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The new science of meditation

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251–260 of 396 posts

Re: The new science of meditation

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A paper from 1976 claims to have detected ESP in its participants. The paper appears to have only been cited twice since, both in 1979, one to explain the 1976 results as experimental bias, and the other to report failure to reproduce. I wouldn't throw out my walkie-talkie just yet. >If a model of physics supports the idea of remote viewing, so be it. Okay. What's that model? Are brains RF transceivers?

According to Google Scholar, the paper has been cited 19 times [1], which isn't groundbreaking but is an order of magnitude larger. Also, I imagine the fringe nature of scientific research into remote viewing keeps researcher numbers and therefore citation counts low. Perhaps a better paper is "The Persistent Phenomena of Psychic Phenomena: An Engineering Perspective" by Robert G. Jahn, who, at the time of publicatio…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G._Jahn#Parapsychology_...

Experiments under Jahn's purview also explored remote viewing and other topics in parapsychology. In 1982, at the invitation of the editors of Proceedings of the IEEE, Jahn published a comprehensive review of psychic phenomena from an engineering perspective.[8] A subsequent critique of this review by psychologist Ray Hyman, which was also invited by the journal's editors, discussed Jahn's work in the context of a long history of flawed psychic research.[9] Psychologist James Alcock carried out an extensive review of Jahn's research and found there to be "serious methodological problems".[10] Statistical flaws in Jahn's work have been proposed by physicist Stanley Jeffers.[11] Jahn closed the PEAR lab in 2007.[12]

Re: The new science of meditation

#252
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your account of an awe experience is quite common. Francis Collins had a similar experience. I am not unaware of these accounts. I agree with much of what you said. But I also think it makes people a tad more open to irrationality after such experiences, even the knowledgeable ones. > that is more about each individual’s existing beliefs and the resulting framing of the experience Not disagreeing.

This revulsion only makes sense if you firmly believe that rationalism is the highest good, and that the only right way to engage with the world is through rationality, ie, dividing the world into "false" and "true" ideas. There are good reasons that so many people realize for themselves that non-dual perspectives hold more value than dualistic ones.

The older I get, the more some paradoxes really tickle my brain in a way they never did when I was younger. It’s like they express some reality that transcends our understanding while still reaching out and grabbing us by our mind grapes to show us that something deeper is at hand.

It’s nearly impossible to describe this in English well.

Re: The new science of meditation

#253

I've practiced mindfulness and meditation for many years until I found "The Tao of Pooh", which, if you're not familiar, outlines the basic tenets of taoism. It has completely changed me and made me feel whole for the first time in my life, and I don't have to practice anything to achieve it. Early on in my life I was drawn in by proverbs and other pieces of wisdom, in an attempt to fill in the gaps of what I thought…

I think meditation is similar to physical exercise which you need to do a little bit frequently, to stay healthy. You don't need to do sports but if you stop walking altogether your physical health deteriorates. Your joints get arthritic. So the goal of meditation should not be some Cosmic Epiphany Truth or Satori or Nirvana or Samadhi. Those come and go. The goal is to keep your mind healthy, to get the toxins out o…

I hope you don’t mean literal toxins, because that would be total nonsense

Re: The new science of meditation

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do not need to sit down to mediate. That is the biggest myth. I mediate while going about my day.

> You do not need to sit down to mediate. I find that if I try to mediate standing up I come across as aggressive.

Some things are better done in private, because some people don't get what you're doing and feel fazed or threatened by it, for whatever reason, typically ignorance or intolerance.

Re: The new science of meditation

#255
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't help but feel the recent societal interest in meditation and psychedelics is wrongheaded in that it's treating a symptom rather than a cause. I agree, but the question emerges "what is treatable?" Many of the thousands of causes of stress in modern life can't be changed by an individual: I can't unelect politicians I disagree with, clean up the air where I live, or make the roads I travel significantly less…

> Stress reduction is a good way to go I totally agree, I think the thing I find discomforting is the apparent conflict between the systems that exacerbate the "problem" and the fact that a meditation app, medicalized psychedelic trip, or scientific research into either seems somehow part of that system. It feels like instead of becoming tools for liberation from daily suffering or for deepening the understanding of…

I agree. It makes me feel weird, too. Google famously says "Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful." I can cynically add "So they can monetize it." However idealistically a company's mission might be framed, in the end survival via being profitable is a core unstated goal. A company dedicated to bringing stress relief to the world participates in the same dynamic. It's a bit like hearing how psychopaths can emulate empathy because they know it will get them what they want. Eek/shiver.

