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Originally Posted by Joshua_G
Meditations do work and bring results without shutting down the mind.
To my experience, shutting down the mind (for more than few seconds) is impossible.
Trying to attain the impossible may lead only to frustration.
In the mediations I practiced, any effort and any attempt to manipulate the process of meditation only interferes with the meditation.
You cam find here instructions to various meditations, none requires shutting down the mind: http://www.the-third-circle.com/nfmedi1.html . |
I think there is a confusion of terminology taking place.
When I write of shutting off the explicit mind, I am not referring to the entire brain.
Your explicit mind can certainly be shut off; you would be incapable of getting sleep if such were not the case.
Explicit is a non-specific categorical term which generally refers to direct and focused attention in itemized and associative patterns.
Implicit is equally non-specific, and is a term which generally refers to indirect responses from stimuli.
For examples of the use, look up explicit and implicit memory.
However, specifically, the part of the explicit mind that can be shut down is the cognition.
Cognition is attention; production of, and comprehension of, language; problem solving and analysis; memory (specifically, episodic and semantic memory); executive decision making (
executive refers to direct decisions based on all of the previous components in this list to reach a conclusion).
The implicit mind cannot be fully shut down (or you would die).
Specifically, there is no way to shut down the default mode network (DMN [I haven't read over the wiki {because it wasn't written when I first studied DMN a few years ago} but this should have some useful info on the DMN:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_network]), which is the cardinal fluctuation of current in your brain in a variety of intersecting cycles when, "idle" (another common way of saying it among neurology is 'waking rest', or 'wakeful rest').
Anyways; the point is that this can't be shut down.
However, this isn't the explicit process of cognition either.
Cognition can be shut down.
We do not need cognition to stay living; not even remotely.
Case in point, the ventral stream is dramatically reliant on interchanging with our cognition, but our dorsal stream is not as directly related to doing so.
The ventral stream can be shut off.
The dorsal stream then remains as the only attended stream.
The result? The individual at hand does not pay attention to
what they are seeing, but instead only sees spacial distance and motion without noticing individual objects, or correlating them through cognitive association.
People with rear damage to the brain can sometimes severely damage the ventral stream, yet the dorsal stream will still be intact.
They may not be capable of telling you that to their right is a square.
To them, there is nothing; they are blind.
But move that square and they will tell you that there is motion and in which direction it moves - farther, nearer, up, down, left, right - and its relative speed - fast, slow.
But they will still not be capable of telling you that it was a square.
That is in brain damage.
In non damage brains, this is just as easily accomplished nearly every time someone reads a book and walks at the same time...successfully (some people can; some people can't).
The ventral stream and cognition are tied up focused on the book.
The dorsal stream and sub-cognition are doing the part of paying attention to spatial distance and relaying to the motor cortex via the limbic system (emotions) for walking.
Reflexes work off of the dorsal stream as well; after someone catches something that was thrown at them in their peripheral vision suddenly, that is when their ventral stream will kick in. Once they look at the object and identify it.
Prior to that, the dorsal stream does not look for a label or identification cognitively; it only looks for speed, distance, and direction. If the right speed, distance, and direction are in place; it uses the limbic system (emotions) to raise the alarm - which is then relayed to the motor cortex for reflexive
like response (not a true reflex by medical definition).
So what I am discussing is the systematic shut off of the
attention to cognitive, and even the limbic, system.
This leaves only the implicit DMN running.
Your bare bone essentials for picking up raw stimuli, and your essential internal life support.
In a way, I suppose it would more akin to being a lizard than a dog.
(A lizard only has the dorsal stream so it is never
cognitively aware of what it sees).
Why would anyone want to shut all this off?
Each to their own, and as I've said; I've been shutting everything off down to the bare essentials since I was 2 (or at least, that's as far back as my memory can take me)...so I'm not so great of a sample of ambition as to why someone wants to seek this out.
What I can say about what it does in my body is sort of a simple reboot; if I sit there for a bit.
On the other hand, it happens several times in my day.
For instance, I will walk outside after this post and have a cigarette.
I won't have a single cognitive thought for multiple moments while I'm out there because I just finished thinking allot in typing this up.
My brain seems to just retreat to non-cognition regularly between functions.
If I have no direct need to
think; my brain seems to happy to oblige not to.
If, on the other hand, I
want to think - that is
all that I will be doing (don't try talking to me while I'm writing, reading, thinking, watching a show, etc...)
[though...watching a show is different, but that is another matter entirely]
So I disagree with you on whether explicit shut-down is possible.
Primarily I disagree because of the neurological architecture of the human brain, and also...because explicit shut-down has been a principle part of daily function with or without meditation.
Now, that does not mean that one needs to shut off the explicit to receive benefits from meditation; far from it.
But if you can accomplish the task...I encourage it.
It is, in sensation (as best as I can convey it), a bathing of the brain.
Linear Mode
