Nothing is More Real than Nothing

Objectless imagery – the multisensory experience and awareness of space, nothingness, or absence – almost always elicits large amplitude and prolonged periods of phase-synchronous alpha activity on an EEG.  “Nothing” is not merely nothing.  Nothing, indeed, is a great and robust healer and is critical to the health and well-being of our nervous system.  Space is unique among the contents of attention because space, silence, and timelessness cannot be concentrated on or grasped as a separate experience.  Seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling, smelling, and thinking of space, basking in it – while simultaneously experiencing timelessness – is a powerful way to let go. 

Examples of perceiving space and nothingness as a goal of meditation stretch back beyond history.  One Eastern mystic wrote that it was important to “attain a state of mind in which even though surrounded by crowds of people, it is as if you were alone in a field extending for tens of thousands of miles.”  The Japanese have a philosophy of ma, -- the ability to see the space between objects as well as the objects themselves.  Other traditions use guided visual meditations on mandalas, in which practitioners focus on the space between the lines of the sacred symbols.  All of these “technologies” no doubt slow cortical rhythms and relax the central nervous system; certainly they deserve further study.

Work by several researchers has shown that phase-synchronous alpha is the hallmark of veteran meditators.  When people gently direct their awareness to space, and imagine feeling space, the brain responds immediately, dropping into whole-brain synchronous alpha. Connected to instruments that show them when they are in synchronous alpha, subjects can learn to change very quickly; some notice positive changes in mood, tension, and anxiety – all widely reported effects of alpha – in a single half-hour session.  And long-term effects included improved memory, clearer thinking, and heightened creativity.

What is the physiological mechanism underlying the sudden and powerful effect on the brain of imagining space, silence, and timelessness?  Part of it may be that the brain is very active when it is making sense out of the world.  When it is processing sense objects – either physical or imagined – it uses high-frequency, desynchronized beta activity in order to make that processing possible.   Electrical signals move through the brain at speeds exceeding a hundred miles an hour in many different and disparate regions.  The parts of the brain responsible for sense perception and voluntary action become activated when we simply imagine objects and actions.  EEG research shows that when athletes imagine performing their sport, for example, the brain activates in the same regions as when they are actually performing.

When the mind is asked to imagine or attend to space, however, there is nothing – no-thing – to grip on to, to objectify and make sense of, no memories of past events or anticipation of future scenarios.  The brain is allowed to take a vacation.  This is presumably why cortical rhythms slow quickly into alpha, and later into theta, and the same brain that was racing moments before becomes a stress-reducing brain and a quiet mind.  The imagination and realization of space seems to reset stress-encumbered neural networks and return them to their original effortlessly flexible processing.  After this “vacation,” overall performance is then enhanced.

Objectless imagery in the alpha/theta protocol for neurofeedback is the quickest way to get into an open focus, and an awareness of space is a powerful tool to teach people to access and maintain alternative styles of attention.  We can transfer this awareness of space to everyday life as well.  If we pay attention to stress in an open style as it occurs, it doesn’t accumulate and stay bottled up it is immediately experienced and released to go through on its merry way.  If we are not only aware of the things around us, but also admit an awareness of space, silence, and a sense of timelessness as the ground of our experience, we have the ability to lead a much less stressful life.