Mystical state of mind. Probably, spiritual state of mind. May be the balanced state of mind.

What happens to your body, when it is called as spiritual? It is also called as realization. It is forgettable. It can be maintained with practice.

Can everybody attend this state? Why somebody wants to attend this state? And when somebody attends this state, what happens to his brain functionally and chemically? Or is it just a feel good phenomenon? Does it change your views towards the thing?

What is prayer and what is the mechanism behind it? When did you pray? When you knew that you have done all efforts, now the things either can be fine or either can go wrong but there is still the time for the results. This time period is quiet stressful. And you started praying in this time period if you believe in god or will just close your eyes if you don’t believe. Thus prayer needs time because if things happen abruptly, you will cry and will not pray. Thus, we assume a defence mechanism to cope this stress. Can we assume this equivalent to sleep? Your body, neurons got tired, you close your eyes and then your conscious cortex which is full of with lactic acid and other waste metabolites that needs clearance as well as when you close the eyes, you cut the stimulus coming towards your cortex and then consequently activating neurotransmitters in the ascending reticular activating system which maintains the arousal gets diminished and you fall asleep. As well as, this Reticular Activating System works in the pain management, hypnosis etc. So, is prayer the self hypnosis? As well as, this meditation, spirituality is like self hypnosis. I think this is a little vast topic.

There are several studies which analyzed brain state during meditation. I found a review from 2006 which lists quite a lot of EEG, ERP and fMRI studies:

http://www.wisebrain.org/papers/MedStatesTraitsNeuroimaging.pdf

A google scholar search for "meditation fMRI" brings up many more recent articles on the subject, indicating that topic is being researched on actively.

Hope this helps,

Michael

It is difficult to define a state of mind. It can manifest itself in many ways.

In the case of a mystical state of mind, it is easiest to cite examples: Transcendental Meditation, self-hypnosis, sufiism, The I-Thou relationship, an inspirational sunset, Kundalini exercises, Ti Chi, Zen Buddhism, etc. They all produce a tranquil mind, one that is passive and open to all stimuli. The person in this state loses his/her sense of self, and exhibits great empathy.

I hope this helps you understand what I mean by "mystical state of mind."

Thank you Michael. I have taken a brief look at the referenced website. It looks VERY interesting. I need to see if I find exactly what I am looking for. Regardless of this, I am sure it will be useful. Thanks again.

Thanks Dr. Michael for the review article " Med States Traits..." and your website theme that advocates for matching machine-learning algorithms and decoding passwords as probes in understanding how the brain works. If I may say so, meditation is just a nodal recess for understanding a long preparatory journey for developing and evolving self. It allows one to seek reality and its application while interacting with the physical world in pursuit of emancipating into other dimensions. Continued consciousness, as Meditation is defined in simplest terms, has several more difficult pre-steps for reinforcing its platform to launch self into higher planes, from physical to non-physical existence, and from matter to non-matter states while continuing the infinite journey of self-understanding and more.

Whenever absolute reality is superimposed with absolute singularity, the difficulty so encountered has many valid reasons. One finds interfering impurities during purification or aberrations due to planar defects in visualizing the object in focus. Similar distinctive effects appear as digression and distractions in the meditative stage of the whole practice. If all this is sensibly analyzed in most justified and logical way, and without any biased pull of religious sway or scientific skepticism, I feel truth of numerous diverging data and inconclusive interpretations of this converging science & art of self-understanding and unifying force could be revealed.

Out of many realities that nature upkeep's, one is that nothing can be understood in isolation in the world of expressions; it may be a disease symptom, emotional situation, scientific fact or a jurisprudence tenet. Such sequentially arranged nodal recesses, in mathematical term, follow the center point trail of a supper symmetrical pattern. Since all is present in the infinitesimally wholesome existence, there are specific ways for deciphering the unknown and special ways to interact with it in a non-invasive manner. However, reality goes into dispersive mode and seeks certainty by scientific and philosophical decoding only under conditions of open mindedness, right attitude and relentless approach.

Uncertainties remain with probabilities unless the objective is reached and imbibed, because no law of physics can be applied universally nor a philosophical ideology can uphold a proposition forever. Therefore, experimentation with abstract of such in-finiteness would fetch more confusing possibilities if the approach is eccentrically rigid, analysis is segmented and visualization for a conclusive end is myopic. Same as a sphere or its center needs a wholesome perception to conceptualize; otherwise, loopholes arise to blur the target and spatial warping teleportation the seeker father away into nothingness. Therefore, continuity in consciousness is as essential as connectivity in communication; it hold good even while exploring the neurological networking of brain or that of the unknown world.

James H. Austin, MD, has several publications on this topic: Zen and the Brain and Zen-Brain Reflections, both are major well researched and referenced texts.

Dr. Hebert; I would be highly obliged if you may kindly send me a copy of your research papers on this topic of discussions on my email: [email protected]. This may illuminate me further with my work and ideas about functional state of brain during meditative stages in concurrence with other body physiological functions. With the limited research facilities I could choose EEG, GSR, EKG, Polygraphy etc as study parameters. Though some more non-invasive procedures need to be incorporated, still the results so far have been significantly astonishing and highly reproducible, and suggest more information waiting to be revealed as innovative meditative procedures are applied to explore modular brain connections and their linkages to the non-physical domains. As meditation is a technique and hence requires continuous probing into all the steps that covers the meditative state; i.e. preparatory relaxation, preparation of will, transition of preceding and succeeding stages of Meditation etc. This would surely decode the whole pattern and dynamics of mental involvement, rather leaving Meditation as a study of cause & effect in bits and pieces. Moreover, meditative state is reached through various techniques and Zen way is only one of them.

I do not have any published research papers in this field. Dr. Austin has two large books that I highly recommend. My personal opinion is that what is called a meditative state is simply conscious right brain dominance and this opinion stems from "personal experience" which is not scientifically valid.

In PubMed you can find articles of scientific studies about this, for example a researcher of Massachusetts General Hospital, Sara Lazar, has done several experimets about the effects of metidation in the brain:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21071182

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10841380

These two are examples, but yu can find more...

Isabel, I do not have easy access to these publications. Do they discuss any lateralization or asymmetrical hemisphere involvement?

Thank you Isabel. I printed the abstracts. I will see about getting the full articles.

What you say Paul is very interesting. I need to investigate further the stationarity of the various frequencies you mention.

Hi, 

Maybe these will be helpful but I don't know what kind of studies they are: 

http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/pc/dmt.html

http://www.cottonwoodresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Pineal-DMT.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21071182

Best!