Keith Wallace and Fred Travis: Understanding new ways to objectively measure enlightenment

Summary

In a groundbreaking discussion, Keith Wallace and Fred Travis explore innovative methods to objectively measure enlightenment. Wallace, a pioneer in the field, recounts attending an international congress where he presented his research on the neurophysiology of enlightenment. He emphasizes how the concept of enlightenment was reshaped by emphasizing its neurophysiological basis. Fred Travis builds on these foundations, showcasing cutting-edge research on brain function during Transcendental Meditation (TM). The talk underscores how TM practice can lead to a state of restful alertness and improved brain coherence, establishing a new paradigm for understanding consciousness and peak performance.

Highlights

• Keith Wallace shares his journey to discovering enlightenment's physiological basis, marking a revolution in how it's understood 🔍.
• Travis demonstrates that TM practice results in increased blood flow and brain activity coherence, transcending traditional meditation practices 🚀.
• The duo explores how these brain changes set the basis for peak human performance and how they might be key to accessing higher states of consciousness 🌈.
• Real-world applications and comparisons to elite performers underline the far-reaching implications of this research in understanding and achieving personal excellence 🏆.

Key Takeaways

• Keith Wallace and Fred Travis dive into the science of enlightenment, showing it's more than just a mystical concept; it has measurable physiological bases 🌟.
• Transcendental Meditation (TM) emerges as a powerful practice for achieving restful alertness and enhancing brain coherence through measurable changes in blood flow and electrical activity 🧠.
• Wallace and Travis highlight that these changes are not limited to meditation alone but integrate into daily activities, pointing towards achieving Cosmic Consciousness 🌌.

Overview

In their enlightening discussion, Keith Wallace and Fred Travis delve into the complexities of measuring enlightenment through physiological changes. Wallace begins by recounting his experiences at an international congress where he unveiled his research on the neurophysiology of enlightenment. He discusses how enlightenment has been redefined from a mystical state to one grounded in tangible neurophysiological changes, thanks to the vision of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Fred Travis takes the stage to illustrate how Transcendental Meditation (TM) affects brain function. He presents research mapping increased blood flow and brain coherence during TM, painting a picture of TM as a transformative practice for both the mind and body. This state of restful alertness is unique to TM and represents a significant shift from traditional meditation techniques, demonstrating TM's potential to unlock human potential at a neurophysiological level.

