Is Ron Martoia, Stephan Joubert and Nelus Niemandt Experts in their Field?

24 comments to Is Ron Martoia, Stephan Joubert and Nelus Niemandt Experts in their Field?

• Amanda

  September 12th, 2009 at 6:36 am

  DTW
  Let me help you out with the Ron Martoia quotes. You seem to miss an important part of the puzzle. Those who meditate, subject their brains and thinking into extra-ordinary processes as described in the article below. Please read the full article as it will help you to understand.

  What I find very interesting is the reference to epilepsy and how abnormal electrical activity in the brain can produce a religious experience. I have an educational video that shows children having different types of seizures. In one clip you can see a girl having an absence seizure. She is talking away and then her eyes loose their focus and her facial muscles go slack and she is clearly unconscious. I have seen the exact same sequence in the Toronto blessing videos. Another clip shows Howard-Brown zapping people and they burst into uncontrollable laughter. The one man gasps that it hurts, before being thrown into another fit of hard laughter. There was nothing amusing about it. Did you know that there is a rare type of seizure called gelastic seizures that look exactly like that? Parents report that their children show extreme fear when they know the seizure is starting. It is most unpleasant. When Kenneth Copeland zaps Rodney Howard-Brown, he falls to the ground unconscious as if in a generalized seizure.

  Those who have the condition called epilepsy, battle the seizures. Others, who seek after ‘transcendence’, induce altered states of consciousness deliberately and call it the presence of god. It seems to me that meditation is the LSD of the emergent church.

  Here are some extracts from the article:

  Your Brain on Religion:
  Mystic visions or brain circuits at work?
  By Sharon Begley, Newsweek, Copyright May 7, 2001.

  OUTSIDE OF TIME AND SPACE

  In neurotheology, psychologists and neurologists try to pinpoint which regions turn on, and
  which turn off, during experiences that seem to exist outside time and space. In this way it differs from the rudimentary research of the 1950s and 1960s that found, yeah, brain waves change when you meditate. But that research was silent on why brain waves change, or which specific regions in the brain lie behind the change.

  Neuroimaging of a living, working brain simply didn’t exist back then. In contrast, today’s studies try to identify the brain circuits that surge with activity when we think we have encountered the divine, and when we feel transported by intense prayer, an uplifting ritual or sacred music.

  Although the field is brand new and the answers only tentative, one thing is clear. Spiritual experiences are so consistent across cultures, across time and across faiths, says Wulff, that it “suggest[s] a common core that is likely a reflection of structures and processes in the human brain.”

  There was a feeling of energy centered within me … going out to infinite space and returning … There was a relaxing of the dualistic mind, and an intense feeling of love. I felt a profound letting go of the boundaries around me, and a connection with some kind of energy and state of being that had a quality of clarity, transparency and joy.

  I felt a deep and profound sense of connection to everything, recognizing that there never was a true separation at all.

  On the Cover: Science & the Spirit

  A look at the relationship between religion and the brain

  Religion And The Brain

  Is God all in our heads? A look at ‘Neurotheology’ and the biological basis of spirituality

  - Faith Is More Than A Feeling

  The problem with Neurotheology is that it confuses spiritual experiences with religion That is how Dr. Michael J. Baime, a colleague of Andrew Newberg’s at Penn, describes what he feels at the moment of peak transcendence when he practices Tibetan Buddhist meditation, as he has since he was 14 in 1969. Baime offered his brain to Newberg, who, since childhood, had wondered about the mystery of God’s existence. At Penn, Newberg’s specialty is radiology, so he teamed with Eugene d’Aquili to use imaging techniques to detect which regions of the brain are active during spiritual experiences. The scientists recruited Baime and seven other Tibetan Buddhists, all skilled meditators.

  TESTING FOR THE TIMELESS AND INFINITE

  In a typical run, Baime settled onto the floor of a small darkened room, lit only by a few candles and filled with jasmine incense. A string of twine lay beside him. Concentrating on a mental image, he focused and focused, quieting his conscious mind (he told the scientists afterward) until something he identifies as his true inner self emerged. It felt “timeless and infinite,” Baime said
  afterward, “a part of everyone and everything in existence.” When he reached the “peak” of spiritual intensity, he tugged on the twine. Newberg, huddled outside the room and holding the other end, felt the pull and quickly injected a radioactive tracer into an IV line that ran into Baime’s left arm. After a few moments, he whisked Baime off to a SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) machine. By detecting the tracer, it tracks blood flow in the brain. Blood flow correlates with neuronal activity.

