Consciousness and Cognition 86 (2020) 103032

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Consciousness and Cognition

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/concog

Meditation, well-being and cognition in heartfulness meditators –

A pilot study
Bhuvnesh Sankar Sylapan a, b, 3, 1, Ajay Kumar Nair a, b, 2, 3, *,
Krishnamurthy Jayanna c, d, f, Saketh Mallipeddi a, b, Sunil Sathyanarayana e, f, Bindu
M. Kutty a, b, *
a
Department of Neurophysiology, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, India
b
Center for Consciousness Studies, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, India
c
Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences, Bengaluru, India
d
Center for Integrative Health and Wellbeing, Bengaluru, India
e
Dayananda Sagar College of Dental Sciences, Bengaluru, India
f
Heartfulness Institute, Bengaluru, India

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Meditative practices can vary considerably in technique as well as their effects. Heartfulness is a
Meditation popular meditation technique that includes in its repertoire, a unique passive form of meditation.
Cognition We carried out a pilot study recruiting male heartfulness meditators (proficient n = 24, with 6–28
Well-being
years of meditation experience; novice n = 24, 5 to 16 months of experience) and subsequently
Heartfulness
recruited matched controls (n = 15). We examined well-being, and carried out high-density EEG
EEG
ERP recordings to examine indices of meditation and cognition in these groups. Well-being scores
were significantly higher for the proficient meditators as compared to novice and intermediate for
the controls. We did not find any group differences in cognitive processing. During meditation,
enhanced occipital gamma was found in proficient meditators as compared to controls. We
discuss the findings from this pilot study and suggest avenues for future research.

1. Introduction

Meditation comprises of a set of mind-body techniques used for self-development that are usually embedded in a spiritual or
religious tradition. Secular derivatives of meditation are also gaining popularity. Meditation techniques vary widely and there have
been several attempts to classify them. One scheme suggests a broad classification into focused attention and open monitoring (Lutz,
Slagter, Dunne, & Davidson, 2008) while an updated scheme suggests classification into attentional, constructive and deconstructive
families based on the cognitive strategies used in the meditation technique (Dahl, Lutz, & Davidson, 2015). It is accepted that these
attempts at classification are preliminary and each meditation tradition may employ several meditative techniques to suit its secular or

* Corresponding authors at: Dept. of Neurophysiology, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), P.B. No. 2900,
Dharmaram P.O, Hosur Main Road, Bengaluru 560029, Karnataka State, India.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (A.K. Nair), [email protected] (K. Jayanna), [email protected] (B.M. Kutty).
1
Present address: Graduate School of Medicine, University of Wollongong, Australia.
2
Present address: Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.
3
Equal contribution.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2020.103032
Received 30 March 2020; Received in revised form 13 September 2020; Accepted 5 October 2020
Available online 20 October 2020
1053-8100/© 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
B. Sankar Sylapan et al. Consciousness and Cognition 86 (2020) 103032

soteriological goals, as the case maybe.

