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meditation

As someone who "thinks too much" and has anxiety issues, meditation is important to relax and to aide in combating stress. Not sure what there is to be skeptical about, its just a relaxation method. Oh sure there are woo claims made by people about it, but there's woo claims about everything.
 
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Chunol's analogy is apt; sexual arousal.

In my 'mental masturbation', there was a breakthrough moment that was accompanied with an intense, all consuming wave of bliss, lasting for many hours.

My possibly erroneous assumption that this would be more or less the same for anyone, is possibly akin to describing an orgasm to someone that never had one.

Except, in the case of experiencing the thoughtless mind, the process doesn't feel particularly good, leading up to it...unlike sex; wherein it feels pretty good, and then something involuntary happens, and it becomes orgasmic.

We have a huge body of data to verify this phenomena; teenage boys figure it out.
Yet, such a thing is not obvious, nor does it make a lot of sense, particularly.

Possibly one of the reasons that ejaculation feels so good, is that it is accompanied with a moment of thought-free mental scape. Not sure; just a thought that came to me, in an attempt to explain the overwhelming rush of bliss that happened to me at the moment that all thought subsided.

This wasn't like something you wouldn't notice. It wasn't co-dependent on particular religious beliefs. It was overwhelming pleasure.
 
I tend to think that orgasms feel so good because they involve the "flooding" of the sensory neurons. This would explain both male and female orgasms. I don't see how it could explain your meditation effect, though. But there's so much we don't know about how the brain functions. We have no idea what awareness is, and some people don't even believe it exists, I gather (or maybe I'm misunderstanding their arguments).

I did a fair amount of meditating myself when I was younger, although not to the level you're describing. I did experience the calming aspect. I wonder if most of this doesn't come from the physical stillness/"just sitting" that is emphasized. Many Zen teachers stress this even more than stilling the thoughts, if I understand them correctly, and I certainly may not. But that is something we otherwise just don't do. We are always doing something, even if it's just daydreaming. But daydreaming, like any other focused thought, does take energy. So perhaps the combination of physical stillness and mental stillness eliminates subconscious tension.

This is all conjecture. I don't remember reading about any studies that addressed the issue this way. I do think it's worthwhile to continue to try to test "the brain on meditation," though.
 
Spockette said:
I tend to think that orgasms feel so good because they involve the "flooding" of the sensory neurons. This would explain both male and female orgasms. I don't see how it could explain your meditation effect, though. But there's so much we don't know about how the brain functions. We have no idea what awareness is, and some people don't even believe it exists, I gather (or maybe I'm misunderstanding their arguments).

I did a fair amount of meditating myself when I was younger, although not to the level you're describing. I did experience the calming aspect. I wonder if most of this doesn't come from the physical stillness/"just sitting" that is emphasized. Many Zen teachers stress this even more than stilling the thoughts, if I understand them correctly, and I certainly may not. But that is something we otherwise just don't do. We are always doing something, even if it's just daydreaming. But daydreaming, like any other focused thought, does take energy. So perhaps the combination of physical stillness and mental stillness eliminates subconscious tension.

This is all conjecture. I don't remember reading about any studies that addressed the issue this way. I do think it's worthwhile to continue to try to test "the brain on meditation," though.
Click to expand...

I can imagine why Zen 'masters' and such, de-emphasize the experience I've tried to describe.
It becomes a distraction. Thinking about it, paradoxically, leads one further away.

Subjectively reflecting on it, I'd describe it as all the neurons firing simultaneously. Why this translates as bliss, I cannot explain. In my case, it was beyond orgasmic, by many degrees.
 
quarky said:
I can imagine why Zen 'masters' and such, de-emphasize the experience I've tried to describe.
It becomes a distraction. Thinking about it, paradoxically, leads one further away.

Subjectively reflecting on it, I'd describe it as all the neurons firing simultaneously. Why this translates as bliss, I cannot explain. In my case, it was beyond orgasmic, by many degrees.
Click to expand...

Hi Quarky,

I am still thinking about how you want to de-subjectify your experience, and I am still not sure what you mean by subjective.

Let’s look at your experiment again.

You wanted to objectively investigate you thinking process and attempt to see if you could experience a time without ‘thinking’.

Which means you wanted to be able o explain and describe (share) your intent, your method and your results.

