On the Emergence of Perinatal Symptoms in Buddhist Meditation
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
Format:
Journal Article
Publication Year:
n.d.
Pages:
339-350
Library/Archive:
Copyright © 1981 Society for the Scientific Study of Religion
Sources ID:
21873
Visibility:
Private
Zotero Collections:
Contemplation by Applied Subject, Psychology and Contemplation, Science and Contemplation
Abstract:
(Show)
Advanced meditators in the Zen tradition occasionally experience traumatic physical seizures accompanied by powerful, disruptive emotions, a development consistently taken by meditation masters as signs of progress toward enlightenment. Using data from LSD research, this paper suggests that these seizures are emerging birth-trauma memories. Interpreting these perinatal memories as memories of fetal impingement, it then turns to object-relations theory to study the effect of impingement and impingement-generated fear on ego-development in order to understand why embodied impingement memories should manifest in the ego-dissolving context of meditation. It argues that a coherent explanation for the manifestation of these symptoms can be had by combining insights from these two fields with the understanding of meditation and consciousness emerging in transpersonal psychology.