Meditation people roll call!

Narby is totally an armchair scientist and he's pretty up-front about that. I don't hold this against him - he's more Terence McKenna than Stephen Jay Gould. I still thought the book contained a lot of interesting stuff I didn't know (cf phosphorescent DNA) or hadn't considered before.

Oh no, I agree with that, there was definitely interesting stuff in there. It's just that the points he chooses to make with those neat facts are sort of spurious.

Also, I'm fairly certain everything emits light in the way he describes. Like, there's nothing totally unique abou the chemical composition of DNA that makes it more remarkable than any other sugar or whatever.

hmmm you are correct! wikipedia confirms that all cells produce bioluminescence along some range of the electromagnetic spectrum, but that most are not visible to the naked eye. weird.

I dunno Tim what do you consider an "occult experience"...? Some experiences, like hallucinating during a ritual and gaining insight from it, seem perfectly valid (not to mention scientifically explicable) to me.

I was talking more about what one might consider "occult" practices whereby one affects an outcome through means that are not scientifically verifiable. Do you believe all of these practices to be "baloney" also and, if not, are they really so different from "new age" practices such as visualization, chanelling energy, calling on spirit guides, angels, etc.?

er channeling energy

The Tibetan explanation of universe-creation is surprisingly a lot like the Big Bang + Evolution, but does in fact include reincarnation, although reincarnation does not include the continuation of a soul as most people probably imagine it, but the continuation of our basic elements.

There's a great book by Chögyal Namkhai Norbu called The Crystal and the Way of Light: Sutra, Tantra and Dzogchen that explains the beliefs of the different traditions.

I was talking more about what one might consider "occult" practices whereby one affects an outcome through means that are not scientifically verifiable

I've never witnessed anything like this personally, especially if you mean things like Crowley's claims of turning himself invisible or Jack Parsons causing a storm to force L. Ron Hubbard to return some stolen boats or any other number of stories about the use of "magic" to alter the physical world. I don't think the universe (and whatever kind of magic is in it) works that way - that seems like a really kind of crude and childish (not to mention selfish) way of looking at the world, as a contest of wills routinely violating the laws of physics.

HOWEVER, there are all kinds of occult practices meant to psychologically and emotionally aid the practitioner - I'm thinking of voodoo, or Jodorowsky's aforementioned psychomagic, but there are many variants - and these seem perfectly valid to me. The idea of performing a ritual to commemorate an event, or reinforce confidence, or excise personal demons, or heal rifts between people is perfectly legitimate, and I have definitely witnessed that kind of thing firsthand. You could say these practices "affect an outcome through means not scientifically verifiable" because they have to do with psychology and consciousness and symbolism and all sorts of things that science generally does not address, but I don't think that's what you were getting at.

I don't accept the majority of stories about past lives or ghosts or spirit guides or channeling or whatever because the explanations given are often vague and self-serving. I don't rule out the existence of something that could reasonably be called an "angel" or a "spirit guide" or a "ghost", but I think in many ways these are often projections of one's own psyche, albeit perfectly acceptable and perfectly functional. There are certain people that have appeared to me in dreams and at other personally significant moments in my life that I do think of as invested with a particular kind of spiritual role in relation to me, but I get the impression my conceptualization of these roles is quite different from what your average channeler or crystal reader or whatever would say.

Certainly occult practices are helpful creatively, and most of my interest in this area sprang from my interest in artists who took it very seriously: Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger, Jodorowsky, Italo Calvino, Page/Zep, Sun Ra, Fela Kuti, etc.

I have no doubt that there are things in this world beyond the explanatory reach of science (the human brain appears to be one of them, as are irreconcilable laws of gravity and quantum physics, etc.) and I have no problem accepting the possibility of the existence of forms of consciousness that are outside the bounds of normal human perception.

That's a nice post, but I will comment on this:

I don't rule out the existence of something that could reasonably be called an "angel" or a "spirit guide" or a "ghost", but I think in many ways these are often projections of one's own psyche

Surely there have been many instances throughout human history where multiple people have been conscious of the same spiritual manifestation. And there are mediums who can tell you things about your own spirit guides. Can we just agree that these people have gifts through which they have access to the spiritual realm?

