Carrying on from State of scientific research into meditation & consciousness.
I was just watching a documentary called 'Hunting for Hedonia' based on a book called 'The Pleasure Shock' by Lone Frank about the controversial work of Dr Robert Heath, a neuropsychiatrist/surgeon who researched into which area of the human brain pleasure resides; the "seat of pleasure" which he called hedonia (meaning pleasure, from which we hedonist).
Heath's work involved neuromodulation, the stimulation of the brain with electrical signals via thin wires placed directly into the brain, sometimes called "deep brain stimulation", which has since been accepted as treatment for debilitating illnesses.
In itself it was an interesting parallel to research into meditation (or indeed trepanning!) to which meditators might respond saying that they were able achieve the same kind of results by mental focus, which I suppose is their theory ... Personally, I don't know that. May be its true, may be there's a different explanation.
As with any profound scientific develop in this area, it challenges and demands explanations from spiritual practitioners, eg if doctors are now able to 'switch on' and 'off' happiness, edit memories, "cure" depression or Parkinson's Disease (conditions the BKs would say are all caused by past karma), change personality traits, perhaps even enhance mental abilities and electively restore thoughts how does that sit with the BK concepts of karma and the burning off of bad karmas via meditation?
If say, according to BKism, depression is caused by past bad karma or negative activities rather than unfortunate chemical or electro-chemical brain states, how does being able to switch it on or off with the flick of a battery switch change or challenge our understanding of that?
However, something that caught my attention were comments made by a professor of psychology towards the end of the documentary regarding memories, "memories are what make us who we are, they are everything; our knowledge, our experience, our identity".
He went on to relate how he was brought up by his grandparent who suffered profound life experiences during WWII (they were European Jews) and how her memories determined her reactions which, 50 years later, determined how he reacted to his children ... even though he was never consciously told about those memories and experience. He considered that we have vastly more memory, detailed memories, of the past than we have immediate access too.
This made me think again about the idea that BKism is primarily Lekhraj Kirpalani's unresolved mental issues; his mental and emotional traumas such as those from his childhood and from his culture, and that culture's subjection to and humiliation by the European "Yadavas", his rejection by his peers right up to the reports of the horrors of WWII ... and how he passed them on and traumatised the young girls and cloistered women of the Bhaibund (uneducated women who would have hardly seen life outside of their family's homes and only then seen life through the one eye they looked out of through their veils - a Bhaibund habit). And how BKism tends to carry that cloistered them and us world view now.
We, in our turn, were traumatised into all of their compound and confused madnesses on being indoctrinated and initiated into the sect; wrapped up and re-packaged in layers and layers of fears, idiocies and ignorances, dishonesties and manipulations, from every subsequent generation of influential BKs; the Jankis and Jayantis; the Chanders, Shubows and Boleses; the Bacons and Georges, the Subiranas, Surajs and Shivanis ... I've lost track of who is at the helm now.
A great snowball of unfiltered, unchallenged, unresolved nonsense based on those individuals' needs - not our own - to work through, now rolling down the hill picking up more and more momentum as it goes ... and more and more outside influences.
Encouraged on as long as it picks up gold as it goes but causing considerable devastation in its path.
I was just watching a documentary called 'Hunting for Hedonia' based on a book called 'The Pleasure Shock' by Lone Frank about the controversial work of Dr Robert Heath, a neuropsychiatrist/surgeon who researched into which area of the human brain pleasure resides; the "seat of pleasure" which he called hedonia (meaning pleasure, from which we hedonist).
Heath's work involved neuromodulation, the stimulation of the brain with electrical signals via thin wires placed directly into the brain, sometimes called "deep brain stimulation", which has since been accepted as treatment for debilitating illnesses.
In itself it was an interesting parallel to research into meditation (or indeed trepanning!) to which meditators might respond saying that they were able achieve the same kind of results by mental focus, which I suppose is their theory ... Personally, I don't know that. May be its true, may be there's a different explanation.
As with any profound scientific develop in this area, it challenges and demands explanations from spiritual practitioners, eg if doctors are now able to 'switch on' and 'off' happiness, edit memories, "cure" depression or Parkinson's Disease (conditions the BKs would say are all caused by past karma), change personality traits, perhaps even enhance mental abilities and electively restore thoughts how does that sit with the BK concepts of karma and the burning off of bad karmas via meditation?
If say, according to BKism, depression is caused by past bad karma or negative activities rather than unfortunate chemical or electro-chemical brain states, how does being able to switch it on or off with the flick of a battery switch change or challenge our understanding of that?
However, something that caught my attention were comments made by a professor of psychology towards the end of the documentary regarding memories, "memories are what make us who we are, they are everything; our knowledge, our experience, our identity".
He went on to relate how he was brought up by his grandparent who suffered profound life experiences during WWII (they were European Jews) and how her memories determined her reactions which, 50 years later, determined how he reacted to his children ... even though he was never consciously told about those memories and experience. He considered that we have vastly more memory, detailed memories, of the past than we have immediate access too.
This made me think again about the idea that BKism is primarily Lekhraj Kirpalani's unresolved mental issues; his mental and emotional traumas such as those from his childhood and from his culture, and that culture's subjection to and humiliation by the European "Yadavas", his rejection by his peers right up to the reports of the horrors of WWII ... and how he passed them on and traumatised the young girls and cloistered women of the Bhaibund (uneducated women who would have hardly seen life outside of their family's homes and only then seen life through the one eye they looked out of through their veils - a Bhaibund habit). And how BKism tends to carry that cloistered them and us world view now.
We, in our turn, were traumatised into all of their compound and confused madnesses on being indoctrinated and initiated into the sect; wrapped up and re-packaged in layers and layers of fears, idiocies and ignorances, dishonesties and manipulations, from every subsequent generation of influential BKs; the Jankis and Jayantis; the Chanders, Shubows and Boleses; the Bacons and Georges, the Subiranas, Surajs and Shivanis ... I've lost track of who is at the helm now.
A great snowball of unfiltered, unchallenged, unresolved nonsense based on those individuals' needs - not our own - to work through, now rolling down the hill picking up more and more momentum as it goes ... and more and more outside influences.
Encouraged on as long as it picks up gold as it goes but causing considerable devastation in its path.