  Attention: Linked to concentration, the frontal lobe lights up during meditation

  Religious emotions: The middle temporal lobe is linked to emotional aspects of religious experience, such as joy and awe

  Sacred images: The lower temporal lobe is involved in the process by which images, such as candles or crosses, facilitate prayer and meditation

  Response to religious words: At the juncture of three lobes, this region governs response to language Cosmic unity: When the parietal lobes quiet down, a person can feel at one with the universe

  The SPECT images are as close as scientists have come to snapping a photo of a transcendent experience. As expected, the prefrontal cortex, seat of attention, lit up: Baime, after all, was focusing deeply. But it was a quieting of activity that stood out. A bundle of neurons in the superior parietal lobe, toward the top and back of the brain, had gone dark. This region, nicknamed the
  “orientation association area,” processes information about space and time, and the orientation of the body in space.

  It determines where the body ends and the rest of the world begins. Specifically, the left orientation area creates the sensation of a physically delimited body; the right orientation area creates the sense of the physical space in which the body exists. (An injury to this area can so cripple your ability to maneuver in physical space that you cannot figure the distance and angles needed to navigate the route to a chair across the room.)

  SELF AND NOT-SELF

  The orientation area requires sensory input to do its calculus. “If you block sensory inputs to this region, as you do during the intense concentration of meditation, you prevent the brain from forming the distinction between self and not-self,” says Newberg. With no information from the senses arriving, the left orientation area cannot find any boundary between the self and the world. As a result, the brain seems to have no choice but “to perceive the self as endless and intimately interwoven with everyone and everything,” Newberg and d’Aquili write in “Why God Won’t Go Away.” The right orientation area, equally bereft of sensory data, defaults to a feeling of infinite space. The meditators feel that they have touched infinity.

  I felt communion, peace, openness to experience … [There was] an awareness and responsiveness to God’s presence around me, and a feeling of centering, quieting, nothingness, [as well as] moments of fullness of the presence of God. [God was] permeating my being.

  This is how her 45-minute prayer made Sister Celeste, a Franciscan nun, feel, just before Newberg SPECT-scanned her. During her most intensely religious moments, when she felt a palpable sense of God’s presence and an absorption of her self into his being, her brain displayed changes like those in the Tibetan Buddhist meditators: her orientation area went dark. What Sister Celeste and the other nuns in the study felt, and what the meditators experienced, Newberg emphasizes, “were neither mistakes nor wishful thinking. They reflect real, biologically based events in the brain.” The fact that spiritual contemplation affects brain activity gives the experience a reality that psychologists and neuroscientists had long denied it, and explains why people experience ineffable, transcendent events as equally real as seeing a wondrous sunset or stubbing their toes.

  PINPOINTING SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE

  That a religious experience is reflected in brain activity is not too surprising, actually. Everything we experience-from the sound of thunder to the sight of a poodle, the feeling of fear and the thought of a polka-dot castle-leaves a trace on the brain. Neurotheology is stalking bigger game than simply affirming that spiritual feelings leave neural footprints, too. By pinpointing the brain areas involved in spiritual experiences and tracing how such experiences arise, the scientists hope to learn whether anyone can have such experiences, and why spiritual experiences have the qualities they do.

  I could hear the singing of the planets, and wave after wave of light washed over me. But … I was the light as well … I no longer existed as a separate I’ … I saw into the structure of the universe. I had the impression of knowing beyond knowledge and being given glimpses into ALL.

  That was how author Sophy Burnham described her experience at Machu Picchu, in her 1997 book “The Ecstatic Journey.” Although there was no scientist around to whisk her into a SPECT machine and confirm that her orientation area was AWOL, it was almost certainly quiescent. That said, just because an experience has a neural correlate does not mean that the experience exists “only” in the brain, or that it is a figment of brain activity with no independent reality. Think of what happens when you dig into an apple pie. The brain’s olfactory region registers the aroma of the cinnamon and fruit. The somatosensory cortex processes the feel of the flaky crust on the tongue and lips. The visual cortex registers the sight of the pie.

  Remembrances of pies past (Grandma’s kitchen, the corner bake shop …) activate association cortices. A neuroscientist with too much time on his hands could undoubtedly produce a PET scan of “your brain on apple pie.” But that does not negate the reality of the pie. “The fact that spiritual experiences can be associated with distinct neural activity does not necessarily mean that such experiences are mere neurological illusions,” Newberg insists. “It’s no safer to say that spiritual urges and sensations are caused by brain activity than it is to say that the neurological changes through which we experience the pleasure of eating an apple cause the apple to exist.”

