I mis-read that, at first, asManna wrote:Is that the meditation talk?
That is to say, I read it on the pattern of:Is that the meditation talking?
(or "drugs", or "booze", )Is that the medication talking?
In any case, the answer is "no".
--No,
that was not my big promised - long rumored - long fabled
- definitive talk on meditation. It was just the little nephew talk,
about "the relaxation response", which may be a manifestation
of meditation, but isn't meditation itself.
The only reason I brought it up is that it seemed to me
to be a coherent way to read I-26.
And --No
I am not now, nor have I ever been, so besotted by
meditation that you could say I'm addicted to it,
and that I arbitrarily associate every unrelated thing
with it.
(In fact I can already see a different, equally consistent way
to read 1-26, that has nothing to do with meditation.
(It may have something to do with Stanislavski
"method-acting" exercises. But in any case...)
It's to read the poem as being about stage-fright.
Cohen leaves his ordinary self (Clark Kent) behind in the chair,
while he, as dancer, (or Superman,) goes out onto the stage to perform.
It makes the poem somewhat reminiscent of the song:
)...
and then the cameras pan,
the stand in stunt man,
dress rehearsal rag,
But I knew people who were (-overly besotted by meditation.)
I knew someone who meditated 8 hours a day in front of a photo of his guru.
Not my cup of matcha, but in his case, at least, I knew
that he knew the difference between the essence of meditation,
on the one hand, and all the variations and rituals he happened
to practice along with it, on the other.
People who have no experience at all of meditation, of course,
always have fantastically incorrect notions about what it is.
But even people who do have some experience of it,
tend to mix apples and oranges about it.
Let me put it this way.
In at least one superficial way you can compare meditation
to getting a good night's sleep. The main difference being
that when you meditate, you remain fully conscious.
And so therefore, when you meditate, you can do anything
with your mind that you can do at any other time with
your mind when you're fully conscious.
Jack here, for example, talks about some interesting things.
But in particular he talks about something he called a "guided meditation".
He said:
etc.... Now use your imagination and imagine the most problematic situation ....
And you can do that, when you meditate.
Because when you meditate, you are fully conscious.
However, it's rather more like someone telling you how you can spend your day
after you've gotten a good night's sleep,
than like telling you a useful technique
that can help you get a good night's sleep in the first place.
Besides deep relaxation, probably the most salient consequence
of meditating is that for an interval of time immediately afterwards
(measured in hours) you're much better able to hold images in your
mind. They are much clearer, and you can keep them still much longer,
and rotate them better, etc. So, obviously, mediating is great for artists.
And for chemists who need to visualize complex 3d molecules.
And for everyone who needs to visualize.
So, what Jack was talking about is probably a fine thing.
Provided it's done after meditating.
That is, after 15 or 20 or 30 minutes of real meditating.
And then after that there'd be nothing wrong if you wanted,
for some reason, to remain seated, eyes closed, etc,
while you went on to do whatever visualizing you wanted to do.
However, to the extent that you use your imagination during meditation,
you are not meditating at all.
And if you try to use your imagination as part of your technique to enter into meditation,
then all you'd be accomplishing is delaying getting there.
It's completely counter productive.
Generally, doing anything during meditation defeats the whole point of it.
Of course, for the first few minutes you do need to do something trivial,
- running a meaningless mantra being the ideal,
- in order to lure your mind away from its natural state of
compulsive ruminating.
But after that the mantra itself has to be regarded as what it is.
Just another distraction needing to be dropped.
(And that's the big difference.
Because virtually anything at all rhythmic can function as a mantra,
---in that initial role of distraction:
- prayer (Ave Maria gratia plena), -slow motion (Tai Chi Chuan),
-chanting in groups (Om, Nam Myoho Renge Kyo), -symmetry (mandala),
-rhythmic breathing, -tantric sex, -hypnosis, -sufi spinning,
-Gurdjieffian dancing, -vegging out watching tv. The problem
with all of them being that they tend to be regarded as having
some kind of intrinsic magic. And then one is loath to drop them.
And then they may, sometimes, produce an altered state
of consciousness. But it will never be meditation.)
Some other things some people think of as useful parts
of techniques of meditation, can actually be dangerous.
"Breath control" being the prime example.
Breathing is a semiautonomous physiological function
in all creatures, since some degree of conscious control
over it had to evolve, I think, in order to help us keep quiet
during predator-prey type situations. But in all other cases,
trying to consciously control your breathing is like trying
to be conscious of everything involved in running down
a flight of stairs. You will inevitably fall if you try.
Everyone at one time or another has had to consciously
tell themselves to breath when they suddenly realized
that they'd been unconsciously holding their breath
due to some measure of unconscious panic
(-as when reading great poems.) And if you want
your breathing to be like that all the time,
- if you like the feeling of panic,
- then by all means practice breath-control exercises.
It doesn't matter whose.
But really, "It's Not Nice to Mess With Mother Nature"
~~~~~~
Steven said he never recommended TM to anyone.
~~~
Manna, back when you first asked about meditation,
I searched the net looking for a good description TM.
Because TM is the best there is.
TM after all was engineered (or selected) by the
Maharishi precisely to be the simplest most direct route
to the essence of meditation, stripped of all extraneous
rigmarole.
And that's exactly what it is.
(If you disregard the initiation ritual
(- bring a flower, a handkerchief, and a fruit)
and the religious associations of the bija seed matras
(- which are simply Sanskrit consonant-vowel clusters
that the Hindi happen to associate with gods, and that
the Christians, therefore, associate with devils who will
possess your soul when you're at your most vulnerable,
which will be when you meditate.)
(Disregard, too, please, the matter of flying meditators.
(The less said about which, - the better.)))
However, having said that, I definitely do not recommend paying for TM.
As it exists today, it's a pure scam. It is criminal.
It infuriated me to read about what it's become.
I mean in terms of what they expect you to pay for it.
(About everything else that some people talk about as having
disillusioned them with TM, I have to think they had to be
pretty stupid to have been illusioned about those kinds of
things in the first place, -starting with the Maharishi's lust,
etc etc.)
That's what motivated me to want to say anything about meditation in this forum,
as I promised I would.
But the problem with me is that anger never motivates me for very long.
And I lost the mojo to finish saying what I wanted to say.
I promise, again, that I will write it up.
Sooner, now, rather than later.
~~~
Basically, I'll be recommending any book by Patricia Carrington.
She talks about meditation generally, and describes in complete detail
what she calls "clinically standardized meditation".
Which is virtually identical to TM.
And so you definitely don't need to pay for the official TM lecture
sequence in order to learn the principle of the thing.
The only real benefit to paying for the course is when they assign you a mantra.
Although it was never much of a secret that the TM mafia does not assign mantras
in the way that they lie they do. With slight variations over the years, they assign
you your mantra from a list of a dozen or so based entirely on what your age
happens to be when they assign it to you!
Nevertheless, having a mantra assigned to you, by whatever means,
has a definite advantage over picking one for yourself.
Even if you pick the one that'd be assigned to you!
Now, provided you thoroughly understand the reason for that,
and understand exactly what a mantra is, and is for,
then you should be able to successfully get around this one pons asinorum,
and save yourself $2500.00.
That, anyway, will be my objective,
when I finally get around to saying what I want to say.
