Alex,
People regularly "meditate"(even when they're unaware of doing so). It is hardly an esoteric experience. Open road highway driving can frequently induce a meditative state. Many times people "get lost" in meditating on an idea, and miss exits, lose track of time, etc. The trick to meditation, to give it real, intentional utility, is to induce this state on demand, and to define the meditative subject.
The lexicon of meditation has been codified for two to three thousand years, as Ken Wilber pointed out in the excerpt I posted. The ability to verbally communicate the techniques, describe the various stages of meditation, and the use of specific mantras to induce specific meditative experiences attest to a definitive approach which appears rather scientific. Is it still subjective? Certainly, but there is enough consistency in the historical database of subjective meditative experiences to convince me that there is a fundamental cause and effect relationship which can be reproduced.
Regarding language and definitions as they relate to science, you have much more confidence in their acuity than I do. Language communicates perception, and it's the globally subjective nature of perception that makes language such a crooked brush for painting reality--even in science. For example, imagine you, I, George, Penni, CGB, Steven, E, a bunch of us, standing shoulder to shoulder looking at Mt. Ranier. Ask each of us to describe it (a rather simple assignment it would appear, afterall it's a static monolith). But then the fun begins: you might focus on its profile, I might focus on its texture, George might be describe how the light plays on its features, Penni's eyes might be drawn to the segue between the snowcap and the treeline, CGB its color, E its majesty, etc., etc. And after we compiled all of our descriptions we still would not have communicated the reality of the mountain in toto for we beheld it from one single vantage point, and there are equally as many valid, yet different, perceptions available at every degree in the mountain's circumference. Is "pure" science immune from this same subjectivity?
Rick |