  The bottom line, he says, is that “there is no way to determine whether the neurological changes associated with spiritual experience mean that the brain is causing those experiences … or is instead perceiving a spiritual reality.”

  PRODUCING VISIONS

  In fact, some of the same brain regions involved in the pie experience create religious experiences, too. When the image of a cross, or a Torah crowned in silver, triggers a sense of religious awe, it is because the brain’s visual-association area, which interprets what the eyes see and connects images to emotions and memories, has learned to link those images to that feeling. Visions that arise during prayer or ritual are also generated in the association area: electrical stimulation of the temporal lobes (which nestle along the sides of the head and house the circuits responsible for language, conceptual thinking and associations) produces visions.

  Temporal-lobe epilepsy-abnormal bursts of electrical activity in these regions-takes this to extremes. Although some studies have cast doubt on the connection between temporal-lobe epilepsy and religiosity, others find that the condition seems to trigger vivid, Joan of Arc-type religious visions and voices. In his recent book “Lying Awake,” novelist Mark Salzman conjures up the story of a cloistered nun who, after years of being unable to truly feel the presence of God, begins having visions.

  The cause is temporal-lobe epilepsy. Sister John of the Cross must wrestle with whether to have surgery, which would probably cure her-but would also end her visions. Dostoevsky, Saint Paul, Saint Teresa of Avila, Proust and others are thought to have had temporal-lobe epilepsy, leaving them obsessed with matters of the spirit.

  Although temporal-lobe epilepsy is rare, researchers suspect that focused bursts of electrical activity called “temporal-lobe transients” may yield mystical experiences. To test this idea, Michael Persinger of Laurentian University in Canada fits a helmet jury-rigged with electromagnets onto a volunteer’s head.

  The helmet creates a weak magnetic field, no stronger than that produced by a computer monitor. The field triggers bursts of electrical activity in the temporal lobes, Persinger finds, producing sensations that volunteers describe as supernatural or spiritual: an out-of-body experience, a sense of the divine. He suspects that religious experiences are evoked by mini electrical storms in the temporal lobes, and that such storms can be triggered by anxiety, personal crisis, lack of oxygen, low blood sugar and simple fatigue-suggesting a reason that some people “find God” in such moments. Why the temporal lobes? Persinger speculates that our left temporal lobe maintains our sense of self. When that region is stimulated but the right stays quiescent, the left interprets this as a sensed presence, as the self departing the body, or of God.

  Those most open to mystical experience tend also to be open to new experiences generally. They are usually creative and innovative, with a breadth of interests and a tolerance for ambiguity (as determined by questionnaire).

  They also tend toward fantasy, notes David Wulff … I was alone upon the seashore … I felt that I
  … return[ed] from the solitude of individuation into the consciousness of unity with all that is … Earth, heaven, and sea resounded as in one vast world encircling harmony … I felt myself one with them.

  Is an experience like this one, described by the German philosopher Malwida von Meysenburg in 1900, within the reach of anyone? “Not everyone who meditates encounters these sorts of unitive experiences,” says Robert K.C. Forman, a scholar of comparative religion at Hunter College in New York City. “This suggests that some people may be genetically or temperamentally predisposed to mystical ability.” Those most open to mystical experience tend also to be open to new experiences generally. They are usually creative and innovative, with a breadth of interests and a tolerance for ambiguity (as determined by questionnaire).

  They also tend toward fantasy, notes David Wulff, “suggesting a capacity to suspend the judging process that distinguishes imaginings and real events.” Since “we all have the brain circuits that mediate spiritual experiences, probably most people have the capacity for having such experiences,” says Wulff. “But it’s possible to foreclose that possibility. If you are rational, controlled, not prone to fantasy, you will probably resist the experience.”

  MEASURING SPIRITUAL FORCE

  In survey after survey since the 1960s, between 30 and 40 percent or so of those asked say they have, at least once or twice, felt “very close to a powerful, spiritual force that seemed to lift you out of yourself.” Gallup polls in the 1990s found that 53 percent of American adults said they had had “a moment of sudden religious awakening or insight.” Reports of mystical experience increase with education, income and age (people in their 40s and 50s are most likely to have them).

