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Jeanjean82
France
24 Posts |
 Posted - Nov 22 2022 : 11:31:44 AM
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Hello,
I find a scientific article:https://www.frontiersin.org/article....720579/full
This article deals with spontaneous spiritual awakening and spontaneous Kundalini awakenings.
I find it interesting that some scientist try to understand this area, maybe that will "desmystify" a little the mystic (and some mystic book will not anymore be stored in the department of esoteric books). However i find that scientist world is sometimes very frustrating because you need a lot of time, energy and sometimes money only to confirm what is known or has been discovered with experience. Maybe a different "scientific" approach should be popularised in order to deliver better, secure and faster result in some area?
In this context i find table 1 of this article very interesting.
Any comment?
Bye! |
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interpaul
USA
524 Posts |
Posted - Nov 23 2022 : 06:54:05 AM
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| Jean, Thanks for sharing this article. I agree with your response to this article. They do seem to methodically address a variety of aspects of spiritual experiences. I found myself impatient to try and understand the full breadth of their study. Once I had a spiritual experience I was compelled to understand it. Table 1 fits with my experience. In the end this journey is an individual one and no matter how detailed the studies are they can't help the individual on the path, although they can give confirmation of the veracity of the journey. It reminds me a little of reading books about psychedelic experiences. Although they are interesting they aren't the same as the experience. I suspect skeptics will discount studies no matter how confirmatory they are. This journey is subjective and as such harder to test with the tools typically used by scientists. |
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Jeanjean82
France
24 Posts |
Posted - Nov 24 2022 : 09:23:14 AM
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hello Interpaul,
I hope that science could broadcast more widely spiritual practice.
We live in scientific era, maybe methods should pass through the scientific approach to be accepted and widely disseminate.
But more important, maybe science could determinate valid and optimized method in the spiritual stuff.
In the other hand, i could ear people intellectually pretty convinced that daily physical activities could improve their well-being but in reality even a daily 5 minutes of daily activities is "not possible" for some of them.
No disparagement, it just seems (from my point of view) that we need an internal "impulsion" to do and keep going in a daily practice and not everybody have this internal impulsion.
So maybe the real question will be: "how can we give an internal impulsion to some people" but here maybe we affect the freedom of each to follow his way on his own. |
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interpaul
USA
524 Posts |
Posted - Nov 25 2022 : 02:09:32 AM
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| Jean, Science has definitely weighed in on meditation and yoga in recent years confirming their benefit. We are certainly living in a time when not everyone is on board with believing in the scientific method. There are a million members of the flat earth society suggesting conspiracies are more interesting to a lot of people. Given the benefits from AYP take time I think it would be hard to properly study. There are certainly studies of monk's brains who have practiced loving kindness meditation showing profound differences in the structure of the brain. As you point out daily physical activity is very helpful for health yet it is hard to motivate people to practice regularly as evidenced by the obesity crisis. With respect to Kundalini awakenings you are looking at a practice that hasn't made it into the mainstream to the degree other forms of yoga have. When you speak of the need for "an internal impulsion" I wonder if this fits with what Yogani refers to as Bahkti. Either way, I agree the decision to commit to the yogic path does seem to be a personal decision motivated by many varied factors and one individuals have to come to on their own. |
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Jeanjean82
France
24 Posts |
Posted - Nov 25 2022 : 09:05:24 AM
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Hello Interpaul,
As a scientist/engineer working in the field of sport science and neuroscience, i'am probably a little biased because i see an unexplored and fantastic field of potential discovery. I hope that we can go further of a simple relax effect or brain changing report with science.
However you are right, the benefit from ayp take time (like many meditation practice i guess) so it will be hard to study, moreover the only equipement (apart from scientific questionnaires) that seems to exist to measure the effect of meditation are EEG or IRM (i haven't heard of anything else).
Here are some scientist dealing with "illumination": https://www.nonsymbolic.org/research/, however there are maybe some bias in their method, moreover i have been in the research business long enough to be cautious about certain result.
