TM is not real meditation, it is more like hypnosis

[Taomeow]

I would argue that the "regular" hypnotic state and deep trance states are quite different  There is little research on deep trance states, as they tend be more rare, a little more hit-and-miss, as you see with Sichort's research. There are perhaps many levels of consciousness that we are unaware of in this material plane that we may accidentally somehow access by deliberately plumbing our minds via hypnotic inductions. We can look at hypnosis as a tool or a process, just as meditation is a tool or process, and both can open up areas of mind, that even though the state is temporary, can have a sticky or lasting effect on one's waking consciousness. We may be able to unlock some hidden capacities or abilities just by attaining a particular deep state for a little while.  At the very least, it can serve as first-hand proof of different states of consciousness other than the mundane.

 

My theory is that even though hypnosis, as TM puts it, fractures consciousness, we can also perhaps instantly repair the fracture through suggestion. Nothing is ever really fractured anyway. I think its a matter of guiding the subject up to a slightly "higher" level of consciousness to where the deep states can be experienced and remembered. Anyway, I will create this deep trance session based on this theory and put it on my youtube channel in the future, and you may message me for the eventual link. I may call it "Hypnosis: deep trance experience: plumbing deep consciousness" or something like that. 

 

I agree that both are tools, and would like to point out in brackets that meditation is often misunderstood as some kind of a "goal" state or skill, which it is not.  But different tools are suited for different purposes, and a hammer is a useful tool and so is a toothbrush, but one needs to know when to use which.  

 

Hypnosis is a tool of manipulation, the deep trance is like a sledgehammer to a shallow trance's hammer.  Meditation is a tool of transportation.  You don't build or destroy the car you're driving while you're driving it.  Not a car, actually, I have always liked the shamanic (and early taoist) definition of the meditative state as a "horse."  It is a means of transporting your consciousness somewhere where it can't get without such carrier, or maybe it can but it would take a lot longer and, besides, the horse knows the road, which you might not.

 

Hypnosis is different.  It may be a good thing to mend a hole with hypnosis -- but you never know why the hole is there  in the first place and what exactly went missing that resulted in a hole.  In meditation you may or may not mend it, but you know that, e.g., a hole is where your peace (or piece) of mind should be, but don't rush to stick a piece of toilet paper in the hole to cover it up.  For one thing, it might hold for a while but if a strong wind blows, it will fly out.  For another, it does not belong.  It is not part of the structure in which a hole appeared.  It is part of what something or someone not organic to your consciousness had handy, and used.  Could be a piece of cement repairing a hole in a delicate rice paper screen -- and then later the whole screen might collapse under the weight.  It might have been better off with the hole...

 

I gained my understanding of hypnosis that is along these lines long before I ever meditated.  I had a close friend who was a psychiatrist trained in hypnotherapy.  She told me that hypnosis can be very efficient but she didn't want to use it after she understood that it is an intrusion into consciousness with not enough information about what it is you're intruding upon.  She went as far as to make parallels between hypnosis and rape.  The technique is not what makes sex and rape different -- nor is the depth of penetration.  It's something else that makes them different.  The overall context. 

Edited September 2, 2016 by Taomeow

[Karl]

I would agree with your friend, I didnt like using any of those techniques even though permission was given and a full inventory taken of the client- past traumas, psychiatric episodes, depression, drug use etc. I had a lot of success at a benign level, but, you are messing with people's heads and from my viewpoint today, most people have no idea of the importance of consciousness and therapists often underestimate the effect they can have. We were told by our trainers that 'we couldn't break anything' so we should try things until we hit on the most effective tool to create client change.

[gendao]

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone!

 

Well, would there perhaps be a way to combine the 2 in a sense - like use hypnotic techniques to go "deeper" in meditation, but without intention?  Like more just to bridge the conscious and subconscious/superconscious to tap into deeper wisdom?

 

 

 

Perhaps my bigger question revolves around how to consult our own inner Oracle in all decisions big and small?  What if I want to know what is really causing a health or life blockage, or choose my next step in life?  Find a lost puppy?

 

Do we open our 3rd eye, follow our hearts, listen to our guts, go into deeper/trance/brainwave states via hypnosis or meditation, await sudden insights in our dreams, channel our Higher Self, dowse/pendulum/muscle test/Oujia board/automatic handwrite, pray, use Tarot cards/Yijing, etc etc?

Edited September 2, 2016 by gendao

[Karl]

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone!

 

Well, would there perhaps be a way to combine the 2 in a sense - like use hypnotic techniques to go "deeper" in meditation, but without intention?  Like more just to bridge the conscious and subconscious/superconscious to tap into deeper wisdom?

