Background: I'm not a trained meditator, and have never followed a formal meditation procedure before. I don't even know how to, in all honesty. I am, however, intensely contemplative in my daily life; mindfulness and introspection are pretty effortless to me, and very little can take me out of that mode. A colleague whose opinion I respect, who is a meditator, suggested I look into it.

​​​​​​​In the process of doing my own research, I ran across Daniel's stuff pretty quickly, and was immediately taken by his no-nonsense attitude toward the topic. I see a lot in common between us; "unusually hardcore" would be a pretty perfect descriptor for me also. His structural approach to mapping the process of insight and such makes it all so much more fascinating to read about than I ever expected. He succeeds at stripping away the blandness of mainstream western meditation discourse without making it unrelatable to a pragmatic western sensibility. I've read some scattered pieces of MCTB on its website, and as a result, I'm casually familiar with terms like jhana, A&P, dark night, stream entry, arahant, etc. I doubt I actually understand them, though.

I'm here in part to inquire about a spontaneous experience from many years ago. I credit it partially for both my talent for and deep interest in contemplative practice. I would like some of the experienced members here to assess the features of this experience, and try to place it at whatever stage of whatever model of contemplative experiences it seems most aligned with. Does it, for instance, map well onto a stage in Daniel's insight structure? Is it most like a fruition, a formless jhana, equanimity, just an A&P? I've heard that his is widely regarded as more permissive than most, so where would it place in a stricter model? Hopefully I'll gain a more personal understanding of how all of this actually works through the replies.

The experience is rather difficult to describe in brief. It was almost entirely alien to my standard state of consciousness. As such, I'll attempt to describe it in terms of the three characteristics, as everything, however remote or disparate, bears some relation to them. It interfaced with the 3 Cs in peculiar, possibly unintuitive ways, but ways that rebounded to make the 3 Cs amazingly obvious in daily life after the experience. I'll take each one by one, detailing how it showed up within the state.

Anicca: Obvious, with one wrinkle. All experience was simply observed as a flow of change, states emerging and shifting to other states. There was no attachment to such states, all change met with profound indifference. However, it's a bit weird to talk about "impermanence" here at all, as one of the defining features of this state was its timelessness. Not in the woo-woo non-linear timey-wimey ball sense; there was just no concept of time as something that existed in itself, moving independently of or alongside state changes. There was only one big now that I inhabited statically. Everything to me was contained in this endless present. States of reality changed, but the now in which I experienced one state is the same now in which I'm experiencing another. Yeah, I know, this is really difficult to talk about coherently in a language with grammatical tense. But trust me that it made sense then, and there was no paradox in perceiving change without a separate thing called time.

The timeless quality of the experience, however, did make it seem as though it would never end. Of course, it did, showing me that change comes even for those things that briefly seem too perfect for it to touch.

Dukkha: None, within the state. I had no means at my disposal to imagine suffering, craving, longing, struggle, dissatisfaction, or any other preferred translation. In fact, as far as I recall, the only emotion I felt within it was one I lack an English word for, but is done justice by adukkha; perfect contentment with everything. I may have been able to feel other ways and just didn't get the opportunity or don't remember. But I have no retained awareness of anything unsatisfactory having entered my mind. I've heard something about "ten fetters", and reading through them, while a few just don't apply to me generally, I'd say ​​​​​none of them did herein.

What it did, though, was make it glaringly obvious to me that everything else is dukkha. Knowing true pure satisfaction, adukkha, has left me with a stark awareness that nothing I can do to try to approach that again can possibly measure up, and yet I'm unable not to keep grasping. I am always going to want more of whatever I am trying to fill that hole in me with, without ceasing, and that's just a bare fact of existence.

Anatta: Complicated. Although one might define it as an ego-death, I wouldn't call this a no-self or even in any sense a not-self experience. It was more of an only-self experience. Maybe more Vedanta aligned than Dharmic in that way. It was essentially the absence of all semiotic interpretation, and all it entails. Thought and sensation were merely the subjective experiences they were, and nothing more. They didn't index the presence of any sort of concrete objects I was perceiving, or any sort of reality external to what was having the experience. I felt like all of existence experiencing itself.

