TO: StillJustJames

Thank you for clarifying certain aspects of my own meditation practice through your pieces on Medium. Thank you also for raising new questions that have confused me.

I would be hard-pressed to summarize your project. All I can do is respond with my experience of it. Certainly one thing I have taken away is the non-overlap between empirical science and the nature of meditation. Ooops, I just made an essentialist claim, that there is an essential nature to meditation. Are you claiming that? Or are you claiming that the origins of meditation in the human narrative involves dynamics not amenable to scientific inquiry.

I think you distinguish between meditation practiced within a spiritual tradition that affords guidance and meditation practiced in a secular manner which may not provide the same support. I think you are concerned about this.

I remember back in the early 1970s when TM was becoming an organized thing, a few smart people were warning of the Kundalini Effect, some spontaneous energy event that could be unleashed by meditation and be very harmful to an individual outside of the right therapeutic environment. I know at least one person who believes that happened to them, and it wasn’t good.

Am I oversimplifying, or is this one of your main ideas — that we are dropping powerful cognitive technologies into the culture without standards, warnings, training or apparently reservations of any kind? If so, I notice this too, even though we do it all the time and there doesn’t seem to be much to be done about it.

A New Form of Meditation?

As I have mentioned to you in a previous Comment, my son, an ordained minister, leads meditation groups in Virtual Reality. I have been a member of those groups and, when he is unable to attend, I have served as Guest VR Meditation Group Leader.

When I think about that conceptually, it just sounds crazy. When I put judgments aside and just do it, it feels great.

I really enjoy leading groups. Avatars are there with me, representing people from all over the world.

Before we started, I assumed that attendees would be long-time meditators like me who wanted to see what it’s like in VR. There have been some people like that, but there have been many more who Have Never Meditated Before. Their first time meditating is within a synthetic environment wearing a headset.

They are in their home or their office. They didn’t deal with the inconveniences of going out, or having to interact with people. Yet their own neurons are telling them they are someplace else with a bunch of others from everywhere.

How Do You Lead VR Meditation?

My son is very experienced in leading progressive relaxation as well as different forms of group meditation. He starts with the relaxation, then moves to a breath-based meditation or sometimes a Metta (loving kindness) meditation. It works. A high percentage of the avatars that start are there when we open our eyes again at the end. There are regulars who keep coming back.

I’m not that good at it. but I do love teaching. So I led a session yesterday where I introduced myself and told about 10 or so avatars how things would unfold:

• First I’d describe the simple technique of lightly following the breathing and the body and when any thoughts emerge, just notice them and go back to the breathing
• Then we would try it together for two minutes, with me reminding them quietly to go back to the breathing, saying ‘breathing in, breathing out’ a few times
• Then we would try it together for another two minutes in complete silence
• Then we would open our eyes, come back together and anyone who wanted to share their experience could do so.
• Then we would do it together for four minutes, come back, and talk about that.

Just before we started to do all those things, I told them as clearly and directly as I can that the point of meditating is not to stay focused on the breath and have no thoughts — it’s to practice just noticing those thoughts and not getting caught up in them, which is not a bad approach to life in general.

Then we did it.

Almost everyone stayed until the end. Almost everyone shared their experience. We talked back-and-forth. I drew little points out of everyone’s contribution.

After the two-minute silent stretch, one person expressed himself very powerfully I thought when he shared his experience that,

“at first is was fine, then the thoughts attacked me, I could not make them go away so I could return to the breathing.”

My first reaction was, like, ‘Wow!’ but as the Guest Meditation Group Leader I felt something more useful than that was called for.

I thanked him, told him I really appreciated how articulate he was, that I have felt thoughts attacking me too, (which I have). I talked with everyone there about all the things that could come up, from what I have to do this afternoon to something I might be deeply ashamed of. Some thoughts are more compelling and less easy to just-notice than others.

So what does an experienced meditator do? Of course there is no panacea and you wouldn’t want there to be one. But I have techniques and I shared two of them. The most obvious is to use a mantra. I recommend, ‘Breathing In, Breathing Out.’ Just stay with the mantra as long as it’s needed. When it’s not needed any more, go back to the breathing.

The second technique is what I sometimes use for an itch, like a major big-time itch. In this approach, the itch becomes the object of attention. Switch to the itch. Have it be your breath. You don’t get all wrapped up in your breath, and you don’t get all wrapped up in your itch. You just notice it. No itch can stand up to that kind of relaxed attention. When it’s gone, go back to the breathing.

The man who was attacked by thoughts said thanks, and later, after the four-minute session, someone else said they used the ‘Breathing In, Breathing Out’ mantra and it helped.

So Here’s My Question

What if a newly empowered meditator from the group feels so confident with their mantra-charm that they decide to go off and meditate by themselves for hours and find themselves facing more reality then they were ready for? Where’s the 24/7 VR Help Desk?

I could try to fit a traditional model into a 21st century platform. I could develop a small following of students for whom I would take on an explicit responsibility. If they need help, there would be ways they could contact me or someone else I would have in place. Is this the only ethical way to proceed?

I told the thought attack story to get out on the table how intimate and potentially dangerous a dinky little VR meditation session can get within minutes. He could have gone on to say, ‘now that these thoughts are attacking, I must take my own life, goodbye.’ He was in Ukraine. 911 doesn’t work there.

We don’t think of meditation training being an over-the-transom business. Right now in VR it is to a certain extent. People are exploring a new universe. They stumble upon my son’s EvolVR sessions, or they download a VR meditation app. They have heard about meditation, wondered about it. Why not check it out? They aren’t necessarily thinking ego dissolution.

And speaking of cognitive technologies, what about Virtual Reality itself? Doesn’t the mere fact of VR explicitly say, dudes, this is what we do. The world you are experiencing is not presented to you; it is constructed by you. Where are the standards and warnings and risk assessments around immersive experiences of any kind, violent or non-violent?

People who are first-time meditators in VR have told me that they feel safer in my son’s synthetic space than out somewhere in the so-called real world (SCRW) with other people. OK. I can see that, although I probably would not have imagined it.

I think meditation can be part of a large-scale change of consciousness for our species. Digital platforms including VR might help the practice proliferate. This is where I get confused. Scaling up always changes things and inevitably increases the risk of outcomes that are perceived to be negative.

Do these matters at least partially overlap with the questions you are asking, StillJustJames?