--- In [email protected], Vaj <vajradh...@...> wrote: > > > On Jun 9, 2009, at 12:07 PM, Richard M wrote: > > > --- In [email protected], Vaj <vajradhatu@> wrote: > >> > >> We have EEG evidence of Samadhi in Patanjali > >> yogins, so we know what it looks like. If you can't replicate those > >> findings in students, I would hope that would be a point of concern > > > > Vaj - can you not see the methodological flaw in this? It's circular. > > Since this has been discussed before here, ad nauseum, I did not feel > I needed to explain in any detail. > > The statement relies on the assumption that the traditional Patanjali > yogins were not lying and that they knew, through their lineal > instruction, what that state of consciousness was. However, given > that we've now replicated this finding in numerous other yogins, in > numerous independent labs, and that the same process now is > understood to underlie neuroplastic restructuring of the brain, I > have a significant degree of confidence in such statements--or I > wouldn't make them. >
A circular line of reasoning remains circular no matter how many times you turn the handle. Putting back your snip: "Let me re-phase your statement slightly: We have tested these guys and found a pattern. We see that that pattern matches what samadhi looks like. Therefore we now know what samadhi looks like. Groan... Or is it: We don't know what samadhi is, but whatever it is, we know these guys have got it (how, if we don't know what samadhi is?). So now we've measured them, and as a result we now know what samadhi is. Groan..." You seem to have gone with version 2. But as a rider to "we know these guys have got it" you've introduced: "the assumption that the traditional Patanjali yogins were not lying and that they knew, through their lineal instruction, what that state of consciousness was". That doesn't do it for me.
