Mindfulness meditation — science, pseudo-science or mere superstition? — Part 1

Science, pseudo-science or mere superstition?
I have been meditating since I was in my 8th grade. One of my close school friend’s mother, who happened to be a friend to my mother, out of her enthusiasm for meditation, booked a week long course for three — her son, myself and another friend from our class. She used to have a complicated disease that affected her knee and her ability to walk. Most of the doctors were not too hopeful and the ones who were hopeful had only hope but no cure. Then she found — meditation, and embarked on a self-healing process through meditation. Within months the signs of her recovery were visible and in a couple years, she was back on her feet again.
Meditation has always been a pseudoscience to me, like wise religion a pseudo-philosophy. However, the ‘pseudo-’ part is something inconclusive. It remains a mystery for both cases.
When Isaac Newton saw the apple falling off a tree, he had this gut feeling that something must be inside the mass of earth. It took him a while to come up with the laws and equations that explained gravity. Meditation is a stockpile of gut feelings which can not be proved and yet disproved by means conventional experimental methodology of science.
Does prayer work? Does a mother have a connection with her child that allows her to have a sensory experience that defies physics? Do twins have special mental and cognitive capacity that lets them transfer or induce feelings and emotions between themselves? Does human mind has a power that can be harnessed to manipulate the world outside? — Yet to be known.
A practical approach
None of the above can be reproduced in a laboratory successfully to pass a litmus test of fact. To scientific extremists and hardcore materialist, these are all superstitions, display of weakness and fragility of the human mind and condition, which almost all the time resorts to a bad explanation than no explanation at all.
However, there is a path, a technique of meditation less mystic and more about working out the muscles of the mind. Here, muscles refer to attributes and capacities of the human psyche. It is a common ability of the mind to focus, find details, sense our surroundings, make assumptions, observe thoughts and be aware of everything that is taking place in the stage of consciousness. These capacities are evolutionary, coded in our gene.
‘Vipassana’, also known as ‘Mindfulness Meditation’ is a simple practice of becoming a better observer who is mindful of the changes that are taking place in the plane of his consciousness. Like most meditation techniques Vipassana also establishes focus by observing one’s breath and noticing details of one’s breath as it begins with in an inhale, pauses when air fills the lungs, then excels out the air, followed by a pause, inhale again. 99% of initial meditators fails to mindfully concentrate on this simple steps without having their mind wander off to other thoughts that enter the scene of their consciousness from nowhere.
Mindfulness meditation
Mindfulness meditation has no rule for how you should breathe, whether through your nose or through your mouth, it doesn’t matter. Your breathing can be short or long, both are equally fine. It is not at all about the breath rather it is your power of the mind to notice something like breathing. Notice the details of your breath, how the air feels as it passes through your nostrils, is the air cold, how it fills up your lungs and how you feel light when you exhale the air out, is the air hot. Even it is perfectly fine to wander off in your thoughts, but whenever you do it you should be able to identify that a thought is rising, then it is growing and it is spreading its branches. While you were observing your breath suddenly you might remember that you were supposed to call your friend who wanted to know whether you wanted to see the new movie that is in the theatre. Almost all the time such thoughts erupt and control what we do next because we didn’t notice them rising in the first place. A good example is an anger. Mindfulness meditation tells you that it is perfectly fine to be angry when you can notice that a feeling of anger is rising, you know that you will become angry before an observer makes the discovery that you are angry and shares it with you.
Most effective and vastly practiced mindfulness meditation techniques origination from Tibetan meditation called Vipassana. Unlike many techniques, this one does not require you to adhere or subscribe to any religious concept.
Sam Harris has been influential on the topic of meditation. In his books ‘Waking up’ and ‘Free will’ and many of his other lectures and talks he has mentioned the techniques of Mindfulness meditation and thankfully he has come up with the self-guided audio version of it.
I could find two versions of the same meditation in YouTube. First one is a plain voice and the other one has atmospheric music superimposed on the voice. I like the later one as the music induces tranquility and I am conditioned with cognition-enhancing music.
Plain voice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdi1AQyyjNA
With atmospheric music.
Though the music is good I wouldn’t recommend looking at the video as the visuals are not very meaningful(at least to me). And a video is always a distraction and something extra for your mind. The meditation starts with closing your eyes and occasionally you will be asked to open your eyes to draw a contrast between states of a closed and open eye.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5oIEKjMdmA
Foot note
The part that is most important and most tricky is — to experience selflessness during the course of the audio. I would suggest that you read the books and do some research to understand what selflessness means in the context of meditation.
Selflessness, in short, is to — evaporate the idea that there is a thinker of thoughts and a centre of events who sits behind your eyes and. As you do it, you become an observer and merge with the objects, thoughts and emotions that arise in the sphere of your consciousness. The whole process of being selfless is counter-intuitive and initially, takes many days to be able to isolate the existence of self and ego and remove it from the equation.