  Yet many people seem no more able to have such an experience than to fly to Venus. One explanation came in 1999, when Australian researchers found that people who report mystical and spiritual experiences tend to have unusually easy access to subliminal consciousness. “In people whose unconscious thoughts tend to break through into consciousness more readily, we find some correlation with spiritual experiences,” says psychologist Michael Thalbourne of the University of Adelaide. Unfortunately, scientists are pretty clueless about what allows subconscious thoughts to pop into the consciousness of some people and not others. The single strongest predictor of such experiences, however, is something called “dissociation.” In this state, different regions of the brain disengage from others. “This theory, which explains hypnotizability so well, might explain mystical states, too,” says Michael Shermer, director of the Skeptics Society, which debunks paranormal phenomena. “Something really seems to be going on in the brain, with some module dissociating from the rest of the cortex.”

  Newsweek On Air: God and the Brain

  THE NEURAL BASIS FOR RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

  That dissociation may reflect unusual electrical crackling in one or more brain regions. In 1997, neurologist Vilayanur Ramachandran told the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience that there is “a neural basis for religious experience.” His preliminary results suggested that depth of religious feeling, or religiosity, might depend on natural-not helmet-induced-enhancements in the electrical activity of the temporal lobes.

  Interestingly, this region of the brain also seems important for speech perception. One experience common to many spiritual states is hearing the voice of God. It seems to arise when you misattribute inner speech (the “little voice” in your head that you know you generate yourself) to something outside yourself. During such experiences, the brain’s Broca’s area (responsible for speech production) switches on. Most of us can tell this is our inner voice speaking. But when sensory information is restricted, as happens during meditation or prayer, people are “more likely to misattribute internally generated thoughts to an external source,” suggests psychologist Richard Bentall of the University of Manchester in England in the book

  “Varieties of Anomalous Experience.”

  Stress and emotional arousal can also interfere with the brain’s ability to find the source of a voice, Bentall adds. In a 1998 study, researchers found that one particular brain region, called the right anterior cingulate, turned on when people heard something in the environment-a voice or a sound-and also when they hallucinated hearing something. But it stayed quiet when they imagined hearing something and thus were sure it came from their own brain. This region, says Bentall, “may contain the neural circuits responsible for tagging events as originating from the external world.” When it is inappropriately switched on, we are fooled into thinking the voice we hear comes from outside us.

  Even people who describe themselves as nonspiritual can be moved by religious ceremonies and liturgy. Hence the power of ritual. Drumming, dancing, incantations-all rivet attention on a single, intense source of sensory stimulation, including the body’s own movements. They also evoke powerful emotional responses. That combination-focused attention that excludes other sensory stimuli, plus heightened emotion-is key. Together, they seem to send the brain’s arousal system into hyperdrive, much as intense fear does. When this happens, explains Newberg, one of the brain structures responsible for maintaining equilibrium-the hippocampus-puts on the brakes.

  It inhibits the flow of signals between neurons, like a traffic cop preventing any more cars from entering the on-ramp to a tied-up highway.

  ‘SOFTENING OF THE BOUNDARIES OF THE SELF’

  The result is that certain regions of the brain are deprived of neuronal input. One such deprived region seems to be the orientation area, the same spot that goes quiet during meditation and prayer. As in those states, without sensory input the orientation area cannot do its job of maintaining a sense of where the self leaves off and the world begins. That’s why ritual and liturgy can bring on what Newberg calls a “softening of the boundaries of the self”-and the sense of oneness and spiritual unity. Slow chanting, elegiac liturgical melodies and whispered ritualistic prayer all seem to work their magic in much the same way: they turn on the hippocampus directly and block neuronal traffic to some brain regions. The result again is “blurring the edges of the brain’s sense of self, opening the door to the unitary states that are the primary goal of religious ritual,” says Newberg.

  Does anybody have links to research into the abnormal brain activity during meditation? Thank you.

• Discerning the World

  September 12th, 2009 at 7:06 am

  Ah yes, maybe my ‘leave your brain at the door’ comment is actually a good idea in more ways than one…lol

• Discerning the World

  September 12th, 2009 at 7:57 am

  You know I think I am gonna post this as an article by itself if you don’t mind Amanda. I will leave it here too. I so agree with what is written above…

• Amanda

  September 12th, 2009 at 11:17 am

  Go ahead. I think it is important for us to understand that something has happened in their brains.

