White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Illuminatus 9/29/16 1:24 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Stick Man 9/29/16 2:03 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon shargrol 9/29/16 3:56 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Marty G 9/29/16 4:13 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Illuminatus 9/29/16 5:22 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Noah D 9/29/16 4:26 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Illuminatus 9/29/16 4:46 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon shargrol 9/29/16 6:01 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Illuminatus 9/29/16 6:10 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Illuminatus 9/29/16 6:15 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Noah D 9/29/16 6:18 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Illuminatus 9/29/16 6:31 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Noah D 9/29/16 11:29 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon shargrol 9/30/16 7:47 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Illuminatus 9/30/16 8:18 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Banned For waht? 9/30/16 8:57 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Illuminatus 9/30/16 9:28 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Banned For waht? 9/30/16 11:49 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Illuminatus 9/30/16 12:25 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Noah D 9/30/16 9:21 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Dream Walker 9/30/16 10:51 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Illuminatus 9/30/16 12:27 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Stick Man 9/30/16 9:39 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Illuminatus 9/30/16 12:17 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Dada Kind 9/30/16 4:49 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Illuminatus 9/30/16 5:26 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Stick Man 10/1/16 2:10 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Illuminatus 10/1/16 2:38 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Dada Kind 10/1/16 4:16 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Stick Man 10/1/16 1:39 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Stick Man 10/1/16 1:32 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Dream Walker 10/1/16 3:33 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Stick Man 10/6/16 12:05 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Stick Man 9/29/16 7:05 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Illuminatus 9/29/16 7:09 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Stick Man 9/30/16 3:26 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Illuminatus 9/30/16 3:33 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Stick Man 9/30/16 4:01 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Illuminatus 9/30/16 3:44 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Stick Man 9/30/16 4:41 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Dream Walker 9/29/16 9:30 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Dada Kind 9/30/16 5:17 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Illuminatus 9/30/16 7:51 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon C P M 9/29/16 8:40 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Illuminatus 9/30/16 3:17 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Stick Man 9/30/16 3:43 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Dream Walker 9/29/16 9:01 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Illuminatus 9/30/16 2:55 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Dream Walker 9/30/16 10:24 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Illuminatus 9/30/16 12:13 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon tom moylan 9/30/16 12:52 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Illuminatus 9/30/16 1:00 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Dream Walker 9/30/16 1:50 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Banned For waht? 10/1/16 6:52 AM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Stick Man 10/6/16 12:04 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Stick Man 10/23/16 6:10 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Sup Dude 10/25/16 1:52 PM
RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon Stick Man 10/27/16 12:12 PM
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Illuminatus, modified 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 1:24 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 1:24 PM

White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 101 Join Date: 7/16/14 Recent Posts
Before I start, here is my rough history of meditation:

- I started meditating in 2008 using the method in a book called "The Presence Process" by Michael Brown. This used a combination of breath awareness and a mantra. I entered first jhana "accidentally" without knowing what it was (that book is a Western self-help book and does not mention any Eastern practices). That happened within the first two weeks of practising.

- After completing the book I shifted to Shinzen Young's "The Science of Enlightenment" CD series, whose core message is, "Observe phenomena with mindfulness and equanimity". I quickly began to see sensations at finer and finer resolutions, and crossed the A&P, again without knowing what that even was. I continued this practice not just every day but literally all the time -- meaning I engrained a habit of constant mindfulness.

- I found MCTB in perhaps 2014. I was able to retrospectively identify many of the territories I had crossed through on my journey so far, which was helpful because I had had so many wacky experiences that I didn't have a name for. I began paying more attention to individual sensations and my practice morphed through various forms as I tried to absorb the methodology Daniel was putting across. Eventually however I went back to my Shinzen Young method because I was used to it and had already got great results from it, and felt that Daniel's methodology was a bit incompatible with my neurological type (a topic I have some theories about but won't go into here). One thing I took away from MCTB however was that I would get more results from going deeper into the meditation and really trying to see what was going on in the sensations etc. So, I started spending more time on individual meditation sessions, e.g. sometimes doing 8 hours straight or even longer (but this would not be every day).

I am now going to describe a specific experience I had starting in November 2015, which culminated in something profound happening in January 2016. I am going to strip out all labels and just describe, as best I can, the "raw sense data". Hopefully then some of you can help me identify what these experiences were.