During the past few decades there has been a tremendous growth in the scientific literature on meditation. While these studies
encompass many traditions, and many different methodologies, the findings suggest that meditative practices yield both state effects (i.
e., effect seen while meditation is being practiced) and trait effects (enduring changes seen even when the person is not meditating) and
manifest in many different ways. Among the modalities used to study the effects of meditation, popular ones include surveys, self-
report questionnaires, cognitive and affective tasks, electroencephalography (EEG), event related potentials (ERPs), structural and
functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), biochemical assays, autonomic function tests etc. Accordingly, there is a wealth of data
available on the effects of meditation. Since these studies span many different meditation traditions employing a range of techniques, it
is important to examine the results of any specific study within its context. In particular, given the widespread adoption of different
meditation traditions, it is necessary to study each tradition separately and also delineate the effects of specific techniques used within
a tradition. Further, it is important to consider that people have varying degrees of adoption and certainly differing levels of profi­
ciency in any scheme of practice.
We have previously reported that Vipassana meditators showed different EEG spectral changes for three different meditation
techniques – concentrative, mindfulness and loving kindness - practiced sequentially (Kakumanu et al., 2018). Furthermore, these EEG
state changes were different across meditators of three levels of proficiency. When we examined their cognitive performance in a
gamified oddball task (Nair, Sasidharan, John, Mehrotra, & Kutty, 2016), we did not find any group differences in their accuracy
measures or the P3 ERP amplitudes, but we found evidence of altered processing in terms of event related spectral changes (Kakumanu
et al., 2019). We also studied Rajayoga meditators finding evidence of proficiency linked progress in well-being (Nair, John, Mehrotra,
& Kutty, 2018) suggesting that meditation practice improves well-being, as even new meditators could quickly experience high levels
of well-being. However, when tested on their ability to rapidly shift between rest and soul conscious meditation under a variety of test
conditions, proficient new meditators did not show ability to quickly shift between these mental states, while proficient experts were
able to reliably switch states (Nair, Sasidharan, John, Mehrotra, & Kutty, 2017). This suggests that long term proficient practice is
necessary to achieve true mastery of a technique. Overall, these studies highlight the need for exploring each meditation tradition
within its context in a nuanced yet multipronged manner.
Heartfulness is a popular meditative tradition with a pan-global presence. It considers individual human consciousness to be on a
continuum – rising from a basic level consisting of physiological drives to a cosmic level transcending any notion of the self. There are
three main techniques in this tradition – meditation, cleaning (or rejuvenation) and prayer. During heartfulness meditation, attention
is brought to the presence of the light within the heart, also referred to as the Source or “deeper Self”. Then one assumes a completely
passive role to allow “Yogic transmission”, to take attention to deeper levels of consciousness within oneself, leading to an expansion of
consciousness. Yogic transmission is defined as the utilization of divine energy for transformation of the human being (Patel, 2016).
The process of transmission is usually triggered by a trainer or expert, and received by the meditator who does not need to be in
physical proximity (Patel, 2016). Cleaning is an active process done at the end of the day, where the meditator removes all impressions
acquired during the daily activities with the help of suggestions and positive affirmations. Prayer-meditation is a process done just
before going to bed in which the meditator recalls the main purpose of human existence and strengthens the connection with the
deeper Self.
There have been very few studies on heartfulness. These preliminary studies have explored efficacy of heartfulness intervention on
physician burnout (Thimmapuram et al., 2019, Thimmapuram et al., 2017), effect of a meditation session on cardiovascular pa­
rameters among meditators (Arya, Singh, Malik, & Mehrotra, 2018) and more recently effect of Heartfulness practice on sleep
(Thimmapuram et al., 2020). These studies are suggestive of heartfulness providing benefits in terms of enhanced well-being, sleep
quality, reduction in emotional exhaustion and a shift towards parasympathetic predominance. There are no reports of studies
examining neurophysiological changes during any form of heartfulness meditation or of any effects of this form of meditation on
neurocognitive parameters.
The present study was designed as an exploratory cross-sectional study to examine well-being and neurophysiological variables
among two groups of heartfulness meditators differing in terms of proficiency. We hypothesized that as compared to novices, proficient
meditators would show higher well-being, show distinct signatures in terms of EEG power during meditation and finally, show evi­
dence of enhanced cognition as assessed through the P3 ERPs. To facilitate further understanding and better inference of the results, we
subsequently acquired data from a healthy control group of non-meditators.

2. Methods

Meditators were recruited by certified meditation trainers at the Heartfulness Institute in Bangalore using the following criteria:
healthy, male, right handed, age between 20 and 60, with no other meditation experience or history of substance abuse. The team of
investigators at NIMHANS were blinded to the proficiency levels and socio-demographics of the meditation participants in order to
avoid any influence on data acquisition.
Two groups of meditators were recruited based on their proficiency and duration of meditation experience: Proficient (n = 24) had
18 years of meditation experience (min 6 years, max 28) and Novice (n = 24) with 9.5 months of meditation experience (min 5 months,
max 16). Subsequent to the initial phase of this pilot, a third group of participants consisting of non-meditators (Control, n = 15) were
recruited from the community by the investigators at NIMHANS, Bangalore, India. All participants were college educated, fluent in
English and of similar socioeconomic status. Although all participants were within the chosen age range, the Proficient group was older
than Novice (p = .03) and Control (p < .01) whereas the latter two groups did not differ in terms of age (p = .37). There were no group
differences in terms of body mass index (BMI). While the majority of the participants were teetotallers, a handful of participants in the

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Novice and Control groups were occasional social drinkers. All were non-smokers. The participants were advised to have breakfast, but
abstain from tea, coffee or any other stimulants and nootropics on the day of the study.
The participants engaged voluntarily and no financial compensation was provided. Each participant provided written informed
consent as approved by the NIMHANS Institute Human Ethics Committee (NIMHANS/IEC/ (BS& NS DIV) /14th Meeting /2018 dated
20-09-2018) and in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (1964).

