If you are interested, Richard Feynman has written about his experiences (the physicist) in Sensory Depravation Tanks. You can read the entire post at [0], and it forms one chapter of "Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman", which I highly recommend.
I just did it once and found it underwhelming, like quickstarting meditation, but not much more. After sometime salt started to crystalize at the water line, which was rather worse than lying in bed meditating.
This isn't surprising. Similar to meditation, a floating practice is something that is developed over time. I didn't enjoy my first float session and couldn't wait to get out of the tank. Now, with ~150 sessions under my belt, it's a very different story.
I recently had the same experience at a different float place in Seattle that I don't normally go to.
I went as this place had huge tubs -- about 6 ft by 8 ft. Also the ceiling was at least 6 foot so people could stand in there. It felt good to not touch the sides like I do occasionally st the other place.
However with a really tall ceiling it was hard to maintain the correct temperature and humidity. Salt began to crystallize on my body and the air temp was noticeably cooler than the water. So the effect was off. I bet this was the same place in Seattle that the author went to.
I mentioned this to the people running the place and they said it is a problem of humidity and they are installing infra red lamps to control it. I'm a little suspicious that this will fix it.
So for now I'll continue to go to the original place. The vats are more like tombs; you can barely sit up in them. But they are warm enough it is hard to tell what is in water and air.
I'm not sure about these Sensory Deprivation Tanks, simply because I haven't tried them, but it all seems a bit too much hocus pocus.
Richard Feynman (as one post mentions) tried it, felt good, had some experiences, but once out of it he quickly realized that it was just another perception. We all perceive, if there is no sensory input, the brain will fill in the blanks.
I've been practicing mediation (Vipassna, which is also minfullness meditation) for around 6 months now. I highly recommend it. The mind-body complex is what its mainly about. You have to observe your bodily senses and your thoughts.
As quantum mechanics demonstrates, observing changes the thing being observed. (Like the wave function collapse, I'm no expert). But you can surely change your mind by meditation.
> "As quantum mechanics demonstrates, observing changes the thing being observed"
Every single Vipassana practitioner I have met said something of this kind. I know this comes from one of Goenka's recording. But the analogy is bad, wrong, not even wrong, it does not mean anything. As rewarding and beneficial as meditation is to some, please leave quantum mechanics out of it.
Listen to some talks by Neil Theise and Donald Hoffman. They each make a pretty good case that conscious agents like humans and ants have many quantum-like effects that are directly comparable to entanglement and observation effects. The argument is that it is conscious agents all the way down
I wonder about how the analogy is being used though. On the face of it, it is just an analogy, saying that they work in the same sort of way. But usually analogies are made to something that the listener is already familiar with, to explain something new. Are people really that familiar quantum mechanics?
I'm wary that actually the alalogy is that meditation is like this concept, which lots of smart people believe in, even though it is accepted that the details are very hard to understand; so you won't need to understand the details of meditation either.
Many things were considered magic and witchcraft in the past and people were burned alive for being slightly more intelligent and/or intuitive in their approaches to life or various objective problems of the age. A good part of these "witchcraft" practices are now commonly known "life hacks", or "tips and tricks", etc.
Quantum mechanics is something nobody on this planet actually fully grasps. Isn't it our duty to be skeptical not only to the religious believers and meditation practitioners but to be skeptical about us being too skeptical as well, so to speak?
For all we know, there might exist a soul, consciousness, or a "hollistic wave front" as Dan Simmons in Hyperion / Endymion calls it, and it might as well operate exactly on one of the quantum fields of reality. (It might be a very fine and huge collection of mega-complex algorithms that work on a quantum plane same way our machines' code works only on certain silicon-derived dies.)
So again, why should we leave the quantum mechanics out of the spiritual/meditative/what-you-wanna-call-it experiences, exactly?
The objective truth is, for now both sides don't know for sure if they are right or wrong. No?
So again, why should we leave the quantum mechanics out of the spiritual/meditative/what-you-wanna-call-it experiences, exactly?
I think you're asking a reasonable question if you genuinely don't know. It should be answered or ignored, not downvoted.
