Higher levels of consciousness through meditation

It seems that we can now really state that Tibetan Monks achieve a higher consciousness through meditation. In a study involving 76 Tibetan holy men, neuroscientists were able to conclude that through a form of meditation these men could essentially alter, or heighten, their visual perception. The experiments involved the use of “visual rivalry” to test the monk’s ability to concentrate. Visual rivalry is essentially the minds way of perceiving two images at the same time. A good example of this, for instance, is when the spokes on a wheel seem to go backwards when in motion. The mind has trouble perceiving the wheel, and the wheel in motion, at the same time so you are tricked into seeing “backwards” motion. The mind essentially switches back and forth from both images to try and make sense of what you are viewing. There are hundreds of examples of this trick, or illusion, such as the 3-D cube that seems to show height and depth at the same time. The Monks, on the other hand seemed to show the ability, through meditation, to be able to stop this “visual switching”, for a time, and achieve visual stability. It’s an interesting find and proves that the mind can be trained to essentially reach higher levels of attention and consciousness.

www.biologynews.net...

This has been around for a long time Skycheif but nobody has been able to give a proper explanation, most believe it is some hoax but scientists can't expalin this Brain body relation.
In the 1970's a hindu godman from India( his name was Swami Rama I think!) claimed he could control his heart rate and could possible stop his heart by his own will through meditation. He was brought to the US ( MAYO CLINIC ) and was asked to perform this feat under observation from doctors, he stunned them all when he stopped his heart for nearly 8min and 'came back to life' under his own power. This is what started the whole Bio-feedback study that has caught on so much recently. The ability of the human mind to control even the most autonomous functions of our body and thus enable superior control and may even be used to bring about higer senses like ESP , telekinese etc.
If this is true and indeed the hidded power of the human mind then the stories of these godmen being able to go without food for years and levitation maybe actually true demanding further study!
Maybe this is next step toward evolution or maybe it is a skill available to only a choosen few but whatever it is it going to be big.

IAF

The concept of human conciousness is a strange thing indeed, the very world
we perceive around us - is merely a creation of our conciousness through social
conditioning and signals to the brain... Its no surprise that people can gain higher
stages of conciousness through exercises such as meditation - I try to practice
meditation as much as possible - temporarily removing the internal dialogue that
goes on in your mind is hard enough... These Zen monks (etc) spend their entire
life attempting to break through into the void, in an attempt to acheive unity
with the universe, in the infinite void that exists everywhere and no-where at the
same time - I've read a few books likes the Tao Teh Ching and the I Ching
and it is easy to see the effect they can have on your perception of the world around
you - I recommend them.

Some of those Tibetan monks strip down to their loin cloths and wrap themselves
up in a wet sheet - and will go out and sit in the freezing snow - eventually they
(through meditation) can generate enough body heat to create actual steam
coming off their body... Its pretty spun out stuff, I wish I was born there and was
raised under that kind of spiritual guidance... But then again, I wouldn't be doing what
I'm doing today if that was the case... and if I has to choose between Buddhism
and Communism... I think you all know what I would choose...

Yeah this kind of study has been around for a while. There is another test where they show an image and quickly remove an object or flash another object as your looking around. The idea here is that as you're looking around you are performing so called saccades, where you eye jumps around all over the image. Since you are given the instruction to identify the missing object, you must scour the image.

In this case, they remove or place an object in the picture. It occurs w/in several milliseconds, w/in the time period of a saccade, so you're not supposed to be able to see it. But I found, through an online java test, that if you look around while defocusing your eyes, you can easily spot the introduced or missing objects. I scored 97 percent and was going to email my results to the researchers, but they banned yahoo addresses.

The point here is that everything can do this kind of thing. I think the only reason I did well on the above test is that I spent most of my life drawing and painting. But, again, anyone can do all of this, including the monk stuff.


EDIT- The above demostrates that one can overcome "change blindness"

see - nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr...

nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr...
that's easy.

Can you defeat change blindess?
nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr...

How abotu this one? what's changing?
nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr...

I'm sure the monks could easilly answer correctly for all of the above.

[edit on 7-6-2005 by ktprktpr]

Originally posted by ktprktpr
But, again, anyone can do all of this, including the monk stuff.

I agree with this 110% - its all a matter of dicipline and patience - often a lifetime
of devotion, look at some of the feats the Xaolin Monks are capable of doing...
But not one of them has completely mastered the art - WHY ? - Because it takes
more than a life time to learn it all... But meditation can be done by all, it takes
a little to get used to - but even mastering the inner dialouge in your mind is like
reaching a new plataue of your mind...

I didn't see this documentry, my mum did - But they had these monks showing
what is capable with only the human mind... They got a human skull and placed
it on a stand - then this monk concentrated his energy and little by little cracks
begun to appear on the skull - they did x-rays and all the rest aswell - I wish I
had seen the doco - It would have blown my mind

Thanks for the replies everyone. I had no idea that this study had been around for a while, how did that slip by me? This is amazing though, when you consider the feats these "trained" individuals are able to perform. It often makes me wonder though, if at one time we weren't more in tune, or one, with our mind/brain. It is almost as if presently we are two separate entities, the mind/brain and the body. Did this happen through evolution for survival? Is this what separated us from the other animals and enabled us to move out of the trees? Through meditation, could we just be tapping into "powers" that have always been there just repressed? I may be way off here, what are your thoughts?