Since my
first (slightly controversial) post I learned enough and made enough progress to give me enough confidence to come back. When I asked if someone can reproduce the unusual experience I had given the instructions, I assumed that most experienced meditators can just sit down and do it. However, after reading and understanding more, I now think that I naturally have unusual strong concentration skills and they get better so fast that I am surprised at what is possible week by week. But for now, let's start at the beginning.
As a teenager I vaguely knew what meditation is, but had no good instruction and didn't practice. At one point I found out that I can pay attention to things in the periphery of my vision, and further that I can relax my attention such that the senses flow in me with reduced filters. I then made this my meditation, practicing while sitting in the bus or walking. It seems to work better when the world is moving or when there are several frames of reference. At one point I sat down at the slope of a small hill. I did this unfocused meditation I discovered, eyes open, relaxed and enjoyed the sunny day.
Then there is a gap and I don't know how long it lasted. Reality reappeared, building up step by step with colors, identifying bushes and the sky, time and knowing that I am a person with memories and the narrative of a life. I was flooded with immense gratitude for being placed in this world, in this body. Coming from a realm of timeless perfection into this fun and messy thing called life. Then I stood up and went home. By the time I didn't think much about that experience. It was just an odd thing that happened.
Around the same age I developed some health problems, with extreme pain in all joints and tiredness that often made me sleep 12 hours a day which also caused depression. I felt dissociated from reality and my body.
To make it short, let's say I had my fair share of suffering and I wanted it to end. I managed to get better and started to work on my self to improve the quality of life. Therapy and psychedelics helped me overcome depression. But I also learned that being close to normal again doesn't make me happy.
Somewhere along the line I took up meditation on an irregular basis, first with guided meditations, then based on The Mind Illuminated. It wasn't until earlier this year where I spend a week sick at home that I got serious about it. Not knowing what to do I decided to spend my time doing mostly that. My main motivation was to be more awake in daily life and maybe more often lucid in my dreams.
After a few months of regular practice (on average 1 to 2 hours a day) I learned about jhanas and somehow managed to access the first and second one. Later I had an experience where, after a short but intense jhana meditation with (what I now can identify as) a few seconds in the 4th, I felt profound and clear. I went for a walk and was crying out of joy and gratitude. I saw that these seemingly obscure teachings actually work, and the work exactly as described.
For a few days my perception was precise, clear and nature looked just beautiful. Following that I had some days where I felt irritable, afraid, annoyed and done with the world. By the time I was reading MTCB, but didn't want to analyze those days as stages of insight, because having some shitty days wasn't exactly a new phenomena for me.
Inspired by the previous experience, I decided that I will spend my next holidays doing an at home half-retreat with Rob Burbeas jhana retreat lectures. It worked quite well and I managed to access the first two jhanas again, maybe also the third, but that totally changed when I decided to meditate on 100 µgs of LSD. A few hours in, I went through the jhanas one by one until I was thrust into total nothingness and spit back out. I was totally changed - which is to say: I was totally myself, where I wasn't before. It was as if I always had a delay between reality and me and that was gone. The clarity faded as the drug faded, but the ability to access the 8 jhanas remained. I was fascinated and practiced them daily. During those two amazing weeks I also discovered what seems like other states that i can't fit into the usual categories, which led me to write that initial post.
Since then I also gained the ability to take any concept or emotion as meditation object and get absorb into it, being able to modulate it in the axis of absorption, intensity and frequency. I explored many pleasant emotions until I learned that they only satisfy temporarily. So exploring the possibilities became more interesting than the states themselves. I also learned to go into, what in my understanding is, the (Kenneth Folk style) pure land jhanas. I think I can get cessations occasionally, but they are nothing like the first experience I described from years ago and are quite subtle, so I'm not sure. I also often wake up in the middle of the night in some state of absorption. Sometimes jhanas, sometimes things I can't name. This usually is a good starting point for a nightly meditation in bed.
