Experienced Meditational expert, would like to debate...

Argue for and against religions and philosophies which are not Christian

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joejoeson
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Experienced Meditational expert, would like to debate...

Post #1

Post by joejoeson »

...Or answer questions.

Hi, I searched but could not find a meditation thread on here, I hope this is the right sub-forum. Anyways I've been a student of meditation for about 12 years and really enjoy it. I would be happy to debate it but I would also like to hear your meditational experiences. If you would like to hear mine I would be happy to share or answer any questions you have. If no one responds I will post a longer comment on what I view meditation as and how to practice it. Thanks.

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Post #21

Post by Divine Insight »

joejoeson wrote: Sorry about being so wordy in my last posts, I'll try and summarize my thoughts
I didn't see this until I after I had already responded with my wordy post. I'd like to give brief summary answer to these as well.
joejoeson wrote: -you say that meditation doesn't offer any proof yet you said that no amount of scientific understanding has made you doubt your spiritual experiences, so this means you've experienced something that withstood the test of time.
But secularist have also convinced me that these experience could indeed be nothing more than me just experiencing my very own imagination and mind.

I can't argue with that. I can't prove that they are anything more than this.

joejoeson wrote: -You say that telling people to "just try it" doesn't fly but all of science would be pointless without peer reviewed experimentation. So I tried it and it worked for me, now it's time for you to peer review and experiment yourself.
I have peer reviewed meditation techniques since the early 1070's via my own personal experiments (i.e. my own personal mediation)

I still continue to meditate to this very day. I find it useful and productive, but not proof of any higher power.

joejoeson wrote: -You mentioned one particular atheist who tried meditation and didn't find anything compelling, but you also said he was heavily invested in it so he must have found something worth his while to invest that much time in it.
He did. In fact, I believe he still finds it useful today. He just doesn't see any proof of any higher power in it. And neither do I.

joejoeson wrote: -True some people will doubt my proofs, but people can doubt anything, even the very basics of mathematics, so at a certain point I can't be hung up on their perpetual doubts.
I don't see where you have an "proofs" for other people to even doubt.

By the way, I have some very serious problems with our mathematical formalism and I do indeed doubt the foundations upon which it is constructed.
joejoeson wrote: -People have done studies on the brain while in meditation http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-12491/ho ... uency.html which shows that meditation changes your brain wave frequency.
So?

I would actually be surprise if that wasn't the case.

Any secular scientist would most likely expect these results.

Why wouldn't you expect a thinking machine to give off different vibrations depending upon it's mode of operation? :-k

Even an electronic computer gives off different vibrations when idling versus doing massive commutations.
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Post #22

Post by joejoeson »

You say there is a secular, meaning natural explanation for your meditation/childhood experiences, this is perfectly good since I wouldn't want to be advocating something unnatural. Whether this is due to a chemical change in the body or the mind being clear of excess thoughts, this does not change anything, it simply further proves the benefit of meditation, natural and good.

If you read my meditation manual, the first few stages use the imagination, but later on I stress that it goes beyond meditation. One example is what I call 'head vibration' which feels like wind is blowing through your head. You can physically feel this sensation, it is not imagination.

You mention how you never had a conversation with any entity while in meditation, I would hope not, this is not meditation, since there is only 'me, myself, and I' within my head. You could imagine a conversation with someone in your head, but that would still be you having a conversation with yourself, if it was an actual conversation that would be schizophrenia. Maybe Christians imply that to speak with God is to actually have a conversation with him, but I reject this, as the saying goes, "If you speak to God, that's good, if God speaks back, you're crazy" I never said a higher power means you talk to space entities. I even reject the notion of "out of body experience" because it implies a literal out of body experience, however OBE does somewhat describe what meditation feels like.

You say meditation does not prove a higher power but you also say it brings about a different stage of consciousness. The term 'higher power,' like OBE, is a bit misleading, but also somewhat justified. It would be better to just call it a higher state of consciousness, or even a different state of consciousness to be extremely conservative about it. Half the problem is the impossibility of putting this experience into words, but the experience is real, it is not just imagination, and it does bring about positive aspects such as relaxation, mental clarity, and insight into the nature of the self.