It was also very much a pure consciousness experience, the state of being no one. It plainly displayed that everything we build up into our identity and self-concept, and even traits several tiers below that, down to the level of basic human nature, are so contrived, insubstantial, and moreover themselves impermanent, and as such malleable. At our core, I would say at our best, we are nothing we would recognize as ourselves. What we are is nothing but a centralized viewpoint of the universe with a will and absolute potentiality, and only that is real.

So there you have it. I could keep saying more, but it might not be relevant to mapping the experience, and this is already getting long. So is this all rookie stuff around here, or is some of it actually quite advanced, and I may have already been far down the path at this point in my life without knowing it? I'm fascinated to see what kind of answers this produces.

Sounds like equanimity. It's quite shocking when you first experience it. People also describe it as "complete presence" and "perfect flowing timeless now" -- that sort of thing.

Hi. I am sharing my opinion with you trusting that you will understand that my opinion emerges from my own experience and that you have to figure out  whether it is of any use to you.

Awakening and awakening practices are all about knowledge about dukkha and where it comes from, wisdom on how to manage the mind and dispassion towards the things that cause dukkha so that those things over a period of time are denied the fuel they need to survive.

In awakening practice when one says that one is very mindful, in the absence of systematic structured practice one is most likely deluding themselves.
Mindfulness or sati/smriti is basically the robust use of short term working memory. We believe we may be actively using short term working memory but systematic practice immediately shows us whether we have it or not.

For example simply tracking the breath and labeling it as in and out - only and only if you have stayed with the entire in breath / entire out breath.
Counting of breaths from 1 to 5 and reset the count. Count only if you have stayed with the entire breath cycle and if you lose track during the course of the breath cycle then reset the count. To know that this is a short breath versus a long breath, to know that this is a coppy breath versus a smooth breath and to know this continuously for two hours during the course of which one faces and learns to battle off sleepiness, dullness, restlessness, agitation, greed to be else where etc etc. 

This above is merely one example fo systematic structured practice. In  the absence of this practice or a similarly rigourous practice one cannot even be sure whether onne actually has sati/smriti/ short term working memory muscles sufficiently strong to even begin to have Insight.

Regarding your  experience .... see if you can make it happen again at will two or three times, see if it causes any lasting change in your exerience of living your life, else let it go and put in place a very consistent, structured, methodical practice using intelligently crafted techniques. 

I would say that this is a mystical experience. I would also say that you are lucky to have had it. For reference, I too had experiences similar to what you describe, many years before I started meditating. Countless people have. Your world is, I'm going to guess, wider and richer for it. Mystical experiences are found across all cultures and times and are described in ways that depend on the culture and time. There is nothing wrong with applying terms from MCTB to this. It also may be worth considering that other sets of terms could also be applied. One way of looking at mystical experiences and non-standard ways of being in the world/experiencing/knowing is to say they are all the same, that they can all be mapped to the same coordinates. Another way of looking at it is to say that they are all different and unique, just as no two sets of human neurons are the same. Perhaps there are both similarities and differences, which are not precisely quantifiable. Buddhist insight practice, which is what MCTB describes, is a progressive thing, in which people gain more and more understanding of how the mind works, so it is probably not an ideal tool for mapping a single mystical experience. 

One interesting question is: does it matter what the nature of the experience was, and if so why does it matter?

If it matters because you are hoping to build on what you have by starting a meditation practice of some sort, you will get the most useful data by looking at the content of current meditation sessions. If it doesn't really matter, then I would go with the description that seems best to you. If it matters for another reason, sharing that reason might get some interesting responses here. 

Not trying to be snide or judgmental just offering another perspective you might want to consider:

https://inquiringmind.com/article/2701_w_kornfield-enlightenments/
In my opinion people should not measure progress by what happens during meditation. People should measure progress by what happens in daily life.

When unpleasant emotions and cravings arise, do they fade quickly and naturally without suppressing them, or does a person cling to them? 

This is not an all or nothing benchmark, non-attachment increases gradually and continuously over a wide range as you continue to make progress.

