If you're trying to gain an understanding of something, it helps to have as many data points as possible. So in the interest of coming to a better understanding of what it looks like, I am curious to hear what others have to say about how stream entry may appear. Here are some sample topics to discuss-

-Level of suffering

-Changed relationship to perception of the world

-...of the self

-Patterns of meditation

-Views towards meditation

-Sureness that it was actually stream entry
           -Time until you were sure

-Significance
           -Was it a big deal? Did it strike you as  significant? Or was it subtle?

-Patterns of mindfulness

-Cycling, phenomenon related to cycling, how cycling manifested

-Fruitions
           -Did you experience them? Did you not see them until a later path, if applicable? Were there things you thought were fruitions but weren't quite sure? Did this become clearer after time?

-Changes in personality, mood, way of conduct, etc...

-View of traditional dogmas of enlightenment, spirituality, etc...
               -How stream entry compared to dogmas you were aware of before stream entry

-Changes in compassion, empathy, emotions towards others

-Changes in understanding of emotions

-Changes in social patterns

-Changes in habits of any nature

-Anything else you noticed


I just thought this might be an interesting thread. Let the data points commence!

I understand the sentiment, and provide a few descriptions below, but would like to warn about the very real possibility of behavioral scripting. Relying too much on the descriptinons of other people's experiences can be misleading in both directions, towards over-confidence as well as uncertainty. Scripting is, in my opinion, one way in which the fetters of "adherence to rites and rituals" and "uncertainty and doubt" can bind the practitioner. End of sermon

-Level of suffering

Since stream-entry has this insight-increasing property, traditionally identified with "seeing things in terms of the four Noble Truths", this is a tricky question. Certainly there is a big sense of relief, i.e. less suffering, but there is also increased awareness and understanding of suffering. I was glad I was "over it", but was seeing much of my experience in terms of suffering all of a sudden. "Suffering less, noticing it more" as Daniel and Kenneth quote Bill Hamilton.

-Changed relationship to perception of the world

-...of the self

These three (world, self, relationship between them) are just different perspectives on the same thing, after stream-entry. In my case at least.

-Sureness that it was actually stream entry
           -Time until you were sure

As I mentioned above, these are ways in which the first three fetters work. So there is something to be said for the "giving oneself permission" to enter the stream - the interplay of over-confidence, doubt, trying to re-live other people's experience (rites & rituals), self-image...

It took me some time to bust these chains. In a way, I had been a stream-enterer long before I would admit it. But in another way of seeing things, I wasn't, because I would not admit it. And no, this is not about make-believe or fooling oneself - just the opposite, in fact.

-Significance
           -Was it a big deal? Did it strike you as  significant? Or was it subtle?

Big deal.

-Cycling, phenomenon related to cycling, how cycling manifested

In my case, mainly in the sense of relief (that the cycles were completing without obstruction). Since I entered the stream off retreat, I did not have a hyper-detailed high-resolution sense of every single ñana in succession, more like the broad landmarks "edginess" "lights and visions and energy and weird dreams" "dark moods" "everything in its place".

-Fruitions
           -Did you experience them? Did you not see them until a later path, if applicable? Were there things you thought were fruitions but weren't quite sure? Did this become clearer after time?

Yes. Experiencing the lead-up and take-away of a fruition was my "goal" for stream-entry, and I was incredibly hung up on that, trying like crazy to re-live the descriptions in MCTB.

And to me, the fruitions of later path(s) are so fundamentally different that it took a lot of time to recognize them for what they were, and see the parallels and common points.

-Changes in personality, mood, way of conduct, etc...

Yes... in all kinds of ways. Everything is subject to change. That in itself was my insight and fruit. It sounds terribly cheesy written down like that.

-View of traditional dogmas of enlightenment, spirituality, etc...
               -How stream entry compared to dogmas you were aware of before stream entry

Well... I learned to explore my own experience of this incredible universe, rathern than to confine my explorations to a tiny little sub-set of the universe, such as the dogmas.

I keep getting back to this point because it is so important.