 

 

 

Perhaps my bigger question revolves around how to consult our own inner Oracle in all decisions big and small?  What if I want to know what is really causing a health or life blockage, or choose my next step in life?  Find a lost puppy?

 

Do we open our 3rd eye, follow our hearts, listen to our guts, go into deeper/trance/brainwave states via hypnosis or meditation, await sudden insights in our dreams, channel our Higher Self, dowse/pendulum/muscle test/Oujia board/automatic handwrite, pray, use Tarot cards/Yijing, etc etc?

Reason and logic. It worked well for Sherlock and every brilliant scientific discovery ever made. Finding a puppy is harder given the possibilities and even the greatest doctors can't diagnose every disease. There is no sure thing in life. Learn from the past, read, talk to people who made similar steps, figure our what's important to you, then crack on. As a great business mentor of mine once said "it's no problem to fail in business, do it often, but always do it cheaply". He had 100 plus businesses over 20 years, of which 90% failed within 2 years, the others performed poorly except one. That one business made him a multi millionaire, but he talked more about his failures, the real source of his wisdom.

 

Funnily enough I used a crystal pendulum and a combination of an internal traffic light method to tap into my inner power.....woo woo :-)

[de_paradise]

I am going to address the topic of deep trance, so that we can form educated opinions about what it is versus typical (somnabulistic state) hypnosis, why hypnotherapists avoid deep trance, and why it may be helpful for spiritual seekers. When a subject reaches a state of deeper trance, Esdaile and below, they are no longer responsive to suggestion in the same way. Their mind is hyper-aware, but they are also aware of how good they feel in the deep state so they tend to disregard whatever instructions the therapist give unless its something they completely agree with at the time. In deep states communication is more of a negociation.

 

These deep states are  useless from a typical hypnotherapy perspective, except for pain-control, such as dental hypnosis because in deep trance you are numb to pain stimuli.  Deep states of hypnosis are also used in the field of  "metaphysical hypnosis", which is a kind of experimental and based on getting in contact with your higher mind for reasons of self-healing, healing others over a distance, enlightenment, life problem solving,  and various other metaphysical topics. What I'd like to stress here is that key for deep states is the subject does the work themselves, and the hypnosis is only meant to guide them to this higher mind state, or states, and up to them and their higher mind to decide if there is any benefit.

 

Metaphysical hypnosis is not lucrative or well researched because people pay therapists to solve mundane problems, yet I personally have had good results from deep trance, leading to a "samadhi" or temporary enlightened state that lasted about 10 days. The mind-to-mind healing research is about putting one person into a higher mind state, and allowing that superior, extra-body consciousness diagnose and heal another. This is something that the Sichort and Ramey were experimenting with, as well as  Gerald Kein in ultra-height.

[Taomeow]

Tools work.  Extracting a tooth is possible with or without anesthesia, and anesthesia can be chemical or hypnotic, but the dentist can't pull the tooth with either -- he needs a different tool for this.

 

I had a most enlightened experience under the influence of general anesthesia (no, not for a tooth), but when I came out of it, turned out six people were holding down my body which was trying to run away.   In this case the divorce between the body and the mind was complete (near-death).  Dental anesthesia under hypnosis leaves you with a similar pocket of unconsciousness, albeit much smaller.  So does a hypnotic solution of any problem, physical, psychological, or metaphysical. 

 

I relived the anesthesia episode twenty years later in the setting of a deep-feeling body-inclusive therapy, and restored the consciousness by connecting the body and the mind that were still in a state of non-communicating while the real actual experience was ruling from the unconscious instead of miraculously making the experience into something not having happened. 

 

That's the problem with manipulating reality by any methods -- if complete reality of everything going on in the moment is either unacceptable or inaccessible to consciousness, it still does not disappear, it's still part of what really happened to you, and it resides in your unconscious from then on -- and, unless extracted thence and reconnected to your overall consciousness, bosses you around in attempts to accomplish that, because that's the nature of consciousness.  It always shoots for being whole and knowing itself, by hook or by crook. 

 

There's tools that can make it possible for one fragment to suppress and subjugate another -- e.g. for the decision-making neocortex, or the pain centers of the brain, to overrule the limbic system or the amygdala --

 

 to establish a hierarchy of consciousness, choose what it will accept and what it will reject, and sacrifice another fragment into oblivion toward some goal or other -- e.g. the goal of solving a problem, of avoiding pain, or of gaining enlightenment which is what the neocortex may have come to "believe in" without consulting with other parts of you and effectively telling them to shut up.  The problem with such tools is, nothing ever shuts up, it just goes underground and starts a guerilla war to regain its rightful throne, its place in your consciousness of "what really happened."  What really happened in the case of a hypnotic suggestion is exactly this -- a hypnotic suggestion.  As Sirhan Sirhan, who, rumor has it, assassinated Robert Kennedy as an outcome of mind-control manipulations he had been subjected to, put it seconds after pulling the trigger, "What happened?  Did I do it?  Am I the one who did it?"   

