Taking Mystical Experiences Seriously

[sun rise]

How would we distinguish between someone that has truly managed to experience a deeper reality from someone that has merely experienced an altered state of consciousness? In other words, where is the falsifiability?

Some things are verifiable such as the alteration in brain processing by those meditating but you're right that at least for now, experiences are not verifiable.

 

[Windwalker]

Some of us would no more do without prayer and meditation than we would do without sunlight or water.

"Those of us who have come to make regular use of prayer would no more do without it than we would refuse air, food, or sunshine. And for the same reason. When we refuse air, light, or food, the body suffers. And when we turn away from meditation and prayer, we likewise deprive our minds, our emotions, and our intuitions of vitally needed support. As the body can fail its purpose for lack of nourishment, so can the soul."

~Step Eleven, pg. 97, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions.​

 

[sayak83]

Thanks for the specific claims.



I am not sure how to interpret this. Whose artificial construct is this way of thinking then? What distinction are you making between static 'me' and fluid 'me'?



I think the greatest problem here is: How do we establish that?
I honestly don't see the pathway.



How would we distinguish between someone that has truly managed to experience a deeper reality from someone that has merely experienced an altered state of consciousness? In other words, where is the falsifiability?

At the end of the way, I mostly dismiss those points because neither do I see how they could be proven to be true nor do they seem to be true considering my own experiences.

The reason I did not take these things up this thread is then the entire discussion becomes too long. We have to discuss epistemology of experience. I will take these up in later threads.

 

[Windwalker]

what I would do is privately list their claims then publicly over a period of time devote a thread to each of these claims for serious consideration individually allowing each claim to stand or fall on its own merits.

I think you are confused about the difference between mystical experiences, and claims of miracles and religious beliefs. In the former, we are talking about qualitative, interior subjective experiences. It's not like the mystical experience differs in type from other mystical experiences. They all are saying pretty much the same thing.

They aren't making specific claims to "Our prophet is the final Messenger from God," sort of thing. Those are religious belief claims. Mysticism quite literally in all cases, transcends beliefs, so they aren't claiming anything. The only claim being made is, "This is how I experience reality". The only way that can be proven subjectively, is for you to have a subjective experience yourself.

But researchers can in fact show quantitative data that it's not just some personal delusion. The experiences are similar to each other. They can map out these types of human experiences as something that is actually happening and is common across all cultures.

What is it you think it is exactly that mystics are claiming, that is no different than any other religious claim? Some cognitive belief? Some religious idea? What might that be exactly?

 

[Heyo]

Avatar Meher Baba indicated:
"The experiences derived through the drugs are experiences by one in the gross world of the shadows of the subtle planes and are not continuous. The experiences of the subtle sphere by one on the subtle planes are continuous, but even these experiences are of illusion, for Reality is beyond them..." ("God in a Pill")

Sounds like he used the Depak Chopra Quote Generator.

 

[Dawnofhope]

So, I have a proposition to make.

As most of you know that much of Eastern religions (I am thinking of Hinduism, Buddhism etc.) are based on insights that have come from what are called "mystical" experiences of their practitioners. This is also true for the minority mystical traditions in Islam and Christianity which always had a tension with the revelation book based understanding of the scriptures. Now, these mystical experiences had been the outcome of a certain set of meditative practices like yoga, dhyana, mindfulness meditation etc. A typical response of many secular people is to dismiss these experiences as constructs of the mind under these practice regimes and hence devoid of veridicality. However, several decades of research and scientific study has now been made on the impact of these practices on the body and mind of the practitioners and they show, quite unequivocally, that even short period practices of these lead to extremely beneficial effects on the health and mind of the people practicing them...in fact precisely the kind of effects that have been claimed to occur for short term practice of these meditative and yogic practices in the original scriptural traditions on which these are based. The evidence is shown below (from mainstream journals only).

I believe that the minimum thing the current studies establish is that the people who developed and mastered these disciplines knew what they were doing and claiming and today there is a reasonable amount of compelling evidence to back of several of their claims. Given this, is it really reasonable to summarily dismiss the rest of the claims that they have made about what are the experiences, results and conclusions when these paths are practiced intensely and with dedication for a whole lifetime? To call these things are results of self-delusion?

