[PhantomBKB]

Don't mess around with your breathing without guidance. It can do more harm than good.

Pranayama is an ancient Indian science passed down from saints who received these teachings as divine visions. It didn't materialize as a result of experimentation as many would assume.

Even practices like Sudarshan kriya (which makes use of breathing) were passed down to Shri Shri as a divine teaching.

So my advice is to not experiment with your breathing unless you have proper guidance and knowledge.

[otikik]

First of all, I agree that breathing is too critical of a system to tamper with without a backup or assistance. I do think that the human body has a degree of flexibility though (we breathe heavily after exercise, and that's fine).

> Pranayama is an ancient Indian science passed down from saints who received these teachings as divine visions

I don't meant to offend, but that doesn't sound like any kind of science to me.

I am sure it has helped a lot of people and a lot of people believe in it. But if it doesn't come from hypothesis, experimentation, and, in the case of medical treatments, clinical trials, it simply isn't science. Or "ancient science".

There's another kind of belief system which accepts axioms coming from divine visions and divine teachings, though. It rhymes with "pigeon".

[PhantomBKB]

> But if it doesn't come from hypothesis, experimentation, and, in the case of medical treatments, clinical trials, it simply isn't science. Or "ancient science".

Way I see it is, we humans are the most sophisticated creatures on our planet. Our birth onto earth is a natural process by all means. By natural, I mean we are a product of nature after all. We humans try to understand the nature around us including ourselves, which is what we termed as science. Our scientific thought itself is a product of nature, and they translate to our endeavors and curiosity to unravel the secrets of reality.

These visions that I spoke about are nothing but the universe speaking to these great rishis. By universe, I mean nature itself. Nature is bestowing knowledge upon its own creations to aid them in understanding itself! The same nature that has imbued life into our bodies when we are born. The same body which will eventually turn to soil after it has run its course.

Now, you might wonder, why nature is not bestowing these sort of gifts upon you? Frankly, I do not know myself. It is what it is. On the bright side, nature has bestowed the most fortunate gift of being born as a human being which almost as a law of nature makes the heights you can go to limitless. No other creature has the same benefits as human beings. We are born with both curiosity to ask questions and intelligence to analyze and infer profound meanings from their answers.

While "we", the ordinary humans live for about a 100 years before forsaking our bodies, however there are people who live for 1000s of years. It's a realm of possibility not yet uncovered by modern science.

> There's another kind of belief system which accepts axioms coming from divine visions and divine teachings, though. It rhymes with "pigeon".

That only came into picture recently during the last ~2000 years. The ancient knowledge I am referring comes from way before.

[otikik]

I don’t doubt you believe what you wrote is truth, but please try to imagine how they sound to someone like me, who has never heard any of this. “People live for thousands of years” is such an extraordinary statement that it simply cannot be thrown around without backing it up with equally strong evidence (at minimum, a list of names). The fact that you present that as fact without any further explanation is a worrisome sign. It’s what someone in a cult would do. Again, I mean no disrespect. Perhaps you were just writing on your mobile and not willing to spend longer time than necessary explaining your beliefs to a stranger on the internet.

[PhantomBKB]

Here's one:

https://www.unexplainable.net/info-theories/mahavatar-babaji...

But really, you might think living a 1000 years is extraordinary, however, the soul (or the life we have in each of us, including you and me) is immortal. When we die, it's simply the body that is discarded. But life itself never perishes. The soul takes multiple births in new bodies and this process of life and death goes on and on until the soul merges with the supreme conciousness. So what's the proof for all this? Well, there's nothing to prove it as false either.

Modern science disregards things that it cannot experience and "see the proof of" for itself. But that's like a person who lacks sensual perceptions saying stimuli that interacts with their senses does not exist. For example, if a blind person says light does not exist or a deaf person says sound does not exist. They might even deny its existence despite you telling them otherwise, that's because they cannot experience it for themselves. So who's to blame them?

Similarly, we are kept from higher understanding due to our inability to experience. That does not mean it does not exist. It simply means we are incapable.

There are many fantastic things in this universe that science knows it cannot understand and even more things that science does not even know exist.

[otikik]

I forgot to address this:

> Here's one:

> https://www.unexplainable.net/info-theories/mahavatar-babaji...

Sorry but that blogpost doesn't qualify as "evidence" to me. There's no verifiable facts. All that it offers is "someone said they have seen them" and at the end it mentions "some people have seen a weird man on the Himalayas". No pictures, not even a real name.

That puts this immortal yogi on the same evidence level of as the Yeti (also believed to live somewhere in the Himalayas), the Bigfoot, or the Rip van Winkle (a guy who allegedly slept for 20 years, although his original story is definitively a made-up story).

[otikik]

Science keeps advancing. We used to think that the Sun went around Earth, and it was a God (Ra, Helios). Then Science came and put the Sun in its current place. We used to think that illness was produced by demons. And then we discovered the microscope, germs and vaccines.

Science keeps taking over more and more of what used to be “attributed to the gods”. Religion keeps losing ground. It’s only natural that religious people feel the need to attack (with logic platitudes- science has never claimed to be able to explain everything)

There will always be people who say that the gods talk to them. It’s a trick as old as the world. A way to gain power, notoriety, or a sense of importance.

The way I see it, when someone makes a discovery in a laboratory (a real discovery, the kind that takes years to produce) then that’s a real manifestation of the Universe understanding itself.

[PhantomBKB]

You are right about religion, but what I am talking about is spirituality. Here's the definition for better clarity: the quality of being concerned with the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.

Modern science stays away from this space for whatever reason, but isn't this just another kind of science like the study of cosmos or microbes? It is a very important facet of life, which dwells into questions such as the meaning of life, what happens after death, when does life enter into a mother's womb, etc. All these questions are of scientific nature.

However, to address these questions we cannot simply break open or dissect things to understand how they work. Naturally, because these questions do not deal with the material world. To understand such phenomenon, one should first understand the subtlety of the soul.

The breathing techniques or pranayama that this thread was originally about deals with yoga. Pranayama is a part of yogic teachings. Yoga is a sanskrit word which means the union of mind and body. The union that the word yoga is referring to is that of uniting individual consciousness (our individual experience of reality) with Divine consciousness (the essence of truth as perceived when we quiet our five senses and reconnect with the Supreme Self within)[1].

So it's not just breathing, or stretching your muscles as it is usually portrayed as. There's a far deeper subtlety in it which is better kept undisturbed from experimentation without having knowledge of the subtler entities.

> ...when someone makes a discovery in a laboratory (a real discovery, the kind that takes years to produce) then that’s a real manifestation of the Universe understanding itself.

That's true as well, but there are yet discoveries to be made by understanding the nature of the "self". Something that involves looking within rather than outside in the material world.

[1]: https://www.yogapedia.com/what-is-the-true-meaning-of-yoga/2...