Brain-electric activity during eyes open Brahma Kumaris Rajayoga meditation

Brahma Kumaris Rajayoga’s open eyed ‘seed stage meditation’ was studied in 52 meditators. Meditation stages: concentration on peace, realization of being a soul and communion with the Supreme Soul. Frequency domain brain electric source localization was used on multichannel EEG recordings to establish activation differences between meditation and open eyed, task-free resting. Additional exploratory analyses probed for effects of passing time from initial rest through meditation to final rest. Meditation showed reduced activity in delta and increased activity in low alpha frequencies. Affected brain areas comprised the following networks: central executive network, mirroring network, task-positive and task-negative network. These altered activations reflect the main cognitive-affective and behavioral specifics of seed stage meditation: attention modulation, self-related processing, experiencing the soul as a point of light between the eyes, endowing the soul with the properties (peacefulness) of the Supreme Soul. Future studies need to differentiate between the stages of the meditation.