BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Temple >

Meditation

  
 
Mike
11:58 / 03.01.03
A few people posting here have discribed meditation and hallucination as if they were the same thing. This is a subject of great interest to me and I am wondering what people think of as meditation. This line in particular interested me:

"...during meditation, on a little island next to a stream..." bear

Personally, I don't find hallunication difficult to achieve, and at all times I am able to control my mental and emotional states to some degree, but surely there is more to meditation than this?

I am reminded of Terry Practchett's line:

"What normally takes a lifetime of dedicated meditation can normally be achieved in about 3 seconds of illegal herbage."

...but I am also reminded of R.J. Stewart's warning in Living Magical Arts on the subject of Discipline:

"...students with relatively healthy bodies should not pursue paths of imbalance or disorientation in order to work magic. There are traditions that employ such means, but the price is very high to pay.

"The ultimate price of such short-cut methods is an inner decay or imbalance that may be carried over from one lifetime to another,extending beyond the obvious abuse of the physcal body. A typical modern example would be the use of LSD for alteration of awareness,or the cocaine and heroin usage that destroyed notorious adepts such as Aleister Crowley.

"Health in magic is about simple cleanliness of body, psyche and living environment."

So what exactly is the difference between hallucination and meditation? What is it that makes meditation distinct from hallucination?
 
 
Mike
12:06 / 03.01.03
Although there is already a thread on astral projection and it would be best to keep these two threads seperate, I would like to include this quote from http://www.astralvoyage.com/basics/FAQ_updated.html in peoples thoughts regarding the difference between hallucination and meditation:

"There is an unmistakable feel to leaving your body. You are very lucid and it has no dream qualities about it. When you lift your limbs, you can feel them rising. They are your limbs at that point, not the inanimate flesh on the bed."
 
 
Papess
13:32 / 03.01.03
You know, I have done both and I do not understand the question. Hallucination and meditation have different ends and are achieved in different ways.

I have had the experience of hallucinating and it is not like the experience I describe in the "power animals" thread. That was an experience. I was there! My entire awarness was there, it was not a hallucination.

I meditate, and it does not have hallucinatory quality, or I hallucinate and it is not meditative at all. I have sat in meditation for hours and hours, not one hallucination.

Hallucination is spontaneous and is not necessarily conjunct with meditation. Meditation takes practice, it is about being still and not about having distractions, including hallucinations.

So, maybe I do not understand the question properly but I do think these two states are one and the same, nor do I believe they opposing. I do believe that if you do meditate correctly, you do not have a hallucinatory experiences - but! on the flipside, if you are hallucinating correctly, you won't be in meditation.


Maybe we need a working definition.
 
 
Papess
13:34 / 03.01.03
Oops, typo!

"So, maybe I do not understand the question properly but I do think these two states are one and the same"

is meant to read...

"So, maybe I do not understand the question properly but I do think these two states are NOT one and the same"
 
 
Mike
15:08 / 03.01.03
To clarify, I believe that hallucination and meditation are distinct states of being, and I hope I didn't phrase my question in a way which suggested that I thought there were the same thing. However, many people describe the two in ways that overlap and I am interested in peoples' views on what makes the distinction.

Put it this way, How would someone who was new to meditation and was trying for the first time know whether they were really meditating?
 
 
Papess
17:07 / 03.01.03
No mind, no hallucinations, no thought. A state of gnosis unassauged by purpose or lust of result. That is what I consider meditation, anyway.
 
 
Kobol Strom
21:36 / 04.01.03
I've never seen the benefit of meditation, but to be fair -I haven't seen the benefit of hallucination either.I mean,the real world effects are what concern me if I'm going to invest time trying to achieve them.
Without a lust for a result seems an impossible state of mind -without going into buddhist nirvana states.
Meditation must be like surfing on the sea.I find that I plunge beneath the water too easily to appreciate the spirituality of riding the waves.
 
 
Nietzsch E. Coyote
22:26 / 04.01.03
Halucination is one mind state, essentially.
Meditation is a term that covers a multitude of mind states. This is where the confusion arises. Some states called meditation involve the attempt to empty your mind. Others involve visions. Maybe you should be asking about the difference between visions and halucinations?
 
 
Unicornius
23:05 / 04.01.03
I don't know. All I know is that meditation stuff can make you go blind...
 
