Science delivers accurate predictions. Religion doesn't.

Yay, me! I finally finished reading Johnjoe McFadden's book, "Life is Simple: How Occam's Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe." 

It took me longer than expected, because I didn't find McFadden's lengthy descriptions of the life and times of historical figures in science, starting with the ancient Greeks, to be all that interesting. I guess he felt he needed to do that in order to buttress his case for how science came to embrace the adage of William of Occam: "Entities should not be multiplied without necessity."

This doesn't mean that the world is simple, just that in attempting to understand the world, our models of reality should be as simple as possible -- which in some cases, could mean being quite complex, if reality is complex.

I liked the end of the book more than the rest of it. That's where McFadden discusses modern science such as relativity theory and quantum mechanics. I'll probably write another blog post or two on those subjects.

Here's excerpts from a section called The simple truth? 

I like McFadden's skepticism about ever knowing ultimate truth. "Ultimate reality" has always been a term that appealed to me. But his argument below about the apparent impossiblity of ever being able to know that we've contacted ultimate truth makes sense to me.

According to postmodernists, science merely takes its place alongside other belief systems such as religion, mysticism, witchcraft, folk beliefs, astrology, homeopathy or the paranormal. Each has, they claim, its own truths and none can claim any monopoly on the truth.

...William of Occam would surely have disagreed. He insisted that there was a stark difference between science and religion, as science is based on reason, religion is based on faith. Yet the postmodernists disagree.

Many of their arguments are heavily influenced by the Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951).

...In 1921, Wittgenstein published his hugely influential Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in which he examined the relationship between language and reality and, at this stage of his career, appears to accept (philosophers still argue about the meaning of much of Wittgenstein's philosophical statements) that science can make statements about the world that are verifiably true.

Thirty years later, in his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein seems to abandon the quest to discover how language represents the world and instead argues that there are only different ways of using language or 'language games', whose meaning is derived solely from their use.

This argument seems to have much in common with William of Occam's nominalist insistence that words refer to ideas in our heads, rather than universals or essences that exist in the world.

...There is, however, another postmodernist insight that is both true and crucial to the role of Occam's razor, though it does not lead down the path taken by the postmodernists. Truth really is, as they argue, unknowable. 

This is something that is shocking even to scientists who are generally taught that science is an inexorable march towards the truth.

Imagine that science were one day to attain the blissful state of knowing everything, i.e. 'the truth'. How would we know? Knowledge of ultimate truth presupposes some means of peeking behind the curtain of evidence provided by our senses or scientific instruments to see the 'real' world rather than the one viewed through our senses or scientific instruments.

It supposes that there is some knowable, complete, and perfect world, a world of idealised Platonic forms, the very view of the world Occam disproved so many centuries ago. 

If like Occam we reject this view of the world we have to rely instead on our sensory inputs and a potentially infinite variety of models of the cosmos that could fit that data and explain our place in it. Yet that does not mean, as the postmodernists argue, that all models are equal.

When drawing up a horoscope, today's astrologers do not consult accounts of the moodiness of the god Mars or the lustful habits of Jupiter. They instead turn to planetary tables based on Kepler's simple model of the solar system.

Believers in the paranormal organise their meetings by phone and email, not telepathy; and, if the meetings are overseas, they fly by plane, not levitation.

Science may be a language game or model but, unlike the vast majority of models, from alchemy to feng shui, homeopathy and the indecipherable postmodernist tracts that dismiss science, its models actually work because they are simple and thereby deliver accurate predictions. 

Comments

[Spence Tepper]

Religion can be defined as any system of belief that is held as dogma without investigation, without inquiry, without discovery, and without peer review and collaboration. In this regard dogmatic atheism is a religion. And scientists who forget to inquire, to journey, to report findings honestly, and submit to peer review have created their own religion.

Science is a system of objective investigation, peer review, logical thinking, and it can be part of the lives most people live in. But it is self-flattering illusion to think one lives entirely as a scientist.

Everyone has their prejudices and dogma, and the most dangerous individuals are those who only believe this about other people.

But any individual can live their life with a scientific attitude by setting aside judgement and opening the door to inquiry, investigation, objectivity, journey, discovery and discourse. Even the followers of a religion can and often do act with a scientific mindset.

Mystics do this daily.

[Spence Tepper]

When a mystic goes within and opens the door to new parts of themselves for the purposes of integration, setting aside all their opinions, hopes, fears, angers, lusts, they are acting as good investigators, good scientists.