-Changes in compassion, empathy, emotions towards others

This came later, in fact. The emotional fetters around my heart were blasted away, and that was a whole different story from stream-entry.

-Changes in understanding of emotions

Not at stream-entry, no.

But for laughs, let me turn this around: "Changes in feeling of comprehension".

In other words, thinking about emotions is not the same as experiencing them. I am not my thoughts, they are not mine, they are not my self (and they are not my emotions, either).

This is hard to express, because all I can put into words is intellectual understanding, which is not what I am trying to put into them. So it looks like gibberish. Not much that can be done about it, really, except again to express the encouragement to go find out what feeling emotions is like, rather than cognize what thinking about emotions is like.

Cheers,
Florian

Could you elaborate on how you had been a stream-enterer before you would admit it? Had you had fruitions but you didn't realize what they were?

I'll jump in with a small post here just to say I agree with Florian. I had 3 big shifts fairly close together last month with some very strange phenomena attached to them. I can't tell you if the strange phenomena were fruitions or not. (As in, was there a fruition that happened before or after what I noticed happening?) They were all experienced slightly differently, but had aspects of the same thing attached to them:

- In one, my body/mind awareness disappeared for an instant and when I came back my moment-to-moment awareness was locked in for the rest of the day.

- In the next, I popped into some kind of completely still featureless mind for about 5 seconds, and spent the rest of the night and the day after locked into that moment-to-moment awareness again. This was preceded by a great deal of head pressure and some strange flip-flopping in the back of my head.

- The third event was just a sudden shift into the mindset that had appeared after the last two, accompanied by a release of head pressure.

These events were definitely related somehow, but when each occurred I wasn't paying much attention so I couldn't tell you if there was a loss of consciousness at any point. Since it's very obvious to me that my internal world has changed significantly, I've realized it's best to ignore the maps in my case. I don't notice any cycling - my emotional life actually much smoother. I don't seem to have the same problems with anxiety that I did before - it's just much more muted, if it appears at all during the day, and fades quickly.

So, really, things can change without path moments or path moments can be very hard to pin down - I can't tell you which one's true. Either way, it's not really worth trying to follow along with the maps IMHO, because you'll never know for sure and the practice is the same for all of them anyway.

Well, I had the mistaken view that a fruition was experience-producing (instead of insight-producing).

Fruition is not an experience.

There is, however, an entire set of interesting and unusual experiences which correlate with fruition, and which can be useful markers for diagnosis, especially when witnessed with a high degree of clarity. Meditation can hone the skills for witnessing these experiences (among many other benefits).

Your second question goes into something that I find fascinating but extremely hard to discuss in a useful way. Also, it gets uncomfortably close to the "already enlightened, nothing to do" fallacy, which I consider one of the most harmful, dangerous ones.

One way to re-frame your question would be, if another person had a fruition, would I realize it? Something like the famous Zen Koan about the noise of trees falling unheard.

It is frustratingly hard to say useful, helpful things about it.

Cheers,
Florian

Well, things change all the time without path moments.

Path moments are when things change permanently. That we have to resort to nonsense phrases like this is sad, but I don't see this particular thing changing any time soon

I'm a huge fan of the maps, and I hate them, too. All in all, gratitude to those who made them completely overrules any frustrations I have with them.

So when I say, "explore reality, not just the maps", I mean, do take the maps along! If nothing else, they can be kindling for a campfire out there in the wilderness. But I bet they will be useful before that.

Cheers,
Florian

As I understand it, the experience comes before and after the fruition, correct?

What is the insight produced from fruition? Do you just find yourself in possession of the insight after you come out of fruition?

I'm about as far away from the "already enlightened, nothing to do" fallacy as you can get, so you don't have to worry about that. But I'm curious if you, or others pre-path, have something similar to fruitions without realizing it, and how that works.

As far as others' fruitions, I've been curious if there's a youtube video of someone having one. I'd like to see what it looks like from the outside: anyone know? I'd assume I'd notice something different about the person for a second, almost like a small seizure or something, but I have no idea.