• cecilia

  September 12th, 2009 at 3:11 pm

  Amanda, I did a study some time ago about this function in the brain when “under a spell” or “spiritual awakening” etc. will search my “paper documents” and place asap. cecilia

• cecilia

  September 12th, 2009 at 4:02 pm

  Amanda:

  http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/neuro/neuronewswk.htm
  http://www.eubios.info/EJ141/ej141j.htm
  http://theframeproblem.wordpress.com/2007/12/18/meditation-can-change-brain-function-u-of-t-psychology-and-psychiatry/
  http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma8/monkstudy.html
  http://www.self-realization.com/articles/yoga/meditation_science.htm
  http://meditation.suite101.com/article.cfm/mind_over_matter
  Washington Post article by Marc Kaufman from Monday, January 3, 2005.

  I’m still looking for my old info. c

• Amanda

  September 13th, 2009 at 4:53 am

  Thank you, cecilia. That will be much appreciated. Read the Ron Martoia quotes again. I can only feel pity.

• Amanda

  September 13th, 2009 at 12:43 pm

  Thank you, cecilia. So we learn from Meditation suite.101 that:

  Neuroscientists like Richard Davidson have found that regular meditation can fundamentally alter the way the brain functions…

  During meditation, the experienced meditators in the study showed high-frequency gamma waves, a brain wave pattern associated with higher mental activity, perception and consciousness.

  The gamma wave frequency was higher than normal even before they started meditating. This suggests that the impact of meditation on the brain waves is permanent and not limited to the meditation session itself.

  So when they speak, we have to bear in mind that the words come from a brain that has been altered.

  The Tibetan monks are known for their happy disposition. They control their happiness through their brain? Maybe that is why the emergents shy away from unhappy words like sin, wrath, judgement,repentence and hell?

• Discerning the World

  September 13th, 2009 at 5:59 pm

  I concur. And then you have Neurotherapy that does the exact same thing except it’s on a completely medical/scientific level. You can alter brainwaves on the Alpha, Beta and Theta levels to control pretty much anything in the brain.

  If someone for instance has a propper medical condition where their brainwave frequencies were not functioning correctly, adjustments can actually be made using Neurotherapy to amend the problem – to a certain extent depending on what’s wrong. For an example, obsessive compulsiveness can be helped by adjusting frequencies on certain areas of the brain where these areas are just not communicating properly – like fixing the soldering on a transmitter on a chip.

  Now, take someone who has a normal functioning brain where there is no deviation from the norm – in order words, the different lobes in the brain and all their little parts are working at the right frequencies and connecting properly. It can take just one tansmitter to fuse, or th wiring to come loose for a hundred other things to go wrong in the brain.

  For instance when you go for an EEG – they are monitoring your brainwaves. Neurologists can tell by reading that sqiggly chart if something is amiss. With the advancement of science you can now go and have much bigger scans that will tell you indepth what is going on in that head of yours. And based on what scientists know to be ‘correct brain data’ through years of study, they will compare your scan to that of someone your age, gender, etc and work out what’s wrong and where.

  During Neurotherapy they will then over a long period of time adjust certain parts of the brain to work at the correct frequencies and as things slowly come right in certain areas, those other hundred things start to come right too… Once the brain learns the new frequency, it STORES it, it remembers what the NEW frequency is and as time goes by the symptoms start to get better as the brain has been re-trained.

  So, Neurotherapy can adjust a persons mental activity, perception and consciousness based on messing with the brain. Meditation does the exact same thing except meditation is done through a spiritual process where occult techniques are applied to clear the mind. Once the mind is made blank, the brain is then reprogrammed during the mediation process with a NEW way of thinking.

  Your brain is what controls your entire body, when you are brain dead your body ceases to function. When you eat a chocolate for example and you get that 5 second rush of happiness it’s not you who is happy – it’s your brain. A chemical reaction takes place and your brain says, “Ah, I needed that” (Ok that’s my brain speaking here…dunno what your’s says lol). It’s a chemical deficiency that caused your brain to react that way in the first place. So now your brain knows that when it feels stressed or overly sad – giving it a chocolate will cause it to be happy or de-stressed (even if it’s only for 5 seconds).

  The same thing with meditation. In fact I am going to coin the phrase: Meditation, the New Chocolate. (Keeping an eye on anyone who steals this, I’m onto you…) Ok…, you are told to meditate cos it’s gonna help relieve your stress, or you are told to meditate because everyone else is doing it, or you went to church and instead of chairs they had yoga mats and decided that instead of a sermon you were going to actually try something different, or you are just new age and you connect with angels and spirit guides on a regular basis, or you went for a massage and someone told you Reiki was just the most relaxing thing ever, not knowing that ‘Reiki are demonic spirit guides’. So you try it, and wow, you actually feel good afterwards.

