My initial experience with meditation was sitting in a dark room with no instructions whatsoever, and I spontaneously went into some kind of deep state of profound awareness. This led me to trust spontaneous realization in myself and others. People who think that all knowledge and all blessings come from India, or Tibet, or a Lineage, or the Guru have always seemed strange to me – the poor things, they don't know what they have inside. They tend to develop an unhealthy over-dependence upon externals.
Now 70, Lorin has been meditating since age 18, when he signed up to be part of a research project on the physiology of meditation. He was a control subject, and received no instructions whatsoever – they paid him to just sit in a totally dark, soundproofed room in the lab for two hours a day for several weeks, and measure his brain waves. With no instructions, and never having heard of meditation, Lorin just attended to the total silence and darkness, and spontaneously entered entered a state of intense alertness.
