Meditation, habits and the brain

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II:5

To take the mind from the senses by meditation is to destroy the physical ego and habit tendencies, the venerated patriarchs of the state of delusive ignorance, in order to regain the true joy self-born in the soul.*

*'Through meditation,... you can set the stage for important mind- and habit-altering brain change.' Herbet Benson, M.D., Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, thus summarizes the results of his extensive research reported in Your Maximum Mind (New York: Random House, 1987).

'Over the years,' he writes, 'you develop circuits and channels of thought in your brain. These are physical pathways which control the way you think, the way you act, and often, the way you feel. Many times, these pathways or habits become so fixed that they turn into what I call wiring. In other words, the circuits or channels become so deeply ingrained that it seems almost impossible to transform them.'

There are approximately 100 billion nerve cells in the brain; and each of these communicates with the others through connections called synapses. The total number of possible connections is 25,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, Dr. Benson estimates. Put another way, if you made a stack of sheets of standard typing paper, with one sheet for each neuron connection, the resulting pile of paper would be approximately 16 billion light years high- stretching beyond the limits of the known universe. And according to the another renowned brain researcher, Robert Ornstein, M.D., the brain is greater than the number of atoms in the universe. Therefore, Dr. Benson believes, the brain's potential for forming new pathways- and thus new habits of thought and behavior- seems to be practically unlimited.

'It's largely established circuits of the left side of our brain that are telling us, 'You can't change your way of living... Your bad habits are forever... You're just made in a certain way, and you have to live with that fact.' That is simply not true.

'Scientific research has shown that electrical activity between the left and right sides of the brain becomes coordinated during certain kinds of meditation or prayer', he explains. 'Through these processes, the mind definitely becomes more capable of being altered and having its capacities maximized... When you are in this state of enhanced left-right hemispheric communication... plasticity of cognition occurs, in which you actually change the way you view the world... If you focus or concentrate on some sort of written passage which represents the direction in which you wish your life to be heading, [this] more directed thought process will help you to rewire the circuits in your brain in more positive directions... When we change our patters of thinking and acting, the brain cells begin to establish additional connections or, new wiring. These new connections then communicate in fresh ways with other cells, and before long, the pathways or wirings that kept the phobia or other habit alive are replaced or altered... Changed actions and a changed life will follow. The implications are exciting and even staggering.'

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"When, through meditation, man chooses to be identified with the unchangeable Spirit, he will no longer be deluded and tortured by the pandemonium of change."
II:17