2.1. Data acquisition

All studies were carried out in the Human Cognitive Research laboratory of the Department of Neurophysiology, NIMHANS. With
the re-assessment of inclusion and exclusion criteria for each participant, data acquisition began around 9:30 AM. Participants either
filled the self-report questionnaires followed by the EEG recordings or the other way around. This counterbalancing was done to nullify
any order effects. The EEG acquisitions took place in the dimly lit, sound-attenuated chamber with an ambient temperature of 25 ◦ C
and, humidity range between 40% and 60%. Data were acquired using the Geodesic EEG System 300 (Philips Neuro, USA). Suitable
sizes of 128 channel HydroCel Geodesic Sensor Nets were used to ensure proper fit. The impedance of all electrodes was maintained
below 50Kohm as recommended by the vendor. The obtained EEG was amplified using the NetAmps300 amplifier, digitized with a
resolution of 24 bits and a sampling rate of 1 kHz. Notch filter was not used. Stimulus presentation was done using the E-prime 2.0
stimulus presentation software (Psychology Software Tools, Inc., Sharpsburg, PA, USA). The participants were seated 90 cm from the
34 cm × 27 cm LCD monitor that directed the participants with instructions throughout the protocol.
The following self-report instruments were used in the study.

1. Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) – (Feldman Barrett & Russell, 1998; Watson & Clark, 1988). The self-report
questionnaire of 20 items is divided into two 10 item scales to measure both positive and negative affect. The items are rated
on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from “Very slightly or not at all” to “Extremely”. The state version was used for this study. It is
considered to be a reliable and valid instrument for the assessment of the affective component of subjective well-being.
2. Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) (Diener, Emmons, Larson, & Griffin, 1985). The scale measures the global cognitive judgments
over one’s satisfaction with life across 5 items. The 5 items are measured on a 7-point Likert-type scale ranging from “Strongly
Disagree” to “Strongly Agree”. The satisfaction with life scale was developed as a judgemental component of subjective well-being.
3. Mindful Attention and Awareness Scale (MAAS) (Brown & Ryan, 2003). This 15-item scale on everyday experience uses ratings
ranging from 1 to 6 between “almost always” and “almost never” respectively, and assesses the core characteristics of mindfulness
namely attention and awareness of the present.
4. General Well Being Scale (GWBS) (Dupuy, H. J., 1978) This 18-item scale is a subjective measure of a subject’s mental well-being
and distress over the preceding month. Total score added up across all 18 items over the respective scale for each question results is
co-related across the 7 well-defined cuts off ranging between “Severe distress” and “Positive well-being”.

Fig. 1. EEG study protocol. A: Overall EEG study design. The two sessions were counterbalanced across subjects. B: EEG data segments used for
analysis. ANGEL: Assessing Neurocognition via Gamified Experimental Logic, a three level cognitive task.

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5. World Health Organization- Well-being Index (WHO-WBI) (Topp, Østergaard, Søndergaard, & Bech, 2015). This short self-reported
questionnaire on the current well-being is measured with 5 items each rated between 0 and 5 representing “At no time” and “All the
time” respectively. The resulting scores range between 0 and 25 indicating the worst and best possible lifestyle. The Well Being
Index has been widely used and translated for assessing the psychological well-being of a participant.
6. Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) (Cohen, Kamarck, & Mermelstein, 1983)) The measure of situations that are appraised as stressful is
assessed using this 10-item scale with scores ranging from 0 to 4 indicating “Never” and “Very often” respectively. The Perceived
stress scale is the most widely used psychological instrument for the assessment of perceived stress.
7. Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ30) (Barrett, Johnson, & Griffiths, 2015). This revised 30 item questionnaire is a measure
of mystical experience, positive mood, transcendence of time and space and ineffability. Assessment of each of these experiences is
measured on a 6-point scale ranging between 0 and 5 indicating “none/no” experience and “extreme” experience respectively. The
MEQ30 was used to validate the retrospective account of mystical and spiritual experience encountered during meditation. This
questionnaire was not filled by the controls as none of them reported having such experiences.