And there are mediums who can tell you things about your own spirit guides.

This is the sort of thing which can be independently verified, then. You can find a few mediums who can tell you things about your own spirit guides and see if they corroborate each other. If they can do this reliably -- especially if they don't know that they are being "tested" -- then you've got some scientific proof.

Maybe some do. I haven't met any myself. And I'm not willing to confer legitimacy in such a blanket-statement manner. The spiritual market is rife with thieves and hucksters and has been ever since the first priest pimped out the first prostitute.

x-post

This is the sort of thing which can be independently verified, then. You can find a few mediums who can tell you things about your own spirit guides and see if they corroborate each other. If they can do this reliably -- especially if they don't know that they are being "tested" -- then you've got some scientific proof.

my drummer is currently attempting this with some past-life regression thing he's into. I'm deeply skeptical and told him so. He hasn't reported back yet.

I'm not making a blanket statement and I don't disagree that there are thieves and hucksters. Maybe you're right to be wary, but you're making this characterization about the "market" being "rife" with problems in this field and I find that problematic in the sense that this field has certainly been present and NEEDED in every human civilization since far, far before the beginning of recorded history and I REALLY don't think we ought to just wave it away. It seems to me that you're verging on blanket statements - or at least overzealous wariness - yourself.

I admit that part of this wariness is essentially political in nature - I have a deep-seated distrust of the conventional teacher-student/leader-follower dynamic and whenever I see it in play I get really suspicious.

I don't think I'm waving non-mainstream spiritual culture away; certainly compared to my more conventional friends and relations I am much more deeply invested and interested in it than they are. Most people I know don't follow any kind of religious/spiritual tradition and have no interest in the subject, much less its more outre manifestations. I don't share these interests with more than a handful of people, to be honest.

This has nothing to do with what you're talking about, but I think it's pretty cool that regular people can go to a firewalk or be trained to block out pain from needles and burning metal spears and stuff. I've never looked into scientific explanations of such things. Are there any? One book I read discussed and showed pictures of chakra piercing (or something), which is basically where burning hot metal spears are driven through the abdomen (all the way through from front to back) without pain and holes close up without scarring, supposedly. YouTube has a crazy video of Sufis pounding knives into their skulls!

my drummer is currently attempting this with some past-life regression thing he's into. I'm deeply skeptical and told him so. He hasn't reported back yet.

perhaps he has regressed completely into a past life and hence hasn't met you yet.

The technique I was talking about way upthread does allow you to meditate pain away, but only to a certain extent. One time I had a tooth pulled and spent a couple of hours afterward lying in bed meditating on the pain but it was super intense and I finally gave up and took the pain pill.

What you do is you go inside the pain. Then, the pain is no longer inside you - it's outside. But then you realize there you are in this new space in your body again and maybe your body is still registering the pain. So you repeat the process. But I believe that each time you make that move you are actually doing something toward eventually healing that pain.

i believe this is also called "denial"

Or you feel the pain as energy moving in a particular direction and what you do is allow it to move where it wants to go unrestricted. That can actually be a sort of ecstatic experience to ride on these waves of energy.

I think I hate energy.

i believe this is also called "denial"

You know, I was actually younger at the time and didn't really know how intense the pain from the tooth extraction was going to be. And also I have a lot of negative feelings about Western medicine that I've become a little less hardline about and that was part of why I didn't want to take the pain pill.

I know a guy who said pain is the same exact sensation as pleasure, just more of it and more concentrated. He claims to have undergone a root canal without any sort of anesthesia as an experiment with the help of a dentist friend of his.

I Tthink I don't trust this dentist friend.

just more of it and more concentrated

I think that's exactly right.

I wish I was a robot.

The grass is always greener. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRhHQM4eMXg

"RAVING ATHEIST: Many hardcore atheists like myself are wary of meditation, viewing it as religious or spiritual practice akin to prayer. How is what you're proposing different?

