A New Chapter on Contemplative Science

Dear CCR Community,

As the CCR’s Scientific Program Director, I’m delighted to share an update with you today on an important contribution the CCR has made to the field of contemplative science. This past September, Routledge published its first Handbook of Research Methods in Spirituality and Contemplative Studies, for which Dr. B. Alan Wallace and I contributed a chapter. Today, I’m writing to share with you the key ideas of that chapter, which describes some of the core elements of the CCR’s approach to contemplative science.

 

 

A revolutionary mission with an orthodox foundation

While the CCR’s mission may seem unorthodox at first glance, our work is thoroughly grounded in principles that are foundational to all branches of scientific research—including the principle of convergence:

 

The principle of convergence:

It is typically more persuasive to obtain convergent evidence across multiple lines of inquiry, as opposed to seeking only consistent evidence within a single line of inquiry.

(This idea is also called evidential triangulation, or the variety-of-evidence thesis.)

 

 

What does this principle look like in practice? Many of you are likely familiar with the process of a jury trial, in which lawyers present a wide variety of evidence to support their arguments. Eyewitness testimony is certainly crucial, but a prosecutor’s argument is even more convincing when augmented with forensic evidence, surveillance footage, and expert witnesses. Arguments that include evidence from a variety of sources are more likely to be true.

Scientists employ the principle of convergence in a similar way. While we certainly need to create replicable experiments to confirm our findings, relying on results from a single kind of experiment alone is like calling the same witness to the stand to hear their testimony over and over again. When we fail to support our findings through multiple sources of evidence, we may not get the full picture. But testing a hypothesis with multiple distinct methods can guard against biases and other deficiencies that may exist in any one method.

For instance, scientists employ the principle of convergence today by combining interventional and observational studies to observe a particular system. When scientists intervene on a system to test its effect, their intervention may have unintended consequences that make it difficult to accurately interpret the results. Scientists therefore complement interventional experiments with purely observational studies, in which they simply observe the system without any explicit intervention. The combination of interventional and observational approaches is just one example of how scientists apply the principle of convergence across different streams of evidence, creating a fuller, more accurate picture of what they study.

 

A New Chapter in Contemplative Science

The principle of convergence is a main theme of our newly published book chapter, titled “Contemplative Science: Expanding the Scope of Empiricism to Increase the Convergence of Evidence.” The chapter describes how professional contemplatives can provide a more comprehensive understanding of both consciousness and genuine well-being by contributing rigorous first- and second-person data:

1. We define first-person data from contemplatives as “reports that contemplatives give regarding their experiences and insights.”
2. We define second-person data as “assessments of contemplatives’ meditative abilities or other psychological and physical traits, which can be offered by other professionals–including psychologists, psychiatrists, clinicians, or other contemplatives.”

Professionally trained contemplatives can therefore increase the very possibility for convergent evidence by providing these additional streams of evidence. This first- and second-person data can then be integrated—and potentially converge—with the traditional third-person measures of modern science, such as electroencephalogram (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

 

Realizing the full potential of contemplative science

One of the truly unprecedented outcomes of this approach is that professional contemplatives will no longer be regarded simply as subjects, or participants, in other scientists’ protocols—akin to untrained undergrads, for example, who might occasionally choose to volunteer for psychological studies at their universities.

Instead, professional contemplatives who have completed years of rigorous training must be regarded as true colleagues to their scientific collaborators. This new role allows contemplatives not only to help design the research itself but also to be acknowledged for their ability to make genuine discoveries. As contemplative science continues to develop, it is essential for researchers, especially those steeped in the Western scientific tradition, to overcome the ethnocentrism that has, until now, denied contemplatives an equal role in scientific discussions.

 

Objectivity as intersubjective verification

To be sure, none of these developments is in any way an invitation to dispense with objectivity in science, even though we are advocating for first-person methods. The reason our approach does not depart from this scientific ideal is that objectivity has always been based on intersubjective verification, or agreement. That is, each scientist, firmly rooted in their subjective perspective on reality, must communicate with colleagues—who each have their own perspectives—to identify the aspects of their experiences that seem to be invariant across perspectives (another form of convergence). The stories we tell about these invariant features of reality therefore compose what we refer to as “objective reality.” Of course, a great deal of training is typically required to participate meaningfully in this process of intersubjective verification—as is the case with mathematicians’ evaluation of a proof, for example. The same is certainly true in the case of contemplative insights and discoveries.