-----------------------

In November 2015 I began to notice that I had a wavelike ripple formation in the centre of my vision with eyes closed. This formation was small and was exactly in the centre, and was only noticeable with eyes closed when looking for it right in the centre. It looked a bit like this in shape:




However, the ripples were black and white and were made of the grainy stuff you see with eyes closed. They appeared to move outward as though emanating from the centre.

Despite being there pretty much every time I closed my eyes, for some reason I decided to pay them little attention and continued using the breath as my object during meditation.

Two months later, in January 2016, however, this changed. One day while semi-reclined on my bed, I decided to meditate directly upon the wave formation. Results were very sudden. The wave formation grew in size until it filled my entire field of vision. Emotions would interfere with the neatness of the pattern at first until I realized that if I relaxed into each emotion as it arose, the wave pattern would become coherent. After a few seconds of this, it became vast in size and filled my entire field of awareness, and my impression of having a body completely disappeared. So, my entire experience was just these waves. They would move and turn with my emotions. Eventually I got my emotional state so steady and relaxed that the waves were very coherent, and at this point it was like I was surfing on the waves toward a horizon which was infinitely far away (yet all the waves appeared to travel towards this horizon). My experience was similar to this Media Player visualization, starting at 25 seconds in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9k4i6FpKRw

However, the waves were coherent like the stable grid at the bottom (but not gridded; just endless waves) rather than chaotic like the crap at the top.

Question 1) What the hell is this wavescape thing?

Now, here starts the second part of my experience.

I exited the wavescape state by just opening my eyes and coming back to "reality". I stayed out of that state for a few minutes. Then I closed my eyes and saw that the wave formation was there in the middle again, as it was before. However, this time I did not focus on the waveform, but rather the space around it.

At this point there was the sudden, jarring sensation of my body very suddenly falling away, and me being propelled into outer space.

I was now in what I would call a "spacefield". The space all around me was completely devoid of anything, meaning there was absolutely nothing visual in there -- just total blackness. However, it was still tangibly three-dimensional "space". So, I could "sense" that it had volume despite it being black.

At the back of the "spacefield" was a "starfield" made of singular oval white dots. I began to focus upon the dots and found myself travelling through a strange cylinder with total blackness at the far end but seemingly endless amounts of these white dots on the walls of this cylinder. The white dots were laid out in uniform fashion. The "cylinder" was IMPLIED by the layout of the white dots -- so I inferred that I was travelling through a cylinder based on the layout and motion of the white dots. It was a little like this:




However, the destination point was NOT off to one side like in the above picture, but was instead straight-on. The uniformity of the dots in the above picture however is approximately correct. To reiterate, the dots were white in my experience.

Note 1: I had seen this tunnel of white dots before, which was during entry to a lucid dream. It occurred while holding my consciousness together and passing through the sleep phases while remaining conscious, and I passed through this tunnel briefly before emerging in the lucid dream.

Note 2: For a moment, when first entering the tunnel, the dots actually looked like little galaxies drifting by me, and reminded me strongly of the Hubble Deep Field scan:



However, they reverted to white dots again and the experience continued.

Question 2: What is the spacefield and what are the white dots -- and what is that "moving through a tunnel" formation all about?

Here is where things become even more interesting. If I relaxed and got some emotional tone, the dots would in fact begin to merge and become those wave formations from the first experience. Additionally, I could also "drop back" and experience them as dots again just by shifting my attention to the previous mode, though I am currently at a loss for words to describe how I did that. It was a bit like pulling on a gearstick in my mind. Using the "gearstick", I could pull back the white dots to a completely static starfield, with the infinite black space sensation still in between them all.

Finally, I began to zoom in on just one of the white dots, getting ever closer. While doing this, a few other white dots would strangely orbit the central one I was zooming in on. Also, the closer I got, the more the central white dot would just stay the same. At this point it looked really "bitty" -- like it was made of just one pixel on a computer screen. As I got closer, one of the orbiting white dots fizzled away, then so did the other one, then finally, after some bizarre feeling of intense trepidation, I had the feeling of something being ripped right out of the centre of me -- and the single white dot exploded, and all of reality ended. The moment where reality did not exist is just inferred by the visual at the end when the dot exploded, then the restarting of reality afterwards. I have no idea how long it lasted but it seemed just like an instant. Things faded back in after that. The moment reality ended was like a sudden fizz followed by indefinable nothingness.

I was then able to close my eyes and repeat the process as many times as I liked. I probably went through the whole sequence about 12 times in a row after that.