2.2. EEG protocol

The Heartfulness EEG protocol had two distinct sessions, namely the cognitive and meditative sessions, counterbalanced across
subjects (Fig. 1 A). The two sessions were separated by a washout period. Each session started and ended with a 4-minute rest period
consisting of an alternating sequence of one-minute-long eyes open and eyes closed conditions. Participants were instructed to refrain
from meditating or indulging in emotionally salient thoughts during the rest period. Cognitive performance was assessed using ANGEL,
a three-level sensory and motor cognitive task previously standardized in our lab (Nair et al., 2016) and used in other studies
(Kakumanu et al., 2019; Sasidharan et al., 2019). In brief, the task is a gamified version of a visual oddball paradigm in which the
participants respond to both frequent and rare stimuli in the presence of multiple audio-visual distractors. The nature of the task
simulates real world cognitive performance. The focus of the present study was the P3 ERP and so data from level 2 (Fig. 1 B, top) of the
task was used for analysis as suggested by the previous reports using the task. Participants were briefed prior to the beginning of the
recording and were also guided with crisp visual instructions at the start of different parts of the protocol. The meditators did the 20-
minute eyes closed meditation by being receptive to transmission as per the Heartfulness tradition. The control participants were
instructed to close their eyes during the meditation session and pay attention to their breath. To facilitate appropriate comparison
between rest and meditation, data from four blocks of two minutes each were taken from the meditation period. Correspondingly, the
one minute eyes closed rest segments were combined to form two-minute rest blocks before and after the meditation.

2.3. Data analysis

The socio-demographics and well-being measures were analysed in the open source R statistical software version 3.6.0 (R Core
Team, 2019). All the scales showed high internal consistency scores (Cronbach’s alpha ranging between 0.78 and 0.9) showing that
they were suitable for use in this population. Examination of normality (using Shapiro-Wilks test and QQ plots) revealed that only the
GWBS and Negative Affect subscale of PANAS were not normally distributed. Assessment of homoscedasticity using Levene’s test for
normal distributions and Fligner-Killeen test for non-normal data revealed that the Positive Affect and Negative Affect subscales were
heteroscedastic. Appropriate statistical tests were done using One way Anova followed by Tukey’s post hoc tests, or Kruskal-Wallis test
followed by post hoc procedures (Siegel & Castellan, 1988), or Robust one-way Anova followed by robust pairwise computation of
robust explanatory effect size (Wilcox, 2012). Several open source R packages were used for the analysis and plots.
The EEG and ERP data were imported into the open source MATLAB toolbox EEGLAB v13.4.4b (Delorme & Makeig, 2004) using the
Philips ‘mff’ import plugin and pre-processed using custom MATLAB scripts along the lines of those reported earlier (Kakumanu et al.,
2019, 2018; Nair et al., 2016). One important change was the use of 20 standard deviations as threshold for the artefact subspace
reconstruction EEGLAB plugin, as per the revised recommendations provided by the authors of the plugin. For the meditation part of
the study, the two eyes closed rest epochs before meditation were combined to form the baseline rest condition (Fig. 1B bottom left).
Four epochs of two minutes were extracted from the 20 minute eyes closed meditation session in order to examine changes across the
meditation period (Fig. 1B bottom right). Power spectral density was computed and the results of the topographical distribution for the
delta (1–4 Hz), low-theta (4–6 Hz), high-theta (6–8 Hz), low-alpha (8–10 Hz), high-alpha (10–12 Hz), low-beta (12–15 Hz), high-beta
(15–30 Hz) and low-gamma (30–40 Hz) were used for statistical analyses.
Separate EEGLAB STUDY files were created for the statistical analysis of meditation and ERP data. For the ERP data, group and
condition (frequent and rare visual stimuli) differences related to P3 were examined for each of the channel measures: ERP, Power
Spectra, Inter-trial coherence (ITC) and event related spectral perturbations (ERSP). The different bands of interest were delta (1–4
Hz), low-theta (4–6 Hz), high-theta (6–8 Hz), low-alpha (8–10 Hz), high-alpha (10–12 Hz), low-beta (12–15 Hz), high-beta (15–30 Hz)
and low-gamma (30–40 Hz). The time-points of interest were 200–600 ms after stimulus for ERP and ERSP and 100–300 ms for ITC.
Statistical significance for the above EEG/ERP measures was set with alpha < 0.05 and tested using two-way ANOVA with 2000
permutations and False Discovery Rate (FDR) correction for multiple comparisons (Benjamini & Hochberg, 1995).

