Today, I got a really clear look at formations and the little particles of experience. I started off seeing a sort of mass of coloured string, and as I watched it more intently with greater mindfulness, it suddenly zoomed in and I could see all these little differently coloured particles dancing around in looping patterns. It looked a bit like a the shapes of a chaos theory strange attractor. There were some bigger ones and some smaller ones. When I watched the big ones closely, the frame zoomed in again, and I saw them decompose into little sub particles. Then I kept watching and zoomed in again suddenly felt like I was falling, and then everything re-set and I was back in the room feeling super peaceful.
Later, I repeated the experiment although this time, I used a little more investigation to try to recognize different types of particles. I intended to see the body sensations vibrating in my forehead and saw some relatively large particles moving around, and then winking in and out of existence. This time, there was a popping sound that when along when one disappeared and a slightly deeper sort of plop sound when one appeared and disappeared, making the overall effect a bit like rain. I intended to see the mental aspects of the body sensations and suddenly the particles were gathered up in little polyhedra (with a definite octahedral symmetry). The sides of the polyhedra where solid and they kept coming apart and letting all the balls spill out, but then the next moment they reformed themselves into the shape again. I looked more closely at the sides of the polyhedra and say that were not solid but made up of very tiny balls. Then I asked to see the particles that made up the movement of the shapes forming and unforming. Suddenly the whole scene switched to a sort of shapeless cloud of many more balls popping in and out. Finally, I decided to expand my focus to include body sensations from my whole body. Instantly, the cloud expanded to a vast field of multi-coloured particles that went out past the edges of my awareness, and what had sounded like a gentle rain became the rumblings of an earthquake! What insight into the amount of freaking noise we live with all the time!
I suppose, I could keep breaking things down further, asking so see the particles responsible for the different colours, and eventually, asking to see the particles that make up the visual mental impressions themselves (that would be interesting, I wonder what modality the sub-atoms of mental visual experience would be experienced in). For now, I’m just pretty happy to have seen this much, I’ve never had such a clear vision of formations arising and passing.
This experience also reveals some interesting things about the way that mental concepts glue physical sensations together to create the appearance of solidity. There appears to be a sort of hierarchical structure of bigger and smaller particles that allows the mental particles to fill in the gaps between the physical particles. This probably isn't news to a lot of you, but for me it answers a lot of questions about how the sensate reality gives rise to ordinary reality.
If anybody else has had similar (or different) experiences of formations, I’d be very interested to hear about them.
Avi
Toronto Spiritual Direction
