Christian mysticism
Importantly, the experience of “thoughtless awareness” and its connection to higher states of consciousness is not exclusive to the East (although it is more systematically described in that culture than any other). There are isolated descriptions throughout the religious history of the West. For example in the anonymous Christian mystical text The Cloud of [...]
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This graph shows a comparison of the health of a group of experienced mental silence (Sahaja Yoga) meditators and three other groups including a group of Presbyterian clergy from America, a group of non-mental silence meditators, and the general Australian population. Health was measured using the Short Form 36 survey. The mental silence meditators’ health [...]
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The conceptualisation of meditation as involving mental silence is virtually absent in Western scientific discussion. Why has this important notion been ignored? How did contemporary, popular notions of meditation become almost diametrically opposed to the ancient Indian ideas which form their source? Some explanations are examined below.
When René Descartes made the philosophical statement “cogito ergo [...]
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The graph displays a key difference between mental silence based meditation and other types of meditation.
Previous definitions of meditation have not differentiated between meditation and relaxation. A key feature of relaxation is that skin temperature increases with the reduced physiological arousal.
This graph shows data from a heuristic physiological study where mental silence meditators manifested reductions [...]
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This graph shows the mental health of people sorted by how frequently they meditate with the mental silence based Sahaja Yoga. The graph depicts a correlation between the frequency of meditation for people who meditate and their mental health score. Mental health was measured by the mental health subscale of the Short Form 36 questionnaire.
The [...]
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While the strong metaphysical linkage between Eastern religiosity, its psycho-spiritual practices, and health may offer important new perspectives on the relationship between religiosity and health, there are a number of practical difficulties associated with studying the epidemiology of non-Western forms of spirituality. These include:
differing criteria of religiosity
new confounding variables relating to language, culture, ethnicity, diet [...]
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Posted in meditation, research on Aug 31st, 2009
As stated previously, the association between religiosity and mental health is not always positive. Larson’s (1992) review of studies exploring the relationship between religious commitment and mental health reported that while 72% described a positive relationship, 16% reported a negative relationship. This proportion is somewhat higher than would be expected by chance alone. Some scholars [...]
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