Studies in Neuroscience, Consciousness and Spirituality Stefan Schmidt Harald Walach Editors Meditation – Neuroscienti c Approaches and Philosophical Implications Meditation – Neuroscientifi c Approaches and Philosophical Implications Studies in Neuroscience, Consciousness and Spirituality Volume 2 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, The Forge Institute, USA B. Alan Wallace, Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies, CA, USA For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/10195 Stefan Schmidt • Harald Walach Editors Meditation – Neuroscientifi c Approaches and Philosophical Implications Editors Stefan Schmidt Harald Walach Department of Psychosomatic Medicine Institute for Transcultural Health Science and Psychotherapy European Universtiy Viadrina, Frankfurt University Medical Center Freiburg Frankfurt , Germany Freiburg, Germany ISSN 2211-8918 ISSN 2211-8926 (electronic) ISBN 978-3-319-01633-7 ISBN 978-3-319-01634-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-01634-4 Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London Library of Congress Control Number: 2013954596 © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014 This work is subject to copyright. 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Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Contents Introduction: Laying out the Field of Meditation Research ....................... 1 Stefan Schmidt and Harald Walach Towards an Epistemology of Inner Experience............................................ 7 Harald Walach The Meditative Approach to Awaken Selfl ess Insight-Wisdom .................. 23 James H. Austin Meditation as First-Person Methodology: Real Promise—and Problems ........................................................................ 57 Jonathan Shear Using First-Person Reports During Meditation to Investigate Basic Cognitive Experience .................................................... 75 Wendy Hasenkamp I Am I From Moment to Moment: Methods and Results of Grasping Intersubjective and Intertemporal Neurophysiological Differences During Meditation States ......................... 95 Thilo Hinterberger Does Neuroimaging Provide Evidence of Meditation-Mediated Neuroplasticity? .............................................................................................. 115 Shawn S. Clausen , Cindy C. Crawford , and John A. Ives Opening Up Meditation for Science: The Development of a Meditation Classifi cation System ........................................................... 137 Stefan Schmidt The Neurobiology of Meditation and Mindfulness ...................................... 153 Tobias Esch v vi Contents Meditation Effects in the Social Domain: Self-Other Connectedness as a General Mechanism? .............................................................................. 175 Fynn-Mathis Trautwein , José Raúl Naranjo , and Stefan Schmidt Mindfulness Meditation and the Experience of Time.................................. 199 Marc Wittmann and Stefan Schmidt Meditation and Hypnosis at the Intersection Between Phenomenology and Cognitive Science ......................................................... 211 Michael Lifshitz , Emma P. Cusumano , and Amir Raz Insights from Quiet Minds: The Converging Fields of Mindfulness and Mind-Wandering ........................................................... 227 Michael D. Mrazek , Benjamin W. Mooneyham , and Jonathan W. Schooler Can Contemplative Science Bring Meditation to (Western) Life? .................. 243 Norman A.S. Farb Spiritual Phenomena as Public Goods: Exploring Meditation Beyond the Standard Model........................................................................... 261 Torkel Falkenberg Does Meditation Give Us Unique Insight into Ultimate Reality? The Ethical Aim of Buddhism ....................................................................... 271 Hoyt L. Edge God or Ultimate Reality in Theory and Practice: A Philosophical Analysis ................................................................................ 297 Anne L. C. Runehov The Concept of Tri-Guna: A Working Model .............................................. 317 Maika Puta and Peter Sedlmeier Meditation: A Link to Spirituality and Health. A Novel Approach to a Human Consciousness Field Experiment .............................................. 365 Eduard van Wijk , John Ackerman , and Roeland van Wijk Mindfulness in German Schools (MISCHO): A Specifi cally Tailored Training Program: Concept, Implementation and Empirical Results ........................................................ 381 Vera Kaltwasser , Sebastian Sauer , and Niko Kohls Index ................................................................................................................. 405 Introduction: Laying Out the Field of Meditation Research Stefan Schmidt and Harald Walach Meditation is not just a simple research object. The rising and popular fi eld of meditation research or contemplative science as it is called has a much larger impact on modern science and on our society as we assume at the fi rst glance. This is because meditation is not only a fascinating research object but also quite a challenge for our current scientifi c practice. The content of this volume, which summarizes presentations and discussions of an expert meeting in Freiburg, Germany, documents the many facets and implications of meditation research. In this introduction we will touch on a few of them. The fi rst challenge meditation research brings to the established scientifi c para- digm is that it is pointing to the neglect of experience . Our personal fi rst person experience, which, by the way, is our primary access to the world, cannot be shared with others directly. You cannot explain how chocolate tastes. In order to get the experience of the taste of chocolate others have to taste it themselves. Even worse, scientists are not even able to explain the phenomenal experience (qualia) using the current predominant approach in consciousness research (Chalmers 1995 ). The pragmatic solution taken so far was that personal experience was mainly devalued in comparison with third person approaches. And this scientifi c practice is also related to our cultural and social practice, where scientifi c beliefs often predominate personal experience. Classical examples are: Patients who have been told for many years that they cannot possibly have back pain because there is nothing to see on their x-ray; people having unwanted telepathic experiences being told that they are S. Schmidt (*) European University Viadrina , Frankfurt (Oder) , Germany University Medical Center Freiburg , Freiburg , Germany e-mail: [email protected] H. Walach European University Viadrina , Frankfurt (Oder) , Germany S. Schmidt and H. Walach (eds.), Meditation – Neuroscientifi c Approaches 1 and Philosophical Implications, Studies in Neuroscience, Consciousness and Spirituality 2, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-01634-4_1, © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014 2 S. Schmidt and H. Walach having illusions and being advised to seek psychological help because no scientifi c explanation is available; or people being shut away into psychiatric hospitals for no other reason than for hearing voices. The investigation into the practice of meditation has made a decisive difference here. The debate about including fi rst person perspec- tive into science had started already at the end of the 1990s (Shear and Varela 1999 ), and successively we were able to demonstrate that this is a feasible position which is also deeply rooted in the history of our