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Psychophysiological Essence of Meditation
Dr. J.P.N. Mishra
Being simple yet having impressive evidence meditation brings about positive changes which may alter a person's personality and life profoundly. No doubt it is a powerful intervention. We need to ask a simple question - where this power comes from? What is meditation's secret?
In trying to understand why meditation has the transforming effect it does, we might imagine watching many different streams flowing into one river. The characteristics of the river can be explained only by its volume of water and the direction of the flow. Similarly many, many factors converage in meditation, lending to it their combined power, something that is above and beyond the effects of any single component. While we may consider various explanations for its effectiveness, we must remember that the full experience of meditation is quite different from any of these and that our limited understanding can give only partial answer.
Process of Discharging Negative Emotions
Meditation functions, it may be assumed, like on electrical demagnetizing circuit. When a tape is demagnetized, the electrical charges are removed from it and the tape is wiped clean or become neutralised. It is quite possible that the thoughts and the feelings, which trouble us, are being neutralized by the process of meditation in the similar way.
A psychological view States that if a person is asked to recall distressing thoughts, especially fears, while at the same time he is in a state of deep relaxation, the fears will lose their hold and thoughts about them become converted into objective and relatively nonemotional concerns. It is not possible for a person to be acutely anxious and at the same time deeply relaxed. If we deliberately couple
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