I then could not sleep for about two days, and felt totally wired. Every time I closed my eyes I would drop into that starfield with the infinite space. It literally felt like I was being shot into outer space each time. Even just watching television, my attention was so powerful that it would "glue" to the picture on the TV screen and that starfield would appear around in the periphery, and the starfield would then quickly fade in to fill the whole of my visual field and I would have that "leaving my body" sensation. It was happening literally every time I paid attention to anything.

In the end I took a valium just to make it end so I could fall asleep, which worked a treat. When I woke up that wave formation from the centre of my vision was gone, and it has not returned. However, this has now been replaced by something else: Everytime I look at anything, but particularly if I look into the distance, a sense of there being a horizon in front of me is basically always present. So, even as I'm looking at this computer screen, there is a sense of infinite depth extending through the screen and forming a horizon at some unimaginably distant point. The "screen" -- and everything else in my surroundings -- therefore looks like it's just this kind of translucent "stuff" suspended in a 3D "space". When I settle back and see that horizon, all the objects in my surroundings suddenly look completely ephemeral, like I could just move my hand right through them -- like they are mist, or clouds. This bothered me at first as I would get that intense panic feeling every time objects would appear to be this "dream stuff", but that has now completely changed and I have come to love seeing the world like that.

Question 3: What happened here?

Your input is greatly appreciated. emoticon
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Stick Man, modified 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 2:03 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 2:03 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 396 Join Date: 9/23/14 Recent Posts
Neat story.

Only ever heard mention of grainy screen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzbFjL4Y0UA
...but I expect there is knowledge of it in buddhism somewhere

the dots and waves sound like entoptic phenomena https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entoptic_phenomenon

leading to an experience of travelling through a tunnel passing through a void to a White Light as per OOBE, NDE, deep trance, shamanism.
shargrol, modified 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 3:56 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 3:56 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

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My initial guess is you were hitting some higher formless jhanas during late pre-Stream Entry, then had a cessation and review period. Basically those experiences were a blend of jhana and vipassina with lots of cool stuff.

The interesting thing about mapping these sorts of things is the visuals do matter to some degree, but some of the most telling evidence comes from your change in perception/attitude. For example, did your baseline level of existential suffering change? Are you better able to understand the dharma? Etc.

I'm curious: What's practice like these days? What's your best guess on mapping?
Marty G, modified 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 4:13 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 4:09 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 95 Join Date: 9/3/16 Recent Posts
Edd thanks for the well described internal state and exploration description. You may get more  positive responses that give guidance and recognize your particular phenomena. But I'm not a phenomena enthusiast.

The kundalini guys and ayahuasca ( or any  psychedelic users) users endlessly describe their experiences and what are they both, really ? Forms of brain ( mind) stimulation. Useful to a degree where a transformative insight arises but passed that point, just endless patterns doing their 'meaningless' thing.

The truth is ( as I see it, anyone can disagree) their is no real meaning to these swirling shapes and patterns and nor do they necessarily lead to great insights or breakthroughs. Often just more of the same, interesting, fascinating but still states of confusion, WTHIGO ( what the hell is going on?) So if you hammer your brain with sensory stimulating meditation you will get 'weird' internal/external (external because you are feeding back into your own brain and thus re-wiring the mechanism).

If you are 'cool' enough you could observe all of this "stuff"  ( because it is only mechanical effects) and stand free of it. Which is what we will all have to do at some point. If you want my advice I would say drop the sensory meditation and just focus on emotional/thought patterns. In spite of what the the sensate meditation exponents claim, their is little happiness or joy down that route. Again this is just my viewpoint colored by my own experiences with such things.
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Noah D, modified 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 4:26 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 4:23 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

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Just to augment what Shargrol said, it sounds like your SE experience had above average perceptual transformation packed into it.  This is based on your description of changes to spatial and visual processesing that have persisted.  3rd Path in Daniels 4 Path "Simple Model" involves these types of changes.  The stage called "Non Dual Awareness" in Mahamudra also does.  Dream Walker writes about it in the 3rd Path section of his Framework of Awakening thread.

