The end results between the 2 types of meditation are directly opposite

<p>The end results between the 2 types of meditation are directly opposite</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Tell Them Ministries

Kok Tho Yip

The Big Difference Between Biblical and Eastern Meditation


My name is Kok Toh. I was a Zen meditator up to when I was 37 years old and then I became a 7 day Adventist. Now I see meditation becoming so popular all over the world. Now there is an international global yoga day and it's in Christianity. I am always asked this question, How can meditation be bad if the practice is quiet, it's silent, it's emptying the mind?

How can nothingness be bad? Right? And everybody says it gets us to know God better. So how can this be bad? I want to start by explaining that there are 2 types of meditation and that there is the Eastern meditation which has also been taken in by Christianity and it's called Christian meditation but they use the same methods.

But there is the true meditation, the biblical meditation and we'll talk about that. It's what King David did in Psalms 19. We'll talk about the outcome of that meditation. Now what's Eastern meditation and what are the methods. Why does it always start with silence?

Let's see how they achieve the silence. When I was doing Zen, they taught us this, that we should sit cross legged, relaxedly and then breathe easily and we follow our breath. Breathing out is 1, breathing in is 234 and in cycles of 10 and we do it for hours. The whole idea is not to allow any thoughts to come into the brain. When any thoughts come into the brain, focus back on your breath.

There was another method, the Japanese call it Ko-on or riddle. And the riddle was what is the sound of 1 hand clapping. And we would think of this riddle constantly and the sound is nothing. So it's another way of emptying the mind. Now why is emptying the mind so essential as a first step of all Eastern meditation and now Christian meditation?

What is this emptying? The emptying may be by breath, by a riddle, it may be by a mantra, alright, and even by a Christian mantra with Christian words, but it doesn't matter how you empty your mind, it's just matters what happens in the brain when your mind is completely empty. When you go into this kind of meditation, what happens first is, right now as you are listening to me, you are in fast wave, beta, very rapid brain wave. And this rapid brain wave helps you to assess, evaluate what I am telling you. For example, you will be wondering if I am telling you the truth or I am telling you something inaccurate.

You are bringing in data that you remember from previously and comparing them so you are in rapid and alert beta. But when you meditate you go into alpha wave which is a slow wave just before you sleep. And as I talk to you, you may hear 3 words or 4 words and you will miss out the rest. Out of 10 you may hear 3 or 4 words. And then as you meditate deeper you go into titha, which is a sleep wave.

And there you are tranquil, you are imagining things and you are floating, your mind is floating, you are not alert. Now the other thing that happens is when you are meditating, you calm immediately, you calm your amygdala which also makes you tranquil. So you begin to be really feeling good, almost sedated. Now Other things happen. Your brain secretes dopamine.

Now dopamine is addictive and it causes meditators to meditate all the time. In Bali where I go, in central Bali, people come to look at a scene and by evening they are tired and they go back to the city where there is night life and enjoyment and shopping. But the meditators come to central Bali and they stay for 4 or 5 days and they meditate for 6 hours a day talking to nobody because things are happening in their brain and they are addicted to it. Now dopamine also causes visualization. If a psychiatrist shows you an inkblot, you know they put an inkblot and they open it and some people see a butterfly.

But when you have, with dopamine in your brain, you can see a jet plane or you can see 2 women talking, you know, and so it causes visualization. So meditators can see God, angels, they can see electric lights, that's dopamine. Now, the most dramatic thing that happens in the brain is this, and this scientist called Andrew Neubauer, he was looking at brain of meditators as they meditate. So when he says when you are meditating on emptying your mind, mantra or breath or whatever, what happens is you are screening off all incoming data into your frontal lobe. When you succeed in screening off all data and you are starving your frontal lobe when you are denying information, your parietal lobe goes down.

Now what is your parietal lobe? The parietal lobe is what tells you where you are in 3 dimensional space. Now take me for an example. I'm sitting here, I'm 20 feet from my friends, I'm 5 feet from the edge of the garden. I've got my hand on this table and the parietal even tells me where the kind of body shape I have, that my arm is on the table.

Now when the parietal goes down I lose all that. I don't know where I am in 3 dimensional space, I don't feel my body shape. So in that moment I become part of the whole universe and the whole universe is part of me. Or in other words I am the whole universe. Now when this phenomena happens it's dramatic, it's mind altering and when you Combine that with dopamine, with alpha and theta wave, it's so euphoric, it's so new.

And when you're meditating with the Buddhist, they will say, you have been awakened. If you're meditating with a Hindu, he'll say, you've reached Nirvana. Now with Christian mantra and Christian meditation, using the same methods, they will say, brother, you are in the presence of God, or you've met God, or you've had a God encounter. Now all these are neurophenomena. You have, depending on who you're meditating with, they make sense of it and tell you these things.

And they are the same neurophenomena. So it doesn't matter whether you're using a Christian mantra or a Hindu mantra, the same thing happens in your brain. Now, we want to now talk about Biblical meditation, the kind of meditation that King David did in Psalms 19. Now in Psalms 19, he started off by saying, by observing the universe, the stars in the sky, the sun. And he said that that was the handiwork of God.

That was evidence of God. He did not like the Eastern meditators say, he is part of the universe and the universe is part of him. He is an observer. He meditated on the law of God, on the statutes of God, on the judgment of God. And in his visualization, he saw the sun and he said the sun was like a bridegroom coming for him, like a strongman.

Now if the bridegroom comes to marry the bride and he saw himself I'm sure like a bride to be, a bride linked to the bridegroom in love. Now, and as he meditated, he said, he asked God to show him his secret faults. Now why is that? Because he was preparing for the marriage with the bridegroom. He wanted to be pure, to know even his secret faults.

He trusted God so much that he wants God to show him who he is in secret. Then he asked God to show him his presumptuous sins. Now as king, he can presume to do so much good, so powerful, but he did not trust himself. He asked God to show him even his presumptuous sins. So that is trust, that is relationship, that is love, that is wanting to be pure.

Now, if you compare the 2 kinds of meditation, the outcomes of them, the Eastern meditation keeps you tranquil, keeps you euphoria. It's all feelings. You do not come to confront anything because your mind is altered. But in Biblical meditation, in love, in relationship, when your mind is active in beta, you confront your weaknesses, not only your weaknesses, your sins. And because you confront your weaknesses and sins in the love of God.

As you behold His glory, His glory causes you to see who you are and you grow from glory to glory. So praise God for biblical meditation. We should keep to biblical meditation. Now as we grow from glory to glory, we are growing as Christians. Now that's what we want to be.

So it's very important for us not to get involved with Eastern meditation, but to keep to Biblical meditation. Now, praise God, and may God bless you all. Spreading God's Word through free sermon audio and much more. If you would like to know more about Audioverse, or if You

Back to Menu

The Big Difference Between Biblical and Eastern Meditation

Description

Sponsor

Recorded

Sound Doctrine