The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, trained as a physicist, welcomed, encouraged Western science to validate Transcendental Meditation, a mechanical mantra repetition technique, with the stress on lack of effort which is opposed to mindfulness, concentration, self-observation, and other effortful techniques.
Electro-encephalographs of TM meditators, after just a few weeks of initiation into TM technique, show the various brain waves frequencies spreading from back to front, plus left-right hemispheric synchrony, and increasing in amplitude. This behaviour was seen a few decades ago, and is even more verified lately as detectors and signal processing advanced.
Was do the data mean? That's less "scientific", but clearly something is happening, and subjective reports are that it's a very positive experience with benefits that last outside of meditation.
Why does this behavior persist, is repeatable across many TM meditators, even neophyte meditators? It suggests, verifies even, that the TM technique recognizes inherent properties, abilities, behavior of the human brain.
Again, the benefits, if any, meditative sessions causing whole-brain wave synchrony, coherence, and increased wave amplitude? You'll have to ask TM meditators.
off topic of the article but on topic to your comment..
of transcendental meditation jd salinger wrote a book called franny and zooey(i) where the main character is obsessed with a little book about an individual who seeks an answer to a question developed after reading a vague reference in the bible to praying incessantly
it's biblical, but skeptical and the religious elements dissolve and are really only symptomatic of the period,
the book wishes to tell a story and the infrastructure of christianity just happens to be the catalyst
the answer is sought in a pilgrimage around russia of the day, visiting the highest religious sanctums to question the foremost of the holy hierarchies, and the answer unfolds slowly to the pilgrim
the book in the story is a real 19th century anonymous work translated as the way of the pilgrim(ii)
the book is beautiful, and i would definitely recommend it
it walks you through the stages of transcendental meditation and then has the most beautiful final chapter
without the ending the story, for me, would have been a waste, but the last interaction is just so beautiful in its paradoxical self invalidation
the process of having a simple question, seeking an answer and finding innate complexity that leads to a simple solution that dissolves the complexity that led to the realisation is something i recognise in many pursuits
TM (and indeed vipaasanaa and other western hemisphere faddish takes on shutting up and sitting still for awhile) are just an offshoot of India's larger and longer tradition of yoga, no? Which isn't to say India has a monopoly on meditative tradition (cue ~neighbouring Daoists, Sufis, various extremo Christian sects though these usually limited to monks IIRC, etc.), just that it seems more dominant there than anywhere else. Point being, research on meditation has focused largely on yoga, and not without reason: I'd be surprised if TM isn't a sort of statistical aberration in the literature.
Electro-encephalographs of TM meditators, after just a few weeks of initiation into TM technique, show the various brain waves frequencies spreading from back to front, plus left-right hemispheric synchrony, and increasing in amplitude. This behaviour was seen a few decades ago, and is even more verified lately as detectors and signal processing advanced.
Was do the data mean? That's less "scientific", but clearly something is happening, and subjective reports are that it's a very positive experience with benefits that last outside of meditation.
Why does this behavior persist, is repeatable across many TM meditators, even neophyte meditators? It suggests, verifies even, that the TM technique recognizes inherent properties, abilities, behavior of the human brain.
Again, the benefits, if any, meditative sessions causing whole-brain wave synchrony, coherence, and increased wave amplitude? You'll have to ask TM meditators.