I put the same question to Matcheri Keshavan, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School. He thought it was possible. There are reliable ways to induce psychosis and other disturbances in a healthy subject—via drugs, sleep deprivation, and prolonged confinement or isolation. “If you deprive the brain of normal inputs—through sensory or social deprivation—that can produce psychosis,” he said. “And you can think of prolonged meditation as a form of deprivation.” The brain is accustomed to a certain amount of activity. When you’re sitting motionless with your eyes closed for ten or more hours a day, he said, neurons can start firing on their own, unprompted by external stimulation, “and this might lead to unusual phenomena, which we call psychosis.”
EXTENSIVE MEDITATION CAN CAUSE DEPERSONALISATION
Studies show that meditation has been shown to cause Depersonalisation/derealisation, which is a strange, and frankly, frightening experience, where life does not feel “real” and takes on a very dream-like quality. It’s like being awake, only you do not feel awake, and you cannot do magical things like ride dinosaurs and surf clouds as you can in the actual dream world.
Sadly, some meditation retreats are irresponsibly intense and do not have much in the way of “integration” back into reality.
EXTENSIVE MEDITATION CAN CAUSE PSYCHOTIC SYMPTOMS
There have been numerous reports of adverse mental health effects lasting for years following attendance at a meditation retreat.
Hier ein Erfahrender Meditationslehrer der nach 2 Tagen Jhana Retreat PTSD entwickelte...
As an instructor in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), I spent four years teaching meditation as a full-time job. A longtime meditator, I have logged roughly 4,000 hours of practice over 10 years, including more than 100 days on roughly a dozen silent meditation retreats. I’m extremely knowledgeable of both Buddhist and secular frameworks of meditation, have read countless books on the subject, and have taken instruction from numerous renowned Western meditation teachers.
In the months after the retreat, I suffered from symptoms diagnosed by a therapist as post-traumatic stress disorder. I frequently experienced involuntary convulsions and simple tasks like cooking a meal induced panic attacks. I was occasionally so overwhelmed by my bodily sensations that I was unable to speak, and sometimes had problems differentiating myself from my surroundings.