The session concludes with insights into how these brain changes are not confined to meditation periods but integrate into everyday life, manifesting as improved mental and emotional balance. Wallace and Travis emphasize this integration as a stepping stone towards Cosmic Consciousness, suggesting that heightened awareness could be a new norm for humanity. Their research offers a glimpse into how achieving this state could redefine personal excellence and contribute to greater human performance across various fields.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Welcome The chapter "Introduction and Welcome" opens with music, setting an inviting tone for the listener. The key focus is on Keith Wallace, the founder of Miu, who is highly regarded by the community. The chapter piques curiosity about Wallace's initial 'aha moment' when he discovered the fourth major State of Consciousness, marking the beginning of his exploration into this concept as an independent realm of study.
• 01:00 - 05:30: Keith's Story of 1974 Conference The chapter begins with an atmosphere of anticipation and excitement as the audience eagerly awaits insights into a unique physiological state from Keith Wallace, a prominent figure in the field. His discussion is highly anticipated as it promises to delve into groundbreaking neurophysiological findings. Accompanied by Fred Travis, another expert renowned for unveiling EEG signatures, their combined presentation is set to explore the fascinating topic of the neurophysiology of Peak Performance. The introduction of the speakers is warmly received, signaling the start of a session that promises to enlighten the participants on new dimensions of cognitive science and physiological frontier.
• 05:30 - 09:00: Maharishi's Redefinition of Enlightenment In 1974, a speaker with a PhD of four years traveled to India to participate in an international Congress focused on physiology. While addressing an esteemed audience of around a thousand top physiologists from around the world, the speaker felt nervous. This chapter likely describes the experiences leading up to and during the Congress, as well as insights into Maharishi's redefinition of enlightenment in this context.
• 09:00 - 12:30: Early Research and Publications The chapter titled 'Early Research and Publications' discusses the preparation and presentation of a speech for a conference on the topic of 'The Neurophysiology of Enlightenment'. The speaker collaborated with Marishi, putting in extensive efforts and sleepless nights to develop the speech. It highlights the involvement of one of India's top scientists, who was hosting the conference, indicating the significance and relevance of the topic presented.
• 12:30 - 15:00: Introduction of Fred Travis The chapter introduces Fred Travis, a young PhD who was recognized for his significant research connecting scientific findings with the traditions of India. This recognition came at a conference where he was unexpectedly chosen as the main speaker. Despite his initial reservations about preparing a pamphlet for a scientific conference, Fred embraced the challenge, marking a notable moment in his career.
• 15:00 - 20:00: Fred Travis on Brain Patterns and Meditation In this chapter, Fred Travis discusses an experience he had during a scientific conference. He recounts a situation where pamphlets featuring his picture were distributed to an audience filled with scientists, including his thesis advisor and other teachers. These pamphlets were titled 'The Neurophysiology of Enlightenment'.
• 20:00 - 26:30: Comparative Analysis of Meditation Types The chapter titled 'Comparative Analysis of Meditation Types' delves into various forms of meditation and highlights significant insights into the nature of Enlightenment. Dr. Wallace recalls a moment from his younger days, where he was deeply moved by a pamphlet produced by Mari, which offered profound insights into Enlightenment. The pamphlet clarified that Enlightenment is not about self-delusion or denial but represents the pinnacle of life's most cherished qualities. This chapter sets the stage for understanding different meditation practices and how they relate to the concept of Enlightenment.
• 26:30 - 31:00: Neurophysiological Changes and Transcendental Consciousness The chapter titled 'Neurophysiological Changes and Transcendental Consciousness' discusses the concept of enlightenment. It emphasizes that enlightenment is something real, natural, and tangible. The process of attaining enlightenment is described as continuous, progressive, and based on neurophysiological refinement or purification. This interpretation is highlighted as a unique way of defining enlightenment, suggesting that such a perspective has not been widely considered before.
• 31:00 - 39:00: Fred's Research on Athletes and Managers This chapter discusses Mar's innovative approach to scientific research, particularly in encouraging studies on phenomena beyond the conventional. It mentions earlier rudimentary investigations, including experiments with yogis, such as burying them to observe survival. One such study noted a decrease in oxygen consumption. The chapter hints at further research conducted in Japan, indicating an international interest in such unique studies.
• 39:00 - 40:00: Conclusion of Presentation The chapter discusses the conclusion of a presentation, focusing on the perspective of highly experienced individuals with 30 to 40 years in their fields. Despite observing certain changes, there was a lack of interest in explaining these phenomena. However, Marishi introduced the concept that Enlightenment is fundamentally tied to neurophysiological refinement, marking a significant shift in perceptions.

