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My Very Person Exceeds both East and West, Exceeds the
characteristic limitations of both the Alpha orientation and
the Omega orientation.
The current Western preference is to look at everything
in terms of brain phenomena – what particular areas of the
brain or functional systems of the brain tend to be
stimulated by a particular activity (such as, for example,
meditation practice), and what outwardly (and even,
primarily, socially) observable results tend to occur from
such brain-stimulation. Western researchers are always
looking for brain changes, physical changes, and
social-functioning changes to come about as a result of
virtually anything and everything within the domain of human
exercise. To investigate phenomena on some other basis is,
in the West, essentially taboo.
The many modes of possible meditation practice have
originated in a flow of tradition that is not adapted to
Westernized purposes. Nevertheless, the typical
Western approach to investigating meditation reduces and
changes it into something it was not originally intended to
be. In any case, many traditional meditators (from even all
traditions) are now all lined up to go to the laboratories
to have the effectiveness of their
technique verified by scientists – but the
scientists are only going to measure how meditation affects
brain activities, brain functions, and brain centers, and
how such brain phenomena affect functional activities and
social behaviors in the context of ordinary (or
gross physical) life.
“traditional purpose of meditation is to exceed the
brain”
The great purpose of traditional meditation practice is
not merely to produce changes in the functioning of the
brain and the behavior of the gross physical and social
personality. In fact, if anything, the traditional purpose
of meditation is to exceed the brain – the brain as a
barrier to the Knowledge of Reality (or Truth,
or Real God). Thus, traditionally, meditation practice is
about going beyond the brain and beyond the gross physical
and social personality.
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