3. Results and discussion

We had initially carried out this pilot study comparing the Proficient and Novice groups. As hypothesized, we found pronounced
well-being differences across many dimensions between the two groups. Both groups also demonstrated significant differences

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between rest and meditation as well as between rare and frequent conditions. However, we did not find any group differences for the
electrophysiology parameters. To understand our initial results better, we extended the pilot to acquire data from a matched healthy
Control group who did not have any meditation experience. We present results for all three groups in this section. The only exception is
the mystical experience comparison which was possible only between the Novice and Proficient groups.
The overall distribution of data and correlation between the different measures are shown in Supplementary Fig. 1. The plot
demonstrates expected relationships between the measures. For example, negative affect and perceived stress are well correlated with
each other and negatively correlated with the general well-being and the WHO well-being index measures.
A two sample t-test of the meditators revealed that Proficient had significantly higher mystical experiences than Novice (t44.8 =
2.51, p = .016). Mystical experiences are an expected, although not explicitly sought after, part of the Heartfulness tradition. While the
organization is less than a hundred years old, it is based on a large body of ideas some of which have thousands of years of philosophical
context that aids practitioners on their spiritual journey. This suggests that developing Heartfulness tradition specific measures to
understand well-being and practice proficiency might be of value, as has been demonstrated in other traditions (Nair et al., 2018).
There were no differences between the three groups in terms of Mindful attention and awareness (F = 2.39, p = .1). This finding
suggests that the Heartfulness tradition is quite distinct from mindfulness meditation and further underscores the need to carry out
tradition specific research on meditation.
In terms of general well-being, Kruskal-Wallis test revealed significant group differences (H = 12.05, p = .002) with post hoc tests
revealing that these differences were significant only between Proficient and Novice groups. The WHO Well-being Index did not show
the same amount of discrimination, showing trend level differences (F = 2.67, p = .077) with Proficient greater than Novice (p = .08).
The results were similar after adjusting for age as a covariate (as Proficient was older than the other two groups).
For Positive Affect, robust one way Anova revealed significant group differences (Ft = 3.94, p = .038) and with an explanatory
effect size of 0.54 for Proficient greater than Novice. However, after adjusting for age, there were only trend level differences at a group
level (F = 2.69, p = .076) and for Proficient having greater positive affect as compared to Novice (p = .06).
The three groups differed significantly in terms of Satisfaction with life (F = 6.03, p = .004) with Proficient reporting higher life
satisfaction than both Novice (p = .02) and Control (p < .01) groups. Again, the results stayed similar after adjusting for age as a
covariate.
The above results reveal that while proficient meditators clearly had higher levels of subjective well-being as compared to novice
meditators, the non-meditator controls formed an intermediate group. This is somewhat unexpected as novice meditators can expe­
rience improvements in well-being (Nair et al., 2018). Cross-sectional studies have shown that Novice meditators are likely to have
higher well-being as compared to controls (Nair et al., 2018) and that short term meditation retreats can bring about higher well-being
improvements (Khoury, Knäuper, Schlosser, Carrière, & Chiesa, 2017). Also, the 12-week Heartfulness meditation intervention in
healthcare professionals that we referred to earlier, showed pronounced reductions in emotional exhaustion (Thimmapuram et al.,
2019). However, as Thimmapuram et al., (2019) did not directly compare the meditation and control groups, we cannot comment
further on possible differences. It could very well be that many of the novice meditators (at least in our sample) had taken to meditation
in order to benefit from the salutary effects of meditation (Sedlmeier et al., 2012) to cope with stress and had not yet experienced the
desirable levels of well-being.
Indeed, perception of stress was also different between the groups (F = 5.32, p = .007) with Novice perceiving significantly higher
stress as compared to Proficient (p = .005). There were no other group differences. These results stayed similar after adjusting for age.
However, as we did not explicitly ask the meditators, we cannot infer the role of stress as a reason for enlistment. A limitation in our
study (due to feasibility constraints within the short duration of the pilot) was that controls were not recruited from a waitlist group. It
is possible that controls in our sample had not started meditation because they did not feel the need for any intervention to cope with
stress or otherwise improve their well-being. A waitlist control group would have addressed this concern.
Examination of Negative Affect by Kruskal-Wallis test showed that the three groups were significantly different (H = 16.796, p <
.001) with post hoc tests revealing that Novice had significantly higher negative affect as compared to both Control and Proficient
groups. An age adjusted evaluation using ancova showed similar results (F = 12.55, p < .001), Novice greater than Control (p < .001)
and Proficient (p < .001), while there were no significant differences between Proficient and Controls (p = .99).
While meditation interventions don’t always yield similar results, improvements in negative affect have been more consistently
observed (Goyal et al., 2014). Our findings of high negative affect and stress perception among Novice, as compared to Proficient, are
suggestive that the new meditators might have started their practice as a means to cope with their challenges and improve their well-
being. This is particularly relevant as the Novice seemed to be having lower well-being (higher negative affect) than the control group.
It is unclear if the Proficient group had similar motivations as the Novice group and that they were successful in achieving more
favourable outcomes including higher life satisfaction than controls. Indeed, an alternative explanation could be that both Novice and
Proficient groups may have started their meditative practice with similar levels of perceived stress, but the Proficient group perceived
less stress than Novice as a result of longer practice. It is not possible to draw any causal inferences from the well-being differences seen
in the present study as this is a cross-sectional study and these are self-reported measures. A prospective randomized control study
examining the effect of heartfulness meditation or active control intervention on a large sample, could perhaps illuminate our findings
better. A large survey of existing Heartfulness practitioners might also provide more insight into their motivation for starting the
practice and their definitions of well-being which might differ from the extant scholarly literature. We used standard well-being
measures that are accepted worldwide. However, meditative traditions have goals that do not strictly overlap with conventional
notions of well-being or self-development. For instance, Heartfulness philosophy refers to the journey of a meditator through certain
conditions and states of consciousness that are unique to the system. This indicates the need for developing customized tools and
methods considering the philosophical and traditional contexts.