The inner journey of meditation is just another laboratory for exploration. It can be done in a disciplined, scientific way, or it can be done in a dogmatic, emotional and sloppy way.

Whether meditation is science or religion, or on some days, just a love affair, depends entirely upon the approach. It can be any.

[Appreciative Reader]

"When drawing up a horoscope, today's astrologers do not consult accounts of the moodiness of the god Mars or the lustful habits of Jupiter. They instead turn to planetary tables based on Kepler's simple model of the solar system."

.........That's hilarious, the irony in that. And in present-day astrologers glorying in their modern computerized horoscopes and suchlike.

[Spence Tepper]

"East Meets West and West meets East Wherever lovers meet..
They take the best of both..
To make their lives complete.
Tom Curtis

[umami]

The physical world has structure and behaviors that can be discovered by physical means.

Truth or loophole?
A principle of Sant Mat is that God cannot be found externally, so why expect the physical senses to disclose a GIHF?

[Ahujahalava]

Physical senses or dumbstruck intellect neither are capable of recognition of any form of God hood

Gihf is suddenly a concept being scrutinized by supposed science promoters attempting to use physical or sensual data by intellectual means of cognition which will never in any month of Sundays be in any position to verify or deny whether such phenomenon or person exists.

The too and fro wrangling between unrealized closed minded intellectual attempts at ratifying will not and cannot recognize anything remotely related to the frame of such reference, because the scope and means of the blunt apparatus at their disposal for determining such non intellectual non sensual experience is simply a moot incapacitated argument and is by default null and void.

[Truth be known]

Ahujahalava, so you're implying that yourself or Spence are "realized minds" and that we should trust your interpretations? Or only the guru/GIHF/Master can determine that? A circular argument at best.

[Ahujahalava]

I'm not implying anything I'm saying any form of intellectual argument is incapable of determining whether a GIHF exists or not, it's simply not capable of making a case for or against.

[Generation77]

Surely there are other topics to explore besides this one, which has been repeated here ad nauseam for the past several years.

[Ron E.]

Mcfaden;- “Imagine that science were one day to attain the blissful state of knowing everything, i.e. 'the truth'. How would we know? Knowledge of ultimate truth presupposes some means of peeking behind the curtain of evidence provided by our senses or scientific instruments to see the 'real' world rather than the one viewed through our senses or scientific instruments”.

“ . . . peeking behind the curtain of evidence provided by our senses , , ,” Isn't this what the the truth proclaimers who follow gurus and their like and have wonderful experiences of reality assert? And how can what they say be negated? They simply maintain that the physical senses are incapable of discovering the real, the truth – except through their particular brand of meditation or some revelations revealed to them through their master.

To point out that the brain can in certain conditions produce states that appear beyond physical reality or to point out that gurus or masters are either deluded or are good salesmen for their particular god-given product again 'cuts no ice' with such believers or practitioners.

And why should it? It can be quite dispiriting living in a world that seems devoid of meaning. Belonging to a special group or institution that offers a way to transcend the harsh realities of (human) life is quite a temptation – particularly as our minds are primed to believe that we are so much more than an impermanent physical life form that is born, lives for a while and then – just ceases to exist.

That is the way of nature, of all life forms – so why should we be any different? Well, because we have evolved an ego-self structure that cannot accept its mortality.

[Spence Tepper]

So long as there is something more to discover within, the open minded individual acknowldges it and encourages exploration and discovery, as a good scientist should.

And for those denying such things, pretending to know what they can't about other people, that is closed minded. The basis of bigotry.

You don't need to explain someone's experience in terms you are comfortable with to be scientific, especially without investigation. Doing that sort of labeling, pigeonholing, adds nothing.

[Brian Hines]

Spence, you keep setting up fake targets to shoot your religious arrows at. I never doubt someone's experience. Subjectivity is a totally personal affair. No one knows what it is like to be me. No one knows what it is like to be you. No one knows what it like to be anybody other than themselves.

What I and other religious skeptics keep saying is this: the problem is when people such as yourself ascribe an objective truth to a subjective experience. This is totally unwarranted when the experience supposedly is of a realm beyond the physical, because there's no way of confirming that sort of experience is anything other than a personal subjective experience.

Hope this clarifies things. Demanding proof of someone who, say, claims to have experienced the divine sound and light that creates and sustains the cosmos is fully warranted. After all, that's an amazing claim. As the saying goes, extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. When someone makes an extraordinary claim, yet can't provide extraordinary evidence to back up that claim, skeptics are entirely justified in thinking, "I don't have to take that claim seriously."

