| Description |
The modern science of psychology has entered a new field of research which brings it into interaction with the cultures-of the East and which challenges the assumptions of the scientific method. This new field of research is the control of involuntary bodily functions such as heart rate, brain waves, blood pressure, and pain. In Asia, ways to achieve this control have been known for centuries. The "ways of liberation" or methods of achieving union with "Brahman" or "tao" such as the yogas, Zen, and Vedanta have great success in teaching practitioners control of "involuntary" functions. Since the advent of the electroencephalograph, electrocardiograph, and other instruments for precise measurement of formerly inaccessible data, the success of the Eastern methods can be measured and evaluated objectively. Psychologists have been charting the parameters of the control, control seeming to be directly proportional to the number of years in the particular discipline and the depth of insight. But Eastern methods take time. Western psychologists have combined learning theory and the relatively new instruments for monitoring internal states in attempts to produce control of these involuntary bodily functions in a much shorter time than is required for the Eastern methods. |