  How can anything that makes you feel good, be bad?

  Well, now that you liked the feeling you try again, and again, but you find yourself not getting further than the feeling you felt when you first started. So you search for more info (as the spirit guide who is now leading starts to change your ‘thinking’). But you are stuck, you are a Christian! You’ve known most of your adult life that this is not Christian, the Bible condems witchcraft. But if your church says it’s ok, then gosh it can’t be bad, surely. A Pastor will NEVER lie. So to appease your conscience(ness) and you go look for Christian meditation… that should make what is EVIL, GOOD.

  Great, you are on your way to a new mind, a new way of thinking, a transformation, you have been brainwashed, you have gone way beyond the veil of occult knowledge without even knowing it. The more you do it the deeper you go, or should we say the more VERTICAL you travel, the higher you go. In order to reach God you have to transcend…

  Everyone who is meditating now has the anti-Christ spirit attempting to direct their thinking and though process. Everything that you believe to be true is now no longer true, you seem to be a different person. Everyone around you is all speaking the same spiritual language. Love, Happiness, Peace and Joy.

  When someone says that they don’t agree with this new thing that you are and whole world are ‘into’ you get angry and disagree – how can anyone oppose Love, Happiness, Peace and Joy. The ’spirit’ in you says, ‘that person is not one of us, they are dis-connected – we need to connect them, UNITE THE WORLD”.

  And the Obama says, “YES WE CAN!” in fine print (and if they refuse to connect too us spiritually then we will just force them).

• Amanda

  September 14th, 2009 at 1:12 pm

  Wow, DTW. I am stunned and in need of chocolate. This is very sad. So in order to ‘feel good’, you do not need to repent and trust in Jesus Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross. You do not need to have faith in the Word of God. Truth is determined by feelings? If it makes me feel good, it is good?

  Thomas, over at Watch and Pray, wrote about the same emerged crew in an excellent article called: The subtle inhibition or suppression of the true meaning of the cross of Jesus Christ:

  In a nutshell it means that the changing of your brain through spiritual contemplative disciplines such as contemplative and centering prayer or meditation is a very powerful tool to change the world, simply because it produces and enhances like-mindedness, but it is a like-mindedness (unity) that contradicts the unity the Bible teaches. Sadly, however, this is a very far cry from Jesus Christ’s command to go into all the world, make disciples of the nations and to teach them to observe everything He taught us. The emergent contemplatives have an enormous problem with this particular way in making followers of Christ. Oh yes! they have nothing against making men followers of Christ (Jesus Christ who?) but the offence of His cross must be removed from people’s brains. It is steeped in rigid doctrines and as such hampers man in his contemplative endeavours to achieve peacefulness, social awareness and compassion amongst all peoples and their great variety of spiritualities.

• Amanda

  September 15th, 2009 at 3:13 am

  DTW:

  In fact I am going to coin the phrase: Meditation, the New Chocolate.

  Disagree. Chocolate does not cause you to talk gibberish and deny the blood of the Lamb.

• Discerning the World

  September 16th, 2009 at 8:13 am

  Ag no Amanda. I thought that was a good one liner lol. Ok seriously, yes meditation is very SERIOUS, for the demonic spirits that perches itself just waiting for one to ‘open’ your mind is beyond comprehension.

  People are playing with fire and their pastors, the ones that are supposed to be ‘trusted’ – the shepperd that is supposed to look after the sheep is leading them right into the hands of a pack of wolves.

• Mark Penrith

  September 17th, 2009 at 4:50 am

  1 How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,
  Nor stand in the path of sinners,
  Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!
  2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
  And in His law he meditates day and night.

  Of course I’m not saying that this is what elements in the emergent movement are advocating however it is necessary to acknowledge that the word meditation means different things to different people. The word itself is inline with Scripture and is an appropriate way to approach God’s word.

  Maybe meditation is the good chocolate after all.

• Discerning the World

  September 17th, 2009 at 7:55 am

  Meditate in the Bible means prayer. Normal simple prayer, a relationship with God, prayer (a normal conversation in prayer) thought Jesus Christ His only begotten son. If you want to meditate/pray the OCCULT way, then that’s what you CHOOSE TO DO. I warn you though.