Otherwise, we'd have to believe every person who claims to have experienced God. There's so many of those people, most with very different tales of what God is like, it makes sense to just disbelieve all of them without demonstrable evidence.

[Ahujahalava]

By using the term 'superstition' as a condition of unverifiable blind faith then you need to direct that accusation at yourself. Because by going about in a public place proclaiming and pronouncing that you have a direct connection with a spiritual source of inner knowledge or vision as validation of your subjective experience is as fundamentally prone to sounding superstitious as anyone can who attempts to ascertain something of a personal nature to be a realizable fact.

Rather one should stfu about any such unverifiable phenomena and especially in communities of a public nature where all manner of various views have recourse to be espoused as valid and where such experience in subjectivity be challenged.

Furthermore to attribute fictitious titles of endorsed endearment to individuals as a type of ingratiating form of reverence to my mind is a typical attempt at currying favor, or rather bluntly smacks of idolized worship, and can be just as easily qualified as superstitious behavior. If you would try such undeserving fawning in my direction I would vehemently chuck it back at you and suggest that you stop being indiscriminately superficial.

[arun marwah]

Problem is true mystics are rarely to be found. They come after very long gaps in time. GSD does not confirm to be either a perfect master, perfect human being or a perfect mystic. All evidences go against him.

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Brian Ji
You wrote
"Hope this clarifies things. Demanding proof of someone who, say, claims to have experienced the divine sound and light that creates and sustains the cosmos is fully warranted."

Exactly. And that's why there is the meditation.

Had you conducted the practice with any discipline at all you would have your own evidence first hand.

You could have said," Yes, I saw the blinding light and have been able to reproduce it at will. Then I saw the sun, then the moon. I'm convinced it is simply the brain gaining access to signal directly outside the visual nervous system....but why the sun, why the moon? I'm still investigating to try to see where these images may have come from. They are far more intense than memory, especially when I can take time to look at them, even approach them... "

You could have developed a real theory around real information.

Now all you have is the second hand evidence of the founders of every religion. And of every mystic who ever lived and documented what they went through.

Yes it evidence. And yes it deserves to be evaluated. But the only way to do this objectively is create the conditions to recreate the experience in your own lab and then you may test it as millions of others have done and are doing every day, with any way you like, including testing your own hypothesis about the causes.

You failed to do this.

Let me be more pointed, Brian Ji.

You didn't have to reproduce the entire journey.

Any part of it would have been fine. But what you report is zero.

That's practically impossible.

Anyone with a minimum of self-discipline can conduct any of a variety of meditation methods and at least watch their thoughts.

They could at least report what was happening to their body as they did so... And as they worked to gain some control, some level of mastery.

They could at least notice the change in their thinking during meditation. And even learn how their brain reacts to different thoughts, how simran works, how distraction alters your level of consciousness wakefulness, and how focus raises it to observe more thoughts, their seeds and their destination all at the same time.

But you report zero.

Not only does that make no sense at all. It is downright suspicious.

And not in any way scientific.

So there is no point in leaping to conclusions when you have not made the least effort to note just exactly what happened and to report it here for peer review. Then we can discuss what is going on within.

As to what others report, they are reporting what happened to them, not for you to take second hand, but to note as their guide, testable reference points. Your own experience from your own effort is all that matters.

The other testimony is meaningless to you because clearly you didn't take it seriously. Sorry to be so blunt.

But you are being less than candd to suggest that 35 years x 365 days x 2.5 hours was spent entirely unconscious.

31, 937.5 hours...

That's not meditation. It's sleep.

[Omg]

Spence says
“ The other testimony is meaningless to you because clearly you didn't take it seriously. Sorry to be so blunt.

But you are being less than candd to suggest that 35 years x 365 days x 2.5 hours was spent entirely unconscious.

31, 937.5 hours...

That's not meditation. It's sleep. ”

Yikes 😱 ROASTED

[Spence Tepper]

One more nagging point, Brian Ji.
Why write a book about Karma unless you personally had direct witness of the structure and dynamics of Karma in action? Seeing it accumulate, observing the storehouse of the soul, looking at the akashic records, seeing the fields of impression layered upon the soul.

There was a time when I did give Satsang. We had a regional meeting and the director told us we should not be giving Satsang if we were only speaking second hand. Yes, we could discuss the teachings, and never our experience, which is always incomplete anyway, but there would be no integrity to it without any actual knowledge. And that would be more harmful to others than helpful.