Yes i have the bhakti in mind with the "internal impulsion". Maybe Yogani write rather early his novel "the secret of wilder" in order to create this impulse!!? bye! |
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interpaul
USA
524 Posts |
Posted - Nov 25 2022 : 7:42:07 PM
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Jean, Glad to engage with a fellow scientist on this forum. I've always had a strong interest in neuroscience but have committed to a career in medicine. I had reached out to Yogani last year raising the possibility of using transcranial magnetic stimulation to shut off the default mode network as a way to access states such as inner silence more efficiently. Although he certainly has an interest in science as an engineer he reminded me people progress along this path mostly thru their Bhakti and consistent practices. As I reflected on that I came to accept any neuro hack may create similar imbalances as are experienced with the use of psychedelics or through premature kundalini overload from unbalanced practices. I do feel science can certainly play a role in further guiding our understanding on these powerful processes but also acknowledge traditions existing for thousands of years have been vetted by the many humans who have gone before us.
The nonsymbolic.org site looks interesting, I will check it out. Maybe you should pioneer some research. I imagine you could tap into this group for support/subjects etc depending on what you develop. You certainly have at least one interested party here. |
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Jeanjean82
France
24 Posts |
Posted - Nov 28 2022 : 10:00:48 AM
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Hello Interpaul,
This area is quite far from being understood, so apply some scientist "hack" (with technology or medication) may be indeed quite hazardous.
I'am well interested by the field of sport science and often see some similarities between sport training and meditation (maybe not always true) and in the field of sport training experience from experienced coach is unvaluable and sometimes more relevant than hundred scientific publication. So, we can probably place a high value on millennial writings refined by multiple practitioners. However science has or will probably have a role to play. Maybe i am at a point on the way where i need to affirm my faith and science is a means for this in the absence of a significant experience/feeling. |
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Walter
United Kingdom
41 Posts |
Posted - Nov 28 2022 : 2:03:01 PM
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Hello Jeanjean and Interpaul,
I feel quite well qualified to express an opinion on this subject. Having graduated in the physical sciences at university I ‘marked time’ for a few years in basic scientific research while considering what to do with the rest of my life. Interesting jobs in pure science abounded at the time (the 1950’s), but I had another, deeper, but ‘unarticulated’ interest, which seemed to involve some mix of psychology, philosophy and religion. One sleepless night, I found myself thinking, not arising from any particular reading, but from deep down in my psyche somewhere, about my sense of ‘self’; what was it and where did it ‘reside’. I imagined myself pruned of limbs and various organs, yet consciousness of self would presumably still remain so long as as the brain and nervous system was still intact, nourished by a blood supply, and capable of receiving ‘signals’, both from outside and inside the body, including from inside the brain itself. It seemed to me (at the time) self-evident that consciousness of self must originate in the brain. My future course was clear: it would have to be in the field now known as ‘Neuroscience’, though that all-embracing term for the plethora of scientific disciplines involved had not yet been adopted at that time. I was fortunate to get a job in a neurophysiology department even though having no biological training of my own, but a good background in the physical sciences which were then becoming recognised as essential to understanding ‘how the brain worked’ .
But science is directed towards ‘explaining’ (advancing hypotheses of) various observations man has made over the millennia; not the phenomenon of man’s own consciousness which underlies both these observations and his theories to explain them, let alone of any ‘higher’ consciousness of that consciousness. Could scientists ever so explain a sense of self that they could eventually ‘synthesise’ it, e.g., supply energy of the right type in the right way to a concoction of chemical substances allowing that simplified ‘body/brain complex’ to be both aware of itself and aware also of its own awareness? In my view, no chance!! It would seem to me that the closest science could ever come to some (very limited) understanding of consciousness is via the field of quantum physics, two proponents of which are Ivan Antic (book entitled The Physics of Consciousness) and Vlatko Vedral
(https://www.theguardian.com/science...eks-krotoski
https://www.vlatkovedral.com/quantu...nsciousness/ ). I have no real knowledge in that domain, unfortunately, but nor do I feel it would in any way aid our progress along our spiritual paths.
For all that, I do not regret my life in Neuroscience; it was completely fulfilling in the intellectual sense, just happening to be of no value whatever with regard to understanding my sense of self.
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Spontaneous spiritual awakenings