Edit:  I've seen other evidence that these types of major and minor shifts can occur out of order, depending on the individual yogi and the practices being done.
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Illuminatus, modified 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 4:46 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 4:46 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

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Thanks all so far (yet eager to hear from more people!). emoticon

Having read Daniel's 3rd Path description that sounds about right. There is certainly some duality left, and cycling does affect the perceptions of a "this side" and a "that side" -- they are absent most of the time but certain states will create a contraction into a "self", Misery in particular (though that itself does not cause anywhere near the problems it used to, e.g. when I was a regular depressive, which basically never happens any more).

shargrol:
My initial guess is you were hitting some higher formless jhanas during late pre-Stream Entry, then had a cessation and review period. Basically those experiences were a blend of jhana and vipassina with lots of cool stuff.

The interesting thing about mapping these sorts of things is the visuals do matter to some degree, but some of the most telling evidence comes from your change in perception/attitude. For example, did your baseline level of existential suffering change? Are you better able to understand the dharma? Etc.

I'm curious: What's practice like these days? What's your best guess on mapping?

The most profound change is that I no longer feel a great push towards "figuring this stuff out".
I don't feel "done"; I feel completely, exactly where I am right now, and completely and exactly fine with that. That's a marked change from the previous eight years where it was blood, sweat and tears to get some sort of "answer". I feel like I got all the answers I wanted.

Practice is done mostly for fun now, but also under the knowledge that whatever practice I do will show me whatever I need to learn. So, it feels like I already got the main course, and everything else now is just dessert.

Fear of death is almost non-existent, whereas before it was something I feared greatly. I feel like I died and was reborn many times that night.

Basically I feel like I got what I wanted, and it was all worth it.
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Illuminatus, modified 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 5:22 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 5:22 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

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You may say there is no meaning to the shapes, but I would still like to hear from anyone out there who has experienced similar:

Why did that ripple wave formation stay in my field of vision for so long? I didn't ask for it. Why, only when I had investigated it fully (and had incredible experiences) did it then disappear?

It just seems rather specific, to me.
shargrol, modified 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 6:01 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 6:01 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

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What's a typical sit like these days? Any new territory?
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Illuminatus, modified 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 6:10 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 6:10 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

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shargrol:
What's a typical sit like these days? Any new territory?

The gains made now are more about playing the game than trying to see through the game (which I feel I already saw through enough to find my peace with it). So each sit results in some micro-gain about the hardware and how to use it.

An example is that I now have total body synaesthesia -- so, I can literally see every nerve in my own body, like I have X-ray vision. I can now also see through other people's bodies. So, I can see where each of their nerves is and infer things about their history from that.

I also have "IQ halos" -- the ability to predict people's IQs within just a few points based on a glowing halo I see around their head. I see that halo around everyone's heads. I have tested that to quite some amazement with people who have actually had their IQs tested. I "see-feel" the halo -- it is a combined modality of seeing and feeling. It appears as a kind of "space" around their head. I can tell other things about each person, too. I can tell if they were hit much as a child. All sorts of information I don't necessarily want about them, just flooding at me.

I appear to have a good level of magickal ability. I semi-regularly rip casinos off using magickal gambling. As we speak I just pulled another £1100 profit.

Every time I practise now I just get better at anything I want to get better at. Bear in mind now that I'm playing the game for fun, rather than for answers. The experience I wrote up above was the culmination of when I was really looking for answers, and it seems like I got it. I haven't worried about needing to progress any further at all since that day. Now, progress is just for the sake of enjoying playing the game.
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Illuminatus, modified 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 6:15 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 6:15 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

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I should add, that I have not abandoned the dharma. Making progress in the dharma is always a background goal, and progress always finds its own way of presenting itself. It's just at this point all the urgency has gone and it feels like it's definitely just going to keep teaching me and revealing its lessons. It's more like I can sit back and enjoy the process, now.
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Noah D, modified 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 6:18 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 6:18 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

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Just to clarify (but not to be combative), I was suggesting that you got SE + a spatial shift add on, not the whole package of 3rd Path after your first fruition.

Also, maybe Pawel K can chime in regarding the synesthesia, particularly if you're curious about further stages of it.
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Illuminatus, modified 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 6:31 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 6:31 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

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Noah D:
Just to clarify (but not to be combative), I was suggesting that you got SE + a spatial shift add on, not the whole package of 3rd Path after your first fruition.

Also, maybe Pawel K can chime in regarding the synesthesia, particularly if you're curious about further stages of it.

Here's the thing: I don't think this was my first fruition. If you check my posting history then there are reports about experiences I was somewhat sure were fruition.