Another line of development is my metaphysical thinking. For a long time I disliked philosophy, as it seemed to me like it's just people who try to calculate using words. But about six years ago, as I was working on a project for university, late at night with too much caffeine, I was listening to some recordings of lectures and interviews and suddenly realized how the multiverse is structured, how it arises from nothing and how time is an illusion. It was so utterly obviously true that I had no chance of getting rid of it. It took me months to integrate that understanding, but it also seemed totally banal and useless to me. Rather, it felt like knowing the answer took the fun out of the puzzle, so I never talked to anyone about it (yes, I'm an introvert). But my understanding deepened with more and more science I absorbed. With access to jhanas, my thinking also changed and became better at meta-reasoning. Meta-reasoning in turn caused a cascade of insights. I found parallels to Buddhist metaphysics, but didn't realize how deep they go until recently.
Anyway, this deep understanding of reality became my map for practice, and it went both ways. I was thinking: I understand this in theory, but not experientially, let's go look for it. Or, I have this experience, how can it be integrated into my understanding?
During one meditation I observed the 6th jhana closely. By turning the 5th back on itself (the infinite in the distance is also the observer, the center) one creates a loop, a recursion. By removing everything else what is not the recursion one arrives at pure "consciousness". But that recursion is empty (there is only one recursive set, which is the empty set). By seeing through the emptiness of consciousness one arrives at nothingness (7th). That was quite a revelation to experience directly and understanding it at the same time. Coming out of the 8th, I intended to go into cessation. I relax and got deeper into meditation. Thought and some part of perception slowed down for a moment, then came back. I try it several time but can't get any further. I noticed that I still had the intention to observe and experience what will happen, which brought me out of the state each time. As I tried to let go of it I realized that it is because I cling to existence and I cling to existence because I have several unfulfilled goals. I struggled to let go of them, one by one, as I wanted to let go of the need to exist, it seemed that I am peeling out of myself, like a snake out of it's skin, but I shed so many layers that nothing remained. It was like a twist in more than three dimensions and after I untwisted, there was stillness something changed and I felt a great peace, like a knot being undone. I then continued to meditate until the doorbell rang. The rest of the day I was in a constant high concentration state, full of energy, clarity and equanimity. I was hiking and when I stood in the ruin of a castle, I looked into the distant valley. In the distance I saw myself, in myself I saw emptiness, in emptiness I saw everything, and felt deep love for everything and everyone.
The next day I was listening to a
conversation with Pernille Damore and Angelo DiLullo over the 10 fetters. I realized that I understood what they where talking about up to the 8th fetter. And when she said that this is something she usually doesn't tell people because it could scare them and him saying the sentence "There is no where for anything to hide.", it clicked and I realized that my metaphysical inquiry perfectly explains the experience one has on the way to enlightenment, because this is how things really are. It was like pulling a zipper where the two sides perfectly interlock. At that point I started laughing, and later I cried for the beauty of it. It was the day before that I understood the point of the 6th, 7th and 8th fetter, but I also saw that I didn't understood the 9th and 10th yet (as they describe it). I was restless, chasing and I wanted to know everything. But then looking at my understanding of reality it occurred to me that, since all moments already exist, there is no need in avoiding or chasing any moments, they all happen anyway. And then I understood that I will only ever know my subjective experience, never anything else but this single place in the world, from this angle, moment by moment. I looked trough my eyes into the world and thought, this is everything I will ever experience, but that's okay.
The next weekend, after metta mediation, I had a profound experience of love for all the world, but most importantly, I also learned to love myself - which was always hard for me before. A few days later during my evening sit, I managed to reproduce the experience I described at the beginning. But this time I could notice it much more precisely. Shutting down, it felt like individual moments stretch in time with less and less going on in the mind, then there is a discontinuity and the mind comes back up again, but more gradual, like an old light bulb heating up. Then there is a wonderful feeling of utter peace and relaxation. Not being sure what that was, I let my self fall again which resulted in exactly the same experience. Afterwards I took the afterglow as meditation object and intensified it for a minute or so. The feeling stayed with me until I went to bed and was present the next day in weaker form. I had to work and talk to people, but all I wanted to do the whole day is sit in quite and solitude and enjoy the peace.
