Spiritual Atheist Musings

[The Grand Nudger]

welcome back.

[mhikl]

welcome back.

Namaste Rhythm,
I got a nice letter from Atheist Forums Staff saying that I was missed. I thought that was kind of cool so thought I'd check back in. Forgot all about this forum and am glad to have received the reminder.

[BethK]

Hi Mihiki won't welcome you yet due to the woo content of your posts;I'm hoping you're a Poe.

There is no evidence for existence of the spiritual.

There is no evidence of reincarnation, of any kind of survival after death, nor any evidence of any personality transferring into the body of another person.
...
Paramahansa Yogananda was fascinating figure and either a gullible fool or a or charlatan. I'm pretty much convinced he was a harmless nutter after reading his amazing "Autobiography Of A Yogi" several times. The book makes some pretty startling claims but presents no evidence: EG the bi-location of his guru, Shi Yukteswar,swami Prabanana,"the saint with two bodies",Nagendra Nath Bhaduri."the levitating saint" and he also breathlessly recounts the story Therese Neuman, the Christian 'mysti'c and stigmatic who claimed to survive on communion wafers. It's woo.

PS: I also studied Kriya Yoga with a teacher,and can meditate in using Kriya or Hatha Yoga. Meditation is not evidence of the spiritual. The techniques I was taught can be learned in an hour.Then it's practice.

I also meditate using Samkhya Yoga. Samkhya is a so-called "atheistic" sect of Hinduism; their texts explicitly state that there is no uber God, but they still believe in some metaphysical things. The technique can be taught in 5 minutes. There's nothing to memorize, and no Gawd-woo involved. It's about the consciousness - which is unrelated to the existence of God.

I've looked at other forms of meditation too, and done some of them. I have found that the more "godly" the thing claims to be, how it (ancient wisdom) was passed down through generations of "great masters", and how you are now privileged to have it offered to you, the greater the price tag involved. Transendental meditation is quite costly, and so is the Self Realization Fellowship, depending on what you do with it.

The fact that meditation exists, or that it works to create any change in anyone just proves that human beings have minds and brains. It's got nothing to do with anything supernatural, does not prove life after death, cannot cause someone to be in more than one place at a time, cannot move objects, cannot cure any number of things, but may help prevent IN THE MEDITATOR things which are stress related or things that just plain have to do with not paying attention to things.

However, if it always actually caused human beings to use their brains, many people would not fork over thousands of dollars and become subservient to other claims or demands of organizations which claim to teach this which is so-simple.