How could someone choose to regurgitate theory without any actual knowledge to add, even if we are not to discuss our experiences?

I get that you might have thought it a reasonable theory. But why promote something you knew you had zero experience with, zero personal knowledge?

If someone asked "Do you know if any of this is true?", even if modesty prevented you from answering at least you would know in your heart that this was true from your own experience. Or that you refused on grounds of personal integrity. Then you could perform Seva in some other way, with your integrity intact.

The idea of writing a book about Karma, really spirituality, without being able to say to yourself " I can stand behind this because I know it's true, even if I'm using the words of others," makes no sense.

It makes your personal situation of authoring what you didn't actually know a house of cards.

I get that you think this is the situation of everyone else. It isn't.

But it is the situation of some new initiates (as in first lifetime). They have a choice to make when offered to write or speak about something. And it begins with a conversation with oneself "Do I actually know this, to my own criteria, to be truth? If not, I'm not putting more junk out there, no matter how beautiful, witty and intelligent my writing." Which of course your writing is all that. I get it.

Take it from Socrates, don't be the poet who only imagines. Be the mystic who sees.

For that you have your lab waiting. Needs a little cleaning up, but perfectly serviceable.

It's a good first step to say "I'm not writing anything anymore that I don't actually know."

But rather than magnify that ignorance into a false projection onto the rest of the world, better still to go the next step and say "I'm going back in the lab and finishing my homework."

[Omg]

Spence the commenter in search of said it a few days ago the problem is most people on the path only go my hearsay and not personal experience and this is why they either fall off or find fault in others for what they say. Brian is one of them no surprise there 😮

[Karim W. Rahmaan]

"Why write a book about Karma unless you personally had direct witness of the structure and dynamics of Karma in action? Seeing it accumulate, observing the storehouse of the soul, looking at the akashic records, seeing the fields of impression layered upon the soul."

Posted by: Spence Tepper | June 22, 2022 at 07:16 AM

Greetings sir!

I thought I'd comment a little about the karma subject. This one is a toughie, at least to me because I recall Hazur Sawan Singh Ji saying that to really know 'karma' one must travel within pass Trikuti. So any studies or literature on this topic would need further studies according to Sant Mat, and book knowledge is all there is unless the level of beyond Trikuti has been reached:

"The range of mind extends up to the top of Trikuti, and so long as the soul is in or below Trikuti, it is subject to transmigration. Souls that have taken shelter with the Saints, sooner or later — sooner if they follow Their advice — go beyond Trikuti to Sach Khand.
You will thus see that the Law of Karma is universally applicable.."
-Spiritual Gems, pg. 249
http://bahaistudies.net/asma/spiritualgems.pdf

So to me, Brian's book was and should still be considered a labor of love.

Back to the original thread:

I've always loved Science in school; biology, astrology, and chemistry. Once I got into Physics, I didn't like when my teacher was able to take the pythagorean theorem (c = square root of a cubed, plus b cubed) and somehow make 0= 1, or 1+1= 4.

Just think I had finally pulled my grades up from D's to B+s, and my then teacher slipped by a mathematical impossibility in Physics to fool us, made me drop the class as I had so many credits I said the hell with pre-cal too to keep up my new gpa. So my senior year was way chill, English IV, PE, Art II, & Economics. But in science we powered light bulbs, incubated meal worms, did the dead frog thing too, and mixed acids. So for me science was cool as hell.

Religion on the other hand, that's a different animal. As such, should be treated like a completely different class. Even Sant Mat is a different class from religion, as religion is more sole effort of doing good deeds to appease the Lord in a given religion. And Sant Mat is more theology, as it studies different religions and the various methods of sole worship, also to gain Grace from the Lord.

[In Search Of]

OMG, this is not what I wrote, also taken out of context by you. Here's what I wrote:

"I believe there's a huge disconnect between those few who have gone within and realized or perceived what the Master within is, then what MSC writes is probably correct. The issue then becomes that vast majority of seekers who don't have a lick of experience to draw from, emulate the feelings of those who have seen and just verbalize the fact that the living master is not a normal human being. They propagate the myth without any experiences.

They rely on a small percentage of individuals, perhaps like yourself, that say certain things and take that as the "norm". It becomes an unofficial belief that the teacher is GIHF. GSD does say he is not. But he should take the next step and eliminate the shabds that say it, discontinue the books that state it. If it truly is not an accurate statement, stop the nonsense."