Also, I had this whole "wilderness" phase of six years of non-stop practice without knowing anything about Buddhism, which had one or two memorable experiences that matched some descriptions of fruition. It is just difficult to know what was what when practice was so unstructured and I did not know what I was aiming for/ trying to do.

Looking forward to any chime-ins about the synaesthesia -- I haven't really scratched the surface there. At one point I had a visual of the entire nervous system of my body, every nerve visible, and how they all linked into the brain, and all the "circuits" that produced what memories and thought process and the endocrine responses that went with them. We're talking a full neurological holographical map of the body. When I came out of that trance, the whole of reality was strobing in multicolour and my hands had tracers when I moved them, just like you get on LSD, except I had not had any drugs.

I have had some really, really interesting experiences with meditation, and to be honest most of them happened just by going with my instincts rather than trying to follow any external guide.
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Stick Man, modified 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 7:05 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 7:05 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

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OK, my IQ ?
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Illuminatus, modified 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 7:09 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 7:09 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 101 Join Date: 7/16/14 Recent Posts
John:
OK, my IQ ?


Is this a joke?

Post a large picture of yourself and I will have a go.
C P M, modified 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 8:40 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 8:39 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 218 Join Date: 5/23/13 Recent Posts
I was curious about visual effects after getting more than usual at a home retreat.  Nothing as dramatic as what you described.  But I did start doing a bit of research and ran across this guy:

http://www.philipnicholson.com/home

who has also reported dramatic visuals and wrote about it.  

Here is one of his links. It shows videos representing visuals, one that looks like the star pattern you are describing. Click on the number three video on the bottom:

http://www.religiousvisionsoflight.com/video.html?1

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Dream Walker, modified 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 9:01 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 9:01 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 1657 Join Date: 1/18/12 Recent Posts
Edd:
In November 2015 I began to notice that I had a wavelike ripple formation in the centre of my vision with eyes closed. This formation was small and was exactly in the centre, and was only noticeable with eyes closed when looking for it right in the centre. It looked a bit like this in shape:




However, the ripples were black and white and were made of the grainy stuff you see with eyes closed. They appeared to move outward as though emanating from the centre.

Question 1) What the hell is this wavescape thing?
Dunno, i used to see that projected on the pavement or any random background. I haven’t tuned into it with my eyes closed though.


Edd:
Now, here starts the second part of my experience.

I exited the wavescape state by just opening my eyes and coming back to "reality". I stayed out of that state for a few minutes. Then I closed my eyes and saw that the wave formation was there in the middle again, as it was before. However, this time I did not focus on the waveform, but rather the space around it.

At this point there was the sudden, jarring sensation of my body very suddenly falling away, and me being propelled into outer space.

I was now in what I would call a "spacefield". The space all around me was completely devoid of anything, meaning there was absolutely nothing visual in there -- just total blackness. However, it was still tangibly three-dimensional "space". So, I could "sense" that it had volume despite it being black.

Question 2: What is the spacefield and what are the white dots -- and what is that "moving through a tunnel" formation all about?
I called this 3D space. It was the experience that led me to finding MCTB after I got first path.

Edd:
The moment where reality did not exist is just inferred by the visual at the end when the dot exploded, then the restarting of reality afterwards. I have no idea how long it lasted but it seemed just like an instant. Things faded back in after that. The moment reality ended was like a sudden fizz followed by indefinable nothingness.

 Everytime I look at anything, but particularly if I look into the distance, a sense of there being a horizon in front of me is basically always present. So, even as I'm looking at this computer screen, there is a sense of infinite depth extending through the screen and forming a horizon at some unimaginably distant point. The "screen" -- and everything else in my surroundings -- therefore looks like it's just this kind of translucent "stuff" suspended in a 3D "space". When I settle back and see that horizon, all the objects in my surroundings suddenly look completely ephemeral, like I could just move my hand right through them -- like they are mist, or clouds. This bothered me at first as I would get that intense panic feeling every time objects would appear to be this "dream stuff", but that has now completely changed and I have come to love seeing the world like that.

Question 3: What happened here?

Your input is greatly appreciated. emoticon
Sounds like a fruition. This sounds like the proprioception shift that happens after second path. The body and the field are no longer separated.
I no longer think of this event as 3rd path since there is so many other things that need to be fixed to complete 3rd but it does seem to be the main next shift that gives you a walking around "change". So if you have had several path worthy experiences before, I’d say you got some of 3rd started, but like Noah mentioned, you can do bits of third out of order if you work on them.
Cool story, its fun to have such visual perceptual shifts.
msg me if you want to skype about it
~D
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Dream Walker, modified 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 9:30 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 9:30 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 1657 Join Date: 1/18/12 Recent Posts
Edd:
shargrol:
What's a typical sit like these days? Any new territory?