I resoundingly agree with Jim here. Being as I stated, a daily-life practitioner, I know no way to measure my progress except by daily-life effects. Minimizing negative emotions and severing attachments that cause them is a massive component of my practice. I have turned out much better at it than I expected at the start. All experiences I perceive as negative are definitely very transient for me at this point, with the exception of physical discomforts like major illnesses and injuries.

it should be noted that my practice is nearly entirely of my own design, and its purpose is vastly different from what I imagine most of us here are going for. My goals could even be said to stand in contrast with much of what Buddhist insight practice aspires to, although they do hold an affinity with Tibetan practice, with a heavy helping of Unusually Hardcore. I doubt that the methods are similar, though. I'll describe all that in complete detail soon in a different thread where it's more relevant. Where do we post personal intros, anyways?

My asking about the "tier" of this state of consciousness is for the most part an attempt to try to relate more personally to insight maps like Daniel's, as I'm really interested in the concept, but approaching it from a pure outside view makes me very confused. The experience happened long before I began what I now call my contemplative practice, and seemed to come from nowhere. I do reflect on it plenty, and how I can draw from it to aid my current practice, but I don't need to have a "placement" for it to do that.

With regard to making it happen at will, I can call up a simulacrum of it from memory and squeeze myself back into that mindset to a solid degree, which is an enjoyable if impractical exercise. Lasting effects, it attuned me to perceive the 3 Cs in ordinary life, made me a more introspective person, and left me with a happy memory.

In any case, this is all valuable feedback and data for me. Please keep it coming!

There are definitely pros and cons to the maps. It's sort of like knowing a map of mount everest --- it can be very interesting to hear about and it can help put things in context... or it can be used to self-shame ("I've never climbed that high, my life is trivial and meaningless")... or it can be used to self-delude ("now that I've learned the map of mount everest, I should be able to climb mount everest tomorrow")... or it can be argued against ("There is no way anyone really climbed mount everest, it is too high and exists in a dead zone where no one can live, that's just a fact")... or any number of things that humans do.

The benefit of knowing the maps is that if someone is devoting time to practice and is practicing for the reasons the practices were invented... well then the maps can be used to fine tune practice toward that end... and it can help normalize the strange stuff that happens with practice. That's why Daniel's book is called MCTB -- focusing on practicing with the intent of "mastering the core teachings of the buddha"... 

So for example, knowing that your "peak experience" could be more common every-day lived experience with practice (11. Equanimity – MCTB.org and the The Fourth Shamatha Jhana 27. The Concentration States (Shamatha Jhanas) – MCTB.org) could be helpful and inspiring. But also knowing about all the common struggles and purifications that need to happen before being able to stablize in EQ/4th Jhana is very important to be warned about 35. How the Maps Help – MCTB.org. 

Or it might be that reading all of this stuff makes you feel nausous and turned-off. That is perfectly fine. There is also no reason someone needs to practice meditation. It's not required for a good life. 

The other thing the maps can do can bring a sense of perspective to meditation practice --- it's a commitment, just like climbing mount everest. (Meditation can just  be a half-hour a day, but there shouldn't be any expectation to climb mount everest.) Probably about seven years of consistent daily practice, weekend retreats twice a year, 10 day retreats once a year... that's about right for serious practice that makes progress along the maps. And that's if someone is already living a healthy and sane life. It's about the same as learning a new language or learning to play a musical intrument. 

But it's not required for a good human life, so it really is up to the person to decide if they are truly called to it. 

There is a lot of truth to the saying: better never to start, but if started it's better to finish quickly.

Yeah I agree with shargrol here. Plus also the "all change met with profound indifference".

The bright side is that if it was an experience you like, you can cultivate the factors over time through meditation. Like one of the things I've noticed is as I go deeper, being present has turned into an automatic and persistent thing (and you get this constant flow state like feeling), and most of my normal experience these days has a lot of the qualities you describe.

I read the MCTB links about Equanimity and the 4th Jhana. Here are some lines that struck me...

"Equanimity... involves a real, down-to-earth, honest humanity, a real acceptance of ourselves just as we are" - Yes, that is what the fallout from the experience has metastasized into. But in the state itself, it was much more a forsaking of the trappings of humanity. Does that track?

"a rediscovery of what we seemingly always knew but temporarily forgot" - It definitely had this quality.

