I am not familiar with either of those books, but a great book on practical meditation is the Silva Mind Control Method. He comes at it from a completely pract

I am not familiar with either of those books, but a great book on practical meditation is the Silva Mind Control Method. He comes at it from a completely practical place, no spirituality at all involved. It is very powerful and easy to use his methods. I also came here to say that this guy obviously had no instruction on meditation before he started. Meditation is hard especially if you have a noisy mind. However, meditation is not about turning off your mind, necessarily, though there is something to that as well. I think most people on HN however would prefer/benefit from what I would call 'active' meditation which basically involved 'getting control' of your mind (being able to hold a specific thought for a dozen or so seconds at a time is near impossible for anyone not trained) and using that control to fast-forward learning processes, shedding bad habits, etc.