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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

This would be a workable explanation for being able to "soul travel" while meditating. When I did the whole Trancendental Meditation thing back in the late 70's it was all about clearing your mind of everything except a repeating mantra. EEG's of people meditating show rhythmic brain activity typical of sleeping.

If that is the case (and I'm not saying it is, just noting the potential path here) then it would suggest you could use a biofeedback system to tune the rhythm of your thinking to achieve this state without drugs.

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I’m curious why you stopped doing Transcendental Meditation? And do you do any other alternative / mind altering processes now?

As someone very interested in Transcendental Meditation but unsure where to begin, any pointers?

Yeah, it's a payment based system, for better or worse. Need to pay a teacher.

AFAICT it is a mantra based meditation. All you have to do is hand over all your money to a guru and they will give you some arbitrary mantra with which you meditate with, repeating the single phrase under your breath. IANATMG but I think the mantra should have little personal value; it is used as an exercise, presumably to do with the breath, rather than a personal philosophy type mantra.

I still meditate, it helps clear my mind. What I didn't do is buy into the whole program with its seminars and retreats etc.

When I was very much younger I was really curious about the claims of "mind over matter" types who claimed that the laws of physics could be changed to suit one's desires. A friend of mine had done the TM thing and she was enthusiastic and helped fund the intro / level 1 class for me (it was like $100 at the time and I considered that a LOT of money).

For me, the primary benefit of meditation is to quiet all of the 'noise' in my head[1]. Some of my best engineering designs have emerged after spending a couple of days alternately meditating and reading.

[1] Apparently some people don't have an inner dialog going on in their head, others are like me with a entire congress of competing dialogs all trying to be heard :-)

Music is probably another route.

What is "soul travel"?

Likely referring to astral projection.

Also known as "Astral Projection", "Mind Walking", and "Spirit Walking" it is described as "Stepping out of your corporeal body and moving around the world."

I've never accomplished this while meditating (and I'm not the type to experiment with drugs) but I did have this type of experience while volunteering as a test subject for a sensory deprivation experiment at UNLV. In that experience I got out of the tank (without opening it which was weird), walked out of the lab and got in my car (again by just sort of being outside of my car and then inside the car). I was thinking about how I could start the car without my keys when I realized I was completely naked and in that realization the experience stopped and I was back in the tank.

People are known to hallucinate in such tanks, it is expected, I found the experience very unlike dreaming and much more like I was more literally conscious the entire time.

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