Introduction to Gary Weber

Transcription

1 Introduction to Gary Weber 'Time has similarly largely stopped as an on-going phenomenon on a day-today basis. Chopping wood and carrying water, and even planning and learning, have continued, but without self-referential thoughts, they occur without a clear sense of their happening in time.' Following many years of yoga and meditation practice, Gary Weber, a PhD in the physical sciences working in industry (and later in academia), had his self-referential thoughts abruptly stop. His state has continued, with few exceptions, for 12 years. He reports the only exceptions are when he has low blood sugar or feels very tired. Gary has participated as a subject in a number of scientific experiments to study the brain and consciousness to help bring understanding to awakening beyond thought. He is the author of a number of books including Into the Stillness (with Rich Doyle), Dancing Beyond Thought, and Happiness Beyond Thought. You can download Dancing Beyond Thought from Interestingly enough, he credits Ramana Maharishi as being very important in his ultimate surrender. Gary calls informally, the everyday,'run away' mind--the endless chatter of selfreferential thoughts--the blahblah network, but he also points to the scientific work that has been done to define this: "The default mode network is an interconnected and anatomically defined brain system that preferentially activates when individuals engage in internal tasks such as daydreaming, envisoning the future, retrieving memories, and gauging others' perspectives. It is negatively correlated with brain systems that focus on external visual signals... Activity in the the network negatively correlates with activity in regions involved in attention and executive function. In humans, the default mode network has been hypothesized to generate spontaneous thoughts during mindwondering." He adds to this: "We know about the Default Mode Network which really is the key to understanding this. We know there are the two sub-network, one of which is "yourself in time", and the other one is "you and others". The traditional mystical experiences are "no sense of personal time", i.e. "now, now, now", and "no sense of anything other than yourself", i.e., "All is one". You can actually look in that network and see how those things are coded in and what centers need to be shut down to make that situation happen. Whether it's psychedelics or meditation, we know what centers code in for that." Gary reached his stateless state after thousands of hours of zen and other practices without the use of any psychedelics. He's not judgmental about the use of psychedelics,

2 but points out that studies of people who have experienced both non-dual states and psychedelic ones state that non-duality without drugs is superior. You can see talks of Gary on various YouTube and other videos. Here are two of them: and In some of his talks, Gary points to scientific papers which describe the functional relationships between some of the centers of the brain. I include below a brief explanation that Gary offered over the internet in December Just knowing that the default mode network exists in your brain is not going to make it quiesce, that is to say, your self referential thoughts will still continue to run on. It can be helpful, however, to know that quieting the mind is not about having better thoughts or the right thoughts. It is not a question of getting 'it' with your mind (collection of thoughts). There is no 'getting it', not because it is so simple (which it is), because it is not a matter of 'getting' at all. There is nothing to be gotten. It is not conceptual. One of the practices he refers people to is self-inquiry à la Ramana Maharishi. More than anything, he points(for me) to the possibility of having no thoughts (having realized within himself a stillness and silence of the mind) for long periods of time unless thoughts are called for by the situation in which he finds himself. Also Gary has a refreshing outlook on many topics of interest to people drawn to nonduality. He does not appear dogmatic or wedded to any traditions that are the 'only way'. He throws common sense on topics like whether it is worthwhile to make any effort at all (like meditation or any practice). Enough for an introduction... we'll talk more about this when we meet...

3 29th December 2011 What is the Default Mode Network? Folk on Tolle board mentioned you. Q. Gary, Someone on a Tolle board mentioned your name connected to Default Mode Network. Can you send me a link explaining what this is? Thank you. G. Namaste. Default Mode Network [ is what your brain "defaults" to when you aren't doing any specific "task" with it (which is called the Task Positive Network). This is a relatively new concept arising over the last 10 years or so. [ fcrhervavka/tvxrbftth2i/aaaaaaaaack/e0n2jjl2ubq/s1600/dmn%2bsci%2bam%2bold%2bview%2bnew%2bview%2bcropped.jpg] Initially, the investigations of the brain with tools such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fmri [ ) and positron emission tomography (PET [ ) gave an incorrect impression of what happened when folk weren't doing a task, which was usually what was measured initially with these tools. What does the brain look like when someone is solving a problem, or lying, or angry, etc.? As the focus was on determining what was just activated during the activity, that difference was determined by subtracting the initial signal from the "doing something" signal. The assumption (very incorrectly) was that when there was no "doing" or "tasking", the brain was just on idle, with no neuronal activity. As it turns out, the exact opposite situation was the reality. Only about 5% of the energy consumed by the brain is used for activities such as reading, or routine tasks; the vast majority of the energy used by the brain (about 20% of the entire body's energy consumption) is consumed continuously by a very busy brain. The "doing" that we attach so much attention to, consumes very little energy. The figure, which appeared in the March 2010 Scientific American, shows the difference. Since "discovering" this baseline, DMN, activity, much excellent work has been done on defining what it is, and what parts of the neuroanatomy are involved in its functioning. IMHO, the best paper was done by Andrews-Hannah [ et. Harvard which was published in Neuron in This paper found 11 different "selfing" centers that constitute most of the DMN activity. They found that these 11 centers were divided into two "core" centers, and two "subnetworks" which the core communicates heavily with. The "core centers" are those shown in yellow; the two subnetworks are shown in blue and green. The blue subnetwork is involved in "self and other", i.e you and your chair, you and your computer, you and your partner, etc. The green subnetwork is responsible for "you in time", i.e. you in the future, you in the past, etc. If there is no "tasking", the DMN is active, and the core network is functioning and whatever other subnetwork is required, perhaps both.

4 Hannah.jpg] [ Q5WIPqQt5FM/TvxhMqOVrlI/AAAAAAAAAcM/3i0oIWQxKaQ/s1600/Brain%2527s%2BDefault%2BNetwork%2BfMRI%2Bscans%2BAndrews- [ 5E/TvxuV4PWP_I/AAAAAAAAAcw/PEmZa_7Te7M/s1600/Brain%2527s%2BDefault%2BNetwork%2Bfunctional%2Bcenters%2BAndrews- Hannah.jpg] For most folk, their DMN is a randomly wandering self-narrative, of I, me, my thoughts. That self-narrative of "I/me/my" thoughts is what causes most of our (imagined) problems, fears, craving, suffering and unhappiness. we have found in the on-going Yale study that experienced meditators can permanently change their DMN to one that does not have the randomly wandering self-narrative, as mine has done, to one of stillness. my the Science and NonDuality Conference in San Francisco, CA in October "No Thoughts - No Time; The Experience, The New Science" (Videos I [ and II [ ) discusses this as well as the background papers on meditation and cognitive neuroscience. you might also want to c/o the blog posting [ on this presentation. Posted 29th December 2011 by Gary Weber Labels: Science of Meditation 3 View comments Nick Kirk May 1, 2015 at 2:44 PM Hi, Gary. The link to your presentation no longer works; would it be possible to reupload it? Reply Replies Gary Weber May 1, 2015 at 5:09 PM Hi Nick. i replaced the original link which stopped working with the links to the two youtube videos, I and II, of the presentation which didn't exist when i made the blogpost. It's better this way. Thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated. stillness

5 Nick Kirk May 1, 2015 at 8:12 PM Thanks, Gary. Even better. Reply Enter your comment... Comment as: Google Account Publish Preview