Awesome Holistic Presence! A Novel Meditative Synchrony

Abstract

Feeling safe, awesome, calm, and present is our default, natural, and effortless state of conscious existential being. But, unfortunately, most of us do not know what it is like to be in that awesome state of awareness. It is because we mostly feel unsafe, uninspired, restless, and preoccupied with a wandering mind and restless eyes. So, we follow some spiritual or meditative pathway. But we do not really understand how that works. We do not know what our essential being is. Naturally, we are not peaceful and happy most of the time. We read about a unique peaceful state of effortless oneness, nonduality, and natural bliss. But we do not know what it feels like. These four levels of safety, awe, calmness, and presence can be understood in terms of neuropsychophysiology and self-experience including awareness of body, mind, ego, self, and surroundings. One’s body can be observed from inside and outside. The outside-in view includes various bodily features such as movements, voice, speech, facial expressions, and actions. The inside-out look includes interoception, proprioception, temperature, heartbeat, breathing, and stomach and bladder fullness. We are also aware of our wandering mind, intentions, memories, thoughts, and feelings. Normally, we do not have much control over our conscious experience. It just happens to us, in our self-surround experiential loop. Our surroundings include not only physical objects but also people, animals, plants, and the whole cosmos. We are both embodied and embedded in a one universal ecosystem. SEQUENTIAL AND PARALLEL ATTENTION-AWARENESS-ACTION We have two modes of multimodal attention-awareness-action (AAA), namely, sequential and parallel. These two modes are analogous to the retinotectal and retinogeniculate neural paths for visual processing and experience. The sequential mode is slow, conscious, deliberate, intentional, explicit, declarative, or voluntary with a self-surround duality. It is processed by multiple forebrain networks of salience, default mode, frontoparietal, and dorsal-ventral attention networks. The typical duration of hippocampal processing is about 100 ms followed by a sequence of longer cognitive activity. The hippocampal-cortical circuits can map what, where, and when of experienced events. The parallel mode of AAA is fast, ballistic, and lifesaving. It is processed by the midbrain circuits with key nodes in the superior colliculus, periaqueductal gray, reticular formation, and ventral tegmental area. Such attention is holistic, multimodal, almost instantaneous with a latency of <50 ms. The superior colliculus has been shown to be not only a visual processor but also a multisensory-motor, orienting structure. It is called the orienting structure as the active agent or self orients itself to its instant situation. The fast actions include behavioral arrest, eye–head turning toward the salient stimulus, and the decision to act, capture pray, or escape (Knudsen, 2020; Wheatcroft et al., 2022). FEELING SAFE We continuously monitor our surroundings for threats or opportunities. That is our evolutionary and developmental heritage. Most of the early stages of evolution were about eating or getting eaten; hunt, or get hunted. That is how the early living cells got the mitochondria inside them. Then, complex intentional behaviors evolved in animals with efficient ways of hunting and defending. One of the theories of consciousness is that, as the threats and defenses became more sophisticated, the evolved animals became more sentient and self-conscious. With the evolution of mnemonic representations, symbols, language, and planning, we humans have reached enormous sophistication in our science of communication including our capacity for aggression and defense. Human conflicts and wars are still going on actively. No wonder, world peace remains a dream. The leading proposal on safety is the polyvagal theory (Porges, 2022). In brief, the vagal-sympathetic complex forms a neurophysiological platform for processing of threat, safety, and play. It is a trimodal neural circuit consisting of dorsal vagal complex (DVC), sympathetic nervous system (SNS), and ventral vagal complex (VVC). DVC can mediate a passive behavior to a threat-like immobilization or shutdown with feigning, collapse, or freeze. SNS is associated with fight or flight behaviors, which require activation of primary defense strategies recruited by mammals. It is associated with emotional behaviors such as fear and rage. VVC provides the neural structures that mediate the “social engagement system.” When safety is detected in the internal and external environment, the VVC supports prosocial behavior, social connections, and play. This trimodal vagal complex is consistent with the theory of three Gunas from the Sankhya philosophy. DVC, SNS, and VVC correlate respectively with Tamas, Rajas, and Sattva. Purusha is the acting-observing agent, and Prakriti is the material nature. The goals of Yoga therapy are to overcome fear, rage, lust, and greed and to actualize self-insight, wellness, peace, joy, and happiness (Sullivan et al., 2018). FEELING AWESOME “Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world” (Keltner, 2024). The eight awesome wonders of life are moral beauty – someone’s courage, kindness, and strength; collective effervescence as in group activities such as folk singing, dancing, team sports, and cultural activities; being in nature with immersive experiences; musicality in listening and creating music; visual artforms in architecture, painting, and sculptures; spiritual experiences with stories of birth and death; and