Posted by: In Search Of - June 20, 2022 at 11:15 AM

[omg]

in search of yes I understood what you meant ofcourse I added the last part which is my opinion. :)

[Spence Tepper]

Can we all agree at least that no one should take superstitious declarations on face value?

These things should be personally investigated, if we want to conclude anything about them. Not believed blindly and not dismissed because they sound too far fetched and are outside our experience.

In Search Of, I get it. Karim, I get it. Once we go along with stuff "out of love" that we have no actual evidence of we find ourselves part of a religion, and our integrity is zero.

Let's stop doing that.

I get that the Masters seem to go along with all this superstition, and it seems to be self-perpetuating.

But those same Masters give a priority on the vows and practice.

And plenty of Satsangis I met could attest to that witness themselves...

I believed the vows precisely because they are testable. I conducted meditation research in college precisely because it is testable, and a skill one can develop.

This idea that "that vast majority of seekers who don't have a lick of experience to draw from" is, I believe, an serious exaggeration.

I see the superstitious stuff, the culture of idolatry from which Sant Mat emerged.

But it emerged as an antidote to Idolatry. And that is practice and discovery.

I'm not defending Sant Mat because it emerges from and has been adapted to a culture bound in ancient idolatry. But the teachings of the Masters themselves are quite opposite, and the true Path as it was taught to me, as it is practiced by those I have come into contact with, and as I've experienced it.

I still cannot fathom anyone giving up their personal integrity to write or publish or claim something as Truth they have no firm evidence of. Especially when, at the time they wrote, they knew this.

Love is one thing, integrity far more important.

If Brian Ji was pressed to give up his integrity on the basis of "Love" that would quickly to turn to anger for me.

[Appreciative Reader]

"Sorry to be so blunt.

But you are being less than candd to suggest that 35 years x 365 days x 2.5 hours was spent entirely unconscious.

31, 937.5 hours...

That's not meditation. It's sleep."

..........Not how science works, Spence, as you should well know. We're conducting an experiment designed to test that there's this aether thing through which light travels. And we find that there's no aether thing at all, apparently. Ergo, our equipment must be faulty, or else our controls were faulty, or else we were mistaken in what we observed, eh? That's exactly the kind of thing you're saying here. True, that's the kind of line we take when teaching science in school; but that is because the experiments students perform in school are not designed to test groundbreaking truths, but instead only to teach the students the principles of science and experiments by conducting experiments whose outcomes are not in question. When it comes to actually doing science, one does not ever take that line. That you do, at this time, exposes your own utter ignorance about the basics of science; or else this is yet another instance of a disingenuous attempted Gotcha.

Further: If you're going to accuse Brian of either not mediating at all for all of those years, or else sitting up to meditate but actually dozing off instead, and subsequently lying about it --- which, let's face it, is exactly what you're doing, except in your usual passive-aggressive style, with hints and implications galore minced out indirectly but not stated directly in so many words --- well then, that's a very bold thing to be doing, I hope you realize that. Not so much becuase of the optics of it, although there's that as well; but because of the gloss house thing. Because if we're going to be accusing others of outright dishonesty like this, then don't forget that what we know of all of the experiences you talk about, stand after all on nothing more than your claims about them, and on the fact that we choose to believe you when you make those claims. When you point at others and accuse them of dishonesty like this, then don't forget that three fingers then point right back at you. All we have to go by, as far as all of your experiences, is after all nothing more than your word.

[Appreciative Reader]

"I still cannot fathom anyone giving up their personal integrity to write or publish or claim something as Truth they have no firm evidence of. Especially when, at the time they wrote, they knew this."

..........I had very assiduously done no more than merely point this out at that time, and then moved on without ever referring back to it. And I'd even apologized at that time for any hurt I may have caused, even though there was no earthly reason for me to do that, because in the process of being clear and direct one wouldn't want to end up being unkind and hurtful. But if you're going to be saying things like the above (quoted), and directly questioning people's integrity, and actually wondering how people can take leave of their integrity, well then perhaps I could remind you of your own comment:

this one : https://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2022/06/rssb-definitely-does-teach-that-the-guru-is-god-in-human-form.html?cid=6a00d83451c0aa69e202a2eec748ff200d#comment-6a00d83451c0aa69e202a2eec748ff200d

and my response to it: https://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2022/06/rssb-definitely-does-teach-that-the-guru-is-god-in-human-form.html?cid=6a00d83451c0aa69e202a308d14b64200c#comment-6a00d83451c0aa69e202a308d14b64200c

[Spence Tepper]

Sorry AR
you wrote:
"We're conducting an experiment designed to test that there's this aether thing through which light travels. And we find that there's no aether thing at all, apparently. Ergo, our equipment must be faulty, or else our controls were faulty, or else we were mistaken in what we observed, eh? That's exactly the kind of thing you're saying here."