Quantum mechanics is a sub-field of physics, which grows in the scientific way: you observe things, try to find "rules" that predict outcomes of experiments, perform experiments to distinguish between similar rules, follow whatever path seems to best predict outcomes and extend it by trying more experiments: "Yes, but what would happen if we did X?"
If quantum mechanics ever finds "spiritual/meditative..." ideas by this incremental extension process that are repeatable by anyone like the rest of QM, then this spiritual stuff will gradually become part of physics and will be science. QM isn't close to achieving that at this point and no reason yet to assume it ever will.
Alternatively, you could go at it from the other direction. Start with whatever spiritual/meditative practice rules you have and try to discover quantum mechanics by following those rules. Or use your spiritual tools to extend our current scientific knowledge of QM to something we don't already know from science but that can be tested and verified by anybody with the measurement gear, just like science.
If your spiritual tools can't discover QM, but have to wait for science, and can't even improve on what science has already discovered about it in any way, then people who know about QM via science won't take your combining QM with some spiritual system seriously.
Spiritual systems are vast in number and can have any rules they want, which should suggest a need to distinguish real from fake. If you have a real system, it should produce results you can't get from the fakes. Prove it. Demonstrate those results. If you want to include QM, then show results with that, too.
But just plugging proven QM into an unproven spiritual system does not increase the value of either one.
OFF-TOPIC: Thank you for your reasonable comment. It helped me because I honestly expected more of the general HN populace than to downvote instead of give a legit answer (whether or not it's obvious to them is irrelevant). I know this can bring me additional downvotes but to hell with this; I am not here for validation but to discuss and learn.
ON-TOPIC: You are telling me if I claim things the burden of proof is on me. I realize that and I am thankful for your reminder. But thing is:
(1) I never claimed anything. My comment was mostly "what if" and a possible thought-provoker. Definitely wasn't "engaging in pseudoscience" as some called it. It was a conversation-starter.
(2) I stand by my claim that we don't know everything and as such, we should be skeptical about everything -- including our current approach. Is that really such an outrageous position?
Apologies if my comment was seen as something deserving so much negativity, I honestly had no idea that a normal "what if" would be so triggering.
Again, I thank you for your reasonable and calm answer. It's much appreciated.
It's interesting that 1) insists you didn't claim anything, then 2) insists that you stand by your claim. ;-) Well, fine, it's not a courtroom, it's a conversation, and I'll try to be useful.
1) It's a natural question. Many people wonder about it, and each new generation will ask it all over again. People who think that because it has already been answered (many times) it should never be asked again need to grow up. They don't have to answer.
My background is physics, and for what it's worth I believe there is no value in combining QM with spiritual systems. I could be wrong, of course, and if you want to pursue it, just do some googling and find some good books, because it has been a popular topic for decades.
Warning: you will find mountains of pseudoscience. If you are most interested in amazing-sounding ideas and not how well supported the ideas are by repeatable measurements, favor books by non-physicists. If you care less about how amazing it sounds and more about what is best supported by repeated measurements, favor books written by people who know QM best: physicists.
2) Sure, be skeptical about everything, though not EQUALLY skeptical of all claims. (Less evidence -> more skepticism.) Real science needs to welcome skepticism (though real, human scientists often don't, unfortunately), while most spiritual practices don't, insisting that you have more faith or "first empty your cup" or otherwise overcome the weakness / character flaw of your skepticism. So, if you want to be skeptical, real science is a better approach for you (and me).
You can claim literally anything, and not all things are true, so you should have an approach to deciding. Mine is the scientific approach; you choose what you like.
You did suggest that we don't know everything about QM or spiritual systems, so maybe there is a connection. While philosophically true, such things are empty conjectures in science. We don't know everything about anything, so that argument supports all claims "A might be related to B", no matter what A and B are. Again, philosophically true but scientifically empty, because science doesn't consider something to be real until you actually observe/measure it. If you speculate about a connection between QM and something else, think of a way to measure it. Until someone does, there is nothing there, scientifically. It doesn't mean there never will be, just nothing so far, and nothing (in my opinion) to suggest there ever will be (again, scientifically).
