---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : snip
Besides, as I've pointed out, the *only* reason these TM researchers are looking into it in the first place is because they believed Maharishi when he told them that "witnessing" was meaningful in terms of some kind of higher state of consciousness. What if it has NOTHING TO DO with any kind of higher SoC, and is just a brain fart of some kind. All of your TM subjects are in that case just sitting around congratulating themselves for brain flatulence. Well, what if it does? But irregardless, I don't think I have have witnessing 24/7. I don't know if I have it all. But I feel I have something, and don't even care to try to define it. Well, maybe I'd call if greater silence in activity, that allows me to be a little more perceptive and therefore efficient in activity. But whatever I may have has been something that has developed over time. To call it a brain fart, seems sort of silly. I've never heard of fart that goes on like that. From: "LEnglish5@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2014 5:50 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: To Curtis, on "witnessing" A note: "witnessing" ala the research on Cosmic Consciousness is a state that appears to be highly unusual. It is associated with coherent alpha-1 EEG in the frontal lobes of the brain. There's no way that I am aware of to induce coherent alpha-1 EEG in someone. Researchers have induced higher levels of gamma EEG during dream-sleep, leading to induced lucid dreaming, but no-one, nowhere has ever induced coherent alpha-1 EEG that I am aware of. And witnessing of the type you are talking about is likely the dissociative disorder that all modern forms of meditation other than TM seem to induce: a functional disconnect between the self-centers of the brain and the rest of the brain. We TMers celebrate our highly stable "sense of self" as a sign of growing enlightenment. Everyone else either ignores the existence of this unique aspect of TM practice, or denounces it as wrong/bad/stupid/worthless/etc. OTOH, a few Zen and Ch'an studies have also found this kind of pattern, but only a few. L