Originally Posted by Foojoy
Does it matter what "style" of meditation is being practiced? For example, would only advanced mantra meditators achieve this, or could someone advanced in breath meditation also achieve this state?
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Foojoy,
Methinks you're falling into a false trap that many people get stuck in, namely, you may be confusing the "technique" being used to reach a state of meditation with the experience of being "in meditation" itself. These two things are not the same.
Take the most familiar, mantra technique, for instance. Sitting in your posture, repeating your mantra over and over again is not meditation. It's a technique that you hope will lead you into a state of meditation. But if that heightened state of clear awareness we call meditation is not attained, then despite the fact that you've repeated your mantra for your target time, you have not been in meditation. You've just been repeating a word or sound, nothing more. Meditation is the natural state of consciousness you're trying to experience by clearing away all the junk that's keeping it hidden from you. The mantra is just the technique you use as an aid to clearing out all that junk.
The same can be said of any technique, be it mantra, pranayama, kriya, bhakti, or shabda yoga, vipassana, chanting, Taoist energy practices, Tibetan Kum Nye, Yoga Nidra, zazen, Sufi dance, or whatever. Don't confuse the tool/technique with the state of consciousness that tool/technique is employed to help you realize.
So to answer your question, if you are in that ecstatic state of deep meditation you're likely to see those very high or very low brainwave frequencies Michael described regardless of which technique you used to get yourself into the meditative state. The salient point is the meditative state itself, not the technique you used to help you reach it.
~R~