Let's face the fact that our current scientific understanding of how conscious subjective first person experience works is near zero. Yet, here is a set of traditions that have worked on this specific thing for thousands of years with dedication, expertise and effort and have reached some understanding of this using a set of practices that are clearly beneficial to us even in short bursts. So why not take them seriously and look further?

Note: Apologies in advance if I do not respond to everything and immediately. Real life is really busy. I will try to get to them I promise.

Note: This is the second thread on this topic from me. The previous threads responds to some common objections. See here
Defending the Validity of Religious/Spiritual Experiences




A few selected papers

1)
Physiological Effects of Yogic Practices and Transcendental Meditation in Health and Disease
Abstract
Yoga is an ancient Indian way of life, which includes changes in mental attitude, diet, and the practice of specific techniques such as yoga asanas (postures), breathing practices (pranayamas), and meditation to attain the highest level of consciousness. Since a decade, there has been a surge in the research on yoga, but we do find very few reviews regarding yogic practices and transcendental meditation (TM) in health and disease. Keeping this in view, a Medline search was done to review relevant articles in English literature on evaluation of physiological effects of yogic practices and TM. Data were constructed; issues were reviewed and found that there were considerable health benefits, including improved cognition, respiration, reduced cardiovascular risk, body mass index, blood pressure, and diabetes. Yoga also influenced immunity and ameliorated joint disorders.

2)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/gps.3790

Abstract
Background
This study examined the effects of brief daily yogic meditation on mental health, cognitive functioning, and immune cell telomerase activity in family dementia caregivers with mild depressive symptoms.
Results
The meditation group showed significantly lower levels of depressive symptoms and greater improvement in mental health and cognitive functioning compared with the relaxation group. In the meditation group, 65.2% showed 50% improvement on the Hamilton Depression Rating scale and 52% of the participants showed 50% improvement on the Mental Health Composite Summary score of the Short Form-36 scale compared with 31.2% and 19%, respectively, in the relaxation group (p < 0.05). The meditation group showed 43% improvement in telomerase activity compared with 3.7% in the relaxation group (p = 0.05).

3) The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation | Nature Reviews Neuroscience

Conclusions from the paper

• It is proposed that the mechanism through which mindfulness meditation exerts its effects is a process of enhanced self-regulation, including attention control, emotion regulation and self-awareness.
  
  
• Research on mindfulness meditation faces a number of important challenges in study design that limit the interpretation of existing studies.
  
  
• A number of changes in brain structure have been related to mindfulness meditation.
  
  
• Mindfulness practice enhances attention. The anterior cingulate cortex is the region associated with attention in which changes in activity and/or structure in response to mindfulness meditation are most consistently reported.
  
  
• Mindfulness practice improves emotion regulation and reduces stress. Fronto-limbic networks involved in these processes show various patterns of engagement by mindfulness meditation.
  
  
• Meditation practice has the potential to affect self-referential processing and improve present-moment awareness. The default mode networks — including the midline prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex, which support self-awareness — could be altered following mindfulness training.
  
  
• Mindfulness meditation has potential for the treatment of clinical disorders and might facilitate the cultivation of a healthy mind and increased well-being.
  
  
• Future research into mindfulness meditation should use randomized and actively controlled longitudinal studies with large sample sizes to validate previous findings.
  
  
• The effects of mindfulness practice on neural structure and function need to be linked to behavioural performance, such as cognitive, affective and social functioning, in future research.
  
  
• The complex mental state of mindfulness is likely to be supported by the large-scale brain networks; future work should take this into account rather than being restricted to activations in single brain areas.

Mindfulness cognitive behavioursl therapy has good evidence base for the treatment of clinical disorders such as depression and anxiety disorders. Being a practitioner of mindfulness/meditation, my experience is the benefits are independent of any mystical experience. The ability to find peace within the turbulence of one's thoughts, to be detached, and to learn to recognise and change unhealthy thought patterns appear much more important.

 

[Windwalker]

I agree with this quite a bit. Spiritual practice is, in general, often highly beneficial to one's psychological well-being. It doesn't really matter what the practice is because it's more about the individual's contextualization of the practice.

Then there really is no need to wait for scientists to get on board with it and give it their stamp of approval because they have validated it through science. I don't think it's a choice between science or "New Age" nonsense. That seems a bit extremist to me.

