| | Alright, more stuff on them:
There is what for lack of a better term I will call formless-light vipassana jhanas, which are really formed jhanas, except that they have the qualities of the formless jhanic perspectives, just not full formlessness, and many attain these and don't recognize that this is what they are attaining.
I will call them 11.4.5-11.4.8 using the ñana.subjhana.subsubjhana notation I am so fond of.
So in 11.4.5 (the 4 makes it the light version, as still in 4, just the 5 aspect of 4, this contrasted with 11.5-11.8 (which is what the original poster is probably interested in, I suspect)) we have the wide open, clear, boundless aspect of 11th. This is best appreciated when looking for it just after 11.3, the mini Dark Night of Equanimity, and is best appreciated by people who are using more panoramic techniques, though the first time I chanced into this I was breath, breath, breath and feet, feet, feet. It is formed, but still the spaciousness, the boundarylessness still predominates.
Next in 11.4.6 things can get very direct, very just as they are where they are, as their own consciousness, their own intrinsic presentation of just what they are, comes to the fore. For instance, when watching a movie and shifting into 11.4.6, one suddenly tends to notice that one is in a movie theater, that there are flashing images on a screen, and notice things like what colors are on the screen, what the lighting in the room is like, the 3D nature of there being a space in the room, the angles the walls make with each other, that sort of thing. It would be very easy to paint or draw in this mode, as you can see just what the colors are of everything without your idea of them being superimposed. Thus, it is still formed, very much so, but the presence of things predominates wherever they are, and it is this presence from which consciousness is falsely implied, as really there is no such thing in this context beyond the things themselves, but I digress...
Next in 11.4.7 the total opposite comes to the fore, this being really something like 11.4.F.3, with F standing in place to signify formless realms, of which 7 is really the 3 aspect of the thing, being inverted, out of phase, totally not aligning with what is going on around. So in this one, where as just one stage before (11.4.6) one was hyper-present to just what was there, now one is really the exact opposite, really tuned out from this. I remember the first time I really noticed how this happens walking around: I was studying in a cafe for a medical school exam during 2nd year and I hit re-observation, had to leave and take a break, as the restlessness got to high, so I decided to go to a place called Silk Road Teahouse for some peppermint tea and a cookie, as was my habit, and somewhere on the journey I shifted into Equanimity, and when I got to the Teahouse I was totally out of phase with everything but oddly fine. It was like the Teahouse and my transactions with the cashier and getting the cookie and the tea was all happening in some sort of very out of phase but totally ok fog, well, not like a fog, but it wasn't registering, not really at all, and something about this was more noticeable than anything about the specifics, which were like they were happening in a dream, and a dream that I wasn't paying attention to really at all except to vaguely marvel on occasion that I somehow as apparently navigating just fine without really having much of a clue or any real interest in what was going on and it didn't matter at all. Were I not a map-freak with a lot of theory and practice background it would have been easy to miss this, as it was in some ways subtle, and we generally don't have great language to talk about those really out-of-it moments in our lives, and what we don't have great language to talk about, we often don't remember.
On sitting down with the tea and cookie it became apparent that I was at that point really, really altered in some way, yet functioning totally normally. There was nobody but me in the teahouse, so I closed my eyes, and suddenly I was clearly in very heavy 8 proper: couldn't say I was there, couldn't say I was not there, and this shifted to what they original poster is now looking for...
I will backtrack and describe the first time I got into real 11.5-11.8 that I remember. It was my last day on my 3rd retreat, a 14-day at MBMC, and it was after the guy played the scratch tape of the stages of insight, and I had already broken through ReObs and was in Equanimity, I was sitting there out beyond noting into just staying with what I will call for lack of better terms fluxing suchness and nothingness, which were trying to synchronize. This is hyper-abstract stuff. Body was long gone as any coherent structure, as was nearly all color except what I will describe vaguely as waves of phantom near-black and true ultra-black, though the color was not really the point, and some of that may be the remembering mind's attempt to put details on something that it is really hard to put details on, but regardless, these two things were trying to synchronize, and at points there was nothing, and this nothing was fluxing or presenting or something in great swaths, and nearly everything was out of phase with this vague presentation anyway, and at points you couldn't even say anything even that out there, as there was nothing you could even call nothing or even be sure there was anything to call anything anything, and these various experiences shifted, fluxed, morphed into one another, and I knew then that if the thing that was trying to get this obviously not-properly synced thing to sync then that without doubt would be stream entry.
I didn't land it, as an hour of that later the lunch bell rang and I had to leave and go back to Thailand, and so it would be next retreat before I would get stream entry, a retreat on which I didn't get into vibrating formless realms, just in case you were were wondering, but apparently didn't need to anyway.
So, back to tea and cookies, I mean 11.F... So I was sitting in the restaurant and clearly there was alternately nothing and then something there in a swimming, swirling sort of way, subtly, panoramically, as at this point I was somewhere up in the high end of what I call 3rd path, which was really different from the early ones, and so things were a lot more calm and clear and subtle in some ways, but it was like the out of phaseness of real full-on nothingness, total body/teahouse/etc gone nothingness was oscillating in and out of real 8th, that can't even say anything about it except it is beyond nothingness and that's about it mode, and then all that calmed down, I ate my cookie, drank my tea, picked up my books, read a bit, and shortly thereafter I suddenly finished up that insight cycle.
The point I am trying to make is that it is common for something 11.4.5-8th-esque to show up even when in formed space during the last little bit of the progress of insight, and whether or not someone is the sort of person that tends to incline to what is way out there, way out of touch with this ordinary space of ordinary form, out beyond the easy and familiar landmarks of things such as form and even space, then they might, if they are skilled, in the right frame of mind, inclining to that, and/or have strong concentration (as that really helps), they may convert those into oscillating, fluxing, trying-to-sync formless realms, which are at once really, really far out and also can scare people, as they can be creepy for those who like things like a coherent body image while they are conscious, as well as an awareness of their environment, so this can cause instability of them for many.
They actually naturally tend to lead relatively rapidly to the next path (or stream entry if that is what you are working on), and I suspect that had I even a few more hours on that 3rd retreat of sitting time I would have gotten it, but I didn't know that, so the next 6 months were a bit of a mess, but that's how we learn, eh? and now that I have passed this on hopefully you, should you find yourself in a similar situation, will stay another day or two...
Anyway, that is my blurb. Thoughts? Helpful?
Maybe I should put this in MCTB2.
Daniel |