HARRIS: Well, the first thing to realize is that "meditation" is a word like "learning" - it can mean many things in different contexts. It is certainly possible to practice a kind of "meditation" that is indistinguishable from prayer, in that it rests on very dubious assumptions about divine agency, the supernatural, etc. Needless to say, this is not the sort of meditation I endorse in my book.

There are, however, many forms of meditation that merely require that a person pay extraordinarily close attention to the flow of his experience. There is nothing irrational about doing this. In fact, it constitutes the only rational basis upon which to make detailed claims about the nature of one's own experience."

> There are, however, many forms of meditation that merely require that a person pay extraordinarily close attention to the flow of his experience. There is nothing irrational about doing this. In fact, it constitutes the only rational basis upon which to make detailed claims about the nature of one's own experience."

OTM!

It was actually an article Harris wrote about Buddhism that made me go back to it.

Assuming that's Sam Harris.

By "pay(ing) extraordinarily close to attention to the flow of (one's) experience," aren't you actually altering the flow of your experience to focus on details that one would normally ignore?

Yes. You're paying closer attention to what you are actually experiencing, whether it be physical reality or thoughts that arise in response to physical reality.

Alternatively: Our mental lives are not "experience" per se. By extricating ourselves from our noisy inner dialogues we are in fact coming into closer accord with our own experiences.

Base! how low can you go?

I wish I was a robot.

-- Abbott, Wednesday, July 18, 2007 5:01 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Link

this is the only thing on this thread that i can get behind

isn't thinking you've extricated yourself from the noisy inner dialogue of the mind a trick your mind plays on itself?

I know a guy who said pain is the same exact sensation as pleasure, just more of it and more concentrated. He claims to have undergone a root canal without any sort of anesthesia as an experiment with the help of a dentist friend of his.

-- dean ge, Wednesday, July 18, 2007 11:58 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

this sounds cool but i don't buy it (the basic idea). the most intense pleasure i have felt was nothing like the very faintest pain.

I guess you're not one of them S&M dudes.

i drove by a truck that said "S&M Trucking" on it today!!

Can we just agree that these people have gifts through which they have access to the spiritual realm?

-- Tim Ellison, Wednesday, July 18, 2007 11:10 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

No.

Also, w/r/t this "pleasure" and "pain" business: are you trying to conflate the two (or put them on the same gradient or whatever) in the psychological/emotional sense, or in a purely physiological way, or both?

I was just addressing that question to Shakey, actually.

As to the pleasure and pain question, my experience in meditation is that pain is, as that person was describing, just this concentrated energy and when it is released you experience the energy in a pleasing way. From what I understand about energies associated with emotions, they are thought to vary in frequency. Someone that does reiki explained that to me once.

Sorry for being so antagonistic, Tim, I'm just a bit of a skeptic by nature.

Per your response to the pain question: I assume, then, you're talking about psychic/emotional pain as opposed to, say, the pain of getting hitting by a truck.

meditation definitely helps in dealing with physical pain (at least for me) - it helps to kind of divorce yourself psychologically from the physical sensations. Instead of focusing on how much pain you're in, you think about the nature of pain, how it will pass, that it is simply a temporary sensation, etc.

I assume, then, you're talking about psychic/emotional pain as opposed to, say, the pain of getting hitting by a truck.

Actually, both types of pain can be meditated upon and released, but like I was saying with the tooth extraction thing, there's only so much a person might be able to weather.

Consider the monks who quietly set themselves on fire and burned to death.

isn't thinking you've extricated yourself from the noisy inner dialogue of the mind a trick your mind plays on itself?

-- Granny Dainger, Thursday, 19 July 2007 04:26

As though the mind is really waiting around the corner chortling at me?

my fuckin mind, always playin tricks on me, I mean itself, I mean it, I mean... oh fuck it...

you could say that reality is a trick the mind plays on itself

I don't see what the problem is. You either are thinking thoughts or you are not, and are completely focused on the present moment. That simple. If focusing on the present moment is defined as "playing a trick on" oneself, then I guess that's what you're doing.