An
experimental investigation of psychological aspects of meditation
S.K. Kubose |
The
present study was concerned with investigating the description, production,
and utilization aspects of meditation, It was found that the meditative
state of consciousness could be described by a concentration which,
with practice, increasingly minimized the intrusion of distracting
thoughts; and relative to a control group, when thoughts did occur,
they tended to be categorized as present-oriented rather than either
past- or future-oriented. The meditative state was also characterized
by greater physical relaxation as compared to a control group. With
regard to utilization effects outside the sitting sessions themselves,
meditation enhanced perceptual performance in a task which required
bath concentration and the ability to minimize an interfering stimulus
background. To delineate the factors involved in producing meditation
effects, mental concentration and physically sitting still were considered
to be two of the most common characteristics of meditation practice.
To determine whether these two characteristics had differential effects,
subjects were divided into a meditation group and a control group.
Both groups physically sat still during the sessions but only the
meditation group concentrated on a breath-counting task. Since the
two groups performed differently on the various measures mentioned
above, it was concluded that one important factor in producing such
effects was the concentrative aspect in the meditation group.
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