The Psychophysiology of Advanced Participants in the Transcendental Meditation Program: Correlations of E E G Coherence, Creativity, H-reflex Recovery, and Experience of Transcendental Consciousness

A multivariate study was conducted on 23 subjects practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique and participating in a six-month Age of Enlightenment advanced training program. The electroencephalogram of each subject was recorded before and during the Transcendental Meditation technique, and compressed spectral arrays of coherence above a threshold of0.95 were subsequently generated by computer. Each subject was asked to rate the clarity of his experience of transcendental consciousness during sessions of the Transcendental Meditation technique and at a later time took the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking. In 15 of these subjects the Hoffmann (H) reflex was also studied, with identical conditioning and test stimuli delivered in pairs with varying delays between the two stimuli, to provide a measure of the recovery rate of spinal alpha motor neurons.