Meditation is a personal experience but other people have shared similar experiences of meditation, so that is the supporting evidence, the real proof is having done it yourself so you get first hand knowledge of it as opposed to second hand knowledge or even worse, some type of mathematical "proof" which wouldn't amount to much. I view this the same as people asking for proof of God. God is immaterial and so you can't give material proof of something immaterial, it's an impossible task and I won't fall into that trap. I have written a well detailed meditation manual, that is the basis for the practice, it is now up to other people to discover the proof for themselves.

You say it doesn't matter that the brain's wave frequency changes while in meditation, but this is proof that the brain is undergoing real change, whereas if it was just imagination then it would not physically affect the body in any way.
I still continue to meditate to this very day. I find it useful and productive, but not proof of any higher power.
This is a contradiction or at best you are stuck in this notion that meditation has to be in some way supernatural. While meditation provides for mundane benefits like relaxation the main goal is to achieve a state of enlightenment where the body and mind merge as one and consciousness is liberated for a short time, depending on your skill level. This is the fabric of reality (non-duality) to say it is just merely useful is reductionist which indicates your brain is still processing the experience and not truly letting go.

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Post #23

Post by Divine Insight »

joejoeson wrote: You say there is a secular, meaning natural explanation for your meditation/childhood experiences, this is perfectly good since I wouldn't want to be advocating something unnatural. Whether this is due to a chemical change in the body or the mind being clear of excess thoughts, this does not change anything, it simply further proves the benefit of meditation, natural and good.
I don't see anyone arguing with that conclusion.
joejoeson wrote: If you read my meditation manual, the first few stages use the imagination, but later on I stress that it goes beyond meditation. One example is what I call 'head vibration' which feels like wind is blowing through your head. You can physically feel this sensation, it is not imagination.
A secularist would simply disagree that because you have a physical sensation this requires that it's not just imagination.

Why wouldn't the imagination be able to imagine a physical sensation? :_k

In fact, there are actually secular experiments (experiments that you can do yourself) that demonstrate that even people who are shown nothing more than images of people in painful situations actually "feel" that physical pain via their own imagination. Or at least they actually feel a sensation that they imagine it to be like.

Therefore it has pretty much been established that the imagination can indeed emulate physical sensations.

Some of my Shamanic Journey are quite lucid. In those journey I too feel the wind, and the heat of sunlight, or even fire. I've felt the physical pain from various activities that I have had in those journeys too. However, just because these sensations are vividly lucid doesn't mean they are actually physically happening. They are still nothing more than (and nothing less) that the product of the imagination.

I might add here, that I personally view imagination as being a "real phenomenon". In other words, I consider all the experiences I have in these Shamanic Journeys to be "real experiences" albeit not necessarily physical experiences.
joejoeson wrote: You mention how you never had a conversation with any entity while in meditation, I would hope not, this is not meditation, since there is only 'me, myself, and I' within my head. You could imagine a conversation with someone in your head, but that would still be you having a conversation with yourself, if it was an actual conversation that would be schizophrenia.
I agree.

So where does your claim that "mediation proves a higher power" come into play?

And have you ever even defined what you mean by "higher power"?

In my early childhood experiences I was convinced that there was indeed an "higher consciousness" in communication with me. Although, not via spoken words. I simply felt that I was being "given knowledge" of things that I could not otherwise know (like the knowledge that I am eternal and have always been around in even past lives). But none of this occurred in any actual conversations with another entity in my mind. I simply felt that this knowledge was emanating from a source "higher" or "separate" from me.

The secularists have since convinced me that just because this is what I felt does not mean that it's true. They claim that this sensation could have simply been my own imagination causing me to believe that what I was imagining to be true was coming from some higher source.

When I evaluate their skepticism honestly I confess that I don't have a good argument against their position. They could be right. That doesn't mean they are right, but it certain does mean that they could be right, and that's all they require to remain skeptical of the source of my experiences. And I can certainly see the rationale in that. So I have no choice but to doubt any unwarranted conclusions I might jump to concerning this matter as well.

My intuition still has me thinking that maybe the skeptics are simply wrong.

But I certainly can't "prove" that to be the case. And my experiences don't qualify as proof either.
joejoeson wrote: Maybe Christians imply that to speak with God is to actually have a conversation with him, but I reject this, as the saying goes, "If you speak to God, that's good, if God speaks back, you're crazy" I never said a higher power means you talk to space entities. I even reject the notion of "out of body experience" because it implies a literal out of body experience, however OBE does somewhat describe what meditation feels like.
Well, again, you need to define you term "Higher Power" precisely. Otherwise it's meaningless to debate it. We can't determine rationally whether your concept of a "Higher Power" has any rational legitimacy or not until we can pin down precisely what you mean by that concept.