No you have it wrong, AR. Please re-read my original comment. The entire comment was that any feedback at all, any experience at all is information, actual experience. Might be a confirmation of the milestones that Saints report. But it may also just be whatever you witness in your efforts to look at your own mind, internal stimuli, etc.

You are mistaking pure hypothesis testing with exploratory discovery, two related but not identical things. You engage in discovery first, gather information, then attempt to control the conditions to better confirm your understanding.

This IS how science is done, friend.

Therefore to report zero findings of ANY kind over 35 years of supposed effort at meditation is suspect. Even pushing against in immovable rock tells you something about your muscles, stance and little more about the rock. The worlds of inner thought and levels of consciousness are all there regardless of the reported milestones. So the report that "nothing" is there is suspect.

That report is highly suspect.

[Appreciative Reader]

All right, then. Since we're taking off our gloves and going bare-knuckled, and taking off our pants and going around with our dicks dangling in all their naked glory, let's then tackle the elephant in the room, that delicacy keeps us from ever addressing directly:

We wonder about the whys and wherefores of mysticism. We talk of this and that and other. We sometimes make so bold as to wonder about whether such might be rooted firmly to biollogical and neurological processes, rother than anything external.

But all of that comes after. They're all attempts to explain one's observations, but they basically take for granted that those observations are fact. But: are they?

When I sit here, saying that I've gone strolling up the hill on the edge of town and seen bushes burst into flame and talk to me; or that I've been up half the night focusing on my Ajna Chakra and my Sahasrar and beyond, and been treated to a dazzling array of lights and a wondrous symphony of sounds; then all that we objectively have is this, and just this: a man sitting there making claims. How the hell do we know he's not simply lying? Not witnessing cosmic revlelations; not experiencing alterned states of perception; not even honest-to-goodness hallucinating; but simply lying his head off?

That after all is the simplest explanation for all of this. That I get this bright idea and spin a yarn about buring bushes, and am rewarded for it by having a bunch of superstitious ignorant rubes fawn over me and make me their leader. Then my tall tales get written down, and become canon. Then someone else reads it, and pretends to something either identical, or somewhat similar. And then someone else. And so it goes, on and on, time and again, all of it nothing more than a tissue of lies. That's one very simple explanation of how the whole mysticism deal works, after all; one that Occam would probably approve of.

----------

I'm not quite there yet. I don't actually think that that's all there is to mysticism, actually. But still, since we're being oh-so-candid here, not about oneself but at others' expense, well then why not be candid about this as well while we're at it?

[Spence Tepper]

Hi AR:

You ask
"How the hell do we know he's not simply lying? "
You can never know that. But what you can do is go to that part of town where the supposed event occurred and see for yourself. That's if you want to actually sincerely confirm such things.

Most people will say "Well, thank God that didn't happen to me. I don't know what I'd make of it. This guy must be crazy."

They have no idea, actually, but within the context of their lives, the report is completely without precedent.

But if it turns out that hundreds of authors throughout written history have recorded similar events, you might say "well, it may be a hallucination, but it's one that appears to have occurred often."

And if a teacher arrives and says "Don't take anything on face value. But don't reject it either. I've seen some of these things and I tell you they are there. Here is the laboratory you have inside yourself, here are the keys to that lab. Go and find out for yourself."

Then that is very reasonable.

What is unreasonable is claiming "How dare you say those things actually exist! That is just manipulating people!"

When that same Teacher says "Look, you don't have to take a vow to believe in any of that. But you do need to make a commitment to do the lab work if you are serious about this," that is entirely reasonable. That's simply providing the basis for you to gather your own information.

If, 30 years later, you say "Nothing to report" that just is nonsensical.

Your comment completely misses the point: Go there within yourself and do the research.

[Appreciative Reader]

"This IS how science is done, friend."

..........No it isn't, and well you know it.

----------

"Therefore to report zero findings of ANY kind over 35 years of supposed effort at meditation is suspect. Even pushing against in immovable rock tells you something about your muscles, stance and little more about the rock. The worlds of inner thought and levels of consciousness are all there regardless of the reported milestones. So the report that "nothing" is there is suspect.

That report is highly suspect."

..........That *is* the result of the experiment. Like I've already discussed.

