31–37 of 37 posts
Related: The Varieties of Spiritual Experience: 21st Century Research and Perspectives by David B. Yaden and Andrew Newberg https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-varieties-of-spi...
Also related(?): The Varieties of Scientific Experience by Carl Sagan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Scientific_...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Drugs change brain neurochemistry, which means they change the very apparatus of conscious experience. There are probably just as many differences as similarities, between sober and intoxicated mysticism. Also there is nothing perennial about platonism. It has been and continues to be challenged. An overlap in a handful of psychological measurements doesn’t justify conflating intoxicated platonism with all possible v…
Many historical mystical experiences are triggered by asceticism. Restricting food, water, social contact, sex, oxygen — engagement in extreme darkness, extreme cold, fatigue, meditation. In short, one could argue, there is no such thing as "sober mystical experiences." They are an altered state of consciousness. Importantly, the mysticism scale is not a “drug induced mysticism scale.” The Pythagorean-Platonic tradit…
As you note there are many routes to the altered state of consciousness and sometimes people unwittingly stumble across shortcuts that do not require chemicals or intentional manipulation of the mental state.
Related: The Varieties of Spiritual Experience: 21st Century Research and Perspectives by David B. Yaden and Andrew Newberg https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-varieties-of-spi...
Also related(?): The Varieties of Scientific Experience by Carl Sagan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Scientific_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Exp...
Are there any good broad multi-tradition books on mysticism?
Becoming Supernatural by Joe Dispenza has promise. The meditation in that (especially the focus on pushing the cerebrospinal fluid up the spine) is probably the clearest instruction you can find (and mirrors the primary meditations in Taoism and Indian yoga).
It is possible to write scientifically about meditation and altered states of consciousness without liberally reinterpreting all of physics. See Sam Harris or John Yates for example (both neuroscientists). What the hell is this guy a doctor of, anyway…? Chiropractic. Why am I not surprised.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Drugs change brain neurochemistry, which means they change the very apparatus of conscious experience. There are probably just as many differences as similarities, between sober and intoxicated mysticism. Also there is nothing perennial about platonism. It has been and continues to be challenged. An overlap in a handful of psychological measurements doesn’t justify conflating intoxicated platonism with all possible v…
> Drugs change brain neurochemistry, which means they change the very apparatus of conscious experience. this is an uninformed comment. Medical science literature starts out in Chapter 1 with "some kinds of drugs create chemical states that are not possible without the substance, while others change chemical states that are also naturally occurring" .. roughly paraphrased. A notable thing about this topic is so many…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_selectivity#Example...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Drugs change brain neurochemistry, which means they change the very apparatus of conscious experience. There are probably just as many differences as similarities, between sober and intoxicated mysticism. Also there is nothing perennial about platonism. It has been and continues to be challenged. An overlap in a handful of psychological measurements doesn’t justify conflating intoxicated platonism with all possible v…
Many historical mystical experiences are triggered by asceticism. Restricting food, water, social contact, sex, oxygen — engagement in extreme darkness, extreme cold, fatigue, meditation. In short, one could argue, there is no such thing as "sober mystical experiences." They are an altered state of consciousness. Importantly, the mysticism scale is not a “drug induced mysticism scale.” The Pythagorean-Platonic tradit…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_selectivity#Example...
This accounts for the “alien” character of the psychedelic experience, which is not an attribute normally used for sober mystical experiences.
> Importantly, the mysticism scale is not a “drug induced mysticism scale.”
Yes, hence my argument: while this scale identifies similarities between sober/intoxicated experiences, it doesn’t give an exhaustive description and overlooks that there might be just as many differences.
The same argument goes for the perennialist view of mysticism. Different doctrines might share the end goal, but the chosen path can be experienced very differently. I guess my point is to not stipulate one path as representative of all paths which arrive at the same destination. The end goal in fact lays outside doctrine.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Becoming Supernatural by Joe Dispenza has promise. The meditation in that (especially the focus on pushing the cerebrospinal fluid up the spine) is probably the clearest instruction you can find (and mirrors the primary meditations in Taoism and Indian yoga).
I just downloaded this and read some of it out of curiosity. It’s probably one of the dumbest, most blatantly pseudoscientific things I’ve ever read. He freely recycles scientific vocabulary to mean… whatever the hell he wants, apparently, painting his mystical nonsense with a thin veneer of empirical legitimacy. I can’t believe tens of thousands of people actually read this stuff and see it as the work of a genius r…
Maybe you just prefer to take instructions on blind faith, but for me his claim that feelings cause the body to produce chemicals which influence the cells makes sense, removing my resistance to this meditation.
His logical fallacies etc do not necessarily undermine the meditation.
YMMV.