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Meditation Practice and Research

Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, University of California, Irvine, California 92717.

This article provides an introduction and overview of meditation practice, theory, and research. The models of human nature and consciousness from the meditative traditions are compared with traditional Western psychological models, and the former are suggested to encompass a wider range of states of consciousness and psychological well-being. The various models and mechanisms, psychological and physiological, Eastern and Western, that have been advanced to account for the effects of meditation are reviewed. Meditation practice is discussed both as a self-regulation strategy for specific psychotherapeutic and psychophysiological aims and as a discipline for deep self-exploration and transformation. When used for intensive self-exploration, meditation is best viewed as one component of a process demanding and producing a thoroughgoing transformation of all aspects of life and thought. The progression of experiences, insights, and states of consciousness that tend to emerge with intensive insight meditation are descibed, as are the author's initial experiences. The research literature on the effects and therapeutic applications of meditation is reviewed.

We know the outer world of sensations and actions, but our inner world of thoughts and feelings we know very little. The primary purpose of meditation is to become conscious of and familiar with our inner life. The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life and consciousness.

Skill in meditation affects deeply our character. We are slaves to what we do not know; of what we know we are masters. Whatever vice or weakness in ourselves we discover and understand its courses and its workings, we overcome it by the very knowing; the unconscious dissolves when brought into the conscious [Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, 1973, p. 15].

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