Your simply saying "that's not how science is done" doesn't make that so. You're conducting an experiment, to see if a certain result --- in this case, mystical experiences --- follow. The result of those experiments is, that they don't, that there are no mystical experiences of note. Why the hell is that not a valid result? You have clearly already, even before the experiment has been done and analyzed, already arrived at your conclusion; and any results that go against those conclusions are therefore "highly suspect".

Go pull the other one. Whatever it is you're espousing here, science it most definitely is not.

----------

*checks out from the endless, and pointless, carousel ride that will no doubt now follow*

[Karim W. Rahmaan]

"Karim, I get it. Once we go along with stuff "out of love" that we have no actual evidence of we find ourselves part of a religion.."

Posted by: Spence Tepper | June 22, 2022 at 10:11 AM

Looks I got my formula wrong in that science theorem above. And perhaps I misunderstood what you meant Spence.

Sorry for that, and I admit I was wrong.

Back to the science/ religion topic:

Sant Mat encourages us to at first hear the proposals in good faith. Next the Teacher goes further to give us his method for proving what he teaches to ourselves. Until we prove any of it, it remains just a proposal in good faith.

Science does this too, also in business we may get the similar proposals. Sometimes the business could have been a scam, and we either try to break even or we get caught up and simply lose money.

In science, perhaps a Professor misplaces the necessary formulas which could lead to an undesired result? Trials and test are common before many scientific become truth. Hence the appellation of a Perfect Living Master. Which is given in all sincerity by a Master to his Teacher. But that is all it really is. A humble appreciative, like when knights call their king my, Lord.

Those knights know damn well their king isn't God. But give him a high title because the king is responsible for those in the kingdom. King David, for example. Was rich, but was also very humble and very God-intoxicated. There are many stories of different Teachers of God who were either paupers or well endowed.

[Spence Tepper]

Hi AR:

You wrote:

" You're conducting an experiment, to see if a certain result --- in this case, mystical experiences "

That's hypothesis testing, AR. Before you can do that you have discovery, which is gathering of information through observation.

"The early stages of a scientific investigation often rely on making observations, asking questions, and initial experimentation — essentially poking around — but the routes to and from these stages are diverse. Intriguing observations sometimes arise in surprising ways, "
https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/howscienceworks_04

Zero discovery, zero experience after 35 years? As if you were asleep?
My hypothesis is that you were asleep.

Hard research on meditation demonstrates a whole variety of internal stimuli and effects from different practices of focus.

So, when you meditate you are unconscious?

That isn't meditation.
Meditation is raising conscious awareness by focus, AR.

You are trying to defend a point that is indefensible.

[Appreciative Reader]

"That isn't meditation.
Meditation is raising conscious awareness by focus, AR."

..........For the last effing time, Spence, on the off chance that you're honestly confused about this, as opposed to deliberately disingenuous:

That "meditation is raising conscious awareness by focus" is exactly the proposition that is being tested in this case, Spence. And the mystical experiences are evidence of the fact that awareness is being so raised. That no mystical experiences were reported, is a perfectly cromulent conclusion to the experiment. It shows that, in this case at least, the result was zero (or at least, nothing of particular note), and that awareness was not raised, and that, therefore, meditation does NOT result in awareness being raised. That is the fucking conclusin of the fucking experiment!!! While one single experiment isn't necessarily conclusive (no matter what results it yields, whether zero remarkable experiences of the kind Brian reports, or the dramatic pyotechnics you report) and does not necessarily lead to exptrapolation beyond that single instance; but should one, nevertheless, want to extrapolate Brian's results, then one possible way to do that might be to conclude that RSSB meditation leads nowhere, or maybe even further that meditation itself might lead nowhere at all.

Your claiming that "meditation is the rasing of awareness", and your claiming that experiments that result in showing meditation as nothing of the kind, and your claiming that therefore the experiment itself has been faulty: that is as transparent a travesty of the actual methods of science as one can imagine. And it should not even need these further words of mine to make this clear to you: my brief allusion earlier to the aether experiments ought to have been enough, for someone like you that is already well familiar with these fundamentals of the scientific method.

You're in the utterly insupportable position of starting an experiment with the conclusion already decided on in your mind, so that should the experiment fail to support that conclusion you will condemn the experiment as faulty. So that the whole process of experimentation then becomes no more than a sham, not an honest attempt to arrive at results, but an attempt to spuriously drum up support for your a priori conclusions by pretending to be doing science.