"many will shift to modes of attention that are much more in the realm of concentration practice, being more about the positive qualities than the three characteristics" - I absolutely do this. It felt so perfect that my reflection tends to dwell in it a lot.

"a real sense of freedom in the conventional sense, freedom from cares, worries, even responsibilities and social conventions" - This has persisted in some ways, and definitely not in others. It certainly taught me how fake and meaningless the ways of the world are. But there are higher-order duties I'm eternally bound by, and my general practice is all about embracing that role.

"mental and physical phenomena may appear nearly indistinguishably as just vibrations of barely differentiated suchness" - This is SO accurate. There were no defined boundaries between thought, emotion, and sensation; it was all just experience. As such, I have always struggled to express in English what disambiguated all of these states of experience from each other, but that word tathātā is the best approximation I've come across. These individual state distinctions were clearly discernible, mind you; there just weren't categorical boundaries classifying them.

"Vibrating formless realms may even arise, with no discernible image of the body being present at all" - Granting that my understanding of what a "formless realm" is is hazy at best, I would say this also happened. I don't believe I was aware of the presence of my body at that time. Again, sense perception was literally just experience then; it wasn't being interpreted in terms like "I touched X object with Y body part". It had no OBE-like qualities, though. No flying or anything.

"Formations contain all the six sense doors, including thought, in a way that does not split them up sequentially in time or positionally in space" - Precisely how it was. Here is the first reference to that timelessness in the chapter. Position as we know it was also not an operative concept.

"When experienced at very high levels of concentration, formations lose the sense that they were even formed of experiences from distinguishable sense doors. This is hard to describe, but we might try such nebulous phrases as “waves of suchness”, or “primal, undifferentiated experience”" - As I alluded to above, this is spot on. Categorical boundaries between types of experience or between particular senses simply did not exist. Individual impressions within the flow were felt as a gestalt, each one distinguished only by those ineffable tathātās. As such, I don't remember all or even that much of the sense data in each formation I passed through. The cognitive component actually stuck with me the most.

"In the face of experiencing formations, it seems crude to consider thoughts as separate from visual, tactile, auditory, gustatory, and olfactory qualities, or even to speak in terms of these being discrete entities" - Yup. Summarizes all of the above. Except that Daniel's depiction seems like externalizing thought into the realm of sensation, while for me it was internalizing sensation into the realm of thought.

While there were, of course, plenty of features mentioned that I didn't get (Daniel always being dutifully clear to make note that the points on his map present in vastly different ways for different people), there is definitely enough here that matched up perfectly to make me more confident that my experience was an aspect of this stage. However, the most spot-on descriptions were those associated with high concentration, leading me to believe my experience was more jhanic in nature.

Getting on to that chapter, however, I read the description of 4th Jhana and it seemed insufficient. Still too concrete to encapsulate my experience, which was heavily abstractified. There seemed to be something there that might be building up to that, though, like losing perception of the body. So seeing Daniel state that the formless jhanas use the 4th as a foundation, I went on to them, and 5th doesn't fit ("space" was not a relevant concept). 6th might fit, the name seems on the mark, but Daniel is incredibly undescriptive of it, instead mostly channeling his inner Admiral Ackbar the whole time. The only thing he really describes is the observation of a "ground of being", which kind of tracks, but it was not "a diffuse presence that seems to be part of space itself rather than centralized on this side". Again, there was no sense of space. Rather, "this side", "center", was ​​​all there was, there was no "there" there, only ​​​here. So I'm in no danger of falling for the big trap of a mystical "universal consciousness" that's so popular with new-age types, which seems like what Daniel is warning about. To what extent it contained a "ground of being", I identified it with me, as might conclude a Berkeleian idealist who happens to be the only person on earth.

I would love to hear more about what is actually contained in 6th Jhana. That might get me somewhere in concretely identifying my experience. It definitely wasn't anything higher than 6th. At the very least, I think I'm understanding all this stuff better in the process of trying to figure out this puzzle. It's good fun if nothing else!

