Latest / The Inner Well Podcast / Dr. Fred Travis - Part 2: Your Brain Is A River Not A Rock
Transcript
- The Inner Well Podcast: Hello and welcome back to the inner well podcast. My name is Danielle Freeberg and I'll be your host for this episode. This week we are back for part two of the conversation with brain researcher, Dr. Fred Travis. If you missed last week's episode, part one of this conversation, I really encourage you to go back and listen to that before diving into this one. I'll introduce our guests and then we'll get started. Dr. Frederick Travis received his PhD in psychology at Maharishi International University in 1988. After a two-year postdoctoral position in basic sleep research at the University of California Davis, Dr. Travis returned to Maharishi University as director of the Center for the Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition. His work has focused on brain development from birth to adulthood. the effects of stress on brain functioning, effects of meditation on the brain both during and after meditation, markers of higher states of consciousness, and the brain patterns of peak performance. Fred has published 92 papers and book chapters and has authored and co-authored four books. He teaches on the undergraduate, master's, and doctoral levels and lectures globally on the brain and consciousness. We're so happy to have you back. Let's dive in. We all contain a space within that when enlivened and nourished will support us with unwavering stability, expansion, and peace of mind. Join us each week as we dive into honest, grounded conversations about transcendental meditation, consciousness, and growth, and what it means to live an integrated life supported by a foundation of creativity and calm. This is The Inner Well. One thing that I often tell my students is that we're not meditating just for the sake of meditation alone. We're meditating for the sake of our life and the effects that that has outside of meditation. So all of these things that we're experiencing in the brain and in our whole physiology during meditation, how does that lead to practical effects in daily life outside of the meditation and how we're experiencing the world and how that kind of challenge stress line shifts. If experience changes the brain, if the brain is a river, not a rock, if you add an experience of being of wholeness, of wakefulness, what will happen is the brain will begin to bring that into daily activity, will begin to integrate that. And this is indeed what we see. Even After just a few weeks of meditation, we find that that brain pattern, this alpha one EEG, seen when the attention is turned within, we're awake, we're alert, that begins to be seen more and more during activity. I talked about this crossfade during TM itself, where the thoughts are becoming secondary, inner silence becoming more primary. There's another crossfade and that is that inner silence of the self begins to be integrated with the outside activity. Once we separate the mind from all of its activity, then we can begin to reintegrate it. And this is what's happening. The longer you meditate over time, the more we see the brain pattern of inner wakefulness, which you talked about inner space. The more we are having inner space, even in the midst of dynamic activity. It's so important. If we have a greater challenge, what we want to do is strengthen our ability to deal with it. We don't want to go up into the woods and live off the grid and forge for food. That's fun to do, but we want to be involved in this dynamic world, but not be lost in it. So by meditating and acting, meditating and acting, that inner silence of being, this inner silence of wakefulness, of alertness, of fullness, begins to be there in daily activity. Something is being added. It's not a thought, it's not a feeling, it's not a thing, it's nothing you can report. You're just more there. You're just less lost in the activity. And so you begin to find an inner stability, inner silence coming with you wherever you're going. And that's how we can understand why perceived stress would become less. Because the only reason we feel stressful is if we think we're losing it. I just, can't manage it. As we beginning to find that the activity itself is not completely overwhelming us, we can begin to look at it in different ways. We can begin to ⁓ consider different options to deal with the situation and so on. And what happens over long-term meditation from seven years to 24 years in our research, People report that inner silence of the transcendent is always there. It's a constant companion. And indeed, that's who they identify, who they are. That's where they're living their life. That's where they're situated. Deep inner silence. the consciousness continues to go out through the ego and the intellect and the mind in the sense as you deal with the world, but it's more you're not lost in that whole process. The thought comes and then it comes back to silence. And that silence, is there before the thought and after the thought is also there during the thought. So it's a whole different way of living the world, very much internally motivated, internally stationed. So you can really appreciate the world outside of yourself. And this is the state of enlightenment. This is what TM practice is doing. TM practice is much more than just a ⁓ fancy state of rest. TM itself leads to restful alertness, this inner state of being and experiencing this fourth state during TM coming into activity, the two come together and then a fifth state arises. You've used this word consciousness a few times and I feel like that often gets just kind of thrown around. How would you explain or define consciousness? Consciousness is