Meditation will probably help those who view it through a religious or spiritual lens, but it's not because meditation itself taps into the healing power of the universe or raises someone's consciousness or whatever.

Why did you link it to religious beliefs? In fact meditation is about quite literally transcending beliefs. It's about moving beyond cognitive ideas and thoughts. Why though may I ask to you assume it does not in fact tap into the "healing power of the universe, or raises someone's consciousness"? Because you start with a belief that there is no such thing?

The fact is, there are direct benefits that come through such practices. If you need to strip away supernaturalism in order to consider it, not a problem. When you remove stresses from the body through relaxing the mind, the body naturally is able to heal itself because that is built into our biology through nature itself. Or, "healing power of the universe", if you prefer to spin it in more lofty terms.

It's because it makes someone feel more connected to something greater than themselves, which is something religions of all stripes excel at evoking.

You don't even really need to be religious or believe in the supernatural to feel these sorts of benefits, either.

So right here, you now acknowledge that there is in fact benefits to the practices. Mediation does in fact benefit by leading to better health of body and mind. No one but yourself here is tying this into "supernaturalism". Why are you doing that?

 

[Ella S.]

Then there really is no need to wait for scientists to get on board with it and give it their stamp of approval because they have validated it through science. I don't think it's a choice between science or "New Age" nonsense. That seems a bit extremist to me.

One must be rigid when deciding what is true, otherwise the mind becomes so gullible that it becomes entirely unreliable. Currently, all we have is New Age nonsense and no good evidence.

Why did you link it to religious beliefs? In fact meditation is about quite literally transcending beliefs. It's about moving beyond cognitive ideas and thoughts. Why though may I ask to you assume it does not in fact tap into the "healing power of the universe, or raises someone's consciousness"? Because you start with a belief that there is no such thing?

Because there's no evidence for such things, however there is evidence that spirituality in general has a positive effect on the psyche.

The fact is, there are direct benefits that come through such practices. If you need to strip away supernaturalism in order to consider it, not a problem. When you remove stresses from the body through relaxing the mind, the body naturally is able to heal itself because that is built into our biology through nature itself. Or, "healing power of the universe", if you prefer to spin it in more lofty terms.

The facts are what you can demonstrate, and these claims have not been adequately demonstrated. So they aren't "facts." They're assertions made in arrogance.

So right here, you now acknowledge that there is in fact benefits to the practices. Mediation does in fact benefit by leading to better health of body and mind. No one but yourself here is tying this into "supernaturalism". Why are you doing that?

Not at all. I acknowledge that spirituality can benefit one's psychological health. If you practice meditation but you don't put it in a spiritual context, it doesn't seem like it's going to do very much for you. It might, but we don't have the evidence to form that conclusion yet.

When you form conclusions regardless of the evidence, your conclusion is highly likely to be false because it's no better than a random guess.

ETA: And the OP is the one who associated the supposed success of meditation with supernatural claims, not me.

 

[Windwalker]

I disagree. If you want objective results, then clinical trials and analysis are the way to go. While your own experience certainly can have a positive effect on you, you yourself aren't able to distinguish objective real results from say a placebo effect.

So, are you saying that the placebo effect is not real? That there are no actual benefits to the body and mind, because the healing is caused by "only the mind"?

I don't understand. If there is a benefit, then why are you downplaying it or dismissing it? Why not instead embrace it as wonderful and miraculous? We don't need drugs! We just need our minds! That's the whole point!

 

[Windwalker]

If that is what you meant, then you should have said "good health can transform lives".
By extension, anything that benefits health transforms lives.

Praying, meditation, jogging, playing tennis, masturbating, having sex, eating vegetables, having a good sleeping pattern,......

It seems rather silly to just put praying and meditation out there as if there is something exceptionally special about it. So to do so makes me thing there is another agenda in play...

There is something exceptionally special about it beyond those other activities, such as playing tennis. It focuses on the mind and the interior landscapes of one's own being and existence. You don't use a screwdriver to cut through a piece of wood, do you? Meditation is a specific tool that has a wide-range of benefits.

The reason why it's such a big deal, is because that part of our lives is woefully neglected. And the result of that is increases in stress and ill-health. There is a body-mind connection that if your mind is just fed garbage and junk food all day, the body will in fact suffer from it. So mediation is for the mind, what exercise is for the body. Nothing New Age about that, is there?

