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Comment by siavosh | Hacker News Reader

Are there any good broad multi-tradition books on mysticism?

I'm about halfway though "Angel Tech: A Modern Shaman's Guide to Reality Selection" https://www.amazon.com/Angel-Tech-Shamans-Reality-Selection/... which is a very interesting book that attempts to de-mystify mysticism using more modern concepts and language. Don't worry, no actual angels are involved nor does it either require or prohibit any particular religious faith. But it does require you to LARP as a robot if want to try their techniques.

It is loosely based on the Buddhist 8-fold Path as interpreted by Tim Leary's (yeah, him, sigh) 8-circuit model of consciousness, but also discusses tarot, cabala, alchemy, the Hindu Chakra System, western magickal esotericism, the usual boring stuff everybody gets taught in grade school.

It's better than most, but unfortunately like a lot of other books on the topic, knowledge of all the background material really is required to get a full understanding and appreciation of the content. I've just never found the time to sit down and actually read "Ulysses."

William James - The Varieties of Religious Experience

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_E...

I found interesting this article about common ideas among mystics from different traditions: https://centerforsacredsciences.org/index.php/Articles/the-m...

Then the site offers a recommended reading list, if you wish to go deeper into some of the traditions: https://centerforsacredsciences.org/index.php/Library/recomm...

Concordant Discord by Robert Zaehner is a book compiling a lecture series he gave at St. Andrews in the 1960's. I found it quite deep and a good view into some of the theological implications of different variants of mysticism, though it can be a bit dry, definitely not an airport-level treatment.

Not a textbook in any way, but I've enjoyed Aldous Huxley's Perennial Philosophy

https://www.amazon.com/Perennial-Philosophy-Interpretation-G...

The Science of Enlightenment by Shinzen Young has an interesting overview of multiple traditions and how they overlap in a lot of ways.

It's a great book and the material dealing with meditative practices and perspectives in Islam (Tasawwuf specifically), Jewish Mysticism and Orthodox Christianity is very interesting for sure, but the second half of the book wouldn't make sense to someone not familiar with Shinzen's style of discourse. For instance when he talks about "the source of self and world", one has to know he has switched to a phenomenological perspective, and it would help to have some experience of the 'selfing' processes with respect to craving, aversion etc and the entanglement of our senses. This isn't mentioned explicitly anywhere IIRC.

The book is edited from Shinzen's talks and an earlier version does have some guided meditations that introduce these practices but a newer version narrated by Edoardo Ballerini doesn't. In any case I think one needs significant meditation experience to comprehend the second half of the book.

https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/E4/E4AAFF6DA...

Becoming Supernatural by Joe Dispenza has promise. The meditation in that (especially the focus on pushing the cerebrospinal fluid up the spine) is probably the clearest instruction you can find (and mirrors the primary meditations in Taoism and Indian yoga).

I just downloaded this and read some of it out of curiosity. It’s probably one of the dumbest, most blatantly pseudoscientific things I’ve ever read. He freely recycles scientific vocabulary to mean… whatever the hell he wants, apparently, painting his mystical nonsense with a thin veneer of empirical legitimacy. I can’t believe tens of thousands of people actually read this stuff and see it as the work of a genius rather than the most obvious quackery.

It is possible to write scientifically about meditation and altered states of consciousness without liberally reinterpreting all of physics. See Sam Harris or John Yates for example (both neuroscientists). What the hell is this guy a doctor of, anyway…? Chiropractic. Why am I not surprised.

It's whatever makes sense to you. The fact is there is strong consistency between traditions in this core meditation.

Maybe you just prefer to take instructions on blind faith, but for me his claim that feelings cause the body to produce chemicals which influence the cells makes sense, removing my resistance to this meditation.

His logical fallacies etc do not necessarily undermine the meditation.

YMMV.

The cerebrospinal fluid already surrounds the spine and brain. "Pushing it up" sounds a bit like pseudo-scientific new agey talk.

It is TOTALLY psuedo-scientific new agey talk. That doesn't necessarily negate it's validity. What determines it's it's validity is whether it is a testable and repeatable method to accomplish a result, and whether it can be learned, then communicated / taught to others.

Aleister Crowley said in Magick in Theory and Practice:

"In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them."

So, have you studied and received training and tried your own personal practice in pushing up your cerebrospinal fluid / manipulating your kundalini energy / grounding your root chakra / whatever new-agey terms your chosen method uses? Or are you dismissing the validity of these methods without firsthand experimentation because of how other people in your society have trained you think and because you do not like the terminology that they use?

Assuming that this suggestion of “pushing up” CSF is possible, if taken literally, it would increase intracranial pressure (ICP). The normal ICP range is around 7-15 mmHg, and pressures outside this range can reduce cerebral perfusion, with increases potentially causing cerebral ischemia and brain herniation. Therefore, maintaining normal ICP is crucial for brain health. Let’s assume this supposed technique alters ICP minimally enough to stay within the normal range. I am not aware of any evidence suggesting that ICP at the higher end of normal (or anywhere within normal) is associated with health benefits.

There's a record of people reaching altered states of consciousness for millenia. However besides drugs the methods aren't widely known or recognised by the scientific community.

So by definition anything that produces an effect not readily accepted by 'science' is pseudo-science. It doesn't make it wrong it just means consensus hasn't caught up with it.

Maybe it's CSF that's pushed up the spine, maybe it's energy. But multiple traditions practice some form of moving awareness up the spine combined with gentle physical contraction as a primary means of creating the conditions for entering mystical states. Those same traditions describe how this method energises the endocrine system. Furthermore the effects of doing this are now documented in scientific papers (search pubmed for kundalini).

None of this negates the validity of the methods. They require firsthand experience for any real benefit, and more study to understand the exact processes at work.

I agree that that by itself, even when it's anatomically incorrect, that doesn't negate it's validity to produce effects and I like Crowley's quote.

I don't consider Joe Dispenza a good and experienced meditation teacher, and I don't consider serious his use of pseudoscientific explanations. Still, what he says may be helpful for some people, but I believe that there are much better meditation teachers.

For me the gateway was Sam Harris, Eckhart Tolle, Ramana Mahrishi and Ram Dass. Steve Jobs also kind of helped indirectly with his association with Neem Karoli Baba, Zen, India etc.

Welcome to the pathless path.

Maybe Schrodinger's What is Life might also help.

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