[thenmar]

I would be careful comparing the work of pseudo scientific "spiritualists" to that of neuroscience. Why do you think scientists don't embrace these ideas? Is it really because they're somehow spiritually devoid and foolish and intentionally ignoring whatever truth you think you're grasping? Or is it because what you're talking about is nebulous and inherently impossible to test, with no theoretical underpinning based on experimental observation?

[cinquemb]

It's funny, because in the lab I work in, we explicitly explore the subjective experience of mediators and novices, under different mental states, and record with EEG and fMRI. What people may think of as "nebulous and inherently impossible to test, with no theoretical underpinning based on experimental observation", is often closer the opposite in the scheme of things…

[thenmar]

I wasn't saying that meditation isn't measurable, or that it's a waste of time, I was talking about the idea of the brain as a "receiver of consciousness". Meditation is definitely interesting, but it is dangerously easy to cross from "this helps/interests me personally" into "I have constructed an irrational belief system based on insights that are ill defined and not supported by evidence"

[cinquemb]

I see what you're saying, and I have to add that such boundary (if such is even well defined) isn't necessarily limited to "spiritualist" and not neuroscientists (at least from what I have seen…) or any other groups of people when such groups are often arbitrarily defined by any given society.

Consciousness is ill defined scientifically (and even among the many concepts that practitioners of what people equate to meditation have been arguing about for thousands of years) and if you asked the layman what they equated to what consciousness is, one would probably take away the same amount of information as to what it is compared to asking neuroscientists.

People throughout the times have had many ideas that were seen as rational and seem to be based on insights supported by evidence, until later on people learned that such beliefs/ideas were irrational and the supported evidence was dubious. The people who lived and died when such ideas/beliefs were not irrational will never know it, same with those who died thinking it helped them/such things were in their personal interests no matter how "true" such things may have been for x period of time.

Maybe if we seek didn't limit ourselves to what things can and can't be, "receiver of consciousness" wouldn't seem so irrational any more than what people now equate to popular science that at some time was equally as irrational but is no longer questioned to the same degree which could be equally as irrational at some point in the future.

But yeah, some sr. research scientist phd who studied ap physics and helped build quantum computers and now trying to apply the some methods they learned in a field to psychology/neuroscience where the current "kings of the hill" use surveys and more surveys with the occasional cutting some people/animals open, is probably not going to want to entertain ideas that relate qed systems and qm theories to meditation with meditation instructors not versed in such to any conversational degree, when they have a hard enough time trying to explore such things with neuroscientists they work with who just got some big funding from politicking that in the scheme of things probably wont advance the field any more than next dubious publication that gets plastered over social media and perceived as fact.

[hosh]

What kind of work do you do at your lab? I'm dubious about being able to measure experience, but hey, I've been wrong lots of times before. I've had some superficial thoughts about how quantum computing relates to consciousness, but I simply don't have the background to seriously explore this.

[hosh]

Thanks for your comments, you two.

That idea that "the brain is a receiver of consciousness" is held in a number of different teachings. I wasn't necessarily trying to establish equivalence. I'm speaking of a very different view of the world.