--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" <anartaxius@> > wrote: > <snip> > > It is OK if a scientist says something like TM, or some other > > form of meditation, like mindfulness, seems to result in more > > of a 'good' neurotransmitter in the brain. But if a scientist > > says that certain specific functions in the brain produce well > > known spiritual experiences and that these experiences can be > > thus manipulated experimentally, this is anathema because it > > looks as if spiritual experience is just materialistic, > > mechanistic - the glory on high of the majesty of the gods and > > the ultimate reality is suddenly reduced to hardware and > > software, of a meat factory producing the crowning and supreme > > sublimity. > > I'm too busy to respond fully to your meaty post at the > moment; hopefully I can get back to it in a day or two. > But I wanted to make one point about the above (not related > to the Sacks piece, really): > > We do tend to think that meditation, or psilocybin or other > methodologies, "produce" spiritual experiences. But another > possibility is that all they do is damp down what gets in > the way of those experiences, that we would be experiencing > a more complete reality 24/7 if our brains didn't normally > filter most of it out in the interests of allowing us to > focus on our immediate survival. > > This ties in with some things MMY has said about higher > consciousness being "normal," and also with what Jay > Latham quotes him as saying about the dawning of Brahman > Consciousness, that one isn't capable at first of doing > anything more than lying in bed, until one begins to get > used to the state. > > I could run on about this for quite awhile, but I have to > get back to work!
Synchronicity--the manuscript I'm editing refers to a story of one person's prolonged unsupervised experience in an alpha-wave biofeedback lab: http://www.biocybernaut.com/about/discovery/part1.htm#nav1top After an hour or so, as he learns to produce strong alpha (in part by breathing deeply, then not breathing), he begins to have mystical experiences: "I was able to exist outside of time, which flowed past almost unrippled by my presence. The only time-like phenomenon was the alternation between willed breathing periods (which I entered only reluctantly) and the detached states of pure being I entered so joyously and eagerly each time as soon as I was oxygenated enough to cease from breathing. Even the briefest and subtlest conceptual thought which intruded into my mind during those periods resulted in a faltering of the feedback tone. With this infallible indicator of egoic thoughts, I was more and more able to non-think. But non thinking did not mean non-awareness, contrary to everything my education and experience had lead me to believe. I discovered thoughts to be multi-layered constructions. - artifices of a certain egoic relationship to the world, ...to myself. "A sheep is still a sheep after the wool is shorn. In many ways its perception may even be enhanced by the removal of the insulating wool. The warming sun and cooling breezes are probably felt more readily after shearing. With thinking gone, the wool was removed from over my eyes, and the new awareness seemed vast." The sheared sheep is a great metaphor for what I was trying clumsily to get across in my earlier post. The whole thing is worth a read.