6th jhana is the sense that everything is made of consciousness, some people call it the I AM state (everything is the same mind as "my mind"), some people find it animistic (everything millimeter of the universe is alive). Those are just poetic descriptions... strickly speaking, these formless concentration states are purified versions of the similar experience we can get while walking around in the world and getting the "one taste, everything is mind" --- except in jhana there is no external world, the mind become centered and absorbed in just the non-embodied pure experience of this.

I don't know if ultimately your past experience can be mapped much more specifically... perhaps with repeated experiences you can tease things out better. The important thing to remember is this map is a map -- a sort of 2 dimensional representation of a 3 dimensional experience, except for a body-mind state. The actual experience will be more multi-dimensional/vivid/impactful than any map can really describe.
 

Yeah, I think we've gotten about as far as we can go at this point. In my estimation, the jhana (probably 6th) is the primary component, and the insight (probably Equanimity) was derived from inspecting the deeper nature of the experience much later. Within the state, the aspects of impermanence, dissatisfaction (or lack thereof), and absence of a self-construct weren't radical realizations; I simply didn't know life any other way. The contrast between that and what eventually became my ordinary experience is what brought the 3 Cs into explicit awareness for me.

I suppose that's my cue to reveal what I've been up to all along. It appears I've succeeded beyond my expectations in masking my ploy here. Seriously, no one ever suspected something was off. But there were red flags all over the place in my descriptions. Mind you, absolutely nothing I have said is a lie. But note how I never once mentioned my age at the time of the experience, what circumstances caused it to arise, or how long it lasted. It lasted a while, actually, and stayed very stable. Unfortunately, it ended abruptly... because I was born.

Yes, this was a description of a retained prenatal in-utero experience. What I have been describing is the experience of being a relatively brand-new individual, still utterly oblivious to material reality. I have presented it here to the best of my ability and recollection. My true purpose in this thread was to answer the following questions: Where on the universal path of awakening, as Daniel presents it, do we start our lives at? And what portion of contemplative practice is simply a matter of getting back to that origin point?

I withheld this information for very good reason: I wanted the analysis to remain free of the biases that one invokes by making such a claim. If I had just come right out with it, especially as a new member, I most likely would've been laughed off the boards. But this way, the features of the experience could be considered purely on their own merits. My strategy and its results have made this exercise as fruitful as I could have hoped. I feel like I understand both my experience and the structure of the path better for having asked. I'm now more convinced that we're endowed by nature with a rather advanced state of awareness, and the jhanic and insight stages discussed herein bear great similarities to prenatal experience for reasons far beyond mere coincidence.

I think the really groundbreaking idea Daniel has brought to the table, and the one that makes his work gripping for me, is that the structure he outlines is in some way universal. It is not tied to any one tradition, but presents in parallel patterns across all contemplative traditions, and even manifests itself outside of them. The Buddha didn't invent a religion, so much as he had a run-in with the universal path of awakening, as others have before and since, and rolled with it to unprecedented success. As far as I know, Daniel's work is the only line of inquiry presenting this material in this light so explicitly.

As such, I felt like it would be worthwhile to apply his methods to an experience that one would think to have nothing to do with insight or contemplative practice, but is certainly a profound experience of raw consciousness, and if Daniel's big idea of the universality of the map is valid, a connection may very well emerge in analysis. I am now fairly confident to say that such a connection has been established, providing support for Daniel's modest proposal.

If you wish to reassess your analysis in light of this new information, of course, go right ahead.

Put in place a well designed, systematic, methodical, formal meditation practice.

It will uncover for you the defilements/fetters that are left, and will provide a way forward.

I say this not as criticism but as a sharing of my understanding. 'Testing' other people is a symptom of what a friend of mine calls PSEDNY. Pre-stream entry dark night yogi.

People get all sorts of ideas in their heads regarding who they are and what their place is in relation to other people and this world in general.

Big claims, no claims, humble brags, performative humility, challenging claimants, testing claimants, establishing inferiority/equality/superiority, bowing before people, getting people to bow before you ..... etc - all of this actually has a place in the dance of human relationships. But if your 'heart' is trapped in it .... there's work to be done.


Re universality of the map:

That which we personally experience in the process of awakening, we may create concepts and language around it. The 'map' is a concept! The languaging resonates with some people, with others it doesnt.

