Becoming supernatural

Oof. Where to start?

A friend recommended this book after I suggested she read Altered Traits, a brilliant account of the last 40 years of hard science surrounding meditation as a research topic within the fields of Psychology and Neuroscience. This book is, perhaps, almost the exact opposite.

Science takes time. It's often boring and unpleasant and particularly when it comes to a topic such as consciousness, the very nature of the research topic becomes an exercise in growing the scientific method to incorporate increasingly difficult material. The researchers referenced in Altered Traits have fought to win objective, scientific results. "Dr. Joe" Dispenza takes another approach in Becoming Supernatural: he weaves together legitimate meditation research, high school physics, chemistry, and biology, and his own direct experience... making up connections between the three as he goes along. I would have no objection to a book which tackled any one of these in isolation, but conflating them is at best disingenuous, at worst dangerous.

Here's why. Most of his meditation-focused writing is not too far off the mark and his book would actually be less dangerous if it seemed hokier. Much of what he says holds merit, in isolation. Meditation can help its practitioners lead healthier and happier lives and the strategies he discusses and the benefits he points out are entirely legitimate, to an extent. But he is clearly targeting an audience of beginners and someone beginning a meditation practice should work slowly, carefully, and skeptically. He is suggesting diving in headfirst, with the promise of massive physical and mental health benefits. This is unethical.

The meditation he suggests is a variation on Kundalini Yoga, which has widely-documented and discussed mental health risks. Attention placed on the nervous system can cause very serious trauma to surface in the psyche and the spinal cord is one of the last places a practitioner should choose to make use of attention in this way.

His descriptions of why and how meditation works are undefended by any objective research or reference beyond his own experience — he is within his right to describe the human body as a magnetic torus, if he must, but he should have clearly delineated that unverified idea from the neuroscience which is not his own. He doesn't. He simply flips between hard science and imaginative ideas at the drop of a hat, which makes the sum of the book hard to swallow.

Dispenza makes a final mistake throughout the book, in his delivery of meditation instructions. Meditation instructions such as this, from Chapter 9 (Walking Meditation):

Raise your energy to its zenith and feel gratitude, appreciation, and thankfulness.

Now acknowledge the divine within you—the energy that powers you and gives rise to all of life. Give thanks for a new life before it's made manifest. Acknowledging the power within you, ask that your life be filled with unexpected wonder, synchronicities, and coincidences that create a joy for existence. Radiate your love while loving your new life into existence.

These are barely sentences. They stand on the edge of meaningful grammar yet they are instructions. These are some of the worst "meditation" instructions I've ever read. What is the action or practice he is suggesting the reader attempt, here? Confusing, mystic, nonspecific, non-actionable, and highly subject to interpretation, such instruction serves little to no purpose. Meditation is serious work and instruction should be clear, unambiguous, and devoid of mysticism if it is to be considered ethical by a rational adult.

Last, but least harmful, we get a sense of how little thought Dispenza has applied in authoring the book when we come across imagery like crop circles in the shape of a melatonin molecule and Fibonacci's constant superimposed over the brain, pointing to the pineal gland (Chapter 12: The Pineal Gland). These images are squarely in Hokey Territory and provide ample warning to any sensible reader that perhaps the legitimate science and authentic spiritual experiences found elsewhere in the book are not to be trusted.