A Simple Explanation of Meditation

Scientific research has proven that the brains of regular meditators function differently than those of non-meditators. For one thing, more information travels through the meditator's corpus callosum, uniting left and right hemispheres.
For another thing, meditators recover more quickly from emotional upsets and startle reactions.
For more information on this topic, you can watch 17 minutes of a good documentary provided through Canadian Television:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3LtQH4Etjo

What is it about meditation that causes these effects?

The general process of meditation involves sitting quietly and stilling the mind through concentration. Various schools of meditation encourage concentration through a variety of techniques--attention to breathing, uttering a repeated mantra such as "Lord" or the word "om," focusing on the "third eye" between the eyebrows, or upon love and heartfelt connection beyond oneself. Any method that quiets the mind's chatter will do. Interior silence must be achieved. The goal is relaxation, a sense of perfect peace, a feeling of bliss, or union with God. 

Quieting the mind's chatter during meditation achieves two things.  First, it allows you to temporarily lay aside your meme bundle and briefly unite with your governing Unit of Consciousness Self; secondly, interior stillness provides the empty space needed to go beyond the boundary of your personal Unit of Consciousness (UC) to perceive the reassuring sheltering presence of the universal unit of consciousness. Spiritually oriented meditation techniques refer to this transcendence of personal identity as recognizing the essential Oneness of All, or as approaching the Throne of God. 

Here's what I think happens to the nesting toroids during meditation:

This first drawing represents our nested universal space. (Please click here to review this concept if you need to.) 

The red center represents the material universe; the white arrows represent proto-energy radiating into our universe; the beige is our governing UC; the yellow is the universal unit of consciousness, known as God.

During ordinary consciousness, our Self is engaged in the material-based world. According to Yoga philosophy and energy healers, an observable red current of life-giving energy (prana) runs upward from the base of the spine. Since our toroidal model indicates that matter and energy are generated from the center zero-point of the conscious universal field, our human bodies must occupy our personal UCs thusly:

This illustration represents the human chakra field drawing universal proto-energy (ananda) through chakra one at the base of the spine.

During ordinary, matter-bound consciousness, human awareness is  entirely trapped within the mind's perceptions of the material universe. These matter-bound perceptions include both processed sensory stimuli(touch, taste, hearing, smell, sight) and thought ideations in the form of meme chords and karma. In this state, the Self's governing UC can only occasionally influence the "mud-up" mind.  You could say that in the ordinary state, the matter-bound mortal is "out of phase" with his or her Self UC.

During meditation, the source from which the body draws energy shifts from chakra one at the base of the spine to chakra four--the heart. Yoga philosophy characterizes the heart as the door between the material and spiritual. When the mind is perfectly still, the heart swells with love and with joy. We propose that during meditation, the human goes "in phase" with pure consciousness, uninfluenced by perceptions of and opinions about the material world. This phase shift brings the mud-up mind into full contact with not only its own  governing UC but, with practice and patience, the individualized UC resonates entirely in phase with the universal UC.

At that stage of advanced meditation, when one's personal identity unit of consciousness becomes one with the universal unit of consciousness, the seventh chakra at the crown of the skull channels unimpeded information and coherence directly through the "top" or aligned metaversal funnel. At the same time, the personal toroidal space is entirely in phase with the universal UC and "pressed" directly against the coherence boundary, stimulating an unparalleled sense of love ("Divine Love"). Also, universal proto-energy pours through the "spiritualized heart" at the core of the meditator, bringing an unrivaled sense of bliss to the meditator.

One technique meditators employ to achieve this advanced state of love, bliss, and awareness is to balance their ascending (chakra one) prana with their descending (chakra seven) spiritual energy (mud up, spirit down) so that they meet at the (chakra four) heart center. Perhaps this model's simple explanation may help with that endeavor.