Re: The new science of meditation

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your account of an awe experience is quite common. Francis Collins had a similar experience. I am not unaware of these accounts. I agree with much of what you said. But I also think it makes people a tad more open to irrationality after such experiences, even the knowledgeable ones. > that is more about each individual’s existing beliefs and the resulting framing of the experience Not disagreeing.

My point about awe and wonder is that I don’t avoid the Rocky Mountains because they reinforce my friend’s beliefs about God. I should mention that it was a similar experience that he says convinced him of the existence of a god to begin with. Do you have some specific examples of irrationality? I’m curious to know what you’re encountering, and I haven’t yet found this among the non-religious meditators that I know.

> I don’t avoid the Rocky Mountains because they reinforce my friend’s beliefs about God

I do avoid them (figuratively, not literally) because I value my critical thinking.

What I observe in meditators is a gradual loss of trust in logic, reason and science, even in those with decades of education. They fall for silly quackeries and psychic beliefs or that the meditation teacher mystically can know things and have insight beyond even experts.

If they produced some new knowledge through that, I would be all for it. But no, it just is a collapse of common sense.

Re: The new science of meditation

#257

One of the ways I hate wasting my time is wishing we would stop using a word that has been overloaded into uselessness as if it conveyed some kind of actual meaning by itself. The article touches vaguely upon it, but “meditation” covers so many different things, many of which are completely incompatible with each other, it’s a guarantee that discussing “meditation” leads to people thinking they are talking about some…

Or it leads to a massive outbreak of "actually that's not really meditation, this is" discussions.

"On the one hand, I do agree that.. But on the other hand, I've come to realize that..."

Re: The new science of meditation

#258

One of the ways I hate wasting my time is wishing we would stop using a word that has been overloaded into uselessness as if it conveyed some kind of actual meaning by itself. The article touches vaguely upon it, but “meditation” covers so many different things, many of which are completely incompatible with each other, it’s a guarantee that discussing “meditation” leads to people thinking they are talking about some…

Excellent point. I think something like "Doing diaphragmatic breathing for 5 minutes a day where you try to focus your mind on your breath will give you certain benefits" is a lot more useful than nebulous claims about "meditation" that end up getting spun up with people's ideas about spirituality and enlightenment.

Further, there's a tendency for some people to get ecstatic about something they do - be it meditation, lifting, yoga, keto, psychedelics, etc. - and act as if everyone should be binging on it in order to live a good life. That sort of closed mindedness makes one question just how beneficial these things actually are.

Re: The new science of meditation

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question: have you sat for a retreat? The reason I’m asking is I’m curious if it’s a “dosage” issue. I sat for a 10 day goenka retreat and was shocked at how psychedelic the experience was for how little warning I was given.

I had a light psychedelic experience on my first retreat, with very noticeable visual object patterns and cartoons appearing in the heathered shirt of the yogi sitting in front of me, during a couple different periods of holding a stable meditation state. I've never had anything like that happen except on cannabis edibles or classic psychedelics. I would recommend people sit their first retreat at a more supportive a…

Thank you for the recommendations! I've been looking at my next retreat and this is the second time Spirit Rock has come up. The goenka retreat was very harsh, very insightful, but ultimately lacking in teacher quality. From what I could gather the teachers available to me had only ever meditated in the vipassana style and were not particularly helpful.

Re: The new science of meditation

#260

I've practiced mindfulness and meditation for many years until I found "The Tao of Pooh", which, if you're not familiar, outlines the basic tenets of taoism. It has completely changed me and made me feel whole for the first time in my life, and I don't have to practice anything to achieve it. Early on in my life I was drawn in by proverbs and other pieces of wisdom, in an attempt to fill in the gaps of what I thought…

Sadly the Tao of Pooh does not outline the basic tenets of Daoism. As van Norden says in the chapter on the Daodejing in his Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy : > The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff ... is a charming work that has attained a wide readership. There is nothing wrong with enjoying it for itself. But it reveals much more about how the Daodejing as been appropriated to illustrate Western Romantici…

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