 

Yes and no...

[9th]

Like sands in the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.  As the world turns, we know the bleakness of winter, the promise of spring, the fullness of summer and the harvest of autumn—the cycle of life is complete.

 

"There is an Eastern tale which speaks about a very rich magician who had a great many sheep. But at the same time this magician was very mean. He did not want to hire shepherds, nor did he want to erect a fence about the pasture where his sheep were grazing. The sheep consequently often wandered into the forest, fell into ravines, and so on, and above all they ran away, for they knew that the magician wanted their flesh and skins and this they did not like.

 

"At last the magician found a remedy. He hypnotized his sheep and suggested to them first of all that they were immortal and that no harm was being done to them when they were skinned, and that, on the contrary, it would be very good for them and even pleasant; secondly he suggested that the magician was a good master who loved his flock so much that he was ready to do anything in the world for them; and in the third place he suggested to them that if anything at all were going to happen to them it was not going to happen just then... at any rate not that day, and therefore they had no need to think about it.

 

Further the magician suggested to his sheep that they were not sheep at all; to some of them he suggested that they were lions, to others that they were eagles, to others that they were men, and to others that they were magicians.

 

"And after this all his cares and worries about the sheep came to an end. They never ran away again but quietly awaited the time when the magician would require their flesh and skins.

 

"This tale is a very good illustration of man's position."

 

- Gurdjieff

 

 

[joeblast]

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone!

 

Well, would there perhaps be a way to combine the 2 in a sense - like use hypnotic techniques to go "deeper" in meditation, but without intention?  Like more just to bridge the conscious and subconscious/superconscious to tap into deeper wisdom?

 

 

 

Perhaps my bigger question revolves around how to consult our own inner Oracle in all decisions big and small?  What if I want to know what is really causing a health or life blockage, or choose my next step in life?  Find a lost puppy?

  I still view this as a misunderstanding of tools and their usages, to borrow a concept from taomeow.  hypnosis and deep meditation.  its like climbing a mountain vs getting in a rail car and quickly driven to the center of the mountain, chunks of rock and dirt whizz by, then you're dumped off straight into an elevator, get a quick ride to the top, and like when you used to be able to go into the statue of liberty....you didnt get to view for too long before the current of the line moves you beyond those windows at the top.

 

there's a peculiar simplicity to entering a high efficiency state for a couple hours a day.  when people talk about this depth, the high efficiency state is part and parcel of the depth.  the spark of yang from deep yin is something worthwhile to experience.

 

it takes the hit and miss out of the equation when approached from the neurological level...when I achieve x, y & z, the states come with increasing regularity, the longer and deeper the sessions go.

[9th]

There is quite a difference between concentration and naked awareness.  Both can be a path to arrive at the recognition of the unconditional reality at the source of all phenomena, but it is not the same methodology.  In particular the practice of concentration is at the heart of all "occult" or supernatural and mystical activities which currently defy the most common and mainstream scientific understandings.  Concentration is another word for focus - it is like narrowing down the light of perception into a laser-like intensity, also referred to as "one-pointedness" in some traditions.  It is incredibly effective at holding obscurations of the mind at bay, keeping them down for the count and rendering them effectively non-existent as long as such a concentrated state is maintained - but it does not remove them.  It is essentially the power of active ignorance.  You actively ignore everything except the object of concentration.  This is the basis of a hypnotic state.  The vast majority of people are wandering around in the state of passive ignorance - they have no control over this function, but it is the same thing.  Either you are "using" your mind, or your mind is "using" you - but ultimately there is no escape from ignorance except to drop it completely.  Concentration can also be used in many ways beyond self-hypnosis.  Many many many ways.  

