Oliver Myth:
AH Almaas talks about this blue consciousness in his book 'Essense' in the beginning chapters and references how the hindu sage Baba Muktananda used it as a huge reference point in his spiritual practices. Almaas talked about the significance of its shape among other things.
Here is the reference: http://books.google.com/books?id=yz0EfqPQuh4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=essence+ah+almaas&hl=en&sa=X&ei=zCT4T7CUOeSK7AGtr7iFBw&ved=0CD4Q6AEwAQ
go to page 63 starting in the last paragraph.
Oliver, I thought we might revisit this topic. I've been practicing again, samatha / samadhi work. My concentration practice has given me some time to reflect on my older "blue chrysanthemum" state. In yogic circles this particular experience does indeed goes by a couple of names that I could find. Although it's not terribly well known even in Siddha where it is actively practiced, it bears the names "Blue pearl," or as you pointed out, the "Blue consciousness." It appears to be never mentioned in the Buddhist Zen or Theravadin schools. If the Vajrayana Yogic or Tantric schools encounter it, I couldn't find any information to that effect.
Based on my recollections, this is what I would say about the experiences:
1) Mind/body state criterion: A very low metabolism & left brain state.
1a) I have very low blood pressure at times, esp. after a night's rest
(a visiting nurse once thought I might be suffering a pulmonary syndrome ...)
1b) My cognitive/discursive mind wakes very slowly. My interpretation is that my left brain is
particularly *un*ergetic -- languid -- upon waking. I see this as normal (to me).
1c) Fighter pilots who black out find that their left brain regains consciousness last, and
yet that's the exact source of serial (karmic) processing necessary to fly a plane in combat.
2) Setting: 3:00 AM, part way through a night's sleep. Bearing in mind 1),
2a) My overall state of mind in early morning tends toward
2c) Fictile mind ... anything goes
2d) A very ductile state of ordinary mind overall...
3) Follow samadhi concentration stages (best of recollection -- this was nine years ago).
3a) Sat against wall or chair
3b) Focused on outbreath. Attenuated all bodily tensions (went through the steps)
3c) Turn focused inward behind eyes & nose
3c-1) Blood pressure changed in skull began
(still to this day I'll note nasal cavity contractions (sinus clicking) or abatement of migraine)
3d) Samadhi entered - focused more. At this stage I recall feeling some discomfort in various parts of my head
- hot pinpricks, passing headaches. Also aching in my eye sockets -I had to remember to relax
my brow & make sure I wasn't crossing my eyes, etc.
3e) Samadhi continued - return to focusing inward;
3f) Recurse: Focus inward into the source of the focus itself.
Where would that be? I don't know, it has a sense of locus however.
3g) Penetrate: Focus hard in that experience at 1:00 O'clock orientation, azimuth of ~ 25 - 35 degrees (less than 45).
3h) And that's when I'd hit it ...
4) Characterizing sensation
4a) All between the ears
4b) Phosphene-like pontilism, with a faint azure blue, like blue diode Xmas lights in a heavy fog
4c) A general sensation from each, in the actual *qualia space* where I normally experienced mental processes.
4d) The sensation array was many-fold, innumerable -- perhaps in the 100's, maybe 1000
4e) It was reminiscent immediately of an infloration - a flower-like arc & array of points.
More like a Dandelion, actually, or a miniature galactic globular cluster of stars
4f) The sensations were reminiscent of pins-and-needles, or a slight neuropathy, but pleasant.
4g) The azure-color experience was probably a synaesthetic artifact of the sensation (not the other way around)
4h) The sensation was functionally "touch," but from within
4i) Discursively engaging on the "touch" sensations broke it (bummer ... )
4j) Longest elapsed time: 20 seconds ?
5) Ideas / speculations
5a) I'm guessing it was a samadhi-form state, but very strenuous.
Otherwise access to it was no different from the samatha/samadhi work I do now
5b) The conscious interface neural switchboard was functionally "feeling" itself. Perhaps a recursion effect?
5c) The intense focus causes a feedback into the neural process-space, evincing awareness as
simply another sense (consistent with Insight/Vipassana doctrine).
6) My current practice
6a) Mostly Samatha / Samadhi, not very disciplined
6b) None of it very prolonged, but some days very frequent - as often as 10 times per day, 3 - 8 minute sessions.
6c) I'm using samatha to ease into vipassana. I'm ADHD so vipassana/insight is still a challenge.
7) In 2003 - 2004, I didn't even know what samadhi was, much less samatha or vipassana.
7a) It is my view that concentration & insight meditation are about attenuating left brain seriality/karmic entrainment (1c)
7b) It is my speculation that 4) was the result of recursing serial processing / karmic entrainment
7c) My last experience was mid-2004. After that I gave up meditating b/c it was such a frustrating pursuit at the time.
Oliver, I want to thank you for the response you gave me earlier this year. It was helpful in that it gave me some context as to the continuum of experience within meditative or trance states.
I'm very much a believer now in the physical processes underlying mind, but I'm not a naive materialist. One of the paradoxes of Mind is the quintessence on which it is built: Experience.
Conscious animate mind is simply an evolutionary reflection of what happens in nature, all the time: The Eternal Now.
I've observed that many people who pursue meditation are uncomfortable with deconstructing the experience as rooted in the physical process of experience, but it makes perfect sense to me pesonally, esp. now that I'm engaging in samadhi coupled w/ sense-perception insight.
Experiencing sense-perception feels to me a completely organic & natural process, and that allowing kinesthetic receptors to adapt out not only results in a body image that fades, but commonly produce unusual phenomena due to various kinds of receptor fatigue (those oft-aspersed groovy experiences during meditation ... they'll pass).
The reason pursuit of most of these ecstatic states is eschewed is that they are typically artifacts of receptor fatigue. In the case of the Blue Pearl, I don't believe it was a case of nascent & inarticulate practice, but extremely precocious luck. Luck of a kind, as it proved functionally deleterious & hazardous due to the severity of the level of focus.
I will venture, however, that it is in fact a potentially instructive state, provided the practitioner is sufficiently prepared and skilled at meditation to in fact do something constructive with it, without either impairing their practice or mental state. For anybody else less skilled (such as myself), I do believe it is well advised to leave it alone (as I have since).
-- Lee