Minimally your test went like this…
1. you sat
2. you observed your thoughts
3. you stopped your constant flow of thoughts
4 you experienced a time of ‘no thoughts’

So, 1,2 and 3 are explainable, describable and sharable.
Which means when you used language (that we all understand) to describe your “sitting’ we could understand it because we understood what you were saying by using language.
We are able to explain, describe and share by using language, by using words, by thinking about the things you want to describe, share and explain.

However, 1,2 and 3 can also be looked at as just a few more of your personal subjective experiences (fundamentally available only to you). The only difference between the subjective aspect of them and objectifying them is that you could ‘think” about them and translate them into language and share them.

The problem with #4 is that its primary characteristic is that there are “no thoughts” available. There is no language, no words, and no ideas. There is nothing to share by using language because there is no ‘language” going on.

But that does not mean “nothing’ happened, just because you cannot describe or define it.

Don’t know if this helps.
Anyway, thanks again for your time.
Chunol
 
Chunol said:
Hi Quarky,

I am still thinking about how you want to de-subjectify your experience, and I am still not sure what you mean by subjective.

Let’s look at your experiment again.

You wanted to objectively investigate you thinking process and attempt to see if you could experience a time without ‘thinking’.

Which means you wanted to be able o explain and describe (share) your intent, your method and your results.

Minimally your test went like this…
1. you sat
2. you observed your thoughts
3. you stopped your constant flow of thoughts
4 you experienced a time of ‘no thoughts’

So, 1,2 and 3 are explainable, describable and sharable.
Which means when you used language (that we all understand) to describe your “sitting’ we could understand it because we understood what you were saying by using language.
We are able to explain, describe and share by using language, by using words, by thinking about the things you want to describe, share and explain.

However, 1,2 and 3 can also be looked at as just a few more of your personal subjective experiences (fundamentally available only to you). The only difference between the subjective aspect of them and objectifying them is that you could ‘think” about them and translate them into language and share them.

The problem with #4 is that its primary characteristic is that there are “no thoughts” available. There is no language, no words, and no ideas. There is nothing to share by using language because there is no ‘language” going on.

But that does not mean “nothing’ happened, just because you cannot describe or define it.

Don’t know if this helps.
Anyway, thanks again for your time.
Chunol
Click to expand...

I appreciate your analysis, and your politeness. Indeed, a rare talent here.
Yet, I honestly don't know where I can go with it.

Very open to suggestion.
 
One of the things I've taken away from altered states of consciousness and meditation is the recurrent theme of visual speech and synesthesia between audio visual content. Don't ask me what it means but it's what seems to happen every time I breakthrough.

Oddly this seems to be the situation we have reached here with this thread. How to define a lack of language or lack of thought by using language or thought. Sort of a logical paradox. Similar to the nature of nothingness.

Not everything is in a book. Not everything that can be thought can be said. Not everything that can be thought can be traceable to something physical or scientifically objective.

That's how I would try to approach the thought process that lead me to the above conclusion.
 
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It's hard to imagine thought without language.
Yet, it must happen.

What about the occasional kid raised by wolves and such?
I doubt they are all blissed out.

Conundrum.
 
I think wolves and dogs communicate only emotions. So the boy/wolf, and us without language, would probably be the same.

So, perhaps our OP is 'feeling without thinking'? A brain without thoughts is pure emotion? All other subjective processes are from the release of endorphins?

And a sexual orgasm is also the disconnect of the thought process, leaving a moment of pure emotion?

So perhaps the OP is merely, quite literally, mental masturbation, without the need to clean up afterwards? ;)

It could be an interesting skill, at least for long enough for the hair to grow back on my palms. ;)

And I suppose it could be accomplished without thinking about sex. With practice. The OP does that?

Which leads me towards thoughts regarding hypnosis, mass hypnosis, and LGAPs. Perhaps the repetitiousness of a sex act is similar in effect as the droning on of a preacher. It leaves the mind open to suggestion? And/or relaxation?

Or you could just take a nap.
 
quarky said:
It's hard to imagine thought without language.
Yet, it must happen.

What about the occasional kid raised by wolves and such?
I doubt they are all blissed out.

Conundrum.
Click to expand...

Hi Quarky,

What about every kid before they learn a language?
We are not born knowing a language, but with the ability to learn or create a language.

Before you have a language, the only thing you have are your senses.

Thought, in the sense of the mental manipulation of concepts (words) is impossible without language (words). Try to think of something you can "think" about without naming it.

