Program Abstracts
how attentionally-demanding and emotional stimuli are processed in a range of practices. Here, for the fi rst time, the same protocol will be used to compare diff erent meditation practices. One control group (n=20) is compared to 20 aged-matched expert Vipassana practitioners, 20 aged-matched expert Isha practitio- ners, and expert practitioners in the Himalayan tradition. To characterize brain dynamics associated with meditation modulation of external stimuli, we are using 64-channel electro-encephalography recordings as well as peripheral autonomic nervous system recordings. T e tasks we are using involve auditory, visual, somato-sensory (tactile) and emotional tasks. Each subject performs 7 diff erent experiments over a 4-hour period. All recording are performed in Rishikesh, India and have been granted ethical approval both by In- dian ethical committees and the University of San Diego California (IRB 090731). Here we present results where we compared meditators in diff erent traditions and controls when they were performing a control thinking task and when they were meditating. Our results indicate that both mediators and controls tend to respond more strongly to external stimuli when they meditate compared to when they are performing a control thinking task. T is eff ect is more important for meditators than for control subjects. Based on these results, we suggest that meditation correspond to a state of higher alertness. T is is the fi rst cross-cultural psychophysics study of meditation to our knowledge.
Beautiful Minds: Time and Consciousness in Nondual Physics, Stephen Deiss, Neuroimaging Research Associate 10:15am–10:35am
NOVATO ROOM Reduced to essence, consciousness is a process using memory for interpreting sensations resulting in
decision, action and new memory. It is shown that this process, usually only ascribed to biological systems with brains, is common to all systems in nature, living and nonliving. T us, consciousness is a self-similar process permeating nature. Time supervenes on detectable changes (such as changed hands on the clock). Change requires contrast or diff erence, and contrast has to be detected to make a diff erence elsewhere. Sys- tems that detect contrast record their reaction to the contrast in their state (a kind of memory) and result- ing behavior. Energy in physics is “the ability to do work.” Work involves changing something (overcom- ing inertia, e.g., moving a mass some distance). T erefore energy is the impetus for change. Since time is abstracted from integration of a series of changes, energy makes time measurement possible. Contrast must be detected for change to be realized in the detector. Physical detectors are customarily viewed as senseless passive mechanical systems driven by laws. T at is an unjustifi able assumption. Consider that they could have some crude sensations, and that they satisfy multiple constraints like we do to move into their next state (as in wave function collapse). T is results in a simple, intuitive, nondual metaphysics. Consciousness becomes the fundamental ‘physical’ process of nature as it self-organizes. Just as acts of human observation or measurement infl uence the outcome of various quantum experiments, the detection of any signal by any system is itself an observation that can infl uence the state of the observed system as well as the observer’s be- havior or its memory-based future behavioral tendencies. Consciousness thus provides direction for changes within every system. Underconstrained ‘ambiguous’ options for decisive change (or collapse) create future uncertainty. Such uncertainty may underly entropy and the resulting arrow of abstract time.
Neurological Openness in Psychological/Spiritual Development, Bill Baird, Cognitive Neuroscientist, UC Berkeley 10:55am–11:15am
NOVATO ROOM
In this story, the “stream” of content in personal awareness at the focus of attention is generated by ac- tion/sensation cycles of neural activity alternating between sensory and motor areas which are communicat- ing by synchronization at 40 Hz and pass through primary cortical areas supporting the quantum coherent fi eld of consciousness described by Penrose and Hammeroff . T ese shifting synchronized attention networks unite brain activity to create the inner movie and the outer stream of behavior. Ordinary consciousness of- ten has a narrow task oriented focus of attention. “Neurological opening” of brain operation to the impact of consciousness is naturally greatest when stream cycles of attention fl ow broadly through the primary sensory areas to expand the spotlight of awareness there. T is occurs in unfocused attention to the fl ux of immediate experience in the “now”. In this state of “presence”, deep grooves of habitual trauma conditioned ego/computer processing can relax to allow many branching possibilities to open at critical transition points in the cycles of action/sensation. Here also the nonlocal quantum superposition of universe possibilities at the fringe of everyday consciousness opens a broad channel which brings the vast creative potential in the
60 SCIENCE AND NONDUALITY CONFERENCE 2011 | OCTOBER 19–24, 2011
SND2011_Program_10.7.11.indd 60
10/9/11 12:44:13 PM
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80