The Physiological Effects of Meditation

I can’t remember where I got this article from.

Essentially, meditation seems to produce a physiological state of deep relaxation couple with a wakeful and highly alert mental state. There tends to be a lower metabolic rate and decreases in heart and respiration rates.

There is also typically, in meditation, a slowing of the heartbeat. The lactate concentration of the blood decreases sharply during meditation, nearly four times as fast as it does in people resting quietly stretched out in a safe, quiet situation. Blood lactate level is related to anxiety and tension, and the low level found in subjects during meditation is very likely related to the relaxed state of the meditators.

Afterword

Meditation is achieved at the point where mind and spirit converge. The mind is the instrument that disciplines, and the spirit represents the special endowment of man that must be cultivated by special control and dedicated efforts.

The idea of revelation is based on the premise that the mind of man is not only able to be aware of cosmic knowledge, but also that in some mysterious way there seems to be a cosmic initiative seeking to make itself known to man. This calls for the mind that is not only seeking but also willing to be sought. There has long been a feeling that man has a capacity of consciousness for direct communication with cosmic wisdom.

The mystic employs silence as a form of communication charged with meaning. In meditation something of the creative nature of the being achieves a meaning that is not bound by the symbolic structure of language. The forms this creative process employ varies with our understanding of the nature of the cosmos and the nature of the human personality.

The unique quality of man’s nature has always been a matter of deep concern to him. Self-consciousness is not only a privilege but is also a burden.

The concept of the spirit that emerges from scientific inquiry is different in degree but not in nature from that of mystical thought. Science can go only so far in showing what this spiritual quality is. The mystics’ inclination is more concerned with employing this spiritual energy in the process of living.

Man is constantly immersed in three force fields. Cosmic radiation, electromagnetic and gravitational force fields are constantly at work on life.

In his integration of experience the mystic denies the appearance of conflict or diversity in ultimate reality. The more practical minded have always challenged the mystic with the problems of good and evil, the false and the true, the beautiful and the ugly with their apparent conflicts. But the mystic finds the answer in a spiritual experience exalted enough to resolve all the differences in a higher unity.