Again this does not mean nothing is going on.
Being in direct contact with your senses (without the constant commenting on them by thinking about them, or being distracted from them by thinking about something else) would probably be pretty close to feeling that " all the (your) neurons (are) firing simultaneously".

All of your senses work by themselves pretty much 24-7, and you are able to experience this somehow in your mind, without the interference of thought.

Consider the child, when it is not uncomforable (wet, tired, hungry) it is pretty much having a ball, enjoying the piss out of life.

Of course most of his/her enjoyment of life will start coming to a screaching halt once we teach it a language and tell it to be reasonable, and try to answer all of his/her questions logically.

Thanks :-)

Chunol
 
On the subject of...what might exist apart from thought?

Among a fair number of ‘interesting’ experiences I’ve encountered was one relating to what is referred to as ‘understanding’. Rational understanding seems somehow to buttress the sanity of just about all of us. It seems we create ‘boxes’ of meaning (rational interpretations of our world and everything in / of it) that somehow we then assume to represent the thing they presume to interpret. That meaning becomes us as well as the flawed process that generated it.

If you give this a modicum of thought…it is reasonably easy to conclude that these rational interpretations of the world quite indisputably do not provide any ultimate understanding of anything. They are, as Ursual K. LeGuin once put it…merely approximations of meaning (for example…science is nothing more than models of approximations…by its own admission /// no word ever completely encompasses the thing that it represents…just about every word means something different for each person…even if only slightly…etc.). It is these approximations that we somehow inhabit and find familiarity and intelligibility within. But they’re incomplete…flawed, and often simply deceptions (sincerity...using the 'right' words /// honesty...using RRReal words).

Consider then…if it is possible to rationally establish that this rational understanding does not, in fact, understand anything in any absolute manner…the following statement must therefore be true:

Its true that I don’t understand that I don’t understand (because nothing is fully understood, by definition…including the fact that nothing is fully understood).’

Thus, the following statement is also true:

I don’t understand that I don’t understand that I don’t understand.

IOW…my rational mind does not, in fact, completely understand anything that it purports to understand (it just needs to give that impression [sanity is rather tenacious])…including the (now indisputable) fact that it does not understand that it does not understand itself.

The conditions of meaning are not really an issue (they are variable and, to a degree, arbitrary [6,000 or so languages...which one is 'right'] /// ...as Wittgenstein said 'it's all word games'). The conclusion (feeling) of intelligibility is the issue.

So what would be the result…if you somehow achieved the capacity to understand (recognize the truth of) that? What kind of understanding would result?

How I managed to do it…I don’t know (I typically refer to such things as ‘strangely manageable’). A conclusion is a condition of certainty. I somehow achieved a condition of certainty that the typical process of certainty was…not certain.

IOW…I looked at the process of ‘looking / interpretation / understanding’ and came to the conclusion that the conclusion that that process is flawed…is itself flawed (if the process is flawed, how can I trust any conclusion that the process comes to…including the conclusion that the process is flawed). Rational understanding was ‘revealed’ as ‘not understanding’….because somehow, that was the conclusion that I had decided was the correct one (because it is…to varying degrees).

And thus was revealed what lay behind that process. Something not unlike what quarky described…though much shorter in duration. There are some things that are convincing by their very nature.

It was about that time, I think, that I came up with the following phrase:

We use words so we can avoid having to face the fact that we don’t know what we’re talking about.

…sometimes I think I might edit it to say…’so we can try and find out what we’re talking about’. Similar meaning but the first version sounds awesomer!
 
Chunol said:
Hi Quarky,

What about every kid before they learn a language?
We are not born knowing a language, but with the ability to learn or create a language.

Before you have a language, the only thing you have are your senses.

Thought, in the sense of the mental manipulation of concepts (words) is impossible without language (words). Try to think of something you can "think" about without naming it.

Again this does not mean nothing is going on.
Being in direct contact with your senses (without the constant commenting on them by thinking about them, or being distracted from them by thinking about something else) would probably be pretty close to feeling that " all the (your) neurons (are) firing simultaneously".

All of your senses work by themselves pretty much 24-7, and you are able to experience this somehow in your mind, without the interference of thought.

Consider the child, when it is not uncomforable (wet, tired, hungry) it is pretty much having a ball, enjoying the piss out of life.

Of course most of his/her enjoyment of life will start coming to a screaching halt once we teach it a language and tell it to be reasonable, and try to answer all of his/her questions logically.

