Athanor

With all due respect, you are jumping to conclusions based on a modest degree of science and alot of assumptions related to meditation.

I do not agree with your conclusions or concerns.

Meditation is highly unlikely to lead to any memory loss. To my knowledge, no research has shown this to be a concern.

 

As already mentioned, you are implying that our daily mind chatter is activity, almost like an exercise needed to maintain brain funciton.

It is not that. It is a side effect. It is totally passive.

The brain exercise is meditation. It allows us to develop skill in having some degree of control and real time awareness of the process of thought.

All of the questions you ask about the relationship of thought to consciousness is something that is revealed with the practice of meditation.

 

There is no need to fear meditation.

Mind chatting may be called passive, but still, it is something that holds our brain function in a specific manner: it keeps some ideas and thoughts fresh while it leaves others to be forgotten... This is not "modest degree of science", this is logic based on neural network observation made with PET scanner, fMR, not just once but many times in different researches. It may be just a theory, as everything might be in science, but feel free to come up with other (not "modest") scientific evidences to refute what I've written.

So then, why does it happen that people become isolated, associative, and nihilist, when they practice meditation for a long time? Why do some people become like this while others don't? You can say "because they don't meditate properly". OK then, what is the difference between proper and improper meditation's effects on the mind-brain continuum?

the surface of pond becomes 'still', but the water stays..

Just as the brain cells stay too even when the mind becomes still. And just as the water molecules are changing and moving even in the still water, so do the synaptic connections change in the still mind.

Original post written as if some sort of authority; fallacy is written all over it.

Do you mean I'm wrong? You are free to refute if you can.

I hope no one would tell you that meditation is a process intended to make you lose your awareness.

No one told me that, and I never thought that it would be its goal. On the contrary, I read everywhere that meditation creates a very sharp consciousness. It's just hard to grasp this process - how does it work? How can I gain consciousness in a process where I leave my thoughts? What are the differences between thoughts and consciousness? Is consciousness rising in my brain? Or is it something beyond it, and my brain is just a tool to express it?

At any rate, provided you're practicing properly, I don't really think becoming a "zombie" is too much of a risk.

Indeed. But people who meditate are much more than people who've learned how to meditate. So ending up in a false condition is quite possible since there are many people who never actually learned how to meditate. For instance, I didn't. I simply don't know a master. There are people around me who teach meditation but I wouldn't call them a master, I wouldn't rely on their instructions. So I try to learn it myself, according to scriptures, but this is much harder because I don't understand many things. So I started to figure out what is actually going on while I meditate.

Human stupidity is limitless

There are billions of receptor cells on your skin. All of them sends an electro-chemical impulse to your brain, and this impulse goes through your spinal column.

All the other sensory organs' receptor cells, like the millions of cells in your eyes, ears, nose and tongue, they also send impulses to your brain.

While having sex, you don't get any more sensory impulses than on a boring day with bad weather. The difference is that while you are having sex, you are focused on and aware of these impulses on a much higher rate.

So the ultimate spiritual purpose of sex is to gain focus and awareness. If you practice normal, simple meditation, then you can observe that awareness is much sharper if you don't bother yourself with shallow thoughts. Then you use this experience in sex, and you stop thinking - and start focusing on your senses. When you stop thinking, you start to be aware, you simply start to meditate... It's just that you don't focus on your breath, or the dot in front of you, but you focus on your senses. Hindu tantra works with this.

My opinion is that sex makes lot more sense if you do it this way, but I don't really think that most people could use this as a spiritual practice. For one thing you practice is to avoid addictions. And while you practice this kind of tantric sex, it's hard to decide whether you do it for joy or for enlightenment...

As much as anything can be used as the path, there are some things which should rather not be used as the path

It is very interesting that in most forums about the side-effects or negative consequences of meditation nobody tells a word about the brain. So here I come to tell you some things.

Brain consists of billions of tiny never cells called neurons which create a neural net.