So each sit results in some micro-gain about the hardware and how to use it.

 I have X-ray vision.

I also have "IQ halos"

I can tell other things about each person, too. I can tell if they were hit much as a child. All sorts of information I don't necessarily want about them, just flooding at me.

I appear to have a good level of magickal ability.

Every time I practise now I just get better at anything I want to get better at. Bear in mind now that I'm playing the game for fun, rather than for answers. The experience I wrote up above was the culmination of when I was really looking for answers, and it seems like I got it. I haven't worried about needing to progress any further at all since that day. Now, progress is just for the sake of enjoying playing the game.
After each major shift we tend to get an increased level of honeymoon concentration. It allows us to get a look at higher levels and powers. This is usually a temporary shift but who knows until you wait a while for whatever to settle into your new normal.
Use your powers for good....
~D
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Noah D, modified 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 11:29 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/29/16 11:29 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 1211 Join Date: 9/1/16 Recent Posts
Edd:
Here's the thing: I don't think this was my first fruition. If you check my posting history then there are reports about experiences I was somewhat sure were fruition.

Mudita!  Enjoy your awareness.  Enjoy your life.  Explore.  Tell us know how it goes.  
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Illuminatus, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 2:55 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 2:55 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 101 Join Date: 7/16/14 Recent Posts
Thanks Dreamwalker! I had mentally placed myself somewhere between 2nd and 3rd path, so that is good to know.
I called this 3D space. It was the experience that led me to finding MCTB after I got first path.

Can you tell me more about your experience? In detail please!

While I am being careful not to read too much into it, the impression I got from that "white dots/ black background" space is that it is something like the framework of the "3D simulator". So, similar to how on Star Trek, when the holodeck is turned off you just have a black room with yellow gridlines onto which is projected any scene.

Also, seeing how the white dots could become waves, I thought this might have something to do with wave/particle duality, with white dots being the base unit of discrete sensations, with them being able to become a flowing experience (waves).
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Illuminatus, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 3:17 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 3:17 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 101 Join Date: 7/16/14 Recent Posts
C P M:
I was curious about visual effects after getting more than usual at a home retreat.  Nothing as dramatic as what you described.  But I did start doing a bit of research and ran across this guy:

http://www.philipnicholson.com/home

who has also reported dramatic visuals and wrote about it.  

Here is one of his links. It shows videos representing visuals, one that looks like the star pattern you are describing. Click on the number three video on the bottom:

http://www.religiousvisionsoflight.com/video.html?1


Thanks for this. Video 3 analysis:

0:00 - 0:10:
I get this purple iris thing practically every time I meditate. Sometimes I use it as an object and get jhana from it; other times I ignore it completely.

0:13 - 0:17:
This star thing is similar to what a flame afterimage kasina turns into.

0:20 - 0:29:
This tunnel tends to follow the purple iris visual from the start of the video. I see this tunnel practically every time I meditate. I mainly meditate using a kundalini "beam" generated by my thumb and forefinger of each hand, linked to my third eye. This beam manifests very quickly as this tunnel visual. I then make the tunnel visual itself the object, simultaeous with the beam sensation. So, I correlate the beam and tunnel into a single entity and make that the object. I get jhanas very quickly doing this.

I see this tunnel visual at the third eye. Sometimes the tunnel is brightly lit with purple, gold, and even green light. These light colours are mixed in infinitely tiny grains -- so, green and purple will tend to coincide at the start of jhana. The most pleasurable is purple and gold. I correlate a purple and gold tunnel at my third eye with third jhana. One time, after staying in third jhana with purple and gold light for 30-60 minutes, outside of meditation I had a persistent hallucination of gold light descending from "Heaven" (all around me, raining down on me from the top of the visual field) even while out walking in a shopping centre. This hallucination lasted several days and was accompanied by profound feelings of bliss and grounding.

0:29 - 0:40:
Wow. That sure is similar to the tunnel of white dots I reported in my post. My only major difference was that my dots were very uniform. I will get around to doing a drawing of my tunnel one day to show the pattern.
I am assuming however that this guy's experience is in fact the same experience I had, and I will be investigating this site further.