Thanks :-)

Chunol
Click to expand...

The thanks is due to you.
What you wrote is quite beautiful, really.

I hope the blue-meanies won't feel compelled to ridicule or cheapen what you've written.

In my own brief encounter with samahdi, for lack of a better, more western word, All my senses were functioning very well. Yet, somehow, the information garnered from them was not filtered through language or thought.

Something I didn't mention in this experiment:
After sitting in silence through the night; getting hit with the cosmic meatball; I took a walk, at dawn, into a nearby forest.

(This is really going to piss off some skeptics, but it is a true story.)

I encountered some white-tail deer. I was quite familiar with them; fond of them; saddened when they always ran away from me.

That morning; in that state; the deer were absolutely comfortable with me.
My intent was obvious at that point, and I believe that intent is a language that proceeds language...one that other species speak.

The deer allowed me to hang out with them.
In the rarefied state I was in, I felt no need to harass them, or be over-bearing in my affection for them. So, we just hung out together.

That's the closest I've ever been to heaven.
 
annnnoid said:
On the subject of...what might exist apart from thought?

Among a fair number of ‘interesting’ experiences I’ve encountered was one relating to what is referred to as ‘understanding’. Rational understanding seems somehow to buttress the sanity of just about all of us. It seems we create ‘boxes’ of meaning (rational interpretations of our world and everything in / of it) that somehow we then assume to represent the thing they presume to interpret. That meaning becomes us as well as the flawed process that generated it.

If you give this a modicum of thought…it is reasonably easy to conclude that these rational interpretations of the world quite indisputably do not provide any ultimate understanding of anything. They are, as Ursual K. LeGuin once put it…merely approximations of meaning (for example…science is nothing more than models of approximations…by its own admission /// no word ever completely encompasses the thing that it represents…just about every word means something different for each person…even if only slightly…etc.). It is these approximations that we somehow inhabit and find familiarity and intelligibility within. But they’re incomplete…flawed, and often simply deceptions (sincerity...using the 'right' words /// honesty...using RRReal words).

Consider then…if it is possible to rationally establish that this rational understanding does not, in fact, understand anything in any absolute manner…the following statement must therefore be true:

Its true that I don’t understand that I don’t understand (because nothing is fully understood, by definition…including the fact that nothing is fully understood).’

Thus, the following statement is also true:

I don’t understand that I don’t understand that I don’t understand.

IOW…my rational mind does not, in fact, completely understand anything that it purports to understand (it just needs to give that impression [sanity is rather tenacious])…including the (now indisputable) fact that it does not understand that it does not understand itself.

The conditions of meaning are not really an issue (they are variable and, to a degree, arbitrary [6,000 or so languages...which one is 'right'] /// ...as Wittgenstein said 'it's all word games'). The conclusion (feeling) of intelligibility is the issue.

So what would be the result…if you somehow achieved the capacity to understand (recognize the truth of) that? What kind of understanding would result?

How I managed to do it…I don’t know (I typically refer to such things as ‘strangely manageable’). A conclusion is a condition of certainty. I somehow achieved a condition of certainty that the typical process of certainty was…not certain.

IOW…I looked at the process of ‘looking / interpretation / understanding’ and came to the conclusion that the conclusion that that process is flawed…is itself flawed (if the process is flawed, how can I trust any conclusion that the process comes to…including the conclusion that the process is flawed). Rational understanding was ‘revealed’ as ‘not understanding’….because somehow, that was the conclusion that I had decided was the correct one (because it is…to varying degrees).

And thus was revealed what lay behind that process. Something not unlike what quarky described…though much shorter in duration. There are some things that are convincing by their very nature.

It was about that time, I think, that I came up with the following phrase:

We use words so we can avoid having to face the fact that we don’t know what we’re talking about.

…sometimes I think I might edit it to say…’so we can try and find out what we’re talking about’. Similar meaning but the first version sounds awesomer!
Click to expand...



Holy smokes.

You've also written something very awesome.
I was just responding to Chunol's amazing post, and now this.

I feel sort of squirmy that this is in the science forum.
The only reason I started the meditation thread here was in protest of the ridiculous 'consciousness' thread being here.

Other than that, I'm quite enchanted by what you wrote.
It's really good, and I thank you.

you guys are something special.

Thank you.
 
[This is post was far more suitable for the consciousness thread, so I have removed it from here]
 
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