I'm an atheist but I quite like Buddism...

[tantric]

Ill try to work your bathwater into my routine next-time I get the bug...

You mean, :gasp: all the spiritual mumbo jumbo is charlatanry Tantric? Who has two thumbs and would've thunk it?

Meditation is a technique for developing mental discipline. Do you understand the distinction between the scientific method and the body of data so accumulated? Same concept - robvalue wants to learn the method. You can do all kinds of strangeness with meditation - you can have hallucinations and 'religious experiences', if that's your cup of tea, but if you're receiving good, qualified Buddhist meditation, it should focus on the method. You inspect and observe how your mind works, the process by which sensory information becomes your identity. Ultimately, it should led to an awareness of the nature of reality, which bears a striking resemblance to some parts of quantum physics and solves the dichotomy between objectivism and subjectivism, so that a quantum of reality is composed of a seed, coming from an object that exists outside your mind filtered through your perceptions and layered in meaning by your mind and memories. A object without observers is meaningless and unknowable, a mind without perceptions is empty, so both are required for a moment of 'reality'. This is 'nondualism' - the observer and the object are neither separate (objectivism) nor the same (subjectivism), but parts of a process that creates the experience of reality. Most Americans are looking for techniques to deal with stress and help relax, not this, and robvalue may very well be doing the same. If you want what I'm describing, I strongly recommend zazen style meditations (do the sitting stuff, not koans). I'm done now, Rhythm can scream 'woo' and feel powerful.