A couple of weeks ago, post sit (my usual samatha Jhana type thing), I was playing with my cats in my living room. I would say that at that point I had a pretty deep level of stillness/concentration for my standards, but it did not feel extraordinary. 

During that, there was a shift in awareness that is not something I have experienced before. The baseline state has the feeling of an observer behind the face. That dropped away completely, and awareness, and sort of sense of self (perhaps the self-making wanted to grasp onto something new), shifted to the whole visual space. The furry doofuses wandering around and the space of my living room area felt like all there was, and the normal baseline state with the observer behind the face could no longer be felt. Some attention/awareness was looking for the behind the face thing and could not find it (or perhaps the volume on that got turned down as the volume on feeling the visual space got turned up). There was an inclination to do metta (positive regard) practice in that space, and a feeling as if the whole concious space was doing metta rather the "my mind". 

Explained in a different way, I have had experience sort of like the lights going out completely, or a generally reduced sense of the observer behind the head. I also have had some insight experiences around the impersonal quality of all things, including awareness itself. But this was the first experience (at least with this particular quality) of the boundary between inside and outside actually ceasing temporarily. 

The feeling persisted for an hour or so and was followed by some pretty deep levels of equanimity and bliss; not outstanding levels though. It is also worth noting that I had some energetic stuff occur up the spine and my posture straightened out substantially. Not necessarily an uncommon thing either. 

My curiosity here is that the term non-dual never made much sense on an experiential level. Does this sound like an experience of that? I am most familiar with Theravada maps/models and Samatha Jhana on a practical level, but I am happy to look into other models that describe this (if they exist). I have heard a bit about some Mahayana models on non-duality but am very much a tourist in that territory.

Thanks,
Ryan

It's hard to find a clear boundary between an experience of nonduality and not an experience of nonduality :-) but what you describe does seem to fit with what many people refer to as nonduality. Although the label might not be the most important part, there is a lot to be learned from these kinds of experiences.

You might be interested in what Angelo DiLullo has to say about it. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR2bLIYLsk_TMR3Ui1bgMDL_HMRcF0m6x He has a pretty broad take. 

If you want to play around with it, Howard Cohn's Big Mind guided meditation is an easy way to get the flavor of it going. It's a stripped down version, because the eyes are closed, but it's fun. He generally gives this meditation on the afternoon of day two of a retreat, so it's geared to people who have a fair bit of concentration momentum going, so it might be most useful after another sit, for example. https://mindfulnessexercises.com/big-mind-meditation/

Ryan, how "big" did this experience feel? Was the effect purely visual? What we the emotional content of it?

Possibly a peak experience of nondual but it is not yet a realization. Do check this out and see if you relate:

https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2020/04/different-degress-of-no-self-non.html (an article I wrote)


If the above interests you, also check out these articles by my mentor：

https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2007/03/thusnesss-six-stages-of-experience.html

https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2009/03/on-anatta-emptiness-and-spontaneous.html

"It's hard to find a clear boundary between an experience of nonduality and not an experience of nonduality :-) ..."

Thanks for the input and resources Martin. I will have a look soon. I imagine that working on a more 3-dimensional aspect of my practice could become important soon. It is not something I connected with until recently on an experiential level.

"Ryan, how "big" did this experience feel?"

It was the biggest experience I have ever had. It did not have an infinite quality as I've heard described about Jhana 5 (I think), but the whole visual space of my living room and kitchen area felt like "it" or "me"; just one concious space without barriers. Perhaps it would have been broader if I was outside.

"Was the effect purely visual?"
I am guessing a bit about the second aspect but the most prominent aspect was definitely the visual space; it was hyper diffused such that the center of the visual space was no more or less clear than the periphery. This is not an uncommon thing in general during/after sits, but I would say the clarity and broadness was a new level. 

It is possible that there was a kind of body-scan like feeling quality (as in the space that I feel during body scanning type stuff) at or roughly the same size of the visual space. When the mind did a bit of metta, there was an impression that it felt like the room was doing metta. Normally, I don't actually feel "metta" in the feeling/body scanning space at all, even though I know it is going on through other markers. It might have been there on a very subtle level.

EDIT: The biggest change was in the sense of perspective or center. There did not feel like a center anywhere or anything which felt more like a "separate self" than anything else. This was totally a new thing. Even during some insight stuff and whatever levels of jhanas I get into, the center or perspective has not had that quality. 

"What we the emotional content of it?"
Emotional content was pretty deep equanimity with a bit of bliss. Once things flipped over from Observer->Observed to whatever the new thing was, I felt lighter (in the sense of weight) and with a strong impersonal/anatta type feel to it in a pleasant way; as opposed to a "oh god I don't actually exist wtf" kind of way. 

Thanks, looking forward to hearing your input.

I asked that series of questions to get a deeper flavor of what you experienced.  Based on your descriptions, my input is that what happened to you sounds like an episode of nonduality. These can deepen over time, but setting up the conditions for them isn't like following a series of specific steps. They just seem to happen when they want to happen.

"Possibly a peak experience of nondual but it is not yet a realization. Do check this out and see if you relate:..."

Thanks Soh, I had a quick read over that and will finish it later. Some aspects I can relate to. At one point or another in the past 12ish years, just about every aspect of conciousness has been seen as impersonal (more recent aspects being awareness/attention itself and states of jhana). It isn't locked in to a default state though; just becomes more apparent during/after sits or just at random throughout the day. 

The part about impersonality there does seem to track with my recent experience. This sentence in particular: " It is the dissolving of the construct of 'personal self'". That thing! The baseline feeling of separation broke down when awareness fully felt the visual space but couldn't find the separate thing that the mind knows doesn't exist on a theoretical level already. It looked behind the head (in a body-scanning sort of way) and came up with nothing.

"I asked that series of questions to get a deeper flavor of what you experienced..."

Thanks Chris; good to know. The set up was quite weird. All I remember about it is that it was a few hours after a deep but non particularly long jhana sit and dropping everything else to play with my cats after a day of work. 

You can try this method  

https://youtube.com/shorts/SosAhZwxd5c?si=7tk4_4Pd0DfCtSxm