What was this?

Tommy P, modified 1 Year ago at 11/8/22 5:42 AM
Created 1 Year ago at 11/8/22 5:42 AM

What was this?

Posts: 11 Join Date: 1/11/22 Recent Posts
 BACKGROUND

I've been practicing TM style mantra meditation for about 8 months. On average 1.5 times per day, always 20 minutes per session. Also, once a month, I will attend a TM meditation event with about 30 - 60 people who all practice TM, and then meditate 3 - 6 sessions of 20 minutes. I find meditating in a group to be a lot more powerful.

For the last half year I have also been trying to trace the intellectual history of this system. I've found influences from the Yoga Sutra's of Patanjali. There's also influences from Advaita Vedanta, as the OG Guru, Brahmananda Saraswati who taught Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, was called the 'Shankarachya' (reincarnation of Adi Shankara) of Jyotirmath monastery. There's also influences from Kashmir Shaivism and the Bija Mantra's. And the intellectual framework of there being 4 states of consciousness; Jagrat, Swapna, Sushupti and Turiya comes from the Mandukya Upanishads. (Awake, Dream, Sleep, and Consciousness being Conscious of itself). 

Rupert Spira explains how a Bija Mantra Meditation style practice works in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy6jdK_f3wo&ab_channel=RupertSpira.

So now allegedly according to my Guru, practicing the mantra meditation brings you into contact with Turiya. This in turn gives you a lot of 'energy' with which you can bring your samskara's to awareness and dissolve these conditioned patterns. In turn, this excess 'consciousness' will start to more and more pervade in your waking life, and progressively lead to 5th stage 'Cosmic consciousness', 6th stage 'God consciousness' and 7th stage 'Unity consciousness'. In my subjective experience it seems that occasionally I will experience a smittering of cosmic consciousness.

THE EXPERIENCE

So, having attended another monthly meditation event, I again in group setting went very deep. The next day, for about 4 - 5 hours, I experienced this. I was also fasting, which I think elevates the effects even more extra.

- A sense of contentment and bliss/happiness.
- A deep pervasive calm and slower manner of speaking (which is jarring considering I usually talk and think fast and am rushed and impatient)
- An insight of... 'Okay so this what most people are looking for, happiness contentment and bliss.' And most people have goals leading to other goals leading to other goals, but in the end the end-goal is probably a state like this.
- A bit of a jarring feeling, I'm used to constantly being in a state of lack/seeking/desire, so it was kind of jarring to be in a state of no desire, no need, no goals, everything being fine as it is.
- Maybe some very light psychosis in the sense that everyone I saw, I saw as within terms of myself, a sort of feeling that everything is one and connected, a lessening of the illusion that people are discrete agents with agency.

Then I kind of purposely ate some junk food to "lower my vibration" because I didn't really want to be in this state constantly. And I haven't really meditated since, because I want to slow down my growth.

I am also studying MTCB and Roots of Yoga and Origins of Yoga and Tantra and so forth, but I'm curious if this experience also fits within the maps, while the meditation style is not necesssarily concentration based.
 
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เอียน พิชฟอร์ด, modified 1 Year ago at 11/8/22 7:04 AM
Created 1 Year ago at 11/8/22 7:00 AM

RE: What was this?

Posts: 40 Join Date: 2/10/20 Recent Posts
I don't know but the factors of first jhāna immediately came to mind:

vitakka and vicāra -- applied and sustained wholesome thought -- thought focussed on the here now

piti -- joy, enthusiasm, exuberance

sukha -- happiness, ease, success, comfort

samādhi -- guarding of the senses, self-possession, contentment, freedom from hindrances

I recently annotated a video on this subject.
George S, modified 1 Year ago at 11/8/22 4:42 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 11/8/22 3:52 PM

RE: What was this?

Posts: 2722 Join Date: 2/26/19 Recent Posts
It certainly sounds like you could map that to some kind of jhanic like progression of states. States arise from universal human physical, emotional and mental conditions, regardless of whether they are described in pali, sanskrit or english.

Here’s the problem though: all states are temporary. When the conditions change, which they always do, then the state changes. That’s dependent origination. There’s no permanent ultimate state, whether it’s 8th jhana, or 7th stage unity consciousness or whatever. Any system which says the endpoint is some kind of permanent ultimate state is samsaric (subject to craving and disappointment). At some point you have to exit god state and do some stuff in human state.

The Great Hope of meditators is that if you could just get really good at attaining and maintaining the top state of your chosen system then it will somehow get permanently locked in. A lot of systems encourage this and claim that the guru is permanently in the ultimate state, because it keeps people locked in the system, looking up to the guru. It’s the so-called golden chains. It also encourages spiritual bypassing, where people feel obligated to pretend to be in the state after it has faded.

Nirvana is not a specific state in the way most people imagine it, rather it is marked by the absence of craving for/attachment to states. You can still practice hanging out in your favorite blissful states or exploring interesting new ones, but you are longer deluded by the impossible hope that such states can or need to be constantly maintained. That is why the realization is liberating - it doesn’t require specific conditions to maintain. It’s freedom from conditions via understanding and acceptance of conditions.
Eric Abrahamsen, modified 1 Year ago at 11/9/22 10:03 AM
Created 1 Year ago at 11/9/22 10:03 AM

RE: What was this?

Posts: 67 Join Date: 6/9/21 Recent Posts
George S
It certainly sounds like you could map that to some kind of jhanic like progression of states. States arise from universal human physical, emotional and mental conditions, regardless of whether they are described in pali, sanskrit or english.

Here’s the problem though: all states are temporary. When the conditions change, which they always do, then the state changes. That’s dependent origination. There’s no permanent ultimate state, whether it’s 8th jhana, or 7th stage unity consciousness or whatever. Any system which says the endpoint is some kind of permanent ultimate state is samsaric (subject to craving and disappointment). At some point you have to exit god state and do some stuff in human state.

The Great Hope of meditators is that if you could just get really good at attaining and maintaining the top state of your chosen system then it will somehow get permanently locked in. A lot of systems encourage this and claim that the guru is permanently in the ultimate state, because it keeps people locked in the system, looking up to the guru. It’s the so-called golden chains. It also encourages spiritual bypassing, where people feel obligated to pretend to be in the state after it has faded.

Nirvana is not a specific state in the way most people imagine it, rather it is marked by the absence of craving for/attachment to states. You can still practice hanging out in your favorite blissful states or exploring interesting new ones, but you are longer deluded by the impossible hope that such states can or need to be constantly maintained. That is why the realization is liberating - it doesn’t require specific conditions to maintain. It’s freedom from conditions via understanding and acceptance of conditions.


Thanks from the peanut gallery -- this was really helpful! Adi said something similar in a different thread recently, and it's slowly sinking in. I appreciate being able to learn from other people's questions!