Higher than what? :-k
joejoeson wrote: You say meditation does not prove a higher power but you also say it brings about a different stage of consciousness. The term 'higher power,' like OBE, is a bit misleading, but also somewhat justified. It would be better to just call it a higher state of consciousness, or even a different state of consciousness to be extremely conservative about it. Half the problem is the impossibility of putting this experience into words, but the experience is real, it is not just imagination, and it does bring about positive aspects such as relaxation, mental clarity, and insight into the nature of the self.
I will gladly concede to the concept of different states of consciousness. There is no question that I am in a totally different state of consciousness when I enter into a Shamanic Journey than I am when I am in my normal alert state of mind.

Calling this a "Higher State of Consciousness", is a subjective evaluation. A secularist might suggest that the highest possible state of consciousness is when you are facing your physical reality head on and being totally alert to everything that is happening around you. When you go off into a closed state of internal mediation, you are shutting out large parts of reality. Therefore they could see mediation as actually being a "Lower State of Consciousness". One that ignores the physical world and focuses solely on the imagination.
joejoeson wrote: Meditation is a personal experience but other people have shared similar experiences of meditation, so that is the supporting evidence, the real proof is having done it yourself so you get first hand knowledge of it as opposed to second hand knowledge or even worse, some type of mathematical "proof" which wouldn't amount to much. I view this the same as people asking for proof of God. God is immaterial and so you can't give material proof of something immaterial, it's an impossible task and I won't fall into that trap. I have written a well detailed meditation manual, that is the basis for the practice, it is now up to other people to discover the proof for themselves.
I'm still not sure what it is that you believe this "proves".

Does it prove that we can detach ourselves from our actual physical environment (and the physical sensory of our own body) and enter a world of pure imagination where we can imagine having different physical sensations?

Yes. It does prove that. But I don't see anyone arguing against that situation. I certainly use those characteristic of imagination when I enter into a state of shamanic journeying. When I come back out of a shamanic journey I feel as though I had really been to the places where I had journeyed to in my imagination. In fact, for me those experiences are very "real". They are real experiences that I experienced in the domain of the imagination. That doesn't mean that those places or experiences actually exist or happened anywhere other than in my own brain and imagination.

Beyond that it doesn't prove much of anything else as far as I can see.

So I'm already in agreement with you that imagination via whatever tool is used to focus on it, does indeed result in "real experiences".

But I see no reason to lay claim to any "Higher Power" is associated with that fact.

joejoeson wrote: You say it doesn't matter that the brain's wave frequency changes while in meditation, but this is proof that the brain is undergoing real change, whereas if it was just imagination then it would not physically affect the body in any way.
I totally disagree with your conclusion here. And so would any neuroscientist. A brain that has entered into a state of pure imagination, and that has also detached itself (in thought processes) from any physical sensations of the body, is naturally going to produce a different brainwave signature than it does in the waking state, or the normal alert state.

So I dismiss your conclusion here as simply being a totally unwarranted conclusion on your behalf. You are making a statement about something and claiming it to be "fact" when the truth is that many other people, including neuroscientists would not accept your conclusions here as being a verified fact.
joejoeson wrote:
I still continue to meditate to this very day. I find it useful and productive, but not proof of any higher power.
This is a contradiction or at best you are stuck in this notion that meditation has to be in some way supernatural. While meditation provides for mundane benefits like relaxation the main goal is to achieve a state of enlightenment where the body and mind merge as one and consciousness is liberated for a short time, depending on your skill level. This is the fabric of reality (non-duality) to say it is just merely useful is reductionist which indicates your brain is still processing the experience and not truly letting go.
Well, again, you are starting to sound like a Christian evangelist at this point. They claim that if you don't know Jesus is God it is only because you haven't truly accepted him.

You are basically doing the same thing here with meditation. You are claiming that if I don't agree with your supernatural claims about mediation then I'm just not doing it right.

Sorry, but that kind of argument just has no merit. It's certainly not compelling or convincing. On the contrary, these types of arguments sound like nothing more than really weak excuses for not being able to produce any actual evidence.

Even the Dali Lama doesn't claim to know for certain that there exists a higher power. He is very practical about his faith. And I might add that he has had many of his Buddhist monks volunteer for scientific research. And scientists have indeed been observing and measuring the brain waves of these monks as they meditate.