 

[sun rise]

I found a meta-study done on meditation studies awhile back which included a variety of forms of meditation such as bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, zazen, etc. and it only found evidence that mindfulness-based meditation helps.

The purpose of bhakti and other forms is not to vaguely "help" with something vague or other. The purpose to to align oneself with Divinity - quite a different matter.

 

[sun rise]

You certainly don't have to believe in a Creator, to believe that we are all part of something greater than ourselves, or that we can benefit from conscious connection with each other and with all of creation. There are strong arguments from both physics and philosophy, for viewing the universe as a fundamental whole, in which "every particle in the universe must eventually become entangled with every other" [Roger Penrose].

A benefit of seeing the physical world not as a series of detached objects interacting through occasional contact, but rather as a vast web of connected phenomena, was described thus by physicist Carlo Rovelli; "It renders lighter, the bittersweet flowing of our lives." Which chimes perfectly with the Dharmic philosophy of detachment.

Ecology is all about that interconnection. But further physics is now exploring the universal web What is the cosmic web?

 

[Ella S.]

The purpose of bhakti and other forms is not to vaguely "help" with something vague or other. The purpose to to align oneself with Divinity - quite a different matter.

This might surprise you, but I actually agree. In fact, most meditation practices in general have specific religious and spiritual functions. They're not about health in the clinical sense at all.

It makes me wonder why people keep trying to invent or imply health benefits to these practices when that was never the point of them to begin with. Most Eastern meditative practices are focused on obtaining liberation from samsara, not creating an alternative medicine for mental illness!

Treating them as an alternative medicine is not only irresponsible and unscientific, but it seems like profaning the sacred by reducing it to pseudoscience, too.

 

[Nakosis]

So, I have a proposition to make.

As most of you know that much of Eastern religions (I am thinking of Hinduism, Buddhism etc.) are based on insights that have come from what are called "mystical" experiences of their practitioners. This is also true for the minority mystical traditions in Islam and Christianity which always had a tension with the revelation book based understanding of the scriptures. Now, these mystical experiences had been the outcome of a certain set of meditative practices like yoga, dhyana, mindfulness meditation etc. A typical response of many secular people is to dismiss these experiences as constructs of the mind under these practice regimes and hence devoid of veridicality. However, several decades of research and scientific study has now been made on the impact of these practices on the body and mind of the practitioners and they show, quite unequivocally, that even short period practices of these lead to extremely beneficial effects on the health and mind of the people practicing them...in fact precisely the kind of effects that have been claimed to occur for short term practice of these meditative and yogic practices in the original scriptural traditions on which these are based. The evidence is shown below (from mainstream journals only).

I believe that the minimum thing the current studies establish is that the people who developed and mastered these disciplines knew what they were doing and claiming and today there is a reasonable amount of compelling evidence to back of several of their claims. Given this, is it really reasonable to summarily dismiss the rest of the claims that they have made about what are the experiences, results and conclusions when these paths are practiced intensely and with dedication for a whole lifetime? To call these things are results of self-delusion?

Let's face the fact that our current scientific understanding of how conscious subjective first person experience works is near zero. Yet, here is a set of traditions that have worked on this specific thing for thousands of years with dedication, expertise and effort and have reached some understanding of this using a set of practices that are clearly beneficial to us even in short bursts. So why not take them seriously and look further?

Note: Apologies in advance if I do not respond to everything and immediately. Real life is really busy. I will try to get to them I promise.

Note: This is the second thread on this topic from me. The previous threads responds to some common objections. See here
Defending the Validity of Religious/Spiritual Experiences




A few selected papers

1)
Physiological Effects of Yogic Practices and Transcendental Meditation in Health and Disease
Abstract
Yoga is an ancient Indian way of life, which includes changes in mental attitude, diet, and the practice of specific techniques such as yoga asanas (postures), breathing practices (pranayamas), and meditation to attain the highest level of consciousness. Since a decade, there has been a surge in the research on yoga, but we do find very few reviews regarding yogic practices and transcendental meditation (TM) in health and disease. Keeping this in view, a Medline search was done to review relevant articles in English literature on evaluation of physiological effects of yogic practices and TM. Data were constructed; issues were reviewed and found that there were considerable health benefits, including improved cognition, respiration, reduced cardiovascular risk, body mass index, blood pressure, and diabetes. Yoga also influenced immunity and ameliorated joint disorders.