Keith Wallace and Fred Travis: Understanding new ways to objectively measure enlightenment Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] Keith Wallace of course is very dear to all of us as the founder of Miu but I think also I always wonder what was his first aha experience when he discovered this fourth major State of Consciousness and began to explore it as as a its own
• 00:30 - 01:00 distinct state of physiology it must have been absolutely fascinating I'm hoping he's going to share that with us this afternoon and as well as Fred Travis who's really opened up a window into our mind to see the EEG signatures so they're going to be talking about today the neurophysiology of Peak Performance please welcome Keith Wallace and Fred Travis [Music]
• 01:00 - 01:30 I'd like to start with a little story in 1974 I went to India to speak at an international Congress I'd only had my PhD for four years but I was speaking to a group of about a thousand of the top physiologists around the world and it was a little bit uh I was a little bit nervous I must say but the interesting thing was that before I went
• 01:30 - 02:00 to this conference I spent uh in fact I stayed up the whole night before several nights before working with marishi on developing uh this speech so I was very well prepared and marishi called this speech the neurophysiology of Enlightenment and it was interesting because of one of the top scientists in India he essentially was hosting the conference and so he felt this was approp even
• 02:00 - 02:30 though I was a young PhD he thought this was amazing that here was this great research that spoke about the tradition of India and so that's why he made me probably the main speaker of this whole conference and as I Was preparing and literally we prepared all night um marshie said oh we're going to make a pamphlet for you I said Mary you know this a scientific conference I can't go with a pamphlet they won't understand
• 02:30 - 03:00 you don't do that at science he said no no no we're going to do that and we're going to put your picture in it too so you know before the lecture all these pamphlets were handed out to all these scientists and you know I had my thesis advisor I had my whole you know board there all my all my teachers in that audience along with another thousand other people who managed to get this little pamphlet here the neurophysiology of Enlightenment with a picture of me which you know I did look
• 03:00 - 03:30 quite young at that time there people sort of looked around me Dr Wallace oh yeah yeah where are you you know but it was beautiful what Mari had done in this pamphlet it was Exquisite I'll just read you just a few parts he said Enlightenment is not a hypnotic state of self- delusion or self-denial the state of Enlightenment represents the ultimate development of what we ordinarily consider to be the most valuable qualities of Life very a
• 03:30 - 04:00 beautiful definition of enlightenment it is something real natural and tangible and develops systematically in a continuous and Progressive manner on the basis of neurophysiological refinement or purification and this is the main point I just wanted to make because no one ever had defined Enlightenment that way
• 04:00 - 04:30 in the world that was Mar's genius to first of all encourage scientific research you know there had been some studies people had looked at yogis they looked at you know they dug a pit put a yogi in it and saw how long he could survive I mean that was literally the extent of the research and there was some you know he did survive so it was okay but um and his Ox consumption seemed to go down um and then you know there there were studies in Japan where
• 04:30 - 05:00 they looked at very very expert people 30 40 years experience and they would see certain changes but again that was kind of phenomenalistic nobody was really interested in explaining what was happening and marishi came out right away to the world and he said Enlightenment is based on neurophysiological refinement and with that some five
• 05:00 - 05:30 million people started meditation and pursued Enlightenment maybe they were interested in lowering their blood pressure doing this or that but nevertheless never in the history of the world had 5 million householders suddenly pursued Enlightenment all because marshy redefined it and of course he brought out an Exquisite technique to allow it to be brought about but he talked about Enlightenment in the language of the times and that was really mari's great genius he
• 05:30 - 06:00 understood that the experience of consciousness of pure Consciousness changed the nervous system now the research hadn't even been done to explain that yet but marshi understood that very clearly I remember in one lecture he said what will be that experience that will enliven the nervous system but not create stress in it what would be that one perfect experience and he said it would be Bliss Consciousness pure Consciousness and this We Now
• 06:00 - 06:30 understand on a neurophysiological basis that everything we do right now you're hearing this lecture neurons are changing in your brain it's Dynamic our brain it's not hardwired it's constantly Changed by experience but we've never had that experience of transcending before suddenly marishi introduces the experience of transcending boom right away and you could see for me doing the research in the early days was easy because I could take beginners in and
• 06:30 - 07:00 instantly you'd see these beautiful changes nice lovely alpha waves in the frontal part of their brain all kinds of changes in their physiology from biochemical changes oxy consumption and so forth and I submitted my first paper before I was even had my PhD a graduate student said to me well you know why don't you just publish this I said well I haven't even done my thesis yet I mean I've just done this preliminary research he said no no it's fine you can publish it in this magazine turns out that magazine science is a magazine that any