I don't see the scientific community screaming that they can't explain the strange brainwaves emanating from these meditating brains. So your claim that a meditating brain gives off brainwaves that are extremely strange and unexplainable simply doesn't hold water.

~~~~~

Strangely you wanted a debate, and I guess I'm giving you one, even though that wasn't my original intent when I entered this thread.

But yes, if you are going to claim that mediation somehow proves something supernatural or proves that a "higher power" exists, I'll definitely debate against that.

Especially the claim that it "proves" these things. I'm not saying that we can rule out the supernatural or a higher power. So don't get me wrong on that.

I'm simply saying that meditation doesn't prove these things. I'm not saying that they can't ultimately be true. Something being true versus proving that it's true, are two entirely different things.
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Post #24

Post by joejoeson »

This is a response to about half your post, sorry it took so long, I was away from my computer for the last two days.

Why wouldn't the imagination be able to imagine a physical sensation? :_k
Imagining a physical sensation and experiencing an actual physical sensation are two different things. You can imagine breathing oxygen but no amount of imagination could help you if you were downing.
painful situations actually "feel" that physical pain via their own imagination. Or at least they actually feel a sensation that they imagine it to be like.
This is because feelings in an emotional sense, like stress or happiness, can be felt, but I would hesitate to say this is imagination. Imagination simply means: image making in your mind, which is why the base word for imagination is image. To imagine something traumatic and then experience this painful feeling, even if it never happened to you, is certainly possible, and it actually would prove that the mind can affect your physical state of being, but mostly it has to do with emotions, such as stress or relaxation, you can't for example make yourself grow taller just by imagining someone who is tall.

Therefore it has pretty much been established that the imagination can indeed emulate physical sensations.
True, imagination is a very important sense perception, it just has limitations.

Some of my Shamanic Journey are quite lucid.
True, but they are temporary, and because they are temporary they cannot give you lasting happiness, they also arise more desires which you can't really satisfy, for example, imagining yourself on a sandy beach might actually make you more sad since you realize you aren't actually there. Meditation is different because it suspends the imagination and therefore liberates the mind from these constant day-dream desires.
I might add here, that I personally view imagination as being a "real phenomenon". In other words, I consider all the experiences I have in these Shamanic Journeys to be "real experiences" albeit not necessarily physical experiences.
I would tend to agree with this.

So where does your claim that "mediation proves a higher power" come into play? (and what is that higher power?)
Meditation can help you understand what death is like, by understanding a kind of eternal emptiness, yet your Self is still there, so the Self which exists even in this nothingness state is the "higher power", in other words, YOU are the higher power, your True Self and not just your physical body or mind.

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Post #25

Post by joejoeson »

I totally disagree with your conclusion here. And so would any neuroscientist. A brain that has entered into a state of pure imagination, and that has also detached itself (in thought processes) from any physical sensations of the body, is naturally going to produce a different brainwave signature than it does in the waking state, or the normal alert state.
At that point I would tell that neuroscientist that the "state of pure imagination" would be a slang term for Samadhi/enlightenment. Although I would say just a slang term because there really is no pure imagination, but a better term to describe it would be a pure mind or a detached mind, at that point it is the essence of the mind itself which is free from any sort of imagination or thinking (that would be The True Self) and so the term "pure imagination" would be contradictory, I also have never heard a neuroscientist, scientist, or any type of skeptic ever use the term "state of pure imagination" as that seems too mystical for a typical scientist to employ, but if you want to clarify this definition I would be happy to hear about it.

So after we get passed the semantics I would agree that Enlightenment/"pure state of imagination" does produce a different brainwave signature, because the state of non-physical detachment is different from our normal waking moments which consist of physical attachment to sensory objects.
So I dismiss your conclusion here as simply being a totally unwarranted conclusion on your behalf. You are making a statement about something and claiming it to be "fact" when the truth is that many other people, including neuroscientists would not accept your conclusions here as being a verified fact.
Again, I've never heard a neuroscientist use the term "state of pure imagination" so maybe you are injecting your own conclusions and simply claiming them to be "fact" when the truth is that many other people who meditate would accept my conclusion here as being perfectly verifiable (as I never hesitate to say that the proof is in the pudding, by undergoing the meditation yourself).