Yes, there is experience before and after the cessation of experience. I'm not making fun of you. This stuff is tricky to talk about.



That would be the experience of being in possession of an insight. If I may be so rash as to give you advice: stop chasing after unusual experiences.

I'm not trying to be deliberately obscure. I'm just no good at this pointing-out business.



Yes, sure, stick some electrodes on a meditator's scalp and watch the EEG display. That's what it looks like.

Or take x-rays of meditator's knees. Very good correlation, the characteristic deformations. That's what fruition looks like.

While you're at it, go to an old-fashioned Catholic church and look at the gory icons of people suffering horrible deaths. That's what it can look like.

Or go to a Buddhist temple and look at the serene icons of the Bodhisattva lightly brushing the ground with his fingertips. That, too, is what it looks like.

Sit in a park and watch people running past you. That, too, is what it looks like.

Shut your eyes. That's what it looks like.

There are ways other than poetic language to point it out, but well, that's the best I can manage. Funny how we make sounds to express sights, isn't it?

Cheers,
Florian

I'm enjoying a nice bonfire at this very moment. It's helped bring a lot of light to my practice.



Is this always following a blip-style fruition? You said you were unsure about your stream entry, when did you know things were permanent (if we're actually allowed to use that word )?

The zeitgeist says that stream entry should be very easy to spot by asking the following questions: Are you cycling? Can you repeat a sudden loss of experience (fruition)? Do you have easy access to jhana? But then things get messy when I read people saying things like: cycling can be hard to spot off retreat, some people don't have many fruitions before moving on to the next path, and jhana can be developed independently of the progress of insight. The maps are also based on emotions, and the progress of insight supposedly can manifest through everyday problems. Once you take that into account, there isn't much left. Maybe Dr. House could figure it out, but he might kill you in the testing process.

So, maybe the best way to diagnose a path moment (or, at least, stream entry) is: did a lasting change happen, and is your life better? That could be hard to know until months later.

Good! Everything burns, as the Fire Sermon goes.



Why, after Stream-Entry of course. When I had convinced myself. When the fetter of doubt had been blasted off. When, after careful examination, by watching closely and attentively, I had come to the conclusion that it could not be otherwise. Whe I could deny it no longer.



Be your own Dr. House. Don't kill yourself. The only person you have to convince is yourself. This is just between you and the universe, what does anybody else know anyway?



Ha. A year and a day, as the saying goes.

Maybe the simile of boiling eggs is helpful? Boiling an egg is an irreversible process. There are a few tricks to tell if any given egg has been boiled, which don't require cracking it open.

Cheers,
Florian

 
I got the below information from a rare Buddhist site that is not attached to the DHO community at all.  I can no longer find the site. Take the information with a grain of salt:

Experiences of enlightenment:

• One of them feels insignificant, like a blip
• One of them is scary
• One of them is beautiful.  For this one it is like you are seeing your “true self” or “God”. (I do not want to get into an Anatta argument about this)

This has lined up with my experiences. I mostly experience the blips and rarely experience a beautiful one.  However, when the beautiful one occurs I get a great feeling and a very vague visual of a face.

My guess is that Anatta correlates to the beautiful one.  I believe this because the Ad-Vaita people seem to describe their enlightenmentt very pleasant and their primary insight method is to question “Who am I”.  

I also know that a friend of mind experienced the ‘scary’ stream entry.
 
 

If you read MCTB carefully you will find a lot of great stuff in it. I reread it again and again and keep finding great nuggets each time. Like this - http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/dharma-wiki/-/wiki/Main/MCTB+The+Three+Doors
Good Luck,
~D

Or you could cultivate a relationship with with a real live person one on one who has gone thru it and can listen closely and help you consider the matter. Of course this is sometimes hard to find a person with experience but if you do they can help you ask the hard questions. A forum is very limiting as far as communication goes.
Good Luck,
~D

Thanks for the helpful post. I will admit that part of my inquiry was purely to see how my progress compares to what stream entry looks like for others, although at the end of the day, I know that I'm the only one who will ever know what experiences/insights I am having and that any term such as stream-entry or whatever, will never capture the truth of experience occuring incessantly, never frozen into any term or whatever.