2)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/gps.3790

Abstract
Background
This study examined the effects of brief daily yogic meditation on mental health, cognitive functioning, and immune cell telomerase activity in family dementia caregivers with mild depressive symptoms.
Results
The meditation group showed significantly lower levels of depressive symptoms and greater improvement in mental health and cognitive functioning compared with the relaxation group. In the meditation group, 65.2% showed 50% improvement on the Hamilton Depression Rating scale and 52% of the participants showed 50% improvement on the Mental Health Composite Summary score of the Short Form-36 scale compared with 31.2% and 19%, respectively, in the relaxation group (p < 0.05). The meditation group showed 43% improvement in telomerase activity compared with 3.7% in the relaxation group (p = 0.05).

3) The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation | Nature Reviews Neuroscience

Conclusions from the paper

• It is proposed that the mechanism through which mindfulness meditation exerts its effects is a process of enhanced self-regulation, including attention control, emotion regulation and self-awareness.
  
  
• Research on mindfulness meditation faces a number of important challenges in study design that limit the interpretation of existing studies.
  
  
• A number of changes in brain structure have been related to mindfulness meditation.
  
  
• Mindfulness practice enhances attention. The anterior cingulate cortex is the region associated with attention in which changes in activity and/or structure in response to mindfulness meditation are most consistently reported.
  
  
• Mindfulness practice improves emotion regulation and reduces stress. Fronto-limbic networks involved in these processes show various patterns of engagement by mindfulness meditation.
  
  
• Meditation practice has the potential to affect self-referential processing and improve present-moment awareness. The default mode networks — including the midline prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex, which support self-awareness — could be altered following mindfulness training.
  
  
• Mindfulness meditation has potential for the treatment of clinical disorders and might facilitate the cultivation of a healthy mind and increased well-being.
  
  
• Future research into mindfulness meditation should use randomized and actively controlled longitudinal studies with large sample sizes to validate previous findings.
  
  
• The effects of mindfulness practice on neural structure and function need to be linked to behavioural performance, such as cognitive, affective and social functioning, in future research.
  
  
• The complex mental state of mindfulness is likely to be supported by the large-scale brain networks; future work should take this into account rather than being restricted to activations in single brain areas.

Sure science is just probing the surface of the brain's potential. A lot of error occurs in the passage of thought through the conscious/unconscious barrier. Mindfulness at a minimum can make us aware of this.

 

[Windwalker]

One must be rigid when deciding what is true, otherwise the mind becomes so gullible that it becomes entirely unreliable. Currently, all we have is New Age nonsense and no good evidence.

A couple things here. First, one needs to be extremely careful about being to rigid in our thinking in deciding what is true or not. Good science is never done like this. That's religious thinking you're describing there. Having a good system of checks and balances, is not the same thing as being rigid. Rigidity is the hallmark quality of black and white fundamentalism.

Secondly, what are you calling New Age? That's a term thrown around by religious fundamentalists who call anything they don't understand by a dirty word. What the OP was describing, and what I am talking about is not New Age at all. Those studies that are being done are in fact following modern scientific standards of research. Furthermore, meditation practices and mystical experiences have been around in human cultures from the dawn of mankind.

New Age is a recent California blending of Eastern thought with Western religious beliefs in the last half century, into some form of progressive experimental form of Christianity. Nothing that is being put forward in this discussion is "New Age". We're not talking about crystals and pyramid power! To just try to lump what you don't understand into that bucket is hardly what any serious mind would consider valid.

Because there's no evidence for such things, however there is evidence that spirituality in general has a positive effect on the psyche.

You don't believe the body has innate qualities to heal itself? I don't really even need to provide evidence for that. Cut your finger, and in a few days it heals itself, doesn't it? How then is that not part of the universe?

And yes, spirituality does in fact have a positive effect on the psyche. And a positive effect on the psyche, does in fact have a positive effect on the body. Do you dispute that? It can easily be shown how the psyche can effect the body.

Surely you've heard of the Cognitive Behavioral sciences, yes? Think of some frightening thing with your mind, then quick do a scan of your body and see where you are holding tension. The mind directly affected the body, didn't it?

The facts are what you can demonstrate, and these claims have not been adequately demonstrated. So they aren't "facts." They're assertions made in arrogance.

