Physicist Brian Greene on What He Learned from a Meditation Class

Do you spend any time meditating? I do. I'm not particularly effective at it, and so- Most people are that way. Yeah, you know, but years ago- Including the most effective ones. Well, years ago, a friend of mine bought me one of these transcendental meditation courses, and I was like, okay, I'll just try it. He spent the money. I'm going to actually go and do it, and it was kind of eye-opening. There was a lot of what you might call woo-woo stuff that was happening in the lectures, and in fact, the funny thing is the guy giving the lecture, he did recognize me, and I could tell how uncomfortable he was giving his normal description, because he kept looking at me sheepishly as he would invoke quantum physics and things of that sort. But I told him, I'm not here to judge you, I'm just here to sort of see what's going on. But the idea of allowing the mind to be in a different mode of operation, which is sort of how I summarize the experience. You know, if you're reciting the mantra in your mind and allowing that to be a sort of pedal point, a driver of how your mind is behaving at that moment, that's a very different way of being in the world from thinking about grocery shopping or solving Einstein's equations. And I think that to me is the value of it. It's a systematic way to put your mind in a different mode of operation. And at times, I find it very useful to move into that place. When you started doing Transcendental Meditation, what about it was weird? Well, what was weird, number one, was doing this in this group setting, which is how you start on this course. And moreover, it being framed in a manner that I had trouble aligning with my understanding of how the world works by virtue of the lectures that were given to us for what it is what we were doing. But through the practice, I sort of found, I'm sure I'm just translating from what they were saying in the lecture into a language that I'm more comfortable with. And that made it less weird for me because... Sort of like what you were talking about religion, just kind of cutting out the thing... Cutting out the thing that didn't make any sense to me and saying, hey, what is it really about? What this really is about is breaking the usual chain of thought that is 99.9% of the time of how I live in the world and allowing my brain to have a chain of thought that is artificial, because I'm sitting here forcing myself to recite this mantra inside my mind. But that's a very useful way of being because it's unfamiliar and it's novel and allows my brain to operate in a different way. So when I translated it into that language, it all of a sudden made a lot more sense to me and became not weird at all. It became an interesting practice. And do you still do it? I do it when I feel I need it. So either friends of mine who say, I cannot live in the world if I don't do my 20 minutes in the morning, simply, that's part of my routine. I don't feel that way, but there are moments when I say, whoa, I need to do it. And based on circumstance, based on what's happening in a given moment, it allows a kind of mental reset if that's a language that makes sense. And that reset I consider to be a valuable thing to do. So do you do this? I do. I don't do TM, but I do meditate. Regular basis. Yeah, regular basis. And I also have a float tank here. Oh, you do? Really? Like a deprivation in this building? Yeah, it's right over there. I'll show it to you after we're done. Wow. Yeah. You could if you want to. Have you done it before? I've never done it before. Oh my God, you gotta do it. I find it a little bit terrifying. Do I have to say? I do. Yeah, there's plenty of them. There's a bunch of different float places. It's not terrifying at all. Really? Yeah, you just float, relax. But it's complete darkness. Oh yeah. See, because I have some claustrophobia. And that's like, for instance, I can't go into an MRI machine. Oh really? Yeah, yeah, totally. In fact, I even tried. But you're so smart. Why don't you get that out of your head? I tried. I gotta tell you, I trained. Really? I had a place where it's only about like one foot high. And I'd slide my body underneath the desk, lock the door, because it looked too weird. And I'd stay under there as long as I possibly could, just to train myself. How long is that? Like 15, 20, but I get into the real machine and... Really? Yeah. My wife's mom is like that. Yeah. Like she did an MRI. And she's like, it was the worst experience of my life. I'm like, I did two of them last week. Totally. I totally understand her. I totally. Really? Yeah. I mean, I'm not as smart as you would not recognize, well, there's just this thing around me and I can't... I do. I do, but it's like the irrational part of being. I get in there, my heart starts to pound. Where do you think that comes from? I don't know, because it wasn't always there. Really? And it has gotten worse in certain... There was a time, I'm gonna come across like a nutcase in here. Maybe it was that trip to Amsterdam. Yeah, to Amsterdam. Waft to the brain out. There was actually times when I couldn't even go in a tunnel in a car. The claustrophobia was that bad. Really? Yeah, I was in a taxi cab, I had to go to New Jersey, Manhattan, so I had to take a Lincoln tunnel. And as the taxis approached the tunnel, I said to the guy, I can't do it. I can't do it. And the guy says, well, I can't let you out. It's illegal to let you out. I said, you gotta let me out. I can't do it. And I just opened the door and I got out. Oh my God, that's so crazy. But now I'm fine with tunnels. I don't know what it is that... Maybe you're too smart. Accentuated it there. Maybe you're too smart. You're playing tricks with you and giving you anxiety to sort of... Shake it up the world and yeah, maybe. Maybe. Constantly contemplating the gigantic picture of the actual scope of the universe. Yeah, but now I'm pretty stable about these things. So it's just MRI machines where it's really close into your face. Well, you gotta just do a lot of MRIs. Get over that. Yeah, right, exactly. I'm sure that would do it. That would absolutely do it. Probably, right? If you just MRIs on a regular basis. Then I'm sure you get used to it. Yeah, I just do a real simple type of meditation. I probably am eventually gonna take a TM course, because my friend Tom Papa, he's really into TM and he raves about it. But I just sit down and I breathe. I just concentrate only on my breath. And it comes and goes, but I concentrate only on my breath. And I find really good relief from that. Yoga is the same thing. I do yoga. I try to do it at least twice a week when I... I do. Okay. There's a lot of benefit in that in the same way, in that it's so difficult and in the poses if you can only concentrate on your breath. Just balance and concentrate on your breath. You'll be filled with activity enough with things to concentrate on, with the balancing of the posture and then the breath that it acts as almost a brain scouring. It cleanses the mind of unnecessary anxieties and a lot of other just... But you've been doing that for a long time. Or is this a reason? No, yoga has been... I've been pretty steady for the last four years. Right, right. And my wife does a lot of yoga. She keeps telling me that I need to do it. It's great. It's great. It's great for the body as well. And I think the more comfortable your body is, the better your... At least for me, the better my mind will be.