Some Vipassana retreats require you to surrender to the Buddha and the master before starting. Invisible men in the sky are the antithesis of Vipassana since Vi

Some Vipassana retreats require you to surrender to the Buddha and the master before starting. Invisible men in the sky are the antithesis of Vipassana since Vipassana masters claim that reality is not real anyway. You say invisble men in the sky are foreign to Vipassana. So what is "Nibbana" if not something beyond mind and matter? Why do spirit entities live inside tree-trunks? Why rid yourself of 'mental factors' that are able to "color the mind"? The cognitive benefits-schtick is also used to justify the religious doctrination: "You have passed and future lives through reincarnation. Buddha existed and we have his teachings. Our goal is to become deathless.". It's scientific right? The cognitive benefits-research focuses on hospital patients and stress/pain relieve. They do not send these patients to a 10-day retreat, where they are not allowed to talk, must surrender to a master, do extreme meditation techniques for hours on end, till they self-operated on their psyche enough it's broken and they now have to repair it. What salvation is for Christians, is enlightenment for Vipassana. There are frauds out there who use these techniques to ensnare students, and there are students out there who ensnare themselves through being young, naive and gullible. Since the experiences are so dramatic, you get a host of uncritical people who proselytize Vipassana. Kinda like people who buy expensive Apple products will be lauding Apple, since else their investment was bad, and no one wants to admit to that. The people for who it didn't work remain quiet, especially when the master told them it was their own fault. Vipassana for prolonged times can do much more than reading a book or eating breakfast. What if the author had gotten a psychotic episode during his tripping balls? Would that be dismissed with another fancy foreign term or garbled psychological babble? Would a master be able to spot deteriorating mental health in their patients? People report disassociation, hallucinations and hearing voices. To a qualified mental health professional that would not be scientific evidence of cognitive benefits, that would be a manifestation of latent schizophrenia. Then there are the documented suicides and self-harm... but then again, people have probably died from eating bad breakfast too. Meditation-induced psychosis: http://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/108125 http://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/108125 Panic attacks and depressed episodes: http://zensydney.com/Mental-Health-and-Intensive-Meditation-Retreats http://zensydney.com/Mental-Health-and-Intensive-Meditation-... Psychiatric complications of meditation practice: http://www.atpweb.org/jtparchive/trps-13-81-02-137.pdf http://www.atpweb.org/jtparchive/trps-13-81-02-137.pdf Terrible and Traumatic Experience at Goenka Retreat: http://downthecrookedpath-meditation-gurus.blogspot.de/2012/03/terrible-and-traumatic-experience-at.html http://downthecrookedpath-meditation-gurus.blogspot.de/2012/... The Potential Downside To Vipassana: http://livingvipassana.blogspot.de/2007/06/potential-downside-to-vipassana.html http://livingvipassana.blogspot.de/2007/06/potential-downsid...