MEDITATION is a process by which one attempts to get beyond the conditioned, "thinking" mind into a deeper state of relaxation or awareness.

It often involves turning attention to a single point of reference. Meditation is recognised as a component of traditional medicine especially Ayurveda. It has been practised for over 5,000 years.



Albert Einstein we know was vegan. We also know he was keen on spirituality. But did he practise meditation? Could this give us an insight to his genius? What did Einstein have that we don't?


Dr Thomas Harvey was the pathologist tasked to perform Einstein's autopsy in 1955. Without the family's permission, Harvey removed and kept Einstein's famous brain. He stored the brain in jars of formaldehyde and studied it slice by slice. He also dispensed small samples to other researchers on request.



There was nothing showing Einstein's brain as extraordinary. But in the early 1980s, Marian Diamond, a neuroanatomist at the University of California at Berkeley, made some discoveries that could change our ideas about genius and help us increase intelligence.





She worked with rats. One group was in a super-stimulating environment with swings, ladders, treadmills and toys.

The other group was confined to bare cages. The rats in the high-stimulus environment lived to the advanced age of three (the equivalent of 90 in a man) and their brains increased in size, sprouting new glial cells, which make connections between neurons (nerve cells).







Diamond had created the footprint of higher intelligence through mental exercise. She then examined sections of Einstein's brain and noted its unusual "interconnectedness".

There were greater numbers of glial cells in the left parietal lobe. This was a kind of neurological switching station connecting various areas of the brain.



Neurons do not reproduce after we are born. That is fixed at birth. However, the connective hardware of the brain -- glial cells, axons, and dendrites -- can increase throughout life. When you increase these connections, you become smarter.

Did Einstein, in some sense, learn his inventive mental powers? Einstein himself seemed to think so.

He believed that you could stimulate ingenious thought by allowing the imagination to float freely, forming associations at will. He even credits the development of his defining work -- the Theory of Relativity -- to his retarded development in his childhood years.



"A normal adult never stops to think about problems of space and time," he said. "These are things which he thought of as a child. But my intellectual development was retarded, and I began to wonder about space and time only when I had grown up."



Einstein attributed his scientific prowess to what he called a "vague play" with "signs", "images", and other elements, both "visual" and "muscular". "This combinatory play", he wrote, "seems to be the essential feature in productive thought".



There is a long practised type of active meditation called image streaming. Evidence suggests that the stream of images in our minds literally never ceases.

Even when our minds are preoccupied with work or conversation the sensory mechanisms continues to generate imaginary sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings.



One form of meditation is to control these images while the other type is to follow these images with a single minded focus.



Image streaming makes use of all five senses, not just sight. Your brain is so wired that vision will always tend to dominate the creative process. LSD researchers discovered that psychedelic compounds tend to break down the boundaries between different senses so that you might "hear" the colour red or "smell" a Bach concerto. This is a process called synesthesia.



Synesthetic references emerge in everyday language when we speak of the "coolness" of blue, the "sweetness" of a woman's voice, or a "piercing" sound.



Einstein is the most spectacular modern example of a man who could dream while wide awake. With few exceptions, the great discoveries in science were made through such intuitive "thought experiments".







Indeed, Einstein once wrote that "all the valuable things, material, spiritual, and moral, which we received from society can be traced back through countless generations to certain creative individuals".



This great ability to create can come from proper training with meditation to enhance the awareness of the brain and the interconnection between senses. There are many types of meditation. We will look at two forms -- one passive and another active -- next week.

Datuk Dr Rajen M. is a pharmacist with a doctorate in holistic medicine. Email him at health@po.jaring.my