that by which we see the world. During working state, consciousness flows out through the senses, identifies with the objects around us, and experience takes place. During transcendental meditation, what we're doing is consciousness is turning within. It's experiencing its own, itself. There's nothing other than itself. And this is a new state, which we call pure consciousness. Pure meaning unmixed. It's not a value judgment, but unmixed with thoughts and feelings, just consciousness itself. By analogy, we have the sun. The sun shines everywhere around us. It's reflected everywhere differently. The sun is this field of pure consciousness, that which exists, which is whole. The reflections our individual mind, individual experiences. And the reflections are from different reflectors. So the body, the brain is a reflector of the field of pure consciousness, the sun. And how that sun is expressed in daily life is what we understand the mind. Most science just looks at the reflector and the reflection. And they say, oh my gosh, I can poke the body and the reflector and it changes the reflection. Oh, it seems like the body is actually creating the reflection. But they can't tell you why it's a reflection of light. In terms of science, science doesn't know why we're conscious. That is why we're awake, why we're aware. Why aren't we just robots? And we're just, you know, responding. reactive way to the world and keeping ourselves growing and so on. And actually science has stalled since the 1990s. It's called the explanatory gap. They can tell you, you'd to see the eye, okay, it's going into the center of the brain, the thalamus. Okay, it's going to the back of the brain, occipital cortex. Okay, it's spreading out and the details of experience are being computed by this part of the brain and spatial is at the back of the brain. But where does all this brain activity results in a conscious experience. They don't It's because it doesn't come from the brain activity itself. You know, there's something else is that field of consciousness interacting with the brain. And that's why consciousness is part of this process. So yes, the reflector and reflection are intimately connected. The activity of the brain is associated in a very rigorous way to the qualities of of feeling and thinking states of consciousness we have, but the brain's not creating consciousness. The brain is just a vehicle to allow a field, which is non-local, to function in time and space. It's such a beautiful explanation. thing, way I've heard this described, David Lynch has this video that I'm sure you're familiar with where he talks about, you know, if you have a golf ball size consciousness or a basketball size consciousness or infinite consciousness. I mean, obviously that's an analogy. It's not, you know, an actual size of consciousness. But how would you explain that in terms of what growth of consciousness looks like? Good. Thank you for that. David is such a dear man. He captures the reality of very deep, profound principles in a very simple way. A golf ball sized consciousness, his consciousness, which is very lost in a specific experience or feeling or ⁓ situation. can't see outside of itself. And that's like the wave on the river, wave on the ocean. And a larger size consciousness is that consciousness which can see beyond the current situation, ⁓ can come up with creative ideas. The larger size is that field of ⁓ being, that inner silence of self. He also talked about catching the big fish. And he says, we can use the analogy of the water again. You can go fishing on the surface of the water and there's little tiny fish up there. If you go deep in the water, that's where the big fish are. And this is the idea of allowing the mind to settle down to inner transcendence. This is a level of intuition. This is a level of coming up with ideas which are not in the current situation. And even deeper than the field of intuition is that field of deep inner silence, pure consciousness, which is the source of our thought, the source of our creativity. And so what David has done is given an idea of size of the basketball. size of the golf ball to give the idea that there's just more awareness there within which the process is going on. That's how I understand it. And speaking of David, you had the opportunity to travel with him pretty extensively, didn't you? I sure did. Is there some favorite moment or story or, you know, experience from that that you would share? Yes, there is one. Thank you for asking this. And what it was, it was a tour, two, two week tours, East coast, West coast. We would get into a city. We would connect things. Bobby Roth would speak. I would show an EEG demo. ⁓ David would take questions and really touching the hearts of the audience. And on the very last day, he called us all together and it wasn't in a nice office with big fluffy chairs. was in a... a stairwell with concrete and cinder black. was just, wasn't even part of where the audience would be. And he thanked each person. He said, this has been the hardest thing I've ever done. He thanked each person for what they did to help him, each one individually. And it wasn't... just superficial, oh, I was so good, you made me laugh, or things like that. It really deep things. When you did this, and as he's doing it, I thought, he's the person, he's the one who's driving the show, he's really the driver, he's the one that everyone is coming to see, and he's thanking everyone. He's thanking the people who drove him around, the people who moved the equipment. And I thought, this is a great man. And it wasn't an artificial humbleness, it was a legitimate appreciation of the other person. And that for me was the essence of David Lynch. ⁓ So beautiful. And yeah, that's my very much my experience of him as well. Just that presence, that authenticity, that genuine curiosity and wanting to know people and and the humility as well. So beautiful. Such a special human. Okay, one last direction I want to go with this is, you you've mostly focused your career on transcendental meditation and the effects of it. One of the first questions that I get most often is, You know, what is TM, but more importantly, how is it different from other forms of meditation? Which I think is the crucial understanding right now because there is so much available to us today. In terms of the brain and everything we've talked about today, how would you answer that question? So how is TM different from other meditations? First, how is it similar? It's similar that it's exploring inner subjectivity and all meditations are exploring inner subjectivity. And this is valuable because this is the untapped resource of every individual. How it's different is how it's exploring. There's a whole class of meditations which are exploring inner subjectivity by trying to control. Okay, I don't want to have all these thoughts, so I'm going to control the mind. I'm going to keep it on one thought. ⁓ Vipassana is like this where you focus on the breath. And the whole purpose is to have the breath, the moving of the diaphragm in and out, completely filling awareness. No thoughts of the environment, no thoughts of your other parts of your body, no thoughts of your mind, no thoughts of you as a thinker, just completely lost, experiencing the is-ness of what is there. And when you're doing this type of meditation, what the brain has to do is it has to really work hard. has to, interneurons have to put together functioning, so you have very localized processing going on. And the EEG is very, it's high frequency. It's gamma EEG. It's from 30 to 50 cycles per second. So that's what this meditation is doing. Now there's another category of meditations that aren't trying to control the mind, but they're trying to keep attention on what's happening right now, present moment experience. And in these, All the thoughts can go through the mind, you don't care. You're just keeping attention on what's in my awareness right now. And this is mindfulness meditation. And in mindfulness meditation, it's non-judgmental. It's this passionate observation and the whole goal is to keep the attention now. Now, now at the present moment experience. And when you're doing this, because your eyes are usually closed and you're processing mental processing, you see the EEG of processing ongoing mental activity. It's called theta activity. It goes up five to eight cycles per second. So both of these are involved with mental processing. And then there's a third category that transcendental meditation is in. First one category is called focused attention. The other one, open monitoring. The third category is automatic self-transcending. And it's any meditation procedure that starts with thought, but then just ends up with silence with being this process of transcending. And this itself has its own EEG pattern. We talked about it as alpha one EEG, eight to 10 cycles per second. It's the pattern of the attention being turned within but not doing, not processing, not being controlled, but just being drawn within. And this is the essential characteristic of any meditation in this category. It has to be automatic. That's why the name of the category is automatic self-transcending. Because if there's any controlling, if there's any manipulation, if there's any intention, that's localized activity. The mind would just never settle down. In Transcendental Meditation, the way that happens is you learn how to use the natural tendency of the mind. The natural tendency of the mind is what all of your viewers have been doing. They've been listening to the podcast and been trying to make it interesting, but I'm sure their mind has been going, wonder what we'll do for this weekend or what are we going to have for lunch or how does that reflect on something else? And their attention is going back into the process and then out again. Now, this isn't bad. What is happening is the mind is always looking for more and more. doesn't want to be in a box and follow one person's thinking all the time. It wants to look at the bigger picture and come back. If you're listening to this podcast and someone mentions your name, suddenly your attention follows the conversation that's going on. Or in another room, someone plays your favorite music. Your attention is going to that favorite music. This is a natural tendency of the mind to always go to that, which is more charming. And there's actually a part of the brain which is governing this is called the orbital prefrontal cortex, which is underneath the eyes. And it's what's evaluating the reward value of any experience. And what we do is we allow that process to happen and the mind settles down. Why? Because pure consciousness, it's free of boundaries, it's expanded, it's lively, it's creative. It's that inner space. It's no place to go, nothing to do. The mind naturally wants to go there. So that's the nature of TM and the EEG pattern is different. So we see all meditations exploring inner subjectivity, but they take it through different procedures. And depending on the procedure, that'll determine what they get. TM is giving you a fourth state of consciousness, the state of just wakefulness being pure consciousness. Other meditations are giving you some ability to think or use your mind in different ways. So this is another way that TM is different. Now one last point, this point about automatic. We have this brain pattern of pure consciousness, Alpha 