Also, if you enjoy this type of discussion, you might enjoy reading more about the philosophy of science in general. You'll see more in-depth justifications for much of what I've been saying that aren't restricted to any particular field of science or non-science.
All of what you said is perfectly reasonable. I've studied the scientific method in the past and I've found it pretty much perfect -- but some of the very influential people in it are minds set in stone (as you yourself implied). But hey, as a programmer I am perfectly well aware that even a perfect system might be "flawed" due to the people applying it in the wrong manner (bias, credentialism, spheres of influence).
I am only vaguely aware of the term "pseudoscience" but I can assure you that I am anything but a wacko who wants to "kill the system" or believe in conspiracies that make zero sense, and for that matter also think our scientists are idiots for "not being spiritual". Not at all! Long gone are the times where I was amazed by alluringly-sounding "what-ifs" in all those trash books with triangles and eyes in them. I'm not even sure I ever was into them -- they were intriguing but I dismissed them as bullshit by the time I was only 16...
(That's why I was very disappointed by the downvotes. Seems like I projected a very wrong image of myself. That stung me hard, I admit.)
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I agree on the levels of skepticism, it's something I definitely missed in my comment and I thank you for bringing it up. I am not putting the spiritual methods above the scientific method, but I don't go the other way around as well. As a technical guy myself I can see clearly why science has a big advantage, too.
Let's face it: the spiritual practices will never be scientific -- not in the current form of the scientific method for sure. They require experiences on different levels of the brain / mind / consciousness / what-you-wanna-call-it. Many scientists strongly disagree these altered states of mind even exist. So there's that. (I have to wonder if they ever smoked pot or got drunk in their lives?)
I have no real point to prove in this comment. I can't disagree with a single thing you said.
It's more like me being sad that many people don't want to integrate human-level experiences into science. There are many things science announces in the last 1-20 years that many common people react to with "no shit Sherlock" and laugh (sorry, can't think of a good example right now). I believe such a mix could help science a lot.
Intuitive semi-revelations aren't scientific, yes. You won't ever hear me argue that! But those can and should be used as a starting point for a legitimate scientific research, wouldn't you agree? (Of course not all of them; nobody could care less if somebody's marijuana-induced hallucinations mean something really profound for physics).
I never heard of a scientist who actually tried really hard to study meditation; is there an official theory (and proof) about why does it seem to kill part / all of your negativity and stress? Is it because you can release dopamine into your brain by a conscious effort? Or is it because a part of the brain cleansing process which occurs naturally while sleeping is artificially caused by you with the meditative practices? A lot more can be asked.
I admit I have to do additional reading, that's a fact. But no, I am not interested in the BS stories about opening third eyes or merging with the Universe, etc. I am simply curious if the quantum foam is the hardware on which our consciousness runs and if the brain isn't simply a remotely-controlled computer; same like an SSH session to a powerful server, you know?
I am simply curious if the quantum foam is the hardware on which our consciousness runs and if the brain isn't simply a remotely-controlled computer; same like an SSH session to a powerful server, you know?
Wouldn't the existence of the drugs you mentioned kind of suggest that the brain is the mind, and not a remote controlled shell? Scientists don't ignore these experiences. Some scientists even came to their insights while under the influence of one substance or another. But that doesn't mean there's anything to them other than a straightforward process following the same laws of physics as everything else. Scientists have implanted memories into the brains of lab animals by altering proteins. Optical implants can be used to alter the brains of lab animals. Partial brain damage results in partial loss of function. All that seems to suggest very strongly that the mind is the brain, and the brain is physical.
Agreed. Everything we know right now fully supports what you say.
For the sake of the argument (note I'm not seriously believing the following): if I were to insist on the spiritual nature of our consciousness I'd then say that if the brain is a temporary physical manifestation of it and if it's damaged one way or another, our essence is "trapped" in the brain until we die.
...But quite frankly, that's an awfully long stretch even if one is a big believer.
It's more like me being sad that many people don't want to integrate human-level experiences into science.
No, no, many scientists do, but quantum mechanics is not "human level". Its weirdness at the fine-grained level usually averages out at the macro scale: probabilistic, jumpy, chunky, etc. at the atomic scale or smaller become (for all practical purposes) deterministic, stable, and smooth at the macro scale. Quantum mechanics is rarely useful for analysis of macro-scale phenomena. It would be like studying the human perception of time passing by resorting to relativistic time dilation: VERY unlikely to play any important role at the human scale.