• 07:00 - 07:30 scientist in their lifetime if they even got close to it would be happy I had no idea didn't have my PhD submitted this article and the the article is so snobby that they wouldn't even put your credentials they just put where you were from so fortunately nobody knew I was still a PhD student you know so this is how it happened very innocently very simply based on marshie
• 07:30 - 08:00 changing the attitude for how we evaluate meditation not only giving us an incredible technique but changing the whole Paradigm of how we approach meditation and he instead of Shifting the Paradigm completely he brought out a means by which we can include it in the present Paradigm we could understand meditation in a very mechanistic way we have an experience of transcending it's a new experience the brain responds to a new experience changes the brain we see
• 08:00 - 08:30 these changes in the um EEG instantly they happen when we're meditating and I'm very fortunate to be with the leading researcher today in the field of brain research Dr Fred Travis very dear friend and Brilliant researcher who's now taken this from my very early research many many many years ago and taken it and shown in a very sophisticated way really validating what marishi said
• 08:30 - 09:00 that there is a progression that there is a neurophysiology of Enlightenment and as we go through these different stages of Enlightenment as we go through different stages of higher States Of Consciousness we can track those changes in the brain and I think the most interesting finding he's going to tell you about is that most of the most powerful changes are outside of meditation so it's my joy to ask Fred now to bring bring out the latest research thank you very much
• 09:00 - 09:30 thank you Keith and thank you for establishing Enlightenment a very firm basis of brain functioning a lot of things that happened since your research some has looked at blood flow what we see here is blood flow during TM practice and we see that during TM there's increased blood flow in the front part of your brain that's your Executive Center that's the source of planning while there's decreased blood flow
• 09:30 - 10:00 decreased blood flow here this is a primitive brain this has to do with the Ral has to do with activation what you're looking at is a blood flow pattern of restful alertness here's the rest for mind and body here we have the attentional levels are much more awake this pattern is unique to TM practice uh we can understand meditations in different categories Focus attention involves meditations that um include voluntary
• 10:00 - 10:30 sustained attention on an object it's focused attention and when you're doing this type of process what you see in your brain is increased gamma activity it's a very fast functioning um brain wave activity goes up 20 to 50 times per second you look at neural Imaging you see the whole brain is active concentration requires effort another category is open monitoring in open monitoring what you do is there's this passionate observation of changing experience experiences in the brain it
• 10:30 - 11:00 could be changing breath changing body States uh changing mind when you have your attention on internal processes this is what you see a brain wave is called Theta 2 it's upper band of theta goes up and down 68 times per second and this is where it is primarily in the front and where we see the change is in the part of the brain that has to do with ATT tension switching because you're constantly moving your attention from one thing to another the last court category automatic self-transcending includes any meditation which goes
• 11:00 - 11:30 beyond its procedures of practice the self that's being transcended here is the steps of the meditation and it leaves it goes from thinking and you arrive to a state of being and when you're having this experience of awareness just turn within you see the lower level of the alpha band alpha 1 goes up and down 8 to 10 times per second and here we see this over the whole brain and this is the change in blood flow pattern that we've just seen now this pattern of blood flow is also
• 11:30 - 12:00 seen in terms of electrical activity but before I get at that I just like to take a broader View and that is language allows us to symbolically represent the world it's allowed us to create to visualize and create this building language is what lets people Envision the unified field also language is what's used to create genetic modified organisms what happens with the language is we can get stuck in the language stuck in the words and the concepts
• 12:00 - 12:30 stuck in the world view stuck in paradigms meditations in these first two categories continue us involved in the thinking process with Transcendental Meditation which is in this automatic self-transcending category you're actually able to transcend thoughts you're able to transcend categories you're able to explore what is at the source of thought and what is at the source of thought is just Consciousness pure Consciousness without an object I
• 12:30 - 13:00 asked people to describe that experience and I asked them to describe it in their own words as though they were tasting a strawberry I don't want them to give me the words they've heard me speak out and then I did content analysis where you see what are the ideas contained in their descriptions these are the three themes absence of time absence of space and absence of body sense absence of time that's the part of us which is eternal
• 13:00 - 13:30 absence of body sense is the part of us which is connected with the world around us this is our most universal self this is the experience of transcendental consciousness of just Consciousness itself it's the fourth state of consciousness and we're fortunate that we we not only have this experience during the meditation but it becomes part of our daily activity here we have EEG patterns in a 19-year-old meditating for 4 months this is TM practice this is eyes open here we have
