Proof, Meditation Attenuates Stress, Accentuates Positive Emotions
The article, “Achieving Racial Harmony, Uniting America” showed that enhancing the societal level of internal excellence is essential to uniting America and to bring about racial harmony, and that this in turn requires cultivation of positive emotions (love, kindness, empathy, compassion) at the exclusion of negative emotions (anger, hatred, hostility, anxiety, resentment, frustration, jealousy, despair, fear, sorrow). As the companion paper, “Actualizing the New Statement” explains, this is also the pathway to actualize “The New Statement.”
The best of the best products of reason will certainly bring about a change for the better, but for success, they must be accompanied by the practice of meditation which will bring about the required positive changes from within. This hypothesis can be proved.
Elizabeth Blackburn received the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for her discovery that telomeres, the caps on the ends of chromosomes in the nucleus of our cells, provide a protective function. Her later studies showed that high levels of stress cause a dwindling of telomeres and accelerate aging. In an article in Nature, Blackburn issued a stark warning on the societal costs of stress. Covid-19 pandemic has exasperated the situation.
In an article in Mosaic Science in 2014, Blackburn suggested that meditation could slow the erosion of telomeres, and perhaps lengthen them. Medical researchers have since shown that meditation lengthens telomeres and slows aging. These investigations also imply that meditation attenuates stress.
Now, negative emotions lead to stress, positive emotions cannot. Thus, attenuation of stress is tantamount to a rise in positive emotions and a fall in negative emotions, and this can be measured and experienced. A rise in positive emotions is equivalent to a rise in internal excellence.
Declares the motto of the Yale University Center for Emotional Intelligence, “Emotions Matter”.
Unbeknownst to us, we are all vibrating all the time. Our emotional state determines our vibrational characteristics. It is just that the vibrational signals are too weak for human perception with the five senses. For example, if you look at someone, can you really tell how that person is feeling? For measurement purposes, the vibrational signals have to be stimulated and amplified.
MIT researchers used wireless radio frequency (RF) signals in their device, which goes by the name EQ Radio. The device sends an RF signal to the subject and captures and analyzes the reflected signal to estimate emotions, they say at an accuracy of 87%, similar to an EKG. Their research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the US Air Force, with additional support from major corporations.
The device I use goes by the name Bio-Well, and it is based on the Gas Discharge Visualization (GDV) principle. Here, a harmless electrical signal is applied to the ring-finger of both hands, one at a time. The finger’s response to this electrical stimulus is a burst of photons which are captured and analyzed by the software to estimate a stress parameter which directly correlates to emotions. See this short video clip on how the measurement is made.
The photonic energy profile strongly correlates with the stress parameter. Bio-Well is not intended to be used as a medical device, however, the GDV technology is registered with the FDA and the EU. The measurement is noninvasive, painless, and takes only a couple of minutes.
The stress parameter ranges from 0 to 10. The lower the stress parameter, the better. The value of ~2.0 is a calm state. Negative emotions elevate the stress parameter.
The efficacy of meditation practices can be assessed by the practitioner experientially. Furthermore, visual inspection of the photonic energy profiles and the values of the stress parameter before and after the practice, will offer comforting evidence to continue with the practice. See this paper, Non-Invasive Measurement of Stress and Bioenergy Disruption, coauthored with the inventor of the device which includes photonic energy profiles and the stress parameter of several individuals.
Figure 1 depicts the stress parameter before-and-after meditation for myself during February 2016.
Not long ago, I measured the stress parameter of participants in my lectures in several Indian cities. The organizations included the Department of Higher Education of a State Government and six reputed academic institutions. The stress parameter of the participants would likely be higher now owing to the pandemic.
Figure 2 displays these results. Notice that the stress parameter for myself is the lowest among all but one participant. Furthermore, my stress parameter has further decreased from that in 2016 (Figure 1) and I am now 78 years old.
Upon returning from India from my usual annual trip in the beginning of March 2020, I started to make measurements at the University of Louisville, but I couldn’t continue due to the Pandemic. The limited data on hand are shown in Figure 3.
I am Subject №12 in Figure 3. Upon seeing these results, one faculty member commented, “We should take your finger with us.” Another commented, “But you are retired”. I have sufficient volume of data on senior citizens that show that retirement is not the root cause for my lower stress parameter, meditation is.
The data in US cities are likely to be similar to the data in Indian cities and may perhaps be worse due to the pandemic.
These results offer compelling evidence that meditation is the pathway to uniting the nation and to achieving racial harmony. It is also the pathway to operationalize the New Statement. It should be possible to further convince companies with a program for their senior management and staff. Seeing their own stress parameter data at the beginning and at the end of practice should serve as a strong impetus to not only continue with the practice, but also to adopt the program in their own companies.
About the Author
Pradeep Deshpande is Professor Emeritus in and a former Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Louisville, and President of Louisville, KY-based Six Sigma and Advanced Controls, Inc. Pradeep’s late father was a freedom fighter who left college around 1915 when he was in his teens to immerse himself in the nonviolent freedom struggle of Mahatma Gandhi for the ensuing three decades, and was jailed for a year. Professor Deshpande has interacted with two Prime Ministers (Rajiv Gandhi, P. V. Narasimha Rao) of India, but the opportunity this time is far bigger, nothing short of world transformation. He has made a presentation to the entire staff of the office of the current Prime Minister of India and in the Parliament of Peru.
In his thirty-three years on the faculty at the University of Louisville (1975–2008), he supervised twenty doctoral scholars and over forty Master’s scholars. During this time, he developed strong ties with DuPont and Exxon. Both companies had given Prof. Deshpande an unrestricted grant for three years as well as several research grants. He is an author or coauthor of eight books and over one hundred papers and presentations.