The weekend after that (three days ago, as of writing), I experimented with shamata without an object (as Michael Taft calls it), but other then usually, I added my practice of taking in all the senses in an unfiltered way. I reached a deep state where it seems like I'm hollow and all sense impressions just flow through me without being taken up. The afterglow was interesting as every sensory event seemed separate and also beautiful. Like a painting made form glitter - every pixel pretty on it's own and only with enough distance they seem to form a gestalt.
The next day I tried again, but then also inquired into the sense of an observer. I couldn't make sense of why the observer is so persistent, I didn't understand what it is and why it feels like a center to experience, when actually my mind consists of the interaction of thoughts and sense data. Since I looked through the experience of consciousness before, this is something else. I tried to understand the observer, not by looking at it as usual, but by looking past it. In my theory, I explain the sense of having a unified experience exists, because there is a mathematical object with approximates the collection of nerve pulses, neurotransmitters and (maybe) electromagnetic fields. While the elements are disjoint and happen inside a universe, the mathematical object which approximates this collection
feels like it is a unified whole. From this I realized that the object has no influence on the universe at all. There could even be an infinite number of similar objects, each with the feeling of being me, but non of them can influence the universe - which will unfold the way it does anyway. I thought, in this case, I can just let go of that feeling. Whether or not this explanation is true, it helped me. I let go of being me, relaxed and dissolved into reality. With that, the center of experience was gone. I was no longer experiencing information traveling to me to be perceived. When I perceive them, they are already there, there is no distance, and in such, it is as if I perceive them
where they happen. Either way, there is no difference, it doesn't matter. The constriction around myself was gone. I observed reality like this for a while. It felt utterly normal, but also light, thin and somehow unimpeded, like the curvature of space time flattened out and everything is traveling in a straight line. It was also a bit disorienting, like trying to balance in thin air without any point of reference, as if up and down lost their meaning - but in a pleasant way. It felt so obviously mundane that I tried to remember how it is to be a constricted center. I managed to bring it back but then though "Nope, don't want." and relaxed it again. This happened about two weeks ago. I feel so different in a way that's hard to describe. There is an ever present okayness with what ever is going on. Zero distance to reality and no need to think how reality could be otherwise. I'm not happy all the time and also have moments where I fall back into old patterns of thinking. But whenever I notice there is constricting, I just relax again.
I haven't told this to anyone so far and I don't think the people I know would understand.
I wanted to quit my job for some time now to do something useful instead. Now I'm no longer afraid
and I know what I want to do.
Above, I mentioned a metaphysical theory to explain this experience. I'm sure that it will be possible to proof this formally, but until then I can give you a very very short summary here. For the normal ear this would sound totally absurd at first, but I think in this place many may nod their head.
Angelo DiLullo summed up this intuitive understanding in one sentence:
"There is no exact way things actually are."Now, I think it is possible to explain
how there is
no exact way things actually are and that a full explanation of this will be able to function as a guide for other as it did for me. Here is a very very short summary of what will be the first chapter to my unwritten book (or series of blog posts or whatever):
There is no true reality. No thing is fundamental. Every thing can be deconstructed into smaller parts until pure emptiness is reached. Nothing exists, which is the same as everything exists. All a thing is, is a perspective on nothingness. A perspective is a definition by constraints (symmetry breaking operations). Every perspective can be further split up into new perspectives by adding constraints. This includes numbers, mathematical objects, universes, moments within the universe and more. Thereby all perspectives are related in a structure that includes everything and has its root in nothingness. We can only understand a part of this structure, the (infinite) rest is absolutely incomprehensible. In some part of this structure (call it multiverse) it is so that the number of constraints that can be added to a perspective is much larger than the ways the perspective can be described. This imbalance gives rise to a direction. The before can be known, the after can not be known. This creates the illusion of time. In the structure of the universe every moment exists outside of time and every possible timeline also exists. The reason the world is the way you experience it, is just because it is a possible perspective on nothingness. The consensus between the disjoint parts of some portion of the structure - i.e. your body in this universe - gives rise to the impression of an unified experience.I think the most amazing thing is that, while I had to use far out ideas from the foundation of mathematics, the multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics and the free energy principle to arrive at this description, some people, more than 2000 years ago - not even knowing how to write - where able to gain a deep intuitive understanding of this by just paying attention carefully.
