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Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation

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Re: Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation

#121

Post by pure_simplicity »

cambaceres wrote: post #115

My theory is that both Christianity and Islam exists because of the fact that deep prolonged mediation causes hallucinations and psychotic experiences. Why? Because God talked to both Jesus and Muhammed while they where meditating in the desert.

It can be useful to speculate, but I think you're not that familiar with what meditation in the Abrahamic religions looks like. Meditation in the biblical sense is to think deeply about something. Meditation in the eastern religion sense is to not think about anything. Those two are basically polar opposites and the psychological / neurological effects of the latter cannot be achieved by practising the former. (various sects have arisen that do eastern style meditation, but those have always been fringe minorities, and neither Jesus nor Mohammed shared any characteristics with them)

Also, in the gospel the story of the temptation in the wilderness comes after, not before, Jesus' recognition of his divine origin and mission. He was already baptized and pronounced to be God's son before ever going there. What's more this recognition has already come to him in childhood. And even if the order of events had been correct, then the nature of the events does not match, because when he was in the wilderness, Jesus was basically put to the test by the devil, who was trying to distract him from his divine commission, rather than being commissioned by God.

Re: Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation

#122

Post by cambaceres »

pure_simplicity wrote: post #121
cambaceres wrote: post #115

My theory is that both Christianity and Islam exists because of the fact that deep prolonged mediation causes hallucinations and psychotic experiences. Why? Because God talked to both Jesus and Muhammed while they where meditating in the desert.

It can be useful to speculate, but I think you're not that familiar with what meditation in the Abrahamic religions looks like. Meditation in the biblical sense is to think deeply about something. Meditation in the eastern religion sense is to not think about anything. Those two are basically polar opposites and the psychological / neurological effects of the latter cannot be achieved by practising the former. (vario…

The Bible was written 300 years after Jesus lived, so some of these things might have been confused...

Re: Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation

#123

Post by prox »

haltingproblem wrote: post #58

Long term meditation "enthusiast" who has been around many meditation traditions and also done retreats from 3 days to 3 weeks. Meditation is definitely not relaxation. In the language of Yoga (which meditative traditions share), long meditation sessions move the focus (prana) to certains parts of the body where long sustained focus can create "imbalances" and lead to breaks and other side effects (psychosis or relat…

The problem with the article and also with your comment is that we use one word “meditation” , while it is as diverse as any discipline. You do raise very good points otherwise! Buddhist vipassana meditation is a long way from a vast range of yogic type meditations, or Sufi meditations and so forth. This clouds the discussion.

As someone who has instructed meditation, our lineage has many safe guards to make it mild for the neophyte to pick up and practice safely. First off all, not by renouncing the world, but by being part of it. Second to never overdo it. Third, no more than three pranayama breaths when you start.

The yoga sutras talk about sthira and sukha, effort and ease, which should be in balance. Basically you wouldn’t send someone up mount Everest untrained. Nor is there a reason to for the layman interested in the relaxation of the mind.

Re: Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation

#124

Post by bayindirh »

colordrops wrote: post #111
bayindirh wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mixing practices considered harmful even if practices itself are not. Every practice regimen has a bigger system in work so, mixing and matching can create havoc on your body. Adding LSD and mushrooms on top of it is just lighting a big fire and calling storm on you. I'm not against LSD, mushrooms or other practice systems, but never seen any positive outcome from these kinds of experiments. Please, don't do it.

Understood. This was over 20 years ago. I've been recently picking up meditation practices again and approaching them unadulterated. Focusing on a particular type of buddhist meditation at the moment.

Wish your practices bring you the peace and happiness you're looking for. Good luck. :)

Re: Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation

#125

Post by mulberrybush »

asymptosis wrote: post #55
hnick wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting piece on it here. I wasn't aware of these terms. Basically, by definition it is about breaching Hindu societal taboos, unless I am vastly misunderstanding this brief summary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-hand_path_and_right-hand_...