Arrogance? Do you not believe that if someone feels more healthy and vital, more energetic and positive, becomes more socially engaged and reports overall better mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing, that those are "assertions made in arrogance"? Isn't a changed life "adequately demonstrated" enough for you to conclude with the rational mind that these are not just empty claims? The proof is in the pudding, as they rightly say.

Not at all. I acknowledge that spirituality can benefit one's psychological health. If you practice meditation but you don't put it in a spiritual context, it doesn't seem like it's going to do very much for you. It might, but we don't have the evidence to form that conclusion yet.

What do you mean by a "spiritual context". Do you mean by spiritual, things associated with mythic religious symbolism? Do you believe that Theravada Buddhists believe in the supernatural?

There are secular humanists who practice meditation and report great benefit to it for themselves. You've heard of the famous neo atheist Sam Harris, haven't you?

And we do have the evidence. The OP is pointing you to that in the research that is being done. And it's not research coming out of the "New Age Research Institute"

When you form conclusions regardless of the evidence, your conclusion is highly likely to be false because it's no better than a random guess.

Experience is evidence. Speaking for myself, all I need to do is look at my own life from where I was to where I am now. That is hardly a random guess. It's hard data. Hell, I even had a friend I hadn't seen in the past year see me recently, and he said "My god, you look 30 years younger". And that corresponds to how I feel.

Now, that is not only subjective evidence, it's also objective evidence. Others can see it, measure its effects, and so forth. The mind/body connection is in fact very real, and easy to show evidence of. I'm certainly convinced of it though direct firsthand personal experience. And that is a conclusion based on solid hard evidence.

ETA: And the OP is the one who associated the supposed success of meditation with supernatural claims, not me.

I didn't see any supernaturalism in it. Can you point me to what your read that makes you think that?

 

[Secret Chief]

Mindfulness cognitive behavioursl therapy has good evidence base for the treatment of clinical disorders such as depression and anxiety disorders. Being a practitioner of mindfulness/meditation, my experience is the benefits are independent of any mystical experience. The ability to find peace within the turbulence of one's thoughts, to be detached, and to learn to recognise and change unhealthy thought patterns appear much more important.

Indeedy. On the British health service:

- Mindfulness

 

[Windwalker]

This might surprise you, but I actually agree. In fact, most meditation practices in general have specific religious and spiritual functions. They're not about health in the clinical sense at all.

It makes me wonder why people keep trying to invent or imply health benefits to these practices when that was never the point of them to begin with. Most Eastern meditative practices are focused on obtaining liberation from samsara, not creating an alternative medicine for mental illness!

Treating them as an alternative medicine is not only irresponsible and unscientific, but it seems like profaning the sacred by reducing it to pseudoscience, too.

I see what you are saying here, and I'll agree with it somewhat. What comes to mind is Yoga practices. That there are clear health benefits that come from it, that was not its intent. What California does with Yoga making it about body beautiful and "hot yoga", is to really miss the true heart of it.

But that doesn't mean you can't get the health benefits from it without the escotic aspects of it. Just look what the Chinese government did with T'ai Chi Chuan. They got rid of the deep Taoist alchemical aspects of it, and turned into the "Tai Chi for Health", sort of low impact practice. But the benefits can still be found regardless, simply because it is a "technology" for unlocking the body's natural resources for health and wellbeing.

A practitioner of T'ai Chi, or any other form of mediation or yoga, can certainly take it to the far deeper spiritual levels, leading up to Liberation or Enlightenment itself. Think of it like a spectrum. As long as you're doing something like this, rather than feeding garbage and anxiety into your mind with no discipline whatsoever, then at some point you're going to benefit from it.

I hope this makes some sense. I think I may get more of where you are trying to come from here?

 

[Ella S.]

A couple things here. First, one needs to be extremely careful about being to rigid in our thinking in deciding what is true or not. Good science is never done like this. That's religious thinking you're describing there. Having a good system of checks and balances, is not the same thing as being rigid. Rigidity is the hallmark quality of black and white fundamentalism.

The scientific method is founded on falsifying claims and dismissing unreliable "alternate ways of knowing." What on earth are you talking about? It's called "critical" thinking for a reason.

