As I understand your question and framework, my approach is along alternate lines -- which I am happy to try to elucidate. I appreciate your background and skills in rational thinking, epistemology, understandings of the limitations and misperceptions of the senses and mind, cognitive biases, scientific method, etc as displayed in your posts (current and past ones that I have read in the archives.). I am not tied (as in feet in cement) to any of my views and welcome refinement and even significant change when I come to understand a richer, cleaner, more accurate approach to understanding both practicalities and mysteries of life. .
For me, in evaluating traditional (yogic, tantric, vedic, hindu, etc) practices and models of how the world works (as well as more modern hypotheses), a number of different lenses, experience, understandings come into play. I'll start with the following premise(s) with three more list at the end which I will try to map out if you are interested. And others. 1) The Process of Hypothesis Generation is Distinct and Separate from Testing and Validating such Hypotheses via Scientific Methods. That is, insights about the mechanics of life, nature, mind, universe etc. might come from a variety of sources or inspirations. Ultimately it does not matter the source of the insight. What matters is testing the hypothesis (and whether it has the potential to be be falsified) and the predictive power of the theory(ies) stemming from the hypothesis. For example, (as I understand it) both the special and general theories of relativity came to Einstein principally through thought experiments which sparked a fusion of highly disparate ideas -- a radically new way to view the universe. Only some years later, and continuing for many years to the present did experimental evidence validate the various aspects of Einstein's theories. And his theories have over time provided magnificent precision and power in their predictive capabilities. Friedrich August Kekulé greatly enhanced the understanding of chemistry and aromatic compounds, via insights into the structure of benzene via a daydream of a snake biting its tail.Newton and a falling apple. Archimedes in the bathtub. There are many examples of scientific breakthroughs inspired outside the lab, outside of logic and scientific method per se. Arthur Koestler wrote a wonderful book outlining many common parallels between the insights leading to scientific discovery, art, and laughter. In essence, his model is that common among all three is the fusion of highly disparate factors and elements -- outside conventional thinking and pairing. (Though some of his supporting evidence is probably updated and could benefit from the findings of neuroscience over the past 30-40 years) (On my TTC, Andy Kaufman (before he was "Andy f'ining Kaufman!!") asked MMY what made things funny or what makes us laugh. My recollection is that MMY said a similar thing that is its the "gap" between what is said and what is expected that makes us laugh -- and he went on to then tie that theme to the "Gap" between Absolute and Relative -- a big MMY theme in those days) Daniel Kahneman (cognitive scientist who won Nobel prize, outside his field, in economics , author of "Think Slow and Fast") describes intuition as, simply "recognition" -- that is the "fast mind" mostly below the surface, pulls together vast amounts of past information, into (at times) highly useful and effective heuristics, insights and motivations. (and OTOH is also the source of huge blind spots and cognitive biases). I am not at all arguing that thought experiments, day dreams, apples falling, bathtubs overflowing are repeatedly valid means of gaining useful knowledge. However, per above examples, nothing precludes such, or any softer, even apparently mystical means as a valid means of obtaining insight. Thus if someone says "God revealed this to me", or "I cognized the most fundamental sounds of creation", or "this really old book says this", or "my father told me and his father told him" , or "I had this awesome acid trip", or "it just came to me", or I saw it in the stars" (or tea leaves), or "Knowledge is structured in consciousness and I have a higher state of consciousness so I know things most people don't" (even if followed by a snarky tone), or I had a vision or a dream, or "Shankara (or Jesus, or .. ) talked to me" --- I don't really care (not should anyone I would argue). The source of insight for a hypothesis as to how the world works can come from almost anywhere. That is a wholly separate and distinct process from validation of the hypothesis. Once generated, the hypotheses of course should be to the extent possible validation via scientific means, tested as to its predictive power, and the capability of it being falsified (which String theory is as I understand it is not, thus 1000's of high level physicists and billions of dollars are being focussed on an area of inquiry that by some definitions, falls outside of science.) A problem is that many practical matters in life, more philosophical and metaphysical issues, mysteries of life, are not particularly well suited for repeated, large scale double-blind experiments and research. Thus, they can either be totally rejected (baby and bathwater IMO) or supplemental means validation can be explored. Some elements of such, for me include the following, which if you are interested I will attempt to expand upon and clarify. 2) Traditional Practices and Models and their Potential Partial Validation (via demonstrated adaptive evolutionary advantage over tens of thousands of experiments over 1000's of years) 3) Personal Observation and Experience (sorting out spurious correlations, cognitive biases, misinterpretation, to identify effective heuristics in ones own life (and possibly applicable for others) 4) Processes of Personal Validation and Acquiring Trust of Insights from Specialized Mentors Thanks for the question. Writing this out has been clarifying at least for me.