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We now report the findings from EEG acquired during rest and meditation.
In the post-session debriefing, meditators reported being able to meditate during the meditation sections of the rest and meditation
protocol. Controls who had been asked to observe their breath admitted to not being able to maintain their attention for long.
Nevertheless, most controls reported feeling peaceful and pleasant at the end of the protocol. All groups showed changes in power
across all the bands of interest across the different epochs of the rest and meditation protocol. This indicates that even the controls
made some effort to have a meditative state which was different from eyes closed rest. The three groups showed differences in low
gamma power in the Occipital electrodes in the early part of the meditation (Fig. 2).
Low-gamma power (30–40 Hz) for the three groups during the rest and meditation protocol. Red dots in the bottom row and rightmost
column indicate electrodes with significant power differences across groups and conditions respectively. Note significant group differences during
4–5 min and 9–10 min epochs.
Post hoc comparisons between each group pair revealed group differences only between Proficient and Control (Fig. 3).
Low-gamma power (30–40 Hz) for the three groups comparing rest and all meditation epochs taken together. Red dots in the bottom row and
rightmost column indicate electrodes with significant differences across conditions and groups respectively. Note the Proficient have higher low-
gamma power than Controls in the occipital electrodes during meditation.
Thus, the Novice group was intermediate to the Control and Proficient groups in terms of EEG power during meditation. This is to
be expected as Controls were clearly not meditating while the Proficient were clearly able to meditate. It is noteworthy that the group
differences between Proficient and Controls were seen in the Occipital region, as the Occipital prominence has been previously
highlighted as central to the Heartfulness meditation experience (Patel, 2017). Increased occipital gamma during meditation is not
commonly reported. There is one study in long term meditators which reported this finding during Vipassana meditation (as compared
to control rest condition) and found that the increase in gamma power was strongest in the most advanced meditators (Cahn, Delorme,
& Polich, 2010). Gamma band activity has been associated with perceptual binding and occipital gamma with imagined action (de
Lange, Jensen, Bauer, & Toni, 2008). Cahn and colleagues interpreted their findings to be possibly due to higher perceptual clarity
gained by open monitoring practice in Vipassana, or due to the iterative body scanning procedure used in that technique (Cahn et al.,
2010). Heartfulness meditation does not involve body scanning or open monitoring but does involve cultivating an enhanced
awareness of a “deeper Self”, and our finding is likely to be related to this latter practice. However, we were surprised to see no group
differences between Novice and Proficient. Perhaps this is because of the nature of the Heartfulness meditation technique that was used
in the study as the practitioner assumes a passive role, and is trying to be receptive to the transmission. Probably, the transmission is
responsible for these state-effects which are independent of duration of practice; this requires deeper examination in future. Most
meditative techniques involve the meditator playing an active role of either concentrating or suspending judgement etc. In the
Heartfulness tradition too, the other techniques such as cleaning or prayer employ active involvement by the practitioner. Future
studies could explore EEG power differences between groups during the practice of the various Heartfulness techniques with a
particular focus on the effects of transmission that is a unique element in Heartfulness system of meditation. Indeed, we have pre­
viously seen that even consecutive practice of different meditative techniques belonging to the same tradition yield EEG power dif­
ferences between groups of varying levels of proficiency (Kakumanu et al., 2018).

