Meditative Attainments Part II: Altered States

In Part I, I talked about the basics around meditative attainments, that they are meditation experiences which have some kind of lasting, typically positive impact on the practitioner beyond simply the meditation session itself. The classical four paths of Theravadan Buddhism are the prototypical example, though the other traditions with which I am familiar also have examples that are similar though somewhat less well documented, in the sense that they have less detailed maps of what happens. The traditions all attribute meditative attainments to mystical causes. The Theravadan four path experiences are said to consist of two classes of mind moments, one of which, the path or magga in Pali, results from first contact with the Nirvana object,  the second, the fruit or phala, in which the mind is still in contact with the Nirvana object and  practitioner reaps the benefits of the contact, namely that certain defilements are destroyed. Which defilements depend on which path moment the practitioner experienced.

Now, its entirely possible that, seen from the "inside", i.e. subjectively, the experience can feel profound and mystical. Taking the Theravadan first path experience as an example, the experience can feel as if the practitioner's mind is in touch with something ineffable, something which both exists and does not exist as the tradition says of the Nirvana object. I've had such experiences in meditation, though not specifically one of the path/fruit experiences, and I can say that they feel profoundly meaningful and one comes out of them with the feeling that the mind has touched something sacred. But seen from the "outside", i.e. objectively, there must be an explanation of these experiences based on how the brain works, i.e. the mechanism of how these experiences manifest has to be through the body in general and, specifically, the brain.

Psychological research into the psychedelic experience has come up with a way of classifying these kinds of nonordinary experience: altered states of consciousness. Altered states can arise as a result of a number of causes: drugs, fatigue, exercise, religious rituals, etc. An altered state is basically a state of consciousness that is different from the ordinary, everyday consciousness you experience as you're driving your car, shopping for food, taking care of the kids, completing an assignment at work or school, etc. The most familiar altered state is one we encounter every night: dreams. Dreams exhibit the typical characteristics of altered states. The dreamer is experiencing something that is unrelated to the flow of objective reality outside. While the dreamer lies in a darkened room in bed, inside their head, they are experiencing a whole fantasy world. With concentration meditation, these kinds of hallucinatory stories can occur during waking as well (see the Breakdown chapter in the book).

The difference between meditative attainments and dreams or most psychedelic experiences is that afterwards the person achieving a meditative attainment exhibits what psychologists called altered traits, i.e. doesn't just chalk it up to another night or trip, but rather, some deep psychological or existential change occurs. It is the fact of this change that lifts the meditative attainments out of the mundane and places them in the category of the supramundane. Just another dream or seeing some colored lights is mundane even if somewhat bizzare. Having an experience that results in a radical change in a person's behavior towards eliminating suffering is supramundane. The reason is quite simple: changing your behavior in even a very simple way is quite difficult to impossible, as anyone who has lost weight and tried to keep it off can tell you. Changing it in a profound way, a way that results in elimination of suffering for yourself and those around you is nothing short of a miracle. We don't have to attribute any transcendental mechanism to the causes of meditative attainments to acknowledge that they are, indeed, quite extraordinary.

So we can sum up a simple naturalistic mechanism for the meditative attainments:

• Meditation results in a profound altered state of consciousness,
• Altered state of consciousness causes specific rearrangements in the cognitive and/or emotional structure of the mapping between the brain and mind,
• Practitioner experiences radical transformation in cognitive and/or emotional function leading to reduction in suffering.

The actual brain areas that might be affected, how they might be remapped, etc. are the kinds of details that need to be worked out by neuroscientists, but I've got some theories on what might be happening that I may write up in a later blog post if I can find some time to do some background research. For the next blog post, though, I want to discuss the four ways different traditions have described the attainment experience resulting in enlightenment.

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