Religion, Spirituality and Science – my perspective

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All sorts of things are reported in those little newspapers you can pick up at the supermarket. As one matures, one deals with them sensibly.

Are you kidding me? Have you read that synopsis of academic research?

Here are some more links about meditation on the brain.

http://www.dmoz.org/Science/Social_Scie ... otheology/

I find that swimming lenghts in a public pool can get you into a meditative-like state.

Swimmng lengths used to be a boring ordeal. But when I learned to open my eyes underwater and not to count lengths but to slow down ( and see how far I could swim on one breath underwater) I learned to get into the moment and bliss out on the play of light underwater - it got very zen-like, and you can swim dozens of lengths without thinking about it.

Frankly I am not interested in dumping my external input to retreat into a self-hypnotic mental numbness. I am satisfactorily unified in swimming through the delights of touch, sound, sight, taste and all the more subtle interactions with the dynamic universe. This is the wonder of being alive and active and at my extended age I never have enough of it. My "I" is useful and precious and I certainly do not want to throw this most valuable thing away. You can take your religious and mystical states and shove them.

That was interesting and similar to what I would describe through personal experience. One thing I would pick up on though is that sensory input from the outside word is actually seen more clearly. Meditation doesn't lead to a deadening of the senses or withdrawal into an internal fantasy world; it actually accentuates perception.

The way I would describe it is that most of the time people are only consciously aware of a tiny fraction amount of the information that comes in from the senses and even that is often unconsciously sifted to only bring a "summary" to consciousness.

A meditative shift in consciousness is quite dramatic, it is like waking up from the normal waking state - perception is sharper, clearer. Colours are more vivid. You can look around and see things you have never noticed before, fine details that never reached consciousness, similarly with sounds, textures and tastes. In some ways it is similar to childhood consciousness where you see things with wonder and for the first time. Many years of familiarity with things dulls their importance and relevance to us. We behave like automatons not really living and experiencing as we once did.

This shift in consciousness doesn't just sharpen sensory input, it sharpens awareness of mental states and why we do certain things. If I say or act in a particular way the cause and effect mechanisms in the brain / mind that led to that are much more apparent.

I get it. I think the mind resides outside of our brain. There is a you and me still. The personality resides in the brain. That is my opinion.

Nevertheless the medical experience of a brain damaged or diseased or drugged or merely in a bad state seems to have a rather dramatic effect on the mind. That cloud cuckoo land where the minds cavort freely seems very sensitive to the physical reality of the brains.

It's easy to play it safe all the time. Try to think an original thought.

No need for originality. Just try to think.

God, I wish I had it in mine... it's easier tutoring math than English, and much more in demand.

Hilbert's Program failed, so the formalist school of mathematics is rather out of fashion nowadays. The only real alternative is the Platonism you see in mathematical realism.

Thinking about my experience of meditation and Eastern stuff generally some more .. this perhaps pretentious story struck me:

Mr Very Happywithhimself showed Mr Friend his new house. Isn't it grand? Look at the size! The style! the height, the width! Friend WAS impressed. Now let's also see the inside, he asked. The also very large inside was a mess. No order to be seen. Stuff piled in disorderly stacks at random. You could hardly take even one step without risking pulling stuff down. Also everything was covered in dirt and dust. Entirely unappealing, useless.

But why the mess, asked Mr Friend. "Mess" replied Mr Very Happywithhimself ... I have the most expensive and sought after stuff you could ever dream of in here. What's wrong? (like he cared) It's just that it's all completely pointless, replied Friend. Your stacks and piles of treasure could just as well be nothing but dirt. Why not clean it up, he asked. Never heard of "clean it up" Mr Very Happywithhimself said. Something you read of in one of your books, I suspect (leering). Well, answered Mr Friend, you just order everything in the house in a way that makes it possible to use. And then you remove all the dirt. No mystery! Well, I've never heard of "cleaning up" yawned Mr Very Happywithhimself .. if it's so great i'm sure I would have come across it.

After Friend helping him remove dirt and order possessions the proud owner immediately realised how useful it was. Now he could actually stay in his house. And use it too!

Meditation is like that. It won't really "change" anything. Just make it a little different. Fun and appealing. Useful. The possessions and house stayed the same. Yet still different.

(story copyright Woodfish)

That is true. Every serious mathematicians has to be a closet Platonist while he is busting his brains on things mathematical. Very few people would devote a good part of their working lives to things that they did not believe were real in some sense.

Yet for all that you would be hard put to find the number 2 which the class of all sets in one to one correspondence with the set {a,b} anywhere in the physical world.

ruveyn

Nice little story. That is one of the aspects of meditation that I've discovered too. We spend a lifetime putting clutter and crap in our minds and get stuck into ruts of thinking about things in certain ways. Worse still we end up not thinking at all and just end up reacting to circumstances in the same old predictable ways like automatons.

Meditation is like throwing the curtains open in your house story. It allows the light in and you to start seeing all the crap and rubbish that has built up. The simple act of seeing particular items of rubbish is often enough to clean it away without any further effort.