epiphanies – when we suddenly understand the essential truths of life. These moments of awe happen to almost all of us in our daily lives. We just have to be aware of these moments. The feeling of awe is processed in the brainstem periaqueductal gray area, ventral tegmental area, and mesolimbic dopamine network. These reward circuits are involved in novelty processing and exploratory behaviors. Novelty is defined as a novel entity, a stimulus, or an environmental change that an individual has not previously experienced. Novelty can lead to a positive or negative experience followed by an approach or avoid response (Tapper and Molas, 2020). We face novel situations many times. This is what I call the awesome novel presence! As the Zen saying goes, “The sacred is in the ordinary.” I personally enjoy being in nature and noticing small or vast things. I love nature photography. Many times, I am inspired to write a poem or an essay. These novel enjoyable activities can instantiate self-insight. During these awesome moments, there is a reduced sense of ego and self-referential processing, especially in the default mode network (van Elk et al., 2019). FEELING CALM A calm mind is precious, dynamic, and pristine. It is like the calm flow of a majestic river. But most of the time our mind is turbulent with rough waves of fear, anxiety, rage, lust, and greed. Jaak Panksepp did the foundational work in affective neuroscience. I liked the cartoon from his book, “The Archeology of Mind” (Panksepp and Biven, 2012). It showed that at the base of all mental activity is the everfresh psychophysiological arousal. The primary emotions include fear, rage, panic, seeking, care, play, and sexuality. The secondary emotions are trust, empathy, pride, blame, guilt, and shame. The tertiary emotions are distancing skills, mindfulness, containment, mentalization, and naming feelings. In this emotional hierarchy, the primary emotions are processed in the periaqueductal gray and midbrain-diencephalic circuits. The secondary emotions are processed in the limbic and basal ganglia circuits. The tertiary emotions are mediated by the neocortical networks, which include the five major networks – Cingular-insular salience network, frontal-parietal executive network, the default mode network, and the dorsal and ventral attentional networks. MEDITATIVE SYNCHRONY Meditative synchrony implies an integrated experience with the coherence of multiple neural psychophysiological oscillatory circuits. Presumably, this is what happens in an immersive meditative state. Such a coherent psychophysiological state is our natural, default mode of being. This effortless aware state is hypothesized to show synchronized electroencephalogram alpha rhythm at multiple cortical and precortical regions. I have described a family of alpha rhythms during an effortless meditative awareness (Deshmukh, 2023). During such awareness, the whole family of alpha rhythm is synchronized including Occipital-Parietal alpha, Frontal eye-field alpha, Somatosensory alpha, Mu rhythm, Midtemporal auditory alpha, and Cingulate-Precuneus alpha. Any mental, cognitive effort and activity instantly desynchronize the alpha family activity. An overview of different brain rhythms and their correlated psychological functions have been documented. (Köster and Gruber, 2022) Alpha rhythm (8–13 Hz) implies attentional gating. Gamma activity (30–90 Hz) is involved in the binding of multisensory information and representations. Theta activity (4–8 Hz) serves as a pacemaker for human cognitive control and mnemonic processing. Theta-gamma coupling mediates attentional sampling, mnemonic updating, prediction, and generation of action plans. Alpha-gamma coupling mediates attention and memory. Alpha-beta coupling is evident in walking. Alpha-gamma coupling is seen in cognitive work and problem-solving. Interpersonal action coordination and psychophysiological hypersynchrony have been shown in team activities such as choir singing (Delius and Müller, 2023). There is some evidence to suggest that we are not only embodied but also embedded in nature. Human bioelectric circuit seems to be connected with the earth-atmospheric Schumann resonance frequency of 7.83 Hz. Nature’s direct current flows through the earth, plants, animals including human beings (Koniver, 2023). HOLISTIC PRESENCE Feeling present in a situation is hard to describe. In other words, our holistic presence is ineffable. My first inspired book was titled, “Presence: The Key To Mental Excellence” (Deshmukh, 1990). The first few words from my 1981 journal were, “Truth is now. Be present.” “The observed ever changes. The observable observer also changes. The integrate presence is change-free. This is our true nature. Discover it.” Now, I realize that presence is a holistic experience. For example, when I video a butterfly on a flower, I become an essential participant of that awesome loop of events. When we minimize our narrow-mindedness and expand our horizon to include all that is happening now, we implicitly embrace all things in our holistic presence, a sense of oneness. The “I” seems to complete the psychophysiological activity pattern, subject–object duality, and action-perception-integration loop. The “I” remains implicitly a nondual aware being. It cannot be objectified. One knows it by being it. This “I” has been a great puzzle for both philosophers and scientists for millennia. A few descriptors of “I” are (a) a Strange Loop, (Hofstadter, 2008) (b) Ipsundrum, (Humphrey, 2023) c) complex Brain-Body-Environment Loop (Humphrey, 2023), and (d) I AM THAT (Dikshit S. S., 1973). What is that “I” that ever knows itself? That only the “I” knows!