceed with the program of rational and scientific enlightenment. Only if spiritual enlightenment meets scientific enlightenment can we really progress, we suggest. We hope to be able to proceed with our Freiburg meetings, and we also invite volumes and contributions from the wider scientific community touching upon these issues. We have no hidden agenda, no tacit creed, no criteria for participation in this discourse other than two very pragmatic ones: The submitted contributions need to be interdisciplinary and touch upon the three topics of neuroscience, consciousness and spirituality or use two of these different disciplines to throw light on the third one in particular. And they need to be of good quality, with stringent argumentation and clear style of writing. All contributions are peer reviewed, and the whole volume will again go through review. So expect good quality work addressing an emerging new topic. We are looking forward to contributions, to discourse and discussions. Freiburg and Frankfurt (Oder), Germany Harald Walach and Stefan Schmidt Contents Neuroscience, Consciousness, Spirituality – Questions, Problems and Potential Solutions: An Introductory Essay......................... 1 Harald Walach Mindfulness in East and West – Is It the Same? .......................................... 23 Stefan Schmidt Setting Our Own Terms: How We Used Ritual to Become Human ........................................................................................... 39 Matt J. Rossano Neuroscience and Spirituality – Findings and Consequences ..................... 57 Mario Beauregard Consciousness: A Riddle and a Key in Neuroscience and Spirituality................................................................................................ 75 Daniel Jeanmonod Generalized Entanglement – A Nonreductive Option for a Phenomenologically Dualist and Ontologically Monist View of Consciousness ........................................ 81 Harald Walach and Hartmann Römer Complementarity of Phenomenal and Physiological Observables: A Primer on Generalised Quantum Theory and Its Scope for Neuroscience and Consciousness Studies ................................................ 97 Hartmann Römer and Harald Walach Hard Problems in Philosophy of Mind and Physics: Do They Point to Spirituality as a Solution? ................................................ 109 Nikolaus von Stillfried Brain Structure and Meditation: How Spiritual Practice Shapes the Brain .............................................................................. 119 Ulrich Ott, Britta K. Hölzel, and Dieter Vaitl vii viii Contents Neurophysiological Correlates to Psychological Trait Variables
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