Fig. 2. Low gamma power for the three groups during rest and meditation.

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Fig. 3. Low gamma power for proficient and control.

If we had examined only rest and meditation states instead of counterbalancing them across the task, the state differences from rest
might have been more pronounced. Further, examining EEG over the time course of one hour (the traditional duration of practice for a
proficient meditator) might have yielded better results. To test these ideas, we carried out an additional exploratory EEG acquisition
for five expert practitioners doing an hour long heartfulness meditation without any task. Indeed, these experts showed state differ­
ences between rest and meditation epochs in the initial 20 min and middle 20 min but not during the last 20 min suggesting that most
of the state changes (at least for these individuals) happened within 40 min of the meditation. Since this is a passive meditation
technique, we believe that the findings of the primary study hold well and that the state effects were not influenced by the reduced
duration (20 min) of meditation that was adopted as part of the protocol. A previous study examining ability of meditators to shift
states rapidly has used meditation protocols before and after the same task (Nair et al., 2017). In any case, our examination of state
changes in meditation when counterbalanced with task is more ecologically valid as participants reported that the meditative practice
can be done at different times of the day and not only early in the morning before the influence of daily activities.
It is important to note that the EEG results in the present study relate to state changes during meditation. Heartfulness meditation is
a passive process, catalysed by the Yogic transmission. State changes during active processes such as cleaning and prayer, might be
valuable tools for study. Measures to examine changes in cerebral blood flow using neuroimaging techniques might reveal sources
underlying these state changes.
We did not find trait differences in EEG at rest. Several meditators from the Heartfulness tradition reported that getting into a sleep
like state during deep meditation is a common experience, probably attributable to the passive nature of meditation and effects of yogic
transmission. This is quite contrary to expectations of deep meditation in other schools of meditation and might be a tradition specific
experience. However, it would be instructive to examine trait changes in sleep using whole night polysomnography. The prominent
well-being differences between Novice and Proficient suggests cognitive and affective modulation. One explanation could be that the
Proficient are better equipped to use cleaning and prayer based methods to enhance well-being and these are not trait changes.
Alternative explanations could be that there are other ways in which well-being could be influenced by Heartfulness meditation – such
as through neuroendocrine pathways, or even epigenetic mechanisms (Thimmapuram et al., 2017). Heartfulness meditation may also
bring about autonomic changes and thus modulate affect (Arya et al., 2018). Biochemical assays can be employed to test these hy­
potheses. It is possible that other methods of analysis such as use of complexity measures might reveal differences (Kakumanu et al.,
2018). The sleep experiences commonly reported by Heartfulness meditators are attributed by the Heartfulness philosophy to the yogic
transmission that may induce deeper states of consciousness (Patel, 2017). It is possible that the effects of yogic transmission are non-
cognitive in nature and may warrant development of research tools and protocols that are customized for this tradition.
In the gamified visual oddball paradigm, the three groups showed condition differences between the rare and frequent conditions
as expected and an omnibus group difference at Pz (Fig. 4). However, paired wise group analysis did not reveal any significant dif­
ferences between the groups suggesting that the effect sizes were quite small for this particular task.
The event related potential at electrode location Pz in level 2 of the ANGEL paradigm showing P3 peaks for rare and frequent conditions. The
grey bands in the bottom row and rightmost column indicate time points at which there were significant differences across conditions and groups
respectively.