​​​​​​​

"this was a description of a retained prenatal in-utero experience."

Well, it is an adult remembering/describing a retained prenatal in-utero experience.   

Most people that go pretty deep into this stuff (regular practice, retreats, etc.) will have their own collection of experiences (energetic, past lives, future lives, regressions, animal consciousness, angels, demons, dieties, psychic, telepathic etc. etc.). It can be very tempting to indentify and reify these experiences, create a whole metaphysics about it... And of course there is the profit motive out there with people selling different paradigms/cultures that futher encourage indentification and reification of these experences...

What I'm basically trying to say/point out is: the past is memory and the future doesn't exist. Ironically, the most spiritual thing that people can learn to do is to simply live in this foundationless present moment... but of course the ego/identity doesn't like being undefined in the present -- which is why formal meditation is so simple yet so hard.

So +1 to the idea of establishing a formal practice to see if the insights/experiences of the past can be brought to the timeless present. 

 

Ad an fyi you might be interested in the chapter "Maps of consciousness" in Stan Grof's book "Stormy search for the self". Daniel recommended this book to me, actually. They have a theory that all experiences related with spiritual emergence/emergency have to do with accessing particular layers of memory and types of unconscious, including the freudian unconscious (biographical type stuff), perinatal (pre-, during-, or post-partum memories linked with theories by Otto Rank), and the "transpersonal" (accessing the jungian "collective unconscious" including the types of experiences shargrol mentioned). Perinatal experiences, in particular, interpreted as "reliving birth trauma", are described awfully like what the theravadins call "dukkha ñanas". The idea is interesting and has some merit, tbh. In fact I think the grofs later developed what they called perinatal matrices? Something like that. Anyways, might be interesting to you, as it points to a certain universality which was certainly discussed before Daniel or the Grofs were around (look up René Guénon). My take is that the Grofs' theories should be taken with a heavy dose of your favorite seasoning, salt perhaps, or soy sauce, or even fish sauce for that matter (Garum!), and that practically speaking, hard beliefs that specific experiences or memories are this or that can be both helpful and handicapping. Best wishes

It's great to be interested in non-standard modes of experience. Interestingly, imagination and elaboration can be a double-edged sword. These things can orient us in interesting directions, but when we spend time imagining what experiences might be like, or intellectually expanding on experiences, particularly in ways that try to fit them into an existing framework, it can limit the ways in which the mind is likely to operate and actually make it less likely that we will see what is actually happening (which is literally beyond imagination). It's a bit like spending a lot of time studying guidebooks before going on vacation and, as a result, never seeing the actual city when we go there. 

If I may offer some advice it would be to allow yourself to be led by your curiosity, rather than your imagination, your memory, or your intellect.

Demands of college life currently make starting a formal practice logistically difficult, but I'm probably going to become an anthropological fieldworker, which I imagine is one of the very best professions for starting up a rigorous practice of some sort. So I think I'll see about it at that point. I can't say I'm not intrigued.

I honestly don't want to call how I currently practice "informal", though, because while it's conducted on a constant basis in daily life (although it certainly dominates my thoughts the most whenever I find myself doing nothing), it's based on concrete operating principles and final objectives, and is devastatingly effective at what I want it to do for me. It's heavily insight-oriented and very instrumental, all about understanding the 3 Cs and knowing how to manipulate them to make them serve my interests. I wouldn't say I've jhana'd since the day I was born, but I'd probably love it, so if I start a separate practice, I may go more the jhanic route.

This practice definitely doesn’t go all the way through the map of awakening, though, as that ultimately leads to stages that are "too far gone" to be conducive to my goals. And it admittedly has a lot of "TB12 Method"-ness about it; it's totally my own creation and may only work for me for all I know. As I said above, I'll start another thread soon with a full description, but I can't figure out where I should do that, so someone please direct me to where we post intros.

Some people seem to be insinuating that I seem a little too interested in the mapping and structure. However, I'm not quite sure even how well it maps onto my current mode of practice yet. My suspicion is that it is parallel, but stops at certain points that are ideal to the task it's designed for. So I'm not fully committed to the idea of universality yet, just getting closer. Once I create a thread about it, I think I'll get a better idea of how it lines up.