but I do agree with metavision that you do not appear to be open to new or different things.

Appearances can be deceiving. It is precisely because I am open to new and different ideas that I have to do some kind of sorting of people's suggestions. If you want me to take something seriously, you have to give me reason to believe that it isn't nonsense. Else, I could spend the rest of my life studying one strange notion after another without ever having the foggiest idea what good it's going to do for me or anyone else.

I don't think you are seriously suggesting that I ought to be 'open to the idea' that the moon landing was a hoax. I don't think you are seriously suggesting that I should be 'open to the idea' that Earth was created in six days six thousand years ago. I don't think you seriously suggest that I should be 'open to the idea' that homeopathic 'remedies' (i.e. vigorously shaken bottles of pure water) confer any real medical benefit.

So why should trancendental meditation get a free pass?

How do you want to understand meditation if you are not willing to learn the basic tools.

I'm not unwilling to learn the basic tools, as long as the expected outcome stands in some reasonable proportion to the time commitment. I am, however, unwilling to accept at face value the often outrageous and frequently worse claims of miraculous magical power that are attributed to meditation. As I said above, I do not hand out 'get out of critical scrutiny free' cards for weird philosophies just because their adherents are sincere.

If you want to convince me that meditation is a good way to spend my time, then convince me on the merits. Don't try to recruit me into a cult and especially don't try to sell me snake oil. Chopra fails on both scores, as does his local apologists.

Over the years I have learned that there is more than science.

A fairly trivial observation. I don't know why people seem to keep thinking that I disagree with it.

(But if I had to guess, I'd say that it's because they don't understand or accept that I won't go along with their rhetorical two-step and accept that 'more than science' equates to their favoured kind of hand-waving magic.)

To me science descibes what can be perceived and measured consciously at this point in time. So many things were in the realm of magic, until someone came along and has been able to either measure it or make it visible. Then they became scientifically acceptable. However, these things excisted before they were proven scientifically.

I don't know where you're going with this, because that seems to be my point you're making? Science works. If you think you have an interesting effect, submit it for scientific scrutiny. Most of the time, it'll turn out that what you thought you were seeing was in fact confirmation bias, selection bias, placebo effect, wishful thinking or sensory illusions. That's the breaks of the game. But if the effect is genuine, we'll find it. Eventually.

Here a link to some SCIENTIFIC research on meditation. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/101/46/16369 :-)

Typing in all caps went out of style with FORTRAN :-P

That being said, that paper isn't terribly revolutionary [1]. From what I can read from the abstract, it says that meditation is coincident with enhanced levels of certain neurological processes associated with the ability to concentrate, which is entirely plausible and not exactly unexpected. If you wanted to convince me that meditation is a good idea, then this is the kind of thing you need to put forward [2].

That is, however, very much beside the point, since the discussion so far has been about whether or not we should accept the whole mythological baggage that some feel should go along with meditation. Meditation was presented as a 'tool' with which to 'explore the spirit realm' - and it was that notion which I rejected for lack of plausible mechanism and being untestable, not meditation en bloc.

- Jake

[1] Contrary to popular imagination, few - if any - papers are truly earth-shattering, but that's a different story.

[2] That being said, further studies are required to determine whether meditation is superior as a concentration-enhancer to - say - solving mathematical problems.

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