Karam Mudra, from my point of view you can believe whatever you want to believe but a bit of investigation into 'altered states' and the meaning of that phrase would not go amiss.

An 'altered state' is any that is not a normal, focused, waking functioning state--that means that trance, dreaming, driving on auto-pilot, and dissociation can all be described as 'altered states'--as can any of the varying states we all pass in and out of throughout the day.

There has been considerable research on hypnotic states, including self-induced hypnotic states of dissociation such as are intentionally sought in medititive practices--as well as naturally occurring periods of short term dissociation such as day-dreaming and reverie.
None of this is special or supernatural, it is what human beings do and have always done--but most do not direct much attention to it most of the time.

You can fixate on the specialness of Nydahl and his wondrous brain if you like but that will keep you in his thrall--or if not him then the next smooth talker who comes along with tales of siddhis and supernatural things.

You said earlier that you were a tough woman-- you are going to need to be if you are unwilling to do some basic rational research into this.
Tough women don't kid themselves and don't avoid the truth when it is staring them in the face--however unwilling they might be to admit that truth to themselves.

And if you are going to get fixated on anybody's wondrous brain--at least make it your own. It is the only one you will ever be able to get close to.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2011 08:58AM by Stoic.

Hi all, did a brief read through of that study, it seemed to be basically comparing brain waves of one person doing several different types of meditation?
Ie "altered states of consciousness are associated with different patterns of brain activation depending on the content of the consciousness"
Seemed kind of a "Duh" comment ; when he was doing a verbal meditation, verbal parts of his brain lit up, when he was doing a visual meditation, visual parts of his brain lit up.
"the different meditations were consciously self induced ...without systematic imput of external origin" ie he was doing it inside his head, not reading the words or looking at a picture.
Similarly, someone internally repeating a poem they have memorized, would probably activate the verbal part of their brain, and of course, they would definitely be causing this "self induced" change without "systematic input of external origin" ie again, it would all be in their head.
Same with thinking of a picture, or imagining drawing one.
To be helpful, it would have been nice if this study had compared his brain waves with say someone else mentally repeating a poem, or imagining painting a picture.

Otherwise it just seems to be saying that what he thinks about ( ie visual/seeing versus linguistic/words) causes different parts of his brain to activate,which you would expect with anyone.
Maybe I missed some reference to comparisons, or something else?
Would be interested in all your thoughts on this.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2011 12:02PM by yasmin.

Sorry; of course there is also the "dissolution" type meditation that activates yet another part of the brain.
Interestingly, it seems that the studies' authors don't feel this necessarily identifies anything unique about meditating "The present single case study reports the activation of different neuronal assembles during different meditations.It did not address the putative general differences between meditative and non meditative states"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2011 12:27PM by yasmin.

Quote
yasmin
Sorry; of course there is also the "dissolution" type meditation that activates yet another part of the brain.
Interestingly, it seems that the studies' authors don't feel this necessarily identifies anything unique about meditating "The present single case study reports the activation of different neuronal assembles during different meditations.It did not address the putative general differences between meditative and non meditative states"

Hi Yasmin,
I think you've got most of it. There's also the idea that the 40hz measure (gamma waves) is one activated by meditative states, so maybe that goes some way to addressing your last point, although they don't make it particularly explicit.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2011 01:00PM by suenam.

Something else that could benefit from some personal research by meditators is the dissociated state.
Prolonged periods of involuntary dissociation are called 'psychosis' in western culture.

There is no guarantee that practising meditation and entering and leaving dissociated states at will is any protection from the onset of an involuntary extended period of dissociation, known as a 'psychotic state' in western psychiatric medecine.

The benefit of being familiar with entering and leaving these states at will is that some of the fear and terror that they can engender is reduced. Fear and terror--or the chemical pre-cursors of these still flood the organism as we have no conscious control over this split-second reaction, and no sensible person would want such conscious control of a life-saving mechanism.

A 'psychotic state' which anyone can experience and a 'psychopath'-- diagnostic terminology for a particular behavioural pattern --- are two very different terms that seem also to have been confused and conflated here.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2011 06:57PM by Stoic.

I do not agree.

What yo are trying to prove through your argumentation is, that the gamma waves are random active in every state of concentracion. That is wrong, but may be it helps you to qualify the results. Worldwide resesearches had "deep-meditating" persons in their studies and the outcome was equivalent every time. In this study they did not have the focus to compare normal maditators with deep meditators or non meditators, that is right.

So we can feel as better experts than the folks in Harvard are. It is a nice feeling, isn`t it!

Stoic, your presumptions about my "addiction" to Nadahl only beause I am very interested in brain-researches of "enlightened" persons -it could be anyone of those, let us take the Dalai Lama - is foolish, sorry, and it goes too far. I do not need to be psychoanalysed here. To be interested in a subject is unlike to be fascinated by a person. So keep cool, man.

But I love this discussion, although I find it hard to do it in English!

karam-mudra:

This thread has a very narrow focus, i.e. Ole Nydahl and Diamond Way.

Stay tightly focused and on topic.

This is not a general discussion thread about Buddhism, etc.

Actually, Karma Mudra, I am way past trying to prove anything.

I agree with the scientific method that sets out to observe phenomena and attempts to validate such phenomena as either a general principle or an anomaly in order to come up with a general workable theory that provisionally explains what all of us see and experience in the world around us.

I don't do proof at all since I do not accept that anything can ever be proved beyond doubt.
That doesn't mean that I accept any wild guess or fantasy as being as valid as a carefully considered theory either.

The people who conducted and wrote up Nydahls EEG have, like the good scientists that they are, simply observed the phenomena and recorded them.
The conclusions that you draw and interpretations that you make are your own idiosyncratic ones--namely that what has been recorded is something special.

I note that the Harvard researchers did not draw any similar conclusions in their paper.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2011 09:30PM by Stoic.

It is ok, moderator!

I shared with you all I wanted to, it was a nice discussion, and because I am far away from beeing interested in Nydahl any longer, I say: Godd Bye!

Let's clear one thing up. Ole Nydahl isn't enlightened.

If he was enlightened he couldn't lose face because to do so requires the presence of an ego and the capacity to identify with the self in order for there to be 'someone' to suffer.

Quote Karam-Mudra
"From Nydahls view he lost his face because he cannot control me anymore".

When Nydahl is throwing his toys out of the pram when he can't exchange money in an Australian bank there is clearly a self experiencing suffering. So let's not even try to debate him from the starting point he's enlightened... he clearly isn't.

The brain scans show that different parts of the brain are activated during different meditations. The parts of the brain which process visual information are activated when he's picturing a Buddha which is exactly what you would expect. When mentally reciting mantras the parts of the brain responsible for speech production are activated. Exactly what one would expect. I don't see anything special about his brain scan. Certainly nothing about the self induced epileptic seizures he claims scientists have observed in him.

Scientists have been working for sometime on a thought controlled interface for severely paralysed patients. They are able to give patients some control over a cursor on a computer screen so they can communicate by typing even though they are completely paralysed. This is accomplised by asking the patient (who has a series of electrodes placed on the scalp) to think of playing tennis for example to activate the part of the brain responsible for arm movement. This results in the cursor moving up. They then ask the patient to thing of an activity which uses a completely different part of the brain which will result in a left/right cursor movement. So different pasts of the brain being activated by thought is not proof of anything out of the ordinary.

If Karam-Mudra's reports are true then Nydahl's abuse of her is clear evidence he isn't enlightened. I can only say that I'm glad she's out of the abusive relationship.

Steve