Well, again, you are starting to sound like a Christian evangelist at this point. They claim that if you don't know Jesus is God it is only because you haven't truly accepted him.
I would disagree, as Christian Evangelists use the term "He" or "you haven't truly accepted HIM" whereas I believe that the True Self is a state of being, rather than a super being. Show my writings from this thread to any Christian Evangelist and they would say I am more aligned with the devil than with Christians.

A) they view meditation as evil which brings in evil spirits
B) they tend to shy away from the notion that "I am God" or "You are God" (even though ironically Jesus Christ did embody this truth somewhat).
C) They would reject meditational theories as being unbiblical
D) they would reject my method of personal salvation as going contrary to the need for a community church
E) they would, and have, called me a false prophet many times.

So, how again am I like an Evangelican Christian? I assure you I have almost nothing in common with a mainstream Chrsitian especially an Evangelican Christian of all sorts. I do believe in some traditional Christian views on life but more as a metaphor than as literal, again something a fundamentalist would reject since they take the bible literally. So really, this is just a low blow and it is completely false.
You are claiming that if I don't agree with your supernatural claims about mediation then I'm just not doing it right.


The only reason my meditation might be considered supernatural is because I talk about an eternal Self but there is nothing supernatural about this, it is all within the realm of nature. It can be called the soul of nature, or even supernatural in the sense that it is immortal whereas everything else is mortal, and so I would say that it is supernatural, but it is not supernatural in the same vein as Superman, or any comic book hero, or the way God creates miracles, or how some people view ghosts as the supernatural, or how people claim to have powers of levitation or literally having "out of body experiences" . I reject all these notions and I am a skeptic under all these circumstances.

I am not in your head so I really don't know if you are doing it right, but from what I'm hearing you seem to have had some deep meditational experiences but I don't know if you've actually obtained a state of liberation before. You can call this state a supernatural state, but it is again something verifiable. Have you meditated the way I outlined in my meditation methods that I posted on this thread? If you haven't, then you are not doing it the way that I am doing it, maybe I'm not right, but I can at least say you aren't doing it the way I suggested. This does not prove my way is right, but I can almost guarantee that my way is a good way to meditate, I'm not just throwing stuff out there, it's all been done and verified by myself, I can't help it if other people don't try it out for themselves.
On the contrary, these types of arguments sound like nothing more than really weak excuses for not being able to produce any actual evidence.
Again, I'm not falling into this "prove it" trap. The meditation manual is the meat and bones of how to meditate, I've tried to define my terms as carefully as possible, I've responded to all your questions and counter arguments, and I certainly can't force you to meditate the same as me. So why don't you tell me what exactly you would consider to be proof of the kind of things I am outlining?

Here's an example: prove to me that the sky is blue. If you don't like that premise, then pick your own premise.

Even the Dali Lama doesn't claim to know for certain that there exists a higher power.
Argument appealing to authority, which is what a fundamentalist would do.
I don't see the scientific community screaming that they can't explain the strange brainwaves emanating from these meditating brains. So your claim that a meditating brain gives off brainwaves that are extremely strange and unexplainable simply doesn't hold water.
Science can't even explain what the mind is, so until they do that, they aren't really grabbing my attention.
Something being true versus proving that it's true, are two entirely different things.
I'm guessing you have spent too much time trying to argue with skeptics, or I should say, nihilists, who won't take any proof as verifiable. Has it ever occured to you that maybe these people have an agenda to deny said proofs? So again, why don't you pick a premise, my suggestion is "the sky is blue" and you can try to prove to me the sky is blue, or pick your own premise. If you say that "nothing can be proven" then that is the position of a nihilist, which is quite ridiculous and that would be like arguing with a child, which I won't do. But if you are sincere about wanting proof, I will work with you, but first you have to prove to me that something can be proven, which I'll give you a prediction, it won't happen, no matter what premise you pick, no matter how self-evident, such as "the sky is blue" I'll deny it. The only difference is I am admitting to being intentionally obtuse, whereas other people won't admit to being intentionally obtuse.
I'm not saying that they can't ultimately be true
Meditation gives someone first hand experience of this higher power, which is your true self. This is the best kind of proof available. It is first hand experience. Reading something in a book would be second hand knowledge, a mathematical theory would be so abstract it would not be practical, and going off some expert (an anonymous neurscientist, or the Dali Lama) would be appealing to authority. And if a God simply injected some type of belief into you, that would be just mind control so it would not be truth founded upon a free intellect.

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