Secondly, what are you calling New Age? That's a term thrown around by religious fundamentalists who call anything they don't understand by a dirty word. What the OP was describing, and what I am talking about is not New Age at all. Those studies that are being done are in fact following modern scientific standards of research. Furthermore, meditation practices and mystical experiences have been around in human cultures from the dawn of mankind.

New Age is a recent California blending of Eastern thought with Western religious beliefs in the last half century, into some form of progressive experimental form of Christianity. Nothing that is being put forward in this discussion is "New Age". We're not talking about crystals and pyramid power! To just try to lump what you don't understand into that bucket is hardly what any serious mind would consider valid.

New Age sites are the ones that I've seen promote these studies the most. It's also not a dirty word, but refers to a specific movement that grew out of Theosophy and New Thought.

You don't believe the body has innate qualities to heal itself? I don't really even need to provide evidence for that. Cut your finger, and in a few days it heals itself, doesn't it? How then is that not part of the universe?

Not only is this a straw man and you're putting words in my mouth, but it's also a false equivalency to compare cuts healing to meditation.

And yes, spirituality does in fact have a positive effect on the psyche. And a positive effect on the psyche, does in fact have a positive effect on the body. Do you dispute that? It can easily be shown how the psyche can effect the body. Surely you've heard of the Cognitive Behavioral sciences, yes? Think of some frightening thing with your mind, then quick do a scan of your body and see where you are holding tension. The mind directly affected the body, didn't it?

I'm glad we agree?

Arrogance? Do you not believe that if someone feels more healthy and vital, more energetic and positive, becomes more socially engaged and reports overall better mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing, that those are "assertions made in arrogance"? Isn't a changed life "adequately demonstrated" enough for you to conclude with the rational mind that these are not just empty claims? The proof is in the pudding, as they rightly say.

Yes, I think a single person generalizing their own anecdotal evidence is arrogant in an epistemic sense. Anecdotes are hardly "proof" at all. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence for essential oils and homeopathy, but those have been demonstrated to do nothing, too.

What do you mean by a "spiritual context". Do you mean by spiritual, things associated with mythic religious symbolism? Do you believe that Theravada Buddhists believe in the supernatural? There are secular humanists who practice meditation and report great benefit to it for themselves. You've heard of Sam Harris, haven't you?

I'm using it in the psychological sense where it's used interchangeably with "self-transcendent."

And we do have the evidence. The OP is pointing you to that in the research that is being done. And it's not research coming out of the "New Age Research Institute"

Experience is evidence. Speaking for myself, all I need to do is look at my own life from where I was to where I am now. That is hardly a random guess. It's hard data. Hell, I even had a friend I hadn't seen in the past year see me recently, and he said "My god, you look 30 years younger". And that corresponds to how I feel.

Now, that is not only subjective evidence, it's also objective evidence. Others can see it, measure its effects, and so forth. The mind/body connection is in fact very real, and easy to show evidence of. I'm certainly convinced of it though direct firsthand personal experience. And that is a conclusion based on solid hard evidence.

It's weak evidence. Weak evidence requires more supporting data before it can be considered conclusive. Studies like the one in the OP on yoga are starting points for research. They demonstrate only that additional research might be warranted. They're not conclusive evidence, so we shouldn't form conclusions based on them.

I didn't see any supernaturalism in it. Can you point me to what your read that makes you think that?

"A typical response of many secular people is to dismiss these experiences as constructs of the mind"

"I believe that the minimum thing the current studies establish is that the people who developed and mastered these disciplines knew what they were doing and claiming and today there is a reasonable amount of compelling evidence to back of several of their claims."

So the OP is dismissing the idea that these results can be explained in a "secular" (i.e. natural) way with reference to the mind. That leaves the supernatural.

And if there was any doubt, they shortly followed it up by affirming the traditional teachings associated with these practices, which include supernatural notions of mental monism, rebirth, and karma at least but also might include subtle bodies, chakras, and gods when it comes to yoga in particular. All of which are supernatural, because that's the context these practices traditionally come in. It was the goddess Krishna who the Bhagavad Gita credits with revealing the 3 margas to man through Arjuna.

 

[Secret Chief]

supernatural notions of ...karma at least...

Karma, as you may know, is simply the English word equated to "action."

 

[Ella S.]

Karma, as you may know, is simply the English word equated to "action."

Tell that to the caste system