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B. Sankar Sylapan et al. Consciousness and Cognition 86 (2020) 103032

Fig. 4. P3 event related potentials at electrode Pz.

Previous reports employing the ANGEL task in Vipassana (Kakumanu et al., 2019) have also not found group differences in the P3
ERP in spite of finding condition differences as expected. One possible interpretation could be that although the ANGEL task is able to
capture the expected ERPs in these studies, participants from a diverse range of neural backgrounds (viz., meditation, healthy controls,
patients with schizophrenia) perform quite similarly in this multimodal audio-visual task. The task was designed with ecological
validity in mind (Nair et al., 2016) and the participants show the expected performance degradation with task complexity. However,
for the purpose of discriminating between these diverse groups, other tasks with larger effect sizes might be warranted. In the
Vipassana study mentioned earlier (Kakumanu et al., 2019), the groups differed in terms of event related spectral perturbations (ERSP)
showing differences in the way the ERPs were processed. However, in the present study we did not find evidence of group differences in
any of the P3 related parameters. Several studies in different schools of meditators have found differences in cognitive parameters
(Cahn & Polich, 2006; Crescentini, Fabbro, & Tomasino, 2017), and thus we had hypothesized a similar effect among Heartfulness
meditators. One possibility is that there might not be any Heartfulness meditation linked differences in terms of cognition or that these
differences may go beyond or deeper than cognition (for example in terms of metacognition). On the other hand, it could very well be
that other tasks and assessments might reveal different facets of cognitive changes attributable to Heartfulness meditation practice.
Future studies with Heartfulness meditators could employ different tasks to evaluate cognition linked differences.

4. Conclusion

Heartfulness meditation confers well-being enhancements to its practitioners as observed in proficient meditators. It appears that
novice meditators experience well-being benefits once they acquire some level of proficiency. While controls were intermediate in
terms of well-being, novices formed an intermediate group in terms of neural processing. During meditation, occipital gamma was
enhanced in proficient meditators as compared to the controls. There were no group differences in cognitive processing. We are still at
an early stage in understanding the neurophysiological effects of Heartfulness meditation and as discussed above, there are several
avenues for building on this initial pilot study.
Enhanced well-being as the outcome of meditation proficiency observed in our study, highlights the importance of meditation in
achieving both psychological and spiritual development. However, more nuanced top-down and bottom-up approaches to highlight
the mechanisms by which meditative practices bring well-being enhancement need to be employed in future studies. Such approaches

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would enable us to further explore how meditative practices lead to an expansion of consciousness.

Funding and conflict of interest statement

This pilot study was funded by the Heartfulness Institute by a six-month fellowship to BSS for carrying out acquisition and analysis.
Recruitment of meditators was done by meditation trainers at the Heartfulness Institute as per the criteria provided by the study
investigators. The authors from the Heartfulness team participated in discussions during study design, oversaw the recruitment of
meditators and provided clarification about Heartfulness terminology, relevant literature and practices during the manuscript writing
process. The funding agency had no role in data acquisition, analysis or interpretation of results.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Bhuvnesh Sankar Sylapan: Investigation, Software. Ajay Kumar Nair: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Supervision,
Writing - original draft. Krishnamurthy Jayanna: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Resources. Saketh Mallipeddi:
Conceptualization, Methodology. Sunil Sathyanarayana: . Bindu M. Kutty: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Methodology,
Project administration, Supervision.

Acknowledgements

We thank Pranay Yadav and Rahul Venugopal for fruitful discussions and help during analysis. We thank Prasanna Krishna, Raghav
Rao and their team for their help with coordination and recruitment of meditators. We thank all participants for their time and
cooperation for the study.

Appendix A. Supplementary material

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2020.103032.

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