Prof. Rich Doyle, who has recently started working with me, and who wrote the recently released "Darwin's Pharmacy: Sex, Plants and the Evolution of the Noosphere", had given the previous month's MOM lecture. It is an eclectic group.
The MOM is a cross-discipline group that Paula started to link the philosophy department with other interested/interesting folk across the University. Attendees were faculty and grad students from religious studies, philosophy, engineering, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, kinesthesiology and medicine. The Medical School at Hershey, about 90 miles away, was linked by video conference.
The presentation focused on current research on cognitive neuroscience and meditation, esp. the research at Harvard, University of Toronto and Yale related to explaining scientifically, "my" loss of thought situation. Similar to the Science and NonDuality Conference presentation in San Francisco in October, psychological testing done on "us" folk with "self-reported, persistent, non-symbolic consciousness" (SRPNSs) was discussed. The MOM talk was not videotaped, but the similar SAND conference talk in October is on youTube. The MOM talk was audio recorded, but as room mics were used, much of it was barely intelligible.
The Q&A period that followed lasted for an hour and a half. This group was clearly interested, understood the subject, and were obviously well-trained in related areas. Some questions, as well as i can make them out from the recording and my recollection:
Q. Is religion useful or important in awakening?
G. As we traditionally define religion, not in my experience. In fact, IME, it is often a big hurdle, a barrier to awakening that must be overcome. There are mystics in every religious tradition, but if you read their work, what there is of it, or the original teachings of the founders of the major religions, what they found is virtually the same, amazingly so. As their followers and successors get involved, and begin "organizing" it into a religion, it becomes a set of practices, beliefs and doctrine that must be overcome if one is to be ultimately free. No matter how hard the founders try to prevent this from happening, their followers will not be deterred, i.e. Buddhism.
Q. Is there a difference between religions on how meditation practices work in awakening for them?
The ashram in south India, Shantivanam, where i spent about a month two years ago, was conceived by two French Benedictine monastics in the 1940s as a Catholic/Hindu ashram, nominally to convert the Hindus to Catholicism. It didn't work out quite that way. Bede Griffiths led it after the founders passed. It does have some exceptional work on Christian advaita by the current leader, Br. Martin.
One of the founders, Henri le Saux, became Swami Abhishiktananda after his meeting w/my teacher, Ramana Maharshi. i had the privilege to stay in Abhishiktananda's hut for most of my stay (until the rats drove me out). Abhishiktananda's writing of his great struggle to let go of his Christianity and accept his direct experience of non-dual awakening is some of the best in the contemplative literature, e.g. Swami Abhishiktananda: Essential Writings and Saccidananda: A Christian Approach to Advaitic Experiences.
Mother Theresa's biography, Mother Theresa: Come Be My Light, attests to a similar struggle, perhaps surprisingly.
Q. The Hood Mystical Scale that your group (SRPNSs) was given had an amazingly, basically statistically unbelievable number of folk who scored at the highest level. How is it possible that a 32 to 160 scale has 9 of 36 of you at the 160 level? I'm a psychological researcher, and that can't be right.
A. Well, as said earlier, Dr. Ralph Hood, the creator of the scale, was in Dr. Jeffery Martin's doctoral committee at CIIS, so as far as applying the methodology, that is about as good as it gets. As far as the statistics, there was no attempt made to have this study reflect a broad general population. Dr. Martin's thesis proposal was to look just at SRPNSs and determine their psychological profile. As discussed in the talk, there were 500 SRPNSs in the original data base, and that population was already heavily "self-selected" and somewhat literate to submit their information.
From that initial population of 500, only 50 were selected, a cut of 90%. From that only 36 completed the testing and in-depth interviews (only 7% of the original population). There was no intention to make it statistically "representative" of any broad population. Dr. Martin was trying to get the most persistently non-dual folk he could find, with enough folk to be statistically addressable, and see what their psychological profile was.
Similarly with the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (WUSCT), which is a standard psychological testing tool with which i am sure you are familiar. All SRPNSs scored 5 or above on the 1 to 10 scale, 2/3 from 7 to 10, with an average of 7.14. i was the only one who scored 10. That is not an "average" population, nor was it intended to be.
One thesis element, asking if those with the highest WUSCT scores also had the highest Hood Mystical Scale scores, was not significantly correlated. As reported in Dr. Martin's thesis the SRPNSs' psychological profiles varied, even those with 160s on the Hood Mystical Scale.
i'll send the .pdf of Dr. Martin's Ph. D. thesis to Paula and she can make it available to all of you.
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