“Cessations of Consciousness in Meditation: Advancing a Scientific Understanding of nirodha Samāpatti”, 2023-04-24 ():
[Twitter (amusing); media, interview; media; cf. 1977] Absence of consciousness can occur due to a concussion, anesthetization, intoxication, epileptic seizure, or other fainting/syncope episode caused by lack of blood flow to the brain. However, some meditation practitioners also report that it is possible to undergo a total absence of consciousness during meditation, lasting up to 7 days, and that these “cessations” can be consistently induced.
One form of extended cessation (ie. nirodha samāpatti) is thought to be different from sleep because practitioners are said to be completely impervious to external stimulation. That is, they cannot be ‘woken up’ from the cessation state as one might be from a dream. Cessations are also associated with the absence of any time experience or tiredness, and are said to involve a stiff rather than a relaxed body. Emergence from meditation-induced cessations is said to have profound effects on subsequent cognition and experience (eg. resulting in a sudden sense of clarity, openness, and possibly insights).
In this paper, we briefly outline the historical context for cessation events, present preliminary data from two labs [about meditation teacher Delson Armstrong], set a research agenda for their study, and provide an initial framework for understanding what meditation induced cessation may reveal about the mind and brain.
We conclude by integrating these so-called nirodha and nirodha samāpatti experiences—as they are known in classical Buddhism—into current cognitive-neurocomputational and active inference frameworks of meditation.
…More specifically, we proposed that these styles of meditation can be placed on a continuum, and gradually reduce the temporal depth of predictive processing in the brain.
First, in FA meditation, high precision is assigned to one source of present-moment sensory input, typically breath sensations, which automatically reduces the precision assigned to other events that may normally habitually arise in experience (ie. mind wandering thoughts at temporally deeper levels in the processing hierarchy). The way that reducing precision of thoughts reduces their arising is similar to the way that, while engaged with reading, we are not aware of the feeling of our shirt resting on our backs. Then, in OM meditation, any content of experience is assigned equal precision, and hence, consequently relatively low precision (bare attention), logically inducing a non-reactive mode of experiencing or a shift to pure sensing without evaluation. Finally, in ND meditation, a state of complete present-moment awareness is induced by releasing any (precision) expectations about even the very next possible moment. In this state, also the most temporally shallow mental processes should disappear.
…In the paper, the researchers report measuring many aspects of Delson Armstrong’s physiology, such as his heart rate, breathing, eye movement, temperature and brain activity, and comparing them with the same measures taken during other states, including a nap.
The researchers found some notable brain changes while Armstrong was in a state of nirodha-samāpatti. Specifically, his overall brain synchronisation was reduced. Usually, certain parts of the brain are active at the same time, firing electrically together. ‘One part of the brain has a relationship with the activity of another part of the brain in a way that’s predictable’, Laukkonen says. These parts of the brain are usually communicating with each other, but the new findings suggest that during nirodha-samāpatti that feature quietens down. Similar brain desynchronization has been observed when people are given anesthetic doses of propofol or ketamine, but not during sleep.
If you watched a person in nirodha-samāpatti, they might appear so still and serene that you would worry that they were dead. Although Armstrong’s physiological readings were all reduced during nirodha-samāpatti, his brain didn’t ‘turn off’ and his breathing didn’t stop. This would appear to be consistent with some of the ancient teachings. For instance, according to the Maha Vedalla Sutta: ‘In the case of a monk who has attained the cessation of perception and feeling … his vitality is not exhausted, his heat has not subsided, and his faculties are exceptionally clear’.
Laukkonen and his co-authors offered some theories about how we might understand the neuroscience behind these cessations. It could be that, when brain activity is de-synchronized in this way, our brains can’t build a coherent model of the world anymore. The way we experience the world is thought by some scientists to come from predictions we’re making based on experience—called predictive processing. The cessation could represent a breaking down of that process, and a resulting loss in conscious experience.
This is just a hypothesis for now. Laukkonen says their study doesn’t mean that their subject is experiencing exactly what’s described in the ancient texts, or that he and his team have come up with the exact mechanism for how it works. ‘The goal is not to validate the existence of the state’, Laukkonen says, but to show that there is an unusual subjective experience unfolding, and some associated brain activity that might reflect how it is happening. And if nirodha-samāpatti does have the benefits that are reported by many meditators (upon awakening, Buddhists report undergoing a profound reset, and describe a sense of clarity and relief, ease and peace), Laukkonen says it makes it even more worthwhile to understand how exactly those feelings of relief and insight come to be.