• 13:30 - 14:00 the alpha activity we talked about we see it goes up and down together this is called coherence coherence means different part of the brain are working together this is eyes open you notice this fast activity this is the gamma this is the beta this is actually trying to take in outside information keep your attention on this side of the slide because we'll see a EEG patterns and someone meditating for eight years ready
• 14:00 - 14:30 notice what's happening is the EEG patterns of TM are there now during waking activity so what's happening is that Universal sense of self that part of us which is silent stable non-changing is becoming part of everyday activity this is Cosmic Consciousness Mahari says we see things as before but not as before now the inner state of being is lived there's something added to your customary experience and that's
• 14:30 - 15:00 something that's not a thought it's not a feeling it's an inner Continuum this is how someone describes this experience during sleep I'll let you read it this person teaches school at the Mahari School of the Age of Enlightenment de Kay through 12 school a Consciousness based School here in Fairfield notice they use a very concrete analogy to explain explain this very abstract experience pure
• 15:00 - 15:30 Consciousness is there it's a Continuum it's like the soda which is always there and the fizzing of the soda which let you identify with it is like that effervescence of pure Consciousness which gives rise to thoughts and feelings and perceptions but when that settles down when you're asleep it's as though the the fizzing goes down this is what's happening in the brain during this experience it's 30 seconds of data these are delta waves that's what you see during sleep that's restoration dur during sleep this is someone reporting
• 15:30 - 16:00 Cosmic Consciousness notice you still see the delta waves you still see the rest restoration of sleep but in addition it's more ragged uh we can count this 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 we see an 8 Herz wave on top of a 1 Herz wave we see these two frequencies which correlate with deep sleep Delta and inner wakefulness this is what the group data show and what's interesting so this is non-meditators during sleep short-term
• 16:00 - 16:30 meditators during sleep those reporting Cosmic Consciousness notice in the short-term meditators who are not experiencing Cosmic Consciousness there's still a beginning of integration of this style of functioning into the brain what is happening is CC isn't a 01 step it's like a flower opening up gradually over time this is what the brain looks like in people who are engaged in activity we have 17 non-meditating subjects 17 practi practicing TM but not reporting CC 17
• 16:30 - 17:00 reporting CC we gave them complex computer tasks and what's differentiated this group is what is the character of the front of the brain these organizing executive centers of the brain we see it's working more as a whole also the overall dominant frequencies are more Alpha which is self-referral and less of this fast activity which is object referral you're getting a different basis from which you're processing the world and last Brain Preparatory
• 17:00 - 17:30 response notice we have a mirror image here during a simple task when you know the response there's increased Preparatory response and the choice reaction time where you don't have enough information the people reporting CC are remaining balanced until it's time to act and we've added these together to get a brain integration scale on non-m meditator short-term higher States and what this is showing is there's now a different perspective on which you're appreciating the work world you have a
• 17:30 - 18:00 completely different inner frame of reference so because of that uh the brain integration scores correlate with more reasoning higher emotional stability just because this the frame of reference from which you're living life has been transformed this last slide is um ongoing research seeing do we see this measure this brain measure anywhere else this is work I've done with Harold herang he's been instrumental in creating and carrying out this research uh we're right now writing a book which
• 18:00 - 18:30 is uh reporting our research this is just looking at the brain patterns we see in athletes and these are 66 athletes 33 had um finished in the top 10 for at least three consecutive years in Olympic Games National games the controls had not you notice there's higher levels of brain integration managers we see a similar phenomena these are top level managers they've been CEOs for 18 years Al longer uh the company had grown during that
• 18:30 - 19:00 time we see higher levels of brain integration compared with controls now these are not meditation studies they didn't practice meditation but they are successful here we have brain integration in our short-term long-term practitioners now when I show this I don't mean to suggest that if you meditate you're going to be a great manager and a great athlete but what I do suggest is transcending taking the mind to Inner unbounded is creating that brain style which is
• 19:00 - 19:30 going to make you more successful in whichever area of life you're endeavoring so in my conclusion the brain changes as we grow to Cosmic Consciousness as a brain changes we realize our Birthright to live Universal being in the midst of waves of change to live this reality is why we have been born on Earth what transcending is going to do is it's going to take the conscious future and it's going to make it into our living presence thank you
• 19:30 - 20:00 very much can we both stand up here okay