In the West, such ideas go back at least as far as Bertrand Russell’s early-20th-century writings; and in the East, they go back at least as far as the Buddha’s teachings. Bertrand Russell makes a distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description, as discussed in his 1912 book The Problems of Philosophy. He argues that any time we describe something that exists, we necessarily do so in reference to “sense-data.” (bold emphasis mine):

 

“We shall say that we have acquaintance with anything of which we are directly aware, without the intermediary of any process of inference or any knowledge of truths. Thus in the presence of my table I am acquainted with the sense-data that make up the appearance of my table—its colour, shape, hardness, smoothness, etc.; all these are things of which I am immediately conscious when I am seeing and touching my table.

My knowledge of the table as a physical object, on the contrary, is not direct knowledge. Such as it is, it is obtained through acquaintance with the sense-data that make up the appearance of the table. We have seen that it is possible, without absurdity, to doubt whether there is a table at all, whereas it is not possible to doubt the sense-data. My knowledge of the table is of the kind which we shall call ‘knowledge by description’. The table is ‘the physical object which causes such-and-such sense-data’. This describes the table by means of the sense-data. In order to know anything at all about the table, we must know truths connecting it with things with which we have acquaintance…”

 

Now compare Russell’s words to those of the Buddha, who explains that our sense faculties—including, crucially, our faculty of mental perception—serve as the basis for descriptions of everything that can be said to exist (Sabba Sutta, SN 35:23):

 

[The Buddha said,] “And what, bhikkhus [monks], is the all? The eye and forms, the ear and sounds, the nose and odors, the tongue and tastes, the body and tactile objects, the mind and mental phenomena. This is called the all.

If anyone, bhikkhus, should speak thus: ‘Having rejected this all, I shall make known another all’—that would be a mere empty boast on his part. If he were questioned he would not be able to reply and, further, he would meet with vexation. For what reason? Because, bhikkhus, that would not be within his domain.”

 

What I take from these quotations is that scientists can maximize their objectivity precisely by understanding their own subjectivity, to know thyself, exactly as the Delphic oracle advised. To explain reality is to explain how it is that we see reality. As we state in the new chapter, all empirical inquiry is therefore “inescapably perspectival.”

If our subjective experiences form the foundation of how we understand the world around us, then our ability to refine our sense faculties directly determines how far we can push the boundaries of empirical and scientific inquiry. This constraint on scientific inquiry is precisely why contemplative science requires the development of contemplative technology: contemplatives cultivate advanced degrees of meditative concentration, like an astronomer who polishes the lens of their telescope, enabling reliable, high-resolution observations.

 

Practical implementation through mind labs

The conceptual framework we outline in our chapter is not merely theoretical or academic—it serves as the foundation for the practical work we do through our Mind Labs, Research, and Education programs, which employ these concepts in real-world settings. As we will begin the new year with a cohort of 13 contemplatives-in-training from six countries, the CCR’s Mind Lab program aims to demonstrate both the feasibility and utility of career paths in contemplative science. And as the CCR’s Pilot Study continues, now in its 47th month, we’re employing a novel research protocol that exemplifies the possibilities for evidential convergence central to our Research program.

 

How to access the chapter

For those interested, the entire chapter is currently available to read in the book preview on the Routledge website—follow the link and then click the “Preview Book” button, beneath the book’s thumbnail.

We believe this handbook entry will help researchers understand the full potential of contemplative science, envisioning it not just as the application of neuroscience tools on meditators, but as a broader use of contemplative methods to gain experiential insight into the nature of reality—a vision articulated by Dr. Wallace in 1986, when he coined the term “contemplative science” in his undergraduate honors thesis.

 

 

If you find this work inspiring, I encourage you to share this newsletter with others who may be interested in our work. You can also follow the link above to read the full chapter, or consider supporting our ongoing initiatives.

With gratitude for your interest and support,

 

Nicholas J. Matiasz

Scientific Program Director

Center for Contemplative Research