 
Simplist
23:28 / 11.01.03
Meditation and hallucination aren't opposing entities or quantities. Meditation is an intentional activity or practice, while hallucinations are subjective mental phenomena. Now, one interesting facet of the activity of meditation is that phenomena definable as hallucinations may arise during it. Different meditative traditions offer different kinds of advice about how to relate to these phenomena. Zen Buddhism considers hallucinations, or makyos, to be valueless distractions, and recommends noting and then ignoring them. OTOH, the tantric visualizations of Vajrayana Buddhism could be said to amount to the gradual cultivation of a capacity for intentional hallucination, though with the eventual goal of gaining insight into and finally transcending identification with subjective mental phenomena altogether. And of course besides these two there are dozens of other systems of meditation with their own idiosyncratic goals and technical approaches.

How to know if you're "really" meditating? Adherents of most schools would probably say if you're sitting there practicing their particular technical approach, you're "really" meditating, but I get that your question is more about what types of subjective experiences might indicate that you're "meditating" successfully. Again, different schools have different ideas about this. There's an interesting essay (from yet another Buddhist tradition) on the eight jhanas, or levels of meditation, here which might give you some ideas.
 
 
Simplist
23:40 / 11.01.03
Oh and um, hello everyone. I'm relatively new to the board in general, and this is my first post over in these parts.
 
 
Sebastian
10:46 / 13.01.03
For me, above all, hallucination is a term used by psychiatrists. It basically defines a sensory perception that has no source in their world. I personally don't care if you don't see it, even if it starts whispering that I should kill you before you kill me. If it suddenly gets hold of my arm and slaps you in the face with it, then its no longer a hallucination and I'll have to deal with it. First thing I'll ask is if it can get hold of my prick.

For a shaman, a magus, a sorcerer, I think they can put aside the matter of "is it real or is it not?", if they are not already doing so. Its you decide, as long as you can, and then you act as if it were, or not. The one point value they have during mediation is that, when they occur, they imply that you have made a bit thinner the boundaries of your universe, or your mind, which are the same anyway. It is a small, empirical dissolution in the opposing scheme of inside-outside we are conditioned with.

As an aside note, many people not into magick already act as if their pairs living in the same world are hallucinations, in the psychiatric sense I mean. And then they wonder why there are so many personal and world-wide misunderstandings, war, misery, pain.
 
 
Wyrd
14:24 / 13.01.03
Since this is a medium of words, let's look at the dictionary definitions, courtesy of dictionary.com.

Here's one on Meditation:

Meditation

\Med`i*ta"tion\, n. [OE. meditacioun, F. m['e]ditation, fr. L. meditatio.]

1. The act of meditating; close or continued thought; the turning or revolving of a subject in the mind; serious contemplation; reflection; musing.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight. --Ps. xix. 14.

And now, hallucination:

Hallucination

hal·lu·ci·na·tion ( P ) Pronunciation Key (h-ls-nshn)
n.

1(a) Perception of visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or gustatory experiences without an external stimulus and with a compelling sense of their reality, usually resulting from a mental disorder or as a response to a drug.

(b)The objects or events so perceived.

2 A false or mistaken idea; a delusion.

So, as we can see hallucination has the inference of experiences which intrude upon normal reality over which we have little. or no, control.

For me, meditation is an act of will, in which you put yourself into a meditative state, usually with the notion of contemplating a subject, or of clearing the mind.

To hallucinate is to have non-ordinary visuals/auditory which are not originating from ordinary reality, but with "a compelling sense of their reality." Often, this is not willed, but occurs spontaneously. Though, hallucinations can occur as a result of willingly altering your mental state radically - as in through trance, drugs, etc.

So, I think there is a vast differnece between meditating and hallucinating. One is a willed state, and one is a state that is not always willed or under one's control.

If I'm hallucinating while taking mushrooms, for example, I'm unable to make the images/noises go away until the drug in my body abates. If I'm hallucinating because I'm seeing things out of the ordinary, but with no apparent cause, I'm not necessarily able to will them away. I can choose to ignore them, or not be excited by them, but in many ways they are independent of my will (though I'm not saying that they are not arising from internal processes).

Control is a interesting issue to consider. I would have been quite the control freak many years ago. However, my path has taught me that control is an illusion. Certainly in the larger context of life one has little control over anything other than oneself and one's own actions. Regarding control over mental states: it's certainly something to be worked towards because a disciplined mind is extremely beneficial when working with magical/spiritual matters.

Equally, however, sometimes it's good to surrender control and to work spontaneously with whatever occurs. The irony is that you usually need to have a sound mental state, and good grounding in magical matters (i.e. you've achieved a certain amount of control) to do this successfully. When you work with Plant Allies you are handing over control of your perception to another force, and that'a a leap of faith that most control freaks can't make. As a result, the issue of control will end up controlling them. I've done a lot of work on this matter of control, and the one of the best things I ever did was learn that sometimes it's good to lose control. It was not an easy lesson, but immensely rewarding.
 
  
Add Your Reply