So, here are my preliminary conclusions for the questions i asked in this thread. Further comments and diagnoses are of course still welcome, but i thought i'd say where i got to in the meantime, instead of just letting the post float.
Hole in the head[quote=Villum ]To describe what happened again: This inner observer seemed to be somewhere inside my head, connected to some physical sensations. I brought up my fear of death, and looked at each sensation in turn, sort of using my fear as a lens. Then i asked myself mentally, mostly without noticeable language, if this what i was examining was the-thing-i-fear-will-be-extinguished-by-death. Every time i did this, the inner observer (or inner-point-of-view) then seemed to be somewhere else, so then i went there, and the process repeated.
After a while, some of the physical areas i examined started to disappear from awareness - i was getting no sensations from them. This seemed to be a result of concluding that i did not worry about losing this sensation, this part of me. I concluded something like "This is not really me. I do not fear losing this. Let it pass away."
In recreating the "hole in my head", the making parts of my head disappear from awareness seemed at least partly dependent on calling up my fear of death and using it as a lens. Also, the "hole" involves, in addition to the sense of there being a hole, that i receive no touch-sensations from those areas. And then there's the part where i can feel the breath there, instead of at the nose, though sometimes it requires a bit of focusing to not get distracted by the breath-at-the-nose.
After having a few more body image/energetic experiences during meditation, this doesnt feel so special. There might be something going on with the crown chakra, but i have no real experience with chakras, what they are, and how they manifest, so i can't say. That i'¨m having these sorts of experiences (they're getting somewhat stronger, it seems) might say something about where i am in my meditation, but the specific phenomen i regard as idiosyncratic.
The technique of calling up my fear of death, though, does seem to have some benefit for sharpening my insight, it seems to give a bit more focus on the passing away of phenomena.
I've started doing some real vipassana, and am slowly working out a disciplined approach to when, how long and what to focus on. Unless someone asks me to clarify here, i'll probably take this up in another thread.
"Formless" Realms[quote=Villum ]The formless elements i experienced was mostly alterations in the shape of the awareness-field. I had read something about how to induce the formless realms and was curious if i could make it work (i tried before). However, this time i got a headache if i used any but the "lightest" focus, only just "touching". And the shift, which seems pretty much instant, only seems to happen after i draw my attention back, and stop "touching" the field. If the touch is light enough, after a subjective second or so the awareness-field shifts.
And it was this very very light was of "pushing" the shape of my awareness that made the field expand into something with no outer limits i could find (i wasn't noticing more things). My body, sounds and light were outside the awareness-field, but still clearly present, and i could still think language-thoughts. It wasn't all that "deep" or "hard".
Next - Pseudo-6th: was a change of shape as well, thing time felt sensations of my head going out to into the awareness-field. It didn't seem like they reached that far, physically, i just couldn't find the spot where they ended.
Pseudo-7th: I push the awareness-field "out and away", or perhaps invert it. and the field becomes very small, with the sense of what i am focusing on (which by now has been reduced to a touch-sensation in my head) being drawn in to something like a point.
Pseudo-8th: Can't remember how i touch the field. The field has the same size as the physical area, with sort of blips or sparks at the edges, and sometimes a bit inside. When i try to "look" at what's in the field, i get nothing back. The difference from 7th is something like if you send out a sonar pulse, and the reflections look "very small area of Nothing At All. And Black Physical sensations at the center". This time i get "Sonar pulse not did not return. No data about this area. Captain, i would like to report that it is very peaceful here".
The strange thing is that the "field", which seems different, and more solid than ordinary awareness, remains there if i start focusing on other things.
I do think i'm accessing the formless realms in some soft version. Whether i'm actually getting to the eighth jhana is debatable. It is perhaps more important that this experience sort of short-circuited my "level-up" mentality towards the jhanas, and i've gotten better at identifying the factors. My jhanas are still mostly quite "soft", but i seem to rise naturally and quickly to third, with fourth following slowly and taking a long time to become stable ("stable" meaning i dont suddenly notice that i've slid back down to third).
The "formless" jhanas don't seem to arise on their own (fifth
might have, once or twice). I have to really, really calm down and "soften" my awareness-presence on the object, and "push" very, very gently for the changes to happen. I usually take three or four attempts of pushing too hard, and sometimes falling down a step, before i push softly enough.
I tried getting a sense of the "witness" in sixth, as i it seems should possible (some people around here said). This hasn't succeeded yet, for the same reason i have a hard time getting a clear sense of these "formless" realms:
It seems that my touch sense door and my thought sense door are muddled and overlapping. I often end up focusing on touch -feelings in and on the head when i try to focus on a thought. Or the thought slips away and leaves a touch-impression.
It's probably because i get (sometimes strong) pressure between the eyes when i go into jhana, and i end up focusing on that. This might happen, for instance, when i try to feel out the factors, and end up awarenessing touch-impressions in and on my head.
Anyways, this means that the clearest impression i of what i call the formless realms are in transformations of a combined touch-impression-and-awareness-field on the top half of my head. (space opening up around it, field becoming limitless, field becoming very small with harder pressure, there being nothing apart from some strange "sparks")
EDIT: Recent possible Arising-and-Passing-Away Experience[quote=Villum ]I should probably have said this in the beginning of my first post. But the "hole in my head" seemed much stranger. I had a recent experience that might have been A&P. I had been down to the harbor, and tried doing shamatha jhana by focusing on the sound of the waves. This was probably another case of me accidentally doing vipassana instead because i like to experiment ;-)
Anyways, was very hard to get proper focus and shift into jhana, because the sounds were so unpredictable (combination of just the waves, and the waves splashing between the rocks i were sitting on.
Anyways, afterwards, walking home, i felt very peaceful and happy, though a lot of this can probably be explained by post-jhanic peace/bliss on a park, on a beautiful spring day.
Then i started noticing that the 3-d effects of the world seemed very simply/amateurishly made, like an early first person shooter. This made me feel a very strong peaceful joy and happiness. The way the weeping willows seemed composed of not-that-many 2d surfaces made me especially happy, almost to tears. I walked around for something like an hour (i have no actual sense of how much time passed), making sure not to disrupt the post-jhana stillness, and being very happy that the world seemed to be made like an amateurish computer game.
Some of the sounds of animals i heard also seemed like they were just for show, it seemed to me that if i looked, there would be no animals making the sounds - that the sounds were just part of the "stage dressing" as it were.
Probably A&P. I've been having some dark-nightish experiences since then (if they are dark night, i don't recommend dark night, even though they're merciful compared to some of the things i've read on this forum). Further elaboration on this will have to wait, as i must sleep now. (ie: to be continued)
Like Fire Unbound?[quote=Villum ]I
seem to recall "extinguishing" having a different meaning in Pali. It's not "coming to an end", but "becoming free of the things it were dependent upon".
Alright, turns out this was not exactly right. Opinions are apparantly divided, as i discovered after reading "Nibbana and the Fire Simile" by Bhikkhu Nanananda, linked on his
wikipedia page.