Hi everyone,
I recently stumbled across MCTB, and I only wish I had found it sooner. My sincere thanks to Daniel for taking the time to write this book and then giving it away free online. (I bought the dead tree edition anyway, but the free online edition makes it much easier to share the information with others.) Reading MCTB rekindled my interest in two meditation-related experiences I've had over the years. I would like to hear your (as in y'all) thoughts on how these experiences fit into the framework laid out in MCTB.
The first experience occurred around ten years ago, when I was in high school and first experimenting with meditation. (I'm 26 now.) In those days I would often stay up all night and sleep until afternoon. On one such occasion I was meditating on my breath in the middle of the night when something strange happened. The rest of my family was asleep, and the only sound was the hum from my computer in the next room. After a few minutes of meditation (my sessions back then usually didn't last too long anyway) I suddenly found myself --- for lack of a better word --- dissolving. One moment I was sitting on the floor, aware of my breathing body and the hum of the computer behind the wall to my left. And then there was no longer an 'I' or a body, but rather the hum of the computer seemed to rush out and fill the universe. There was consciousness, but no 'I' or a separate body, just the all-encompassing hum. Almost immediately thoughts like "wow", "I must be getting somewhere" and "ah, non-duality" appeared, and that was the end of it: I was back in 'my body' and 'my mind' as usual.
Whereas the above experience was obviously an altered state of consciousness of some kind, the second experience is superficially more mundane, but actually left a deeper impression on me. I'm quite certain it happened before I ever heard of meditation, but I paid more attention to it once I had been exposed to the dharma, particularly the idea of no-self and certain koans. ("What was your original face before your parents were born?" comes to mind.) This experience is even harder to describe in words than the first one; I've been trying to write this message for several days now. I'm sorry if the following sounds like some kind of abstract intellectual thought exercise quite far removed from real practice. I assure you that the experience is one of direct, almost instantaneous nonverbal perception, but when I try to put it into words it sounds more like a dry philosophical argument that I've been digesting for years.
The Rousing, as I just decided to call this experience, has so far always occurred spontaneously and uninvited in daily life rather than in formal meditation. I call it the Rousing because it resembles rousing from a daydream, except that the 'daydream' is my ordinary day-to-day consciousness. The experience begins with a sudden feeling that rather than actually living my life, I have, for as long as I can remember, been completely absorbed in a kind of complicated and abstract role-playing game that I like to call life. Examining the game more closely, I see that it's actually a collection of separate subgames, such as 'university studies', in each of which I have a separate character, such as a 'student'. Each subgame has its own goals and rules. I realize that the 'I' whose solidity, continuity and unity I normally take for granted is actually just a ragtag collection of characters in a collection of games. The characters and the games constantly being redefined, and games and the characters with them come and go. Yet for some reason I seem to walk around every day thinking of this collection of characters as a permanent 'I' and of this collection of games as life or reality.
The first reaction to this realization is to feel my body quite vividly and identify with it strongly. When I'm absorbed in my games, I am aware of my body, but somehow quite vaguely; it's just one of my character's many attributes. My character happens to be human, and humans happen to have bodies; that's all there is to it. Once I enter the Rousing, however, I realize that the reality of my body is actually far more absolute than the reality of my various characters whose games I constantly worry about. Games and characters come and go, but my body has always be
en present as long as I can remember. Thus I think "I am this body, I really am" and wonder what it would mean for the body to die or what it meant for it to be born and find that I have no
idea.
As soon as my sense of my body solidifies, however, it proceeds to dissolve, as I realize that my body is primarily a sensation just like the 'outside world'. I note that my thoughts and emotions are also perceptions. The games and the player of games are perceptions. I realize that I cannot be these perceptions, since I'm perceiving them --- and I realize that I have no idea who or what I am beneath all this or what 'I' means or what it means that I exist. Yet amidst this confusion I also have a strong intuition that this problem could somehow be resolved, and it's hard to imagine going back to my normal life without discovering that resolution. I find it very puzzling that I can walk around worrying about myself all day all year, when I clearly have no idea what 'myself' actually is.
As far as I can remember, the Rousing always subsided after a while, with a whimper rather than a bang; eventually I just forgot about it and continued playing my games as usual. On the other hand I'm quite sure having had this experience several times was one of the reasons the dharma immediately seemed to make sense to me when I first encountered it. I already had a strong intuition that I had a tendency of ascribing solidity to transitory (or even illusory) phenomena and that much of my dissatisfaction in life stemmed from misunderstandings like that. I haven't experienced the Rousing for quite some time now, either because the idea has become sufficiently integrated in my everyday consciousness that I no longer feel the baffled surprise associated with the experience in the past, or perhaps because my practice has just been too wishy-washy for a long time.

Anyway, I would like to know where you think my experiences stand with respect to the path to awakening (particularly as discussed in MCT

and how they should inform my practice. For example, would it make any sense to make attaining one or both of these 'states' as a first goal? Does the fact that I've had these kinds of experiences spontaneously say anything about what forms of practice might be best suited for me? Ever since I noticed that certain koans seem to point me towards the Rousing (although I experienced the Rousing before I ever heard of koans) I've been thinking that it might be useful for me to try to use the Rousing as a meditation object once my concentration is stable enough, but I was never confident enough to go ahead with it.
Oh well, time to meditate and sleep!
Kristian