  Why don’t you go and do some research to find out why occult meditation is NOT biblical prayer!!

• Mark Penrith

  September 17th, 2009 at 11:53 am

  Hi DTW,

  Is English your first language? I do not say that to be rude but you frequently don’t seem to understand the comments that people write. This is not the first time that you’ve reacted offensively to me after misinterpreting something I’ve said.

  I said, “The word itself is inline with Scripture and is an appropriate way to approach God’s word.”

  I seldom write anything without doing some research. I went and read the 18 uses of the word translated as meditation or meditate in the Old Testament and the 1 in the New. The word is clearly tied closely to Scripture, understanding God and praying to Him. As such my statements are not in conflict with Scripture nor your understanding of the use of the word.

  My personal favorite use of the word is in the New Testament, Paul is speaking to Timothy and you’ll see the close connection between meditate and the Word of God, “12 Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. 13 Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. 14 Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. 15 Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all. 16 Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.”

• Discerning the World

  September 17th, 2009 at 3:22 pm

  Mark

  YES, we both speak a different language. I speak the from the Gospel of Jesus Christ and you speak from the Emergent Gospel – Two different messages, two different languages.

  I on the other hand understand you totally. I get upset because you don’t unsterstand what you are getting yourself involved in.

  If that’s your research on meditation. Then I can see why 99% of the world will be following, running, tripping after the false Christ.

  Mark, I am doing all your research for you, should have some of it online tomorrow. Use it, don’t use…at least I try to warn you.

• Amanda

  September 18th, 2009 at 12:53 am

  I speak the from the Gospel of Jesus Christ and you speak from the Emergent Language.

  Yes. They have taken the words and have given them new meanings. When they say ‘gospel, Christ, kingdom, good, law, sin, truth, Satan, judgement, justice, redemption, be still, quiet and meditation, they mean something completely different to what the Bible teaches. It is time for an emergent dictionary!

  Here is Chris Rosebrough’s review of Shane Hipps’ Sermon at Rob Bell’s Mars Hill Bible Church on the Spiritual Discipline of Silence.

• Discerning the World

  September 18th, 2009 at 1:45 am

  Mark

  Meditate (Based on Word of God teaching) = Normal Prayer, Prayer as in a normal conversation with God, obeying the Holy Spirit.

  Mantra (does not exist in the Word of God)

  Matthew 6:7 Jesus said: “And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words.”

  Give attendance to reading = Pay attention, read the Word of God often, make sure you are interpreting scripture correctly and you can only interpret scripture correct through the Holy Spirit. If you are not born again and have the Holy Spirit abide in you, your interpretation of scripture will always be incorrect. And the answer to this question is come to be saved Mark by Jesus Christ the Son of God and not the false Christ who offers many paths to him.

  1 John 4 1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

  doctrine = Correct doctrine NOT doctrine of demons (new age/occult doctrine)

  Jesus tells us to be vigilant, be awake:

  1 Peter 5:8 8 Be of sober spirit, be on the alert Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

  2 Corinthians 11:4 4 For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully

  No where in the bible do you find Jesus: Meditating, sitting with legs crossed, doing breathing exercises, repeating words over again, entering a trance like state, saying AUM, speaking about vibrations, vizualizing, walking in circles, etc, etc, etc,.

  Find 1 verse in scripture where Jesus says that His message will change as the centuries change?
  Find 1 verse in scripture where Jesus says his message will not be relevant to mankind 2000 years after He ascended?

  You are confusing Roman Catholicism being Christian vs. genuine Christianity. Roman Catholicism is drenched in the Blood of the Saints. The Roman Christ is the Eucharist Christ permanently nailed to a crucifix whos Mother is an incarnation of many goddesses throughout the ages, right back to Egyptian Isis and her son Horus (false Christ).

  The Emergent Church is a Roman Catholic vessel (their evangelization tool) being used to bring Roman Catholic authority over the earth, disguised under the banner of Genuine Christianity.

• Mark Penrith

  September 18th, 2009 at 3:24 am

  Hi DTW,

  Everything I’ve written about meditation can be found [AdMo: url removed]

  It does not conflict with what you’ve written. You are punching into the wind.

• Discerning the World

  September 18th, 2009 at 4:47 am

  Mark

  >> It does not conflict with what you’ve written.

  That’ll be the day…

  Ah but I forgot who you are associated with, and this comment I made to you on the 24 Aug 09:

  Submitted on 2009/08/24 at 6:03am

  Mark

  Ahh I see you are acqainted with Steve Khanya. He is Rogers ‘mentor’ or whatever. In fact I wrote an article about Steve who lumped born again Christians to the same category as those who started Inquisitions.