This is the syllabus I was working through: https://web.archive.org/web/20040612155253/http://www.kamaka... It isn't obvious that asanas, breathing exercises, mantras and visualisation are somehow breaching any taboos of any society that I know of ;)

This is derived from kriya yoga, not Vāmācāra. Another similar online tutorial is https://www.aypsite.org/10.html. Real Vāmācāra by definition involves breaking all taboos - see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hiKDMsIHn8 (warning - it is pretty horrific)

Re: Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation

#126

Post by hudon »

cambaceres wrote: post #122
pure_simplicity wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be useful to speculate, but I think you're not that familiar with what meditation in the Abrahamic religions looks like. Meditation in the biblical sense is to think deeply about something. Meditation in the eastern religion sense is to not think about anything. Those two are basically polar opposites and the psychological / neurological effects of the latter cannot be achieved by practising the former. (vario…

The Bible was written 300 years after Jesus lived, so some of these things might have been confused...

1. “The Bible” is not one text and is actually a collection of books each written by different people at different times over the course of centuries. Most of these books were written before Jesus was even born.

2. The books probably relevant to this discussion—the Gospels—are generally believed to have been written before the turn of the first century. Some argue that Mark and Luke were written as early as the 50s, 20 years after Jesus died. [0]

[0] https://jimmyakin.com/2018/11/when-was-the-gospel-of-mark-wr...

Re: Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation

#127

Post by mikkom »

bayindirh wrote: post #97
majjgepolja wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea about how so-called self-hypnosis compares to meditation? In terms of side effects of overdoing it.

Some of the methods try to modify the behavior or emotion without solving or removing the root cause. This practically buries them deeper and adds an emotional deflection layer preventing person him/herself or other people approaching it. This causes the emotion to ferment underneath that layer, and since it's prevented from venting itself, the person sometimes emotionally deforms more and everything becomes harder t…

> Some of the methods try to modify the behavior or emotion without solving or removing the root cause

Sounds odd - what exact methods are you talking about?

Re: Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation

#128

Post by h0l0cube »

medstrom wrote: post #119
h0l0cube wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goenka (of the schools mentioned in the article) warns against gurus multiple times in his video lectures, and went out of his way to not dress or act like one. From what I heard, the recordings of him were by the insistence of other students, and wished that the actual teaching was taken up by a new generation. Unfortunately, playing back recordings scales very well, and they almost exclusively proxy as a teacher at…

What's your thesis here? It looks like you just want us to like this Goenka person.

Thesis seems a high bar for a HN reply. It relates to this thread about gurus, their alleged shadiness, and to the particular school of meditation mentioned multiple times in the OP article. Was I speaking out of turn?

Edit: If you want to get your own measure of the character, the evening discourses are freely available, though perhaps disjointed without actually doing or committing to the actual practice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz7QHNvNFfA

Re: Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation

#129

Post by tugberkk »

prox wrote: post #123
haltingproblem wrote: post #58

Long term meditation "enthusiast" who has been around many meditation traditions and also done retreats from 3 days to 3 weeks. Meditation is definitely not relaxation. In the language of Yoga (which meditative traditions share), long meditation sessions move the focus (prana) to certains parts of the body where long sustained focus can create "imbalances" and lead to breaks and other side effects (psychosis or relat…

The problem with the article and also with your comment is that we use one word “meditation” , while it is as diverse as any discipline. You do raise very good points otherwise! Buddhist vipassana meditation is a long way from a vast range of yogic type meditations, or Sufi meditations and so forth. This clouds the discussion. As someone who has instructed meditation, our lineage has many safe guards to make it mild…

This! I read Zen tradition and their meditation is sitting, calming and contemplating on things (depending on their school).

The word "meditation" is used for almost everything and in different senses.

Re: Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation

#130

Post by hudon »

rasengan0 wrote: post #116

Let's face it, unfortunate suffering arises. Not everyone is cut out for Guriji's 12 hour meditation session. I'm not. How about 2 seconds of meditation? What is meditation? How long? Where? in a 102 degree F room or subzero little hut? Are you alone in solitary or with people? Is focusing on Guriji's toy poodle a part of the style? Seriously are you really ready ? It's not a game or vacation to shangri la. I think a…

> I'd pin that on the "mindfulness" industry and the infantile society we have become

I think that’s the gist of the article, but maybe the author could have been more explicit. The “mindfulness” movement detached meditation from its source and repackaged it for consumerist society. On the receiving end, users of “Calm” or “Headspace” purchase a product with an incomplete warning label... but perhaps if we were more mature spiritually we wouldn’t go venturing so naively into hazardous territory while being so ill-equipped to deal with what’s out there (or “in here”, as it were).

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