1. So I read a study done in Taiwan, 25 Zen Buddhist priests. So Zen Buddhism, it's, or excuse me, Vipassana priests. So they're practicing Vipassana, they're practicing controlling the mind, just focus attention. But they were reporting Alpha 1 EEG during their practice. You know, how is this possible? Well, if we accept that it's a brain pattern, which is allowing us to know what's happening in consciousness, we have to accept that somehow they're experiencing pure consciousness. Now it's after 25 years practice and that's the key point. Because if we go into psychology, psychology has done extensive studying on controlled and automatic processing. Any controlled process, if practiced sufficiently, will become automatic. And what you're doing is you're putting together individual steps, so the output of one step is the input of another and the whole process happens by itself. So there's 50 year history of this research. And I think that is what's happening. If you start with a procedure which is effortful, if you continue to practice it in a very respectful way, at some point it's going to become effortless and you'll have that experience of pure consciousness. So this is the fuller picture. And I'm actually happy that this is the situation that science is telling us that yes, any practice can lead to the experience of pure consciousness because pure consciousness is not the possession of TM meditators. It's the possession of every human being on earth. It's that silence at the source of thought and it's being waiting to be used and being utilized in daily life. That's so beautiful and that's what I often tell my students on the last day of our class is that This vision of what's possible, the growth of consciousness that is experienced with TM, is not unique to TM. This is a natural human experience that has been described throughout the ages by wise people in different cultures and traditions. This is the most simple, systematic, repeatable, user-friendly approach to cultivating it that I've seen. ⁓ I think that's one of the first things that people express often even after the first day of learning TM is kind of a delighted surprise at just how easy the experience was. And in that ease, the effectiveness of it lies. They're kind of blown away by how profound the experience feels even after the first time they practice it. everything you just talked about, that automatic natural process. And in the words of our friend David, it's a human being thing. Yes. It's so beautiful and it allows us to appreciate what Maharishi has given us. That anyone at any point in their evolution can close their eyes and experience pure consciousness, the fourth state of consciousness. They can experience the goal of all meditation. On the very first day. And then they come out and they begin to act and they begin to put it into daily life. And then they go back in and meditate again. But they get that vision of the goal in the very beginning. And this is something which is very unique to TM and I hope people will really appreciate. It's a goal which is available as we're saying to anyone. It may have to take 25 years, 30 years, 40 years. It's there, but with TM we get that picture in the very moment and then it just becomes more and more part of our daily life. All right, last question. ⁓ We're calling this podcast the inner well. What does that mean to you? It's great. Well has so many different connotations. On one level it can be that by which we gain water. It's this big structure and when you get water you put your bucket down, you get your water and you bring it out. ⁓ And so the inner well is what is inside. How do you go inside? How do you get that water, that sustenance from being inside? So that's one way to look at it, that the source of nutrition, of happiness, of success is going inside. The second way to look at it is well also means how do you feel? ⁓ I feel well. Where is the best support of feeling well? Is it taking your supplements? it exercising is good? Is it something external or is it something internal? And when you're feeling well inside, what you'll find is that all of your outer activity is gonna be supported by that wellness. And so I see both of those in that term. It's a good choice. Any last thoughts or anything that you think is important for people to know kind of at this moment in time based on everything you've learned in your career? Just to know that we're all growing and that we shouldn't judge others who may be at a different level, a different path that they're growing, but we're all growing and we should never be hard on ourselves. We might hear people speaking very richly and flashy about their experiences and I think I'm not having flashy experiences. We should just... appreciate the silence and evenness which is growing. Because that's the real flash. It's this growth towards higher states. There's not a band playing, there's not bright lights, they are making it, you know, this is a transcendent. It's just growing inner silence and being and wellness and just to appreciate that. We tend to lose it in a very active, crazy world we live in. ⁓ And in fact, the world is not going to appreciate you taking 20 minutes morning and afternoon. They can say, how can you possibly take 40 minutes out of your busy day? You know, just appreciate growing inner silence, growing inner wealth, growing inner awareness, growing inner reality, which is going to become the stable basis for all of your success. Transcendental meditation is a scientifically validated technique that provides access to become more ourselves. Join us next week for more conversations with real people living fulfilling and peaceful lives with infinite support from their inner well.