There are exceptions where QM and relativistic effects are visible at human scale, but that's not a smart place to start looking for explanations of human-scale phenomena. It would be like losing my car keys and flying to Tahiti to look for them. As interesting as Tahiti is, if my real goal is to find my keys, I should start in the house, garage, car, office, etc., and ignore Tahiti.
The place to start looking for an understanding of meditative phenomena is cognitive science, not quantum science, in my opinion.
I never heard of a scientist who actually tried really hard to study meditation
Some are working on it. Go to scholar.google.com and search for meditation. Unfortunately, most of this work is done by the least scientific of the "science" departments. My (controversial) opinion of it is that a great deal of what is done in "psychology" is leftist junk science. What they discover often depends on the current political agenda they are trying to promote.
Though there is good work done by psych departments, too, the best real science in human cognition (of which meditation is a part) is being done by cognitive modelers using computers and algorithms, and AI researchers. They don't just claim to find things about people, they build cognitive systems and see what phenomena emerge. They explain phenomena by reproducing them--far more scientifically rigorous.
Cognitive modeling is too low-level to be ideal for investigating real human-scale phenomena, so it has to be combined with psychology, but it's much closer to human scale than QM. I believe that we won't have any solid, scientific explanations of meditative states until we can build working models of human cognition that are very close to the real thing and recreate ordinary mental states. Trying to just jump straight into it instead of slowly building up to it is like the ancient alchemists trying to make gold from lead with no knowledge of atoms or molecules.
RE: quantum mechanics, my mentioning it is mostly in the sense of wondering if the quantum plane is the "place" where our true "essences" truly live. Again though, that's just a wild speculation without any scientifical substance. I realize that, it's simply something I grew to wonder about in the last several years. I honestly can't claim any relation to anything spiritual, that's a fact that can't be denied.
RE: human cognition: IMO until science has a very detailed understanding on how is the brain temporarily altered while under the influence of various kinds of drugs, we can't do much progress there. I mean, that way your normal state would be a partial baseline, and the altered states would be something producing a different set of parameters compared to the baseline. Comparing both would give some insights, perhaps -- sounds hard as hell though.
Even cheaper - foam padded meditation mask (Mindfold Mask) and ear plugs. It puts you in total darkness and silence. Samadhi tank offers the same deal + floating in liquid, which is not so essential. If you can sit alert in total blackness for 30 minutes, you will lose your spatial orientation completely and feel like you are suspended in void.
I have practiced meditation for 20 years (normal meditation, without samadhi tanks and brain machines) and what is essential is to focus your attention and keep it on its object. It really feels like something different than day to day experiences, after a while. There is much potential for life hacking through meditation, the brain being so complex and open.
> As quantum mechanics demonstrates, observing changes the thing being observed.
Appealing to pop-quantum mechanics is an almost 100% accurate indicator that whatever you're pitching is hocus-pocus BS.
This statement is also wrong. Taking a measurement corresponding to some operator appears to put the system into an eigenstate of that operator. It may or may not change the state of the system. It's also many orders of magnitude too small to be relevant to considerations of bulk systems like the human brain and body.
He might be associating Vipassana with the Goenka courses. Any time the guy speaks, it's nonsense. He explicitly states his whole course and meditation is a way to make sure you reincarnate better.
Also lots of inane physics talk, mostly attacking scientists for figuring out stuff then claiming Buddhists knew such technical details all along.
Also, gems such as "a cat killing a mouse is not true nature".
The many days without any communication is great. The schedule, up at 4, hours of meditation a day, is great. But everything from the guy's fake accent/guru style to the words he says is "hocus pocus".
playing the piano well also requires practice, discipline, and effort. it's not science. it's an artistic performance skill.
meditation is an empirical approach to psychological and spiritual development. there is a lot of overlap between the empirical approach of Buddhist meditation and the empirical approach of Western experimental science. however, it's not accurate to describe meditation as science.
