After talking to several people about meditation, I learned that there wasn't any funky mysticism inherent to meditation, just closely associated to meditation. Some people are trying to figure out if it can be used as a tool and are trying to figure out ways to experiment around it, etc.

Rather off-topic, but I'm very interested in rational meditation-advice: Did they suggest specific techniques of meditation like e.g. vipassana or did they recommend some particular books on meditation?