Meditation & Light Visions

This neurological, "reverse-engineering" analysis of the spatial and temporal characteristics of meditation-induced light visions observed by the author and described in ancient Indian, Tibetan, and Chinese texts is an indispensable reference for neuroscientific researchers, physicians, psychotherapists, anthropologists, scholars of religion, and intellectually curious meditators. The analysis shows how sleep rhythms generate meditative states and how destabilization of sleep rhythms triggers hypersynchronous activity in corticothalamic circuits that drives the emergence of hippocampal seizures with ecstatic attributes. A review of EEG studies of experienced meditators reveals the unacknowledged presence of topological patterns typical of simple partial seizure. The book includes detailed, empirically-oriented drawings of the complete progression of light visions and charts that compare descriptions of light visions in ancient texts.