I guess this is the safest place on the net to admit that I am still struggling with the idea that I may have gotten stream entry. So even though I may appear to be a fish swimming on land, I guess I will continue to post about it and learn what I can, bouncing ideas and experiences off this site to see what comes up. 

Here are the things I feel are insight related-

-It feels as though everything that happens, happens with a distance. It's kind of like watching a movie, being involved/resonating with the events, but having the sense that you will always be walking away from it. It is almost like standing in waves in the ocean, seeing them come and go, and feeling the full effects and force, but not feeling the push or pull after the wave has passed through. I realize it was my most naive mistake to think that the metaphorical waves themselves would disappear. Which ties into:

-Greatly reduced anticipation of sensations and greatly reduced rumination on sensations after they have passed. Thoughts and emotions consisting of sensations (which isn't always at the forefront of awareness), I don't dread thoughts or emotions in the same way that I used to. Even in moments of distress, there is a sense of distance. I would describe this in relationship to the point of perception/the watcher/the point that most feels like where I am. It feels like there is some far off point from which I observe things, and without conscious effort or choice or thought, the sensations of, say, distress or even pleasure, don't have any lasting effect on this point. It feels like a purely idiot/infantile/non-involved but interested point of perspective. Like watching the stars from Earth. I wager this is what is meant by things being less "sticky". Things don't stick to the point of awareness very easily because it doesn't feel like it is in the field of experience where I used to feel it. (but obviously this means that there is still more development, because it is being experienced and thus it is sensations in the field of experience. It still feels vastly removed from it though.)

-Fairly obvious transparency/redundancy of ideas. It feels very difficult to "believe in ideas" in the same way it used to. There is a sense of Santa-style disenchantment with them, although I still get caught up in them. But referring to the last point, the pure, changing observation of everything constantly burns through the stress that I would normally experience when seeing the sensations of ideas as something held/kept/connected to the point of observation. Here is a way of saying this: the point from which I seem to be observing seems to be too pure and blank to ever allow emotions and ideas to overshadow the pureness/blankness/naivety/indiscrimination of the point itself. Yet the emotions and ideas still occur and cause pain. But even the pain lacks the same existential angst that I once felt before I got used to this point.

Here are some experiences and cues that sound related to stream entry and cycling-

-I often have the experience of settling down in the mind (not necessarily doing any kind of conscioucs meditation), then experiencing three very quick pulses (definitely three, it has occurred enough times to be sure) which happen in maybe half a second, followed by a sudden feeling of blank slate, like an etch-a-sketch that was suddenly shaken. Slowly, the mind starts to shape things again, but I can't exactly say what it is that happens right before it starts to take shape. I know that before the shape begins to form, there is no self-reference. Trying as hard as I can not to script this to make it sound like classic fruition, I would explain it as the moment when a picture appears and you haven't yet processed it at all. Or like when you see a picture that is out of focus, and as it comes into focus, only then do you cognize what it is you are seeing and make thoughts/judgements of what it is. 

-This one is pure speculation, but I often times get this feeling that I lost the continuity of experience, like I cannot connect my flow of thought/experience to where it just was. It's different from daydreaming in that it doesn't feel like I was lost in some sort of reverie or thought, but rather, like experience is a vinyl and that I get the sense that the needle just hopped to another place. I've never seen the discontinuity itself, but I ask myself, how would I even sense it in any way if it was a discontinuity? I suspect it would take a great deal of mindfulness/resolution to see the moment just before and after a discontinuity, as it is very difficult for me to consciously induce this thing, except when:

-I will often have dreams, lucid or otherwise, where I will get this inclination to disconnect/have a fruition. The dream will disappear entirely, and I immediately feel a very pure sense of non-local awareness, where there will be absolutely no visual/tactile/spacial experience, besides this sense of presence, with great peacefulness/bliss. I have no idea how practice looks in dreams, but this started occuring fairly regularly after what I suspect could have been stream entry. It occurs as regularly and as naturally as the thought, "I am going to take a drink of water".