  See above under RELATED POSTS FOR: Born Again Christians are Now Compared to Inquisitors of the Inquisitions

  This conversation with you is a waste of my time, fortunately all is not lost – thankfully there is someone out there who is reading this and through the guidance of the Holy Spirit in their life will see right through the lies because they LOVE the Word of God.

• Amanda

  September 18th, 2009 at 4:54 am

  Stephan Joubert and Nelus Niemandt are not “Experts in their Field.”

  No, no, they are giants, according to yoga enthusiast, Ron.

  I am more convinced than ever that the deepest changes in how Christianity does it’s work will center around a new type of spirituality. We haven’t done a good job at helping people see how change and formation happen. And my personal hunch is we have defined the problem wrong. We seem to be sin-centric instead of imago dei-centric. Problem solving and holiness fixing, rather than freedom granting and life giving.

  I spoke at a spirituality congress in South Africa where quite honestly I was a spiritual peon amongst giants. Willem Nichol, Trevor Hudson, Johan Geyser, Gys Du Plessis and Stephan Joubert all my elders and all more deeply experienced, were the docket of speakers at this conversation on the what and how of spirituality.

  More than ever I am convinced apophatic spirituality, Cloud of Unknowing type of stuff is part of the missing pattern in our formation. We are clueless how to do Psalm 46.10 spirituality and instead of learning to be still (an interior condition) I think we have confused it with sitting still (an exterior posture).

  The most dramatic thing I am reminded of on a nearly daily basis is just how modern, textual and information our spirituality is. Interestingly this is not where Bonaventure sat (think Soul’s Journey to God), or St Teresa of Avila (Interior Castle) or San Juan de La Cruz (St. John of the Cross) or earlier still John Cassian’s Conferences. I was reminded by these great mentors I shared the platform with just how rare the work is on interior silence is where we can watch the constructed egoic self in action. Where we take insight from what arises in our awareness and how to move toward the letting go of a centering practice (the main point of my talk Silence is the First Language of God {a quote from St John of the Cross})

  We must must must move beyond the textual addiction of modernity and move toward the place of quiet. Only there can we see the judger gene, the real issue raised in the Genesis 1-3 narrative, and learn the letting go work that needs to be done for us to be deeply formed.

  DTW, you are in the grips of textual addiction. Tut-tut.

• Amanda

  September 18th, 2009 at 5:05 am

  Here is another Christian-emergent encounter. Chris Rosebrough and Bob DeWaay attended the Emergent Moltmann Conference and thought they have lost their grip on reality. It is that language thing again, or maybe they suffer from textual addiction. P.S. They do not meditate.

• Discerning the World

  September 18th, 2009 at 5:25 am

  Amanda

  >> you are in the grips of textual addiction. Tut-tut.

  Ah man…that sucks!!

  But seriously. Yes, they are seperating the Word of God from God. So you can throw the Bible away and just follow ‘Jesus’. What they fail to realise in all their giganticness (they must be close to the Alchamist level) that they can’t do this.

  For Jesus Christ IS the Word made Flesh. If you try in anyway to change this you DENY Jesus Christ. And if in their minds they believe they have accomplished this then they DENY Jesus Christ.

  The sad part is they honestly think that because they ’say it and preach it and pass on the new message’ that it’s actually so – All they have done is created a new religion with a fake Christ where the Word (textual) no longer exists. Because what we speak now becomes the word instead. We become the gospel as per this horrendus emergent thinking.

  >> “Cloud of Unknowing type of stuff is part of the missing pattern in our formation” what on earth is that? Don’t answer…I actually don’t want to know.

  >> We must must must move beyond the textual addiction of modernity and move toward the place of quiet

  Oh they need to hurry up and reach this place of quiet quickly – If I am not mistaken it comes with at least a 10 year pact to silence where they are not to make another peep or tweet! That can save a few hundred people from further deception.

• cecilia

  September 18th, 2009 at 5:59 am

  i’d like to throw in a little comment here? Most members of the Afrikaans Susters Kerke, fall easily in this trap of opening up to New Age (very often connected to the occultic) teachings. I often thought why and discover that sisters are supposed to have a mother. and following the footsteps of history, discovering their mother is the Roman Catholic Organization (which the world wrongly calls “a church”). cecilia

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