[Spence Tepper]

Hi AR:
You wrote:
"That no mystical experiences were reported, is a perfectly cromulent conclusion to the experiment. It shows that, in this case at least, the result was zero "

You are equating zero results with the hypothesis conclusion. Again, a violation of basic scientific method.

Failed experiments are filled with other information about why things turned out differently. That's very valuable information. You could say the hypothesis wasn't proven, but that should provide valuable information about what actually IS happening, a step towards a more accurate hypothesis, or better method. Either or both is the outcome of every properly conducted experiment.

But again, before hypothesis testing, there is basic exploration and discovery.

The hypothesis can just be...when I don't drink alcohol, my meditation experience is far more wakeful"

The good meditator, the scientific one, creates all sorts of hypotheses to test what changes they make every day to improve the experience. To claim there is no experience at all makes zero sense.

Long term meditators have a different experience. They have worked the details of their inner experience and the effects have been noted scientifically.

When you close your eyes and meditate, you can see things happening. Those are important things. And you should try to see what is required to calm the mind so that you can actually test the hypotheses. But that can take years, as in the case of Relativity. The instrumentation has taken years. But along the way scientists see promising results.

To claim "That isn't supernatural therefore it isn't important" is to dismiss vital information. That suggests there is no subconscious mind, no thinking mind, no experience at all. When you sit still and close your eyes, whatever you are doing, there is experience. And your focus influences that. And it is influenced by your environment and behavior. To chalk all that up to "nothing" is strange and has no precedent, unless you went unconscious.

The bigger hypothesis may not have been confirmed, yet. But the experiment yields all sorts of information...whatever you experienced for the duration. Then you hypothesize what it takes to have a calmer experience.

But if you are asleep, you don't know what happened.

Hence, all Brian Ji has provided evidence of is that he was alseep, not meditating.

[Spence Tepper]

Finally, AR
As to the notion that meditation is raising conscious awareness, I'm afraid you don't understand the validity of this remark.

conscious awareness is influenced by all sorts of things. That's not mystical or supernatural. The hard sciences have decades of experimentation on focus, vigilance, level of wakefulness, cognitive and physical performance.

And yes, there are all sorts of environmental factors including your own ideation and focus that influences that level of wakeful awareness.

So you are wrong to conclude this is something only related to meditation. There are several indicators of level of wakefulness, level of cognitive awareness and focus. Much of that research has nothing to do with meditation, but much of it also does.

So, when you are meditating you are not actually testing one hypothesis. You are exploring and coming up with your own to understand the experience.

That experience is whatever you are aware of when you sit to meditate, and how that changes during your meditation. Doesn't have to be supernatural at all. I propose there is nothing supernatural about Meditation. And that whatever is seen or heard starts with whatever you see or hear or perceive right now when you meditate.

Let me put this another way. If you say I spent 31,000 hours over 35 years doing something I can't actually report on in any detail, nor made effort to understand, then that seems just about where we are with what has been reported here.

And that sounds more like sleep and not at all like meditation.

Meditation research has already demonstrated that meditation improves cognitive functioning and health. That doesn't happen by snoozing through it.

It doesn't happen by supernatural means either. We're discussing the very real scientific aspects of meditation.

[Deepak Kamat]

Scientific fanaticism is as bad as religious fanaticcism if not worrse.

[Appreciative Reader]

"Scientific fanaticism is as bad as religious fanaticcism if not worrse."

(Posted by: Deepak Kamat | June 28, 2022 at 03:05 AM)

-----

Indeed. That brings to mind a short story by Chesterton, read a long time back, possibly the one in which he introduces Father Brown, where he writes about a fanatic atheist that murders the police prefect who had been working to bring back Church and Christ back into mainstream relevance. The point that is important and relevant here is this, that the bad guy was an atheist, and a fanatic atheist.

Chesterton lived in a cleaner time, that had not gotten polluted with the sacrilege promoted by these uppity atheists and these disgusting heathens that one sees running amok in these degenerate godless times. That was a good time, when the Word of God was recognized as such, and the heathens with their primitive pseudo-religions as well as sundry low-lifes like agnostics and atheists knew their place; and those few who didn't, were shown their place in no uncertain times.

That's what's wrong with the world today. A whole host of ungodly atheists and blaspheming heathens that worship false gods, all running loose, and pretending that their silly fanaticism amounts to anything at all. Praise be to the Lord, that there is someone at least that reconizes the folly in giving in to scientific fanaticism, that is indeed much worse than religious fanaticism.