-Definitely experiencing cycles, even without practicing. A&P obvious, fear obvious, re-obseravation obvious, equanimity obvious. It is fairly effortless as well, and when I am aware of the fact that it is an insight stage, it is not hard to go with it and not get involved in it. This is most miraculous and in contrast to my previous stage of development at the A&P and at re-observation. Although I still definitely get caught up in the classic pitfalls of these stages from time to time.


Edit: Analyzing the time right before and after I think I may have gotten it (putting it here even though there are old threads that have this on record)-
-I was practicing consistenly, noting almost constantly throughout the day, and sitting for many hours daily
-I was experiencing formless realms just through practicing vipassana, which Daniel says is not far off from path/fruit if one continues
-I was experiencing a great amount of pressure/pulsing between the eyes and in the head, apart from the experience associated with the A&P
-I had the definite sense of reality and awareness trying to synchronize, and felt the tension of the two being out of sync

-Then, an experience where all of a sudden, there was absolutely no reference point/self at all, which was extremely shocking, and sudden, and happened in less than a second
-A sudden quietness in the mind, like waking up from a dream
-The pressure to practice (which had been driving me to practicing several hours a day and note like my hair was on fire) suddenly vanished
-The sense of "hah, what was the big deal?????"
-For weeks (months?) afterwards, the feeling of my head being big/hollow/empty/without boundary
-For weeks afterwards, constant A&P's, available in seconds any time I inclined towards them
-For weeks afterwards, during seated mediations, A&P's being extremely more powerful and overwhelming, essentially like a full-body orgasm that lasts for a ridulously long period of time


Hopefully this doesn't bother anyone, the possibility that I am metaphorically trying to swim on land. I don't want to try to prove a status or anything like that. I just want to make sense of where I'm at. Feel free to poke holes in my thoughts; you won't be poking holes in the reality of it, at least. It is('nt) what it is('nt).

Sup,

Out of curiosity, do you read the Pali Canon? I ask because there is nothing cryptic about how stream-entry is defined in the Canon, which is literally
defined as: the four limbs of streamwinning.

The four limbs of stream winning are: Wise faith in the Buddha, wise faith in the Dharma, wise faith in the Sangha, and pure morality.

I do have great respect for this community, but often times find that their attempts to secularize and remove the the religious components of stream-entry from stream-entry, makes it impossible for them to be stream-winners in the first place. By secularizing and attempting to remove the religious
components of stream-entry, you cannot be a stream-winner.

The reason I claim stream-entry is because I possess these four limbs, the Buddha explicitly told his disciples before his parinibbana that should anyone possess these four limbs, they are liable to claim stream-entry and free to do so.

To be a stream-winner, means to see the Dharma, means to possess these four limbs. There is no other way.

It IS a religious phenomena, and if that does not interest you, then you may be missing the point. What exactly is your purpose for meditating? I am curious.

I hadn't hear of that one. The one I'm familiar with is the fetter model. If you've breached the first three fetters, it's stream entry; if you haven't, it ain't.

It is very common in the nikayas, in the Maha Parinibbana Sutta it is called the "Mirror of the Dhamma";



The fetter model was not intended by the Buddha as a diagnostic model, as the obvious question arises in people whom the fetters are absent in: what makes me not a streamwinner?

The Buddha answers this question in the Maha-Malunkyaputta Sutta, by stating that it is the presence of the latent tendencies towards those fetters that indicate someone is not a streamwinner. Even though those fetters may not be strong in said person, at the time.

The Buddha therefore had different methods of indicating to his disciples, whether or not they were noble disciples, the best example I can think of is the Sekha Sutta.

It is abundantly clear there, that the ability to distinguish the Buddha's Dharma from other Dharmas, is the equivalent of stream-entry, also read the Sarakani Sutta.

Peace.

That's way too Buddhist. I prefer the fetter definition. Looking through old threads on this board, it seems the consensus was that stream-entry in the fetter model matches fourth path in the path model. That's from http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/view_message/3705312