Hi Don (& Jan),

Thanks for your post re "Science & Yoga."

I like your writing — especially its teaching story quality. As I was reading your post, I found myself participating in VR scenes of the various "characters" you introduce and looking forward to what their interactions and outcomes would be.

> … I don't think there was anything I learned in the experiment that I couldn't have learned from having a good long conversation with one  other individual who was exploring this waking-dream transition. And  I certainly didn't uncover any patterns, laws, etc which could be used  for future research. The whole methodology by this time seemed to me  to be rather tenuous at best, superficial at worst. The quantitative  "control and manipulate" methods were extremely powerful but also  extremely limited, cutting out vast realms of reality, leaving only a  cold fragment to be controlled and manipulated. The qualitative  methods on the other hand were open to that whole aspect of reality  the other methods left out, but ended up providing very little real  insight. …

I think this comment re your "phenomenological/experiential experiment" is right on, and exhibits a kind of integrity that is often missing on both sides of the spiritual vs. scientific debate; i.e., authentically doubting the validity of one's cognitive map of the world and having the courage to look for ways of improving it …

>When is quantitative research valid, and when does it degenerative into mere "scientism"? … the dark side of scientism… and the possibility of what we IY'ers are calling a "Gnostic science"

I think these are important questions and am looking forward to the details in your next postings.

The general conclusion I've come to re this is the familiar IY stance that only through an authentic spiritual practice over many years do most of us have the possibility of evolving our consciousness from our habitual reactions to the world, to a place where we're truly being continuously guided by the Divine. And that only when we're in the inspired state that SA/M call "knowledge by identity," will our actions to improve the world have true integral wisdom.

Unfortunately, my impression via participation in numerous spiritual groups over the last 40 years is that claims of being in these evolved states are far more frequent than the reality. So in another post I may introduce a sort of complementary project with your looking at the dark side of scientism, i.e., the dark side of spirituality.

I'm intrigued by your hint at the relevance of Tibetan Buddhism. I've been impressed by the few Tibetan teachers I've met personally; e.g., Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and His Holiness the Sixteenth Gyalwang Karmapa. And I've been intrigued by the reports of "high-amplitude gamma synchrony" (coherent 40-70 Hz, with bursts of 80-120 Hz) being measured in long-term (15-40 years of meditation training & practice) Tibetan Buddhist meditators. Importantly, one study showed evidence that "the trained Tibetan meditators had baseline increases in gamma synchrony and amplitude, suggesting long-term changes in their brains from years of meditation. One might say they are more highly conscious in a baseline state, achieving even greater intensity of consciousness during meditation." Stuart Hameroff believes this high coherence measured at spatially distant brain locations is a possible indication of quantum effects in the brain.

Here's an evocative quote from one of the experimenters:

"In a book titled *The Quantum and the Lotus* by Mathieu Ricard and Trinh Xuan Thuan (Crown Publishers, 2001), Ricard (a molecular biologist turned Buddhist meditator and co-author of the Lutz study) describes the Buddhist concept of three levels of consciousness, including the most important 'fundamental luminosity of the mind'.  This is a 'state of pure awareness that transcends the perception of a subject/object duality and breaks free from the constraints and traps of discursive thought.' Moreover this form of consciousness, according to Mathieu Ricard, can exist independently of the brain, and in fact pervades the universe. Presumably, the meditative state marked by enhanced gamma synchrony represents an immersion of the subjects in this fundamental luminosity."

All of the above is from an article by Stuart Hameroff in the current issue of the *Science and Consciousness Review,* (which I recommend as a good source of the burgeoning research in this field). (www.sci-con.org/articles/20050601.html )

I guess the moral of all this is that perhaps we need more scientists who are also sincere practitioners of effective meditative disciplines (and visa versa) to start discovering more integral ways of doing research?

Namaste,

~ ron