 

Naked awareness is a bit more difficult to describe because it is simultaneously the fundamental origin of perception and yet you could say it is effectively "obscured" by the content of perception itself, or to put it more accurately it is hidden by the identification of the mind with the contents of perception.  Naked, original awareness is never abolished or destroyed, only covered up.  Many traditions speak of this in different ways, perhaps the most technical I have found is that of dzogchen and its inclination for very precise descriptions and elucidations of rigpa and all the teachings surrounding that term.  However it is not a concept exclusive to dzogchen by any means.  It seems most traditions tend to focus more on the preparatory methods and so forth that lead a practitioner along the path until they reach a point where they have effectively crossed the stream and the boat is left behind - this metaphor refers to the dawn of such naked awareness, which cannot be systematized or structured in a generic way as a practice per-se, because it is both prior to as well as far beyond all practices.  Once you are established in such a position of naked awareness, you are effectively existent before any obscurations of mind occur, which means they dont need to be removed because they were never there to begin with.  This kind of reality is impossible to talk about without a direct experience of it yourself - and that is why we have the idea of "transmission" and so forth.

 

Its also worth noting that the results obtained through the practice of concentration are directly related to the idea of "personal power" or just "power" in general - the power of mind - and eventually can result in the power of "mind over matter" as it is commonly known.  Therefore it ultimately has nothing to do with so-called spiritual advancement or evolution of being in the sense of a harmonious relationship to all things.  Rather, concentration is specifically involved with the ability to manipulate things, which is often at odds with a greater harmony in terms of the "big picture".  It is not an absolute, black and white kind of situation, because this kind of power may be necessary for a particular person in a particular situation, or to achieve a particular objective that ultimately will serve the harmonious balance of all things as opposed to an upset of such balance.  Yet these judgement calls are not able to be generated through the ideas of man-made morality, ethics and so forth - and that is why you have concepts such as wei wu wei.  Of course it has always been attempted, and one might say such attempts are the glue that has held society together since the dawn of time - either as religion, legal proclamations, codes of honor, etc.

 

The discrepancy between concentration and awareness also explains why there are plenty of so-called "masters" who are capable of various kinds of supernatural feats and possess all manner of siddhis - and yet remain incredibly flawed and even outright despicable people who live only to exploit others for their own imagined personal gains.  However such situations rarely last very long (on the cosmic time table), because the ability to bend the world to your will is explicitly the creation of vast amounts of karmic activity - which will rebound eventually, like anything else in the physical realm that is bound by physical laws.  The only way to bend the world to your will and yet remain totally free of it is to possess (or be possessed by) the will of the absolute, which again returns us to the source and origin of all things and the concept of acting-without-acting, not-doing, and so forth.

[joeblast]

"concentration" only fits in that context if it retains a link to mental processing - so it winds up being a matter of how one interprets "concentration" - its focus of awareness but not necessarily engaging the mental processing, depending on the context.   i.e. if your brow is furrowed or there's fire in your eye, then that is a concentration that is more than simply focusing the awareness.

 

verb (used with object), concentrated, concentrating.

1. to bring or draw to a common center or point of union; converge; direct toward one point; focus:

2 to put or bring into a single place, group, etc.:

3. to intensify; make denser, stronger, or purer, especially by the removal or reduction of liquid:

 

verb (used without object), concentrated, concentrating.

5. to bring all efforts, faculties, activities, etc., to bear on one thing or activity (often followed by on or upon):

6. to come to or toward a common center; converge; collect:

7. to become more intense, stronger, or purer.

 

none of these definitions necessarily indicate any sort of action of the mind

 

so 9th, in the context you're using, concentration leads to awareness;

 

but I contend that the base mechanism is exactly the same, the key is getting the body & mind conditioned properly, and that's the mechanism to become aware of what heartmind is.

 

the process of concentration modifies and enhances the net awareness-experience

 

it just seemed like some terms were being mashed up.  or maybe I was perhaps a member of the consortium of gentlemen for  nominal accuracy in discourse in some distant existence

[Taomeow]

Words...  Would be easier if the same words meant the same things to different people.

 

I remember being thoroughly confused as a little girl when my grandmother would ask me, e.g., "Have you seen my yellow handbag?"  She didn't live in a state of abundance where you don't know how many material possessions you possess and what exactly they are and their exact whereabouts at any given time, so I knew with utmost precision that my grandmother didn't own a yellow handbag.  I knew she had a black one for "going out" and a brown one for everyday use.  There was no yellow handbag in existence.  I thought she was imagining having one, dreaming of it, or  worse, because this "where's my yellow handbag" quest was repeated with some regularity and she would get annoyed at me for not helping her find it.  Then one day the mystery of the yellow handbag was solved.  "There it is!" my grandmother proclaimed as she grabbed her brown handbag.  

 

She made no distinction between the color brown and the color yellow --- moreover, turned out she called all mustard shades and khaki and beige and chocolate colors "yellow," but she wasn't color blind, she just didn't care enough for the distinctions, it was unimportant in her world.  