> "As quantum mechanics demonstrates, observing changes the thing being observed"
This isn't really a fair corollary. It's not that true observation that changes particles, it's that once we hit them with light (to enable observation), they change their state. This is so so often misinterpreted in journalism. The change has nothing to do with a conscious observer being present.
Vipassina is a style of meditation and does not refer to retreats specifically—though Vipassina retreats are common (from my understanding it's partly because Vipassina roughly means 'insight meditation,' and a deep state of relaxation/tranquility is required for the insights to emerge [and meditating for many full days in a row can get you there]).
Vipassana, as others have said, is just a meditation technique where one concentrates on the sensations in the body. That may sound very basic, but one can derive some very profound observations from that simple experience. It is usually taught in 10-day courses because it's extremely difficult to learn otherwise. The 10-day courses I've attended (3 so far) have all devoted the first 3-4 days to anapana meditation, a different technique that develops the focus necessary to even attempt vipassana. Without that focus, it's very difficult to get any benefit from the vipassana technique. Even as someone who has been through the courses, I find that my daily practice doesn't come close to matching the depth that I'm able to achieve during the courses.
The primary reason for this is the "noble silence" that's observed during the course. Students avoid communicating with each other, both verbally and non-verbally, for the first 9 days of the 10-day experience. This is, in a sense, another form of sensory deprivation. When your mind "turns off" the part that pays attention to what's going on for the purpose of figuring out what to say and how to respond, it changes the way you think and what you're capable of achieving during meditation.
So yes, the technique can be used outside of the 10-day courses, but it's a very different experience from what you get in the 10-day course. Personally, attending these 10-day courses has been very beneficial to me. But I stop short of recommending them to anyone who isn't sure they want to attend. It's one of the hardest things I've ever done. Sitting 10+ hours per day can be exhausting, both physically and mentally. And many people aren't equipped to essentially be alone with only their thoughts to keep them company for that amount of time. But if all that doesn't scare you off, there's nothing else that should and it can be a life-changing experience.
As others have mentioned, going for the 10-day retreat can help you get started. You have to understand though, that if you want to get into Vipassana meditation, do it for life. If you are motivated enough, then you don't need the retreat.
Some people like the company of others and a sort of schedule to keep. It motivates them. They go for the retreat. But I have seen them come back with absolutely no change. They still go back to their old ways, of talking shit about others, smoking, drinking, and they don't practice meditation anymore. This is just bad attitude towards Vipassana.
To be honest, I was introduced to Vipassana (and Yoga), when I was in rehab. 15 days of early morning meditation and Yoga helped me a lot. That got my interest going and I decided to buy self-help books and keep practicing.
Thats how its marketed. But no, Vipassna is a form of meditation practice. There are many others.
And to be honest its not the real stuff. What are 10 days? You are going to learn absolutely nothing. Mediation is a 24 hours a day practice. And it takes a lot of time to just get used to it.
For example, in one form they only tell you to focus your mind on an object (like breathing, or your abdomen). In Vipassna, the idea is focus first, but the next step is to observe your thoughts (mindfullness). Observe, never reject, whatever it is. Happiness, Lust, Greediness, Anxiety. Observe, and let it go. The mind is a crazy machine. More precisely, our chattering monkey mind.
Please read this book if you haven't already. I can't recommend it enough. It has changed my life.
Mindfulness in Plain English - Bhante Henepola Gunaratana
Everyone keeps recommending Mindfulness in Plain English, including people I have a deep admiration from. But I went into it thinking it'd be a no-bs exploration of meditation and closed the book once the author mentioned how some meditators experienced "talking to their ancestors".
I'm sure that you can be objective and cut through that type of statement but meh, I couldn't do it. Maybe I'll try again at some point but that one really put me off.
Rather difficult read. Not sure what the author is doing with his language, but even after rereading some of the paragraphs I still fail to grasp the point.
An example:
> "Hardly a week goes by, it seems, without an enthusiastic report in the popular media about intriguing neuroscience research linking some human behavior to the function of a particular brain circuit."
These things that he "learned" seem to be quite trivial and shallow. It seems he first came up with the title and then tried to fit his experience into this title.
[0]: https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=51786