S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 5 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 1 9 3 9 mind to it (perhaps using thoughts to create some opening in thoughts themselves). In spirituality, there is sometimes distinction made between the so called “Ego” and the “Self”. Ego is connected with our personal life-story, while the Self “lives in the present”; it can even be understood as the “Presence itself”. As probably the clearest example of this approach, we can mention Eckhart Tolle and his teaching, as he expressed it in his books The Power of Now (2004), A New Earth (2005), Silence Speaks (2003), and others. There are similarities between this concept and a distinction between narrative and momentary self-reference described and studied by Farb et al. (2007), who state that the narrative self-reference is linking experiences across time, while the momentary self-reference is centered on the present. With respect to these two modes of self-reference they distinguish between enduring traits of narrative focus (NF) and experiential focus (EF). In their study, Farb et al. (2007) compared two groups of participants: one group went through an eight-week course in mindfulness meditation, which aims on training the individual to develop attention on the present (“trained participants”), while the other did not (“novices”). Farb et al. (2007, 313) report that experiential focus “yielded focal reductions in self-referential cortical midline regions… associated with NF.” This points to the fact that these two kinds of focus are indeed different from each other and if trained, they tend to supersede each other. “These results suggest a fundamental neural dissociation between two distinct forms of self-awareness that are habitually integrated but can be dissociated through attentional training: the self across time and in the present moment.” (Farb et al. 2007, 313). Typically functioning human brain expresses these two kinds of focus as mingled together: in our flow of consciousness we at some moments perceive what is happening now and in other moments we relate to our past and future and inwardly “comment on it”. But both of these modalities can be trained. We can train ourselves to be present in the now, but also to relate to our personal story, to past and future, to possible scenarios of events and so on. In real life, we train ourselves in both of these modalities, but from my experience it seems that as we grow up, we tend to train ourselves (unconsciously) more in the narrative focus and thus we build strong narrative self-reference over time. But sometimes we also have to be present, and thus the capacity to be aware of the present moment never dies out. For example, based on my observations, but also on observations of others, in the moment of ordinary sense perception, there exists a short period of time (typically it seems to last for a fraction of a second) in which ception, or whether it can contain deeper truth or open the er what can look like autosuggestion is some kind of self-de- body”) and questions (“Who am I?”), we can speculate wheth- repeated affirmations, negations (for example, “I am not this we look at some specific forms of spiritual practice like are nized in many spiritual traditions and teachings. And when importance of mind and its development in general is recog- sibly also of its priority over matter. Primacy or at least key a testimony to the power and importance of mind, and pos- is better to view suggestion and autosuggestion rather as the placebo effect is real and its effects can be beneficial, it be something necessarily deceptive or delusional. Because down on suggestion or autosuggestion and consider them to leads to it. I would like to emphasize that we should not look reducing suffering in the presence of stimuli, which typically suggestion, these results point to one possible mechanism of aiming at spiritual transformation use suggestion or auto- ponent is not. And if some meditation practices or methods affective component can be reduced even if sensory com- lessened suffering in pain, but they open the possibility that These findings do not prove that meditation can lead to correlates with sensory dimensions of pain. tivation, though, was unaltered. Activity in this brain region (Rainville et al. 1997, 969). Primary somatosensory cortex ac- some but not all of [specific] pain-related cortical regions” both the perception of pain affect and the activation within suggestions for increased or decreased unpleasantness… altered intensity of the pain sensations”. They found that “hypnotic decrease pain unpleasantness, without changing the perceived was achieved with hypnotic suggestions to both increase and ation of sensory and affective aspects of the pain experience Rainville et al. (1997, 968) explain that “perceptual dissoci- [3]. mented cases, astonishing in the eyes of ordinary experience influence which “mind has over matter”, that is, in some docu- seems to show, because of its scientifically verifiable results, least some forms of the placebo effect. This effect in turn form of autosuggestion, probably one of the key parts of at Let us note that hypnosis uses suggestion, which is, in the can be separated from its affective aspects (unpleasantness). aspects of pain (perception of location, quality and intensity) Rainville et al. (1997) used hypnosis to study whether sensory entific research supports spiritual viewpoint in this respect. philosophy, is based, can hardly arrive at such view. Yet, sci- perience, on which ordinary thinking, but also, in most cases, experience, or even without suffering entirely. ordinary ex- without feeling as much suffering as is typical in human due to meditative training, people are able to perceive pain pain. Yet, many spiritual traditions and teachings report that MICHAL KUTáŠ
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