On Apr 24, 2012, at 5:30 PM, Susan wrote: > Vaj, I can't speak to the quality of the TM research, but I wonder why you > are so certain that no one doing TM is witnessing during the day and/or at > night? Witnessing is not such an unusual experience - and I am not talking > about people with sleep problems.
In the strict yogic sense of the word, when awareness resides during sleep in the ananda-maya kosha, the “body of bliss illusion” it’s so deeply resting that the bodies need for sleep is greatly reduced, one awakes as if if cleaned from the inside out. And I do not hear that coming from TMers. Of course there’s also the exaggeration effect whereby whenever you say an experience is “X”, some will say “I’ve experienced “X” even if it only means they thought about it for a while. Many of the people I’ve talked to thought it was a sleep disturbance on reflection. > People who have never learned to meditate sometimes have experiences like > this that suggest that their brains are shifting toward something different > (awakening or cc or who knows what). You make it sound as if only people > doing something other than TM can possibly have witnessing. Maybe your real > argument is that no form of witnessing is good. But I believe it is a fairly > common experience of the beginnings of spiritual growth in many traditions. There’s witnessing and then there’s form of subtle mental hypervigilance masquerading as witnessing (and various other things like vata disturbances, over-meditation, etc.). I’m drawing a sharp line between the two and going with what I see and feel. > > Now to the people whose brain waves were measured in the experiment - maybe > they were in fact witnessing but the test was not looking at the correct > arrows or brain waves. Saying it proves anything is ridiculous, but denying > the reported experiences of people seems harsh - and not very scientific > either. I believe they are having experiences. IMO it’s 99.9% exaggeration - as the research shows. Just as disreputable scientists can exaggerate their findings, so too can mental meditators exaggerate and micromanage merely mental states. That just does not impress me at all. Just because someone's somewhat familiar with subtle mental states does not impress me at all. Now someone who can go beyond thought and show that profound state in their EEG’s - profound states of consciousness and equally profound scientific truths, it’s out there, that’s what grabs me. But I’m SO used to TMers exaggerating about merely mental worlds, I just don’t take the vast majority of them seriously.