Meditation's effect on the neural network is very intense, in fact, it is just as intense as thoughts' effect. A thought, if regularly repeated (especially if emotionally supported) creates a synaptic path. A thought is actually stored between two nerve cells, which connect to each other with a synaptic gap (actually, many of these gaps hold a thought). These gaps are flexible: if a thought is repeated, the synapse gets stronger; if a thought is not repeated then the gap gets larger and eventually the synapse breaks.

Now, the thinking process relies on these gaps. It says: those thoughts which are stored in a stronger synapse will rise faster and will connect to more things (this is association), while those thoughts which are stored in a loosened synapse, or which doesn't have its own synapse (but it's stored through many synapses' complex system) will rise harder. This is how your memory can quickly give you something what you recently think about, but not so easy something what you don't think about for months. While you study, you know what you've learned. After a few years you forget many things...

Meditation is the mental state of non-thinking, which means that the time of meditation, if you are really not thinking, makes virtually every synapse loosen. So the main side effect of meditation is actually the main purpose of it. While you let the synaptic connections which hold your bad habits and evil thoughts to loosen up and break, you also let everything else go the same. Imagine that if you'd reach total non-thinking, through all the levels of the mind right down 'till the source of awareness, and you'd keep this up for at least 3 weeks, then you'd have a great chance that when you get out of it, you'll be a zombie, for what you'd actually do is that you'd erase your thinking patterns (your synaptic connections) out of your brain.

Sounds weird, huh?

Well, you don't have to worry that your heart and digestion is driven by your brain and what if you erase that connection... Vegetative functions stimulate the synapses while they are in process, so your heart cannot forget to beat

It is said that great masters can meditate for weeks and they don't become zombies. So what do they do different? Well, it took some time for me to figure out and I still might be wrong with this, but I think that the difference is deep down in the mind, just before you reach samadhi. As far as I could observe through my own meditations, there are some levels of thinking which you can practically turn off systematically, one after the other, by mere practicing.

• The top is the everyday thinking, the level of inner conversation, where you form the words and sentences you speak.
• Below this is another level of thoughts which consists of more images and less verbal content. This is where you become aware of your mental images.
• Below this level are very subtle memories. They feel more like static ideas, not so much dynamic, but you can still feel that your awareness rises from somewhere below, and it comes through these memories before it actually grasps something.

So you can actually observe the process as your awareness uses association, and creates a connection between your past memories and your everyday life.

This mental connection between your past and present is the basis of thinking. You can't think in any other way than this. Even babies are born with lots of synapses (actually, new-born babies have more synapses than adults) to have something to compare their present experiences with. So I think when you get beyond this level then you can either let your awareness vanish, or you can guide it somewhere, preferably to samadhi. Losing your awareness will not lead you to samadhi, it will lead you to becoming a zombie.

Now, I couldn't get to this so far but this seems to be logical to me.

Just before you freak out and panic because you don't want to become a zombie you should know one more thing. Just as your brain can be wired to learn new things and forget learned things, it can also be re-wired to remember forgotten things. So it doesn't really matter what you forget, or how much you feel that meditation makes you more stupid every day (although you feel great), because if things get too bad, you can undo this whole mess and you can get your old bad habits and evil thoughts back

I only read about it. As far as I could grasp it, the whole thing is based on a personalized mantra. Now, according to the effects of sounds and vibrations (like mantra) on the mind, there might be something like a personalized mantra because one mantra has a different effect than the other. But this effect or result doesn't differ from any other noise you meet during your everyday life.

However, according to the sacred texts about mantras, the main thing about them is the transcendental connection, and not so much the vibration and the sound. If it would be the vibration and the sound, then it would only be effective if you'd say it in a specific language, in one specific dialect. But we all know that's not the case.

As far as vibration goes, sound vibrations don't make much of an impact on the mind but thoughts do. So I think it's more effective to create a right thinking routine and practice that regularly, instead of paying a lot for a TM course and talking the mantra to yourself.

So, if you ask me, TM might be just as effective as any placebo stuff, but you can get others cheaper

Hello everyone.

I'm Gabriel, 29, graphic artist from Hungary.

This is all I have to say about that.