 

I think the difference between concentration and awareness becomes pretty clear in taiji, which some people call a "moving meditation" but no one, to my knowledge, calls a "moving hypnosis."  Concentration is what you have lost when you screw up a move and realize that the reason you did is that your mind had just taken a brief departure from what your body is doing.  And awareness is what you gain if you manage not to lose concentration for a few years.  

Edited September 5, 2016 by Taomeow

[9th]

"concentration" only fits in that context if it retains a link to mental processing - so it winds up being a matter of how one interprets "concentration" - its focus of awareness but not necessarily engaging the mental processing, depending on the context.   i.e. if your brow is furrowed or there's fire in your eye, then that is a concentration that is more than simply focusing the awareness.

 

verb (used with object), concentrated, concentrating.

1. to bring or draw to a common center or point of union; converge; direct toward one point; focus:

2 to put or bring into a single place, group, etc.:

3. to intensify; make denser, stronger, or purer, especially by the removal or reduction of liquid:

 

verb (used without object), concentrated, concentrating.

5. to bring all efforts, faculties, activities, etc., to bear on one thing or activity (often followed by on or upon):

6. to come to or toward a common center; converge; collect:

7. to become more intense, stronger, or purer.

 

none of these definitions necessarily indicate any sort of action of the mind

 

so 9th, in the context you're using, concentration leads to awareness;

 

but I contend that the base mechanism is exactly the same, the key is getting the body & mind conditioned properly, and that's the mechanism to become aware of what heartmind is.

 

the process of concentration modifies and enhances the net awareness-experience

 

it just seemed like some terms were being mashed up.  or maybe I was perhaps a member of the consortium of gentlemen for  nominal accuracy in discourse in some distant existence

 

 

No - you read into it way too far and got hung up on terminology.  Im only interested in the meaning, not the words.  If that causes issues for people, so be it.  

 

Concentration as I refer to it above is exactly the same as "one-pointedness", as I stated above.  No need to consult the oxford or websters dictionary.  Here is some more word study for you:

 

 

Ekaggatā (Pali; Sanskrit ekāgratā, एकाग्रता) is a Buddhist term translated as "one-pointedness" or "concentration". Ekaggatā is defined as a mental factor that has the function to focus on an object. ^[1]

Ekaggatā is identified within the Buddhist teachings as:

• One of the seven universal mental factors within the Theravada abhidharma teachings.
• One of the mental factors that arises in the first of the five jhānas.^[2]
• A factor that counteracts the hindrance of sensory desire (kāmacchanda) within the five hindrances.

• Bhikkhu Bodhi states:

  This is the unification of the mind on its object. Although this factor comes to prominence in the jhānas, where it functions as a jhāna factor, the Abhidhamma teaches that the germ of that capacity for mental unification is present in all types of consciousness, even the most rudimentary. It there functions as the factor which fixes the mind on its object. One-pointedness has non-wandering or non-distraction as its characteristic. Its function is to conglomerate or unite the associated states.^[3]

  Bhikkhu Bodhi also explains that at the level of profound concentration (i.e. in the jhanas), it manifests as peace, and its proximate cause is happiness.^[3]

  Nina van Gorkom explains:

  Ekaggatā is the cetasika which has as function to focus on that one object. Seeing-consciousness, for example, can only know visible object, it cannot know any other object and ekaggatā focuses on visible object. Hearing-consciousness can only know sound, it cannot know visible object or any other object and ekaggatā focuses on sound.^[1]

  The Atthasālinī (1, Part IV, Chapter 1. 118, 119) states about ekaggatā (in the context of sammā-samādhi):

  This concentration, known as one-pointedness of mind, has non-scattering (of itself) or non-distraction (of associated states) as characteristic, the welding together of the coexistent states as function, as water kneads bath-powder into a paste, and peace of mind or knowledge as manifestation. For it has been said: 'He who is concentrated knows, sees according to the truth.' It is distinguished by having ease (sukha) (usually) as a proximate cause. Like the steadiness of a lamp in the absence of wind, so should steadfastness of mind be understood.^[1]

  Ajahn Sucitto explains:

  This is the factor of absorption that arises dependent on bringing to mind, non-involvement and evaluation. It occurs in meditation when the quality of ease has calmed rapture and the mental energy; the energy of focusing and the bodily energy are in harmony. The resultant merging of mind and body is experienced as a firmness in awareness, which is hence not penetrated by sense-impressions.^[4]

 

If you are unfamiliar with this, then perhaps that is the problem here.

[joeblast]

ah, okay

 

 

 

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – – that’s all.”