Thanks for the great find! I will explore the other videos and comment on those, too, if they are similar to what I have experienced.
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Stick Man, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 3:26 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 3:25 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 396 Join Date: 9/23/14 Recent Posts
Joke ?

50/50 - I wondered if you could do it remotely (No way I'm posting my picture emoticon ).
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Illuminatus, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 3:33 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 3:33 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 101 Join Date: 7/16/14 Recent Posts
John:
Joke ?

50/50 - I wondered if you could do it remotely (No way I'm posting my picture emoticon ).
I never said I could do it remotely. The phenomenon occurs during live in-person interactions.

Photos are difficult because I need to see movement (mannerisms etc.) However I can still get a sense impression off of a photo.

I will read some of your posts now and guess your IQ from your "voiceprint". It would help if you know your IQ, though, in order to confirm or deny my guess?
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Stick Man, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 3:43 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 3:43 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 396 Join Date: 9/23/14 Recent Posts
Thanks for book tip, I was wondering about stuff like that - seizure/meditation commonalities.
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Illuminatus, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 3:44 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 3:44 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 101 Join Date: 7/16/14 Recent Posts
John:
Joke ?

50/50 - I wondered if you could do it remotely (No way I'm posting my picture emoticon ).
My sense impression of you is an IQ of around 121. But understand that is just from skimming a few posts of yours -- I can hardly get a "clear signal" from it.
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Stick Man, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 4:01 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 4:01 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 396 Join Date: 9/23/14 Recent Posts
Edd:
John:
Joke ?

50/50 - I wondered if you could do it remotely (No way I'm posting my picture emoticon ).
I never said I could do it remotely. The phenomenon occurs during live in-person interactions.


Photos are difficult because I need to see movement (mannerisms etc.) However I can still get a sense impression off of a photo.

I will read some of your posts now and guess your IQ from your "voiceprint". It would help if you know your IQ, though, in order to confirm or deny my guess?

Well, I wondered anyway. I only have a rough idea of my IQ, the tester (school teacher) was iffy about giving an accurate number.
That might already be too much info for a truly blinded study, given the published limitations of Wechsler tests.

OK forget this line of endeavour, I will shut up and enjoy the rest of your convo.
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Stick Man, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 4:41 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 4:41 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 396 Join Date: 9/23/14 Recent Posts
Edd:
John:
Joke ?

50/50 - I wondered if you could do it remotely (No way I'm posting my picture emoticon ).
My sense impression of you is an IQ of around 121. But understand that is just from skimming a few posts of yours -- I can hardly get a "clear signal" from it.

Ah well, I wouldn't be surprised if I lost a few points over the years, given my life experience emoticon
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Dada Kind, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 5:17 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 5:17 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 633 Join Date: 11/15/13 Recent Posts
This post read to me like satire. I wonder if anyone has tried a sort of dharmic Sokal affair.

At face value your experiences sound grandiose to me -- by mapping standards in this community, roughly, that should suggest a major A&P event or a particularly fiery review phase. I'm not sure if I recommend believing those standards.

For energetic-feely-magicky stuff this book is often recommended https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18420.Hands_Of_Light?from_search=true

What value do you see in the experiences?
shargrol, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 7:47 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 7:47 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 2344 Join Date: 2/8/16 Recent Posts
Edd:
Here's the thing: I don't think this was my first fruition. If you check my posting history then there are reports about experiences I was somewhat sure were fruition.


Ah, that helps paint the picture better. See, this is why any particular experience isn't diagnostic, but rather it's the trend over time. Context is everything. People can have momentary experiences that mirror anything in the formal meditation maps, but that doesn't mean their developmental baseline really "has" that experience.

So my second guess is this is an A&P event at whatever path you are working on, followed by cessations of a previous path. The reason I say that is because of all of the energetic experiences. Typically, the moments before a new path are not noisy, but rather especially mundane.

If this is the case, then, looking ahead, don't keep searching for these peak experiences. Things might become less mindblowing and might even go in the direction of boredom or even typical dark night stuff.

The later paths are more about wondering about "the nature of mind/awareness" rather than what appears "in awareness". So less about specific experiences and more about the container that seems to hold them.

Best wishes! Big openings can cause a lot of mania and striving. Be sure to give yourself time to integrate this experience. Don't make any big life plans or re-solidify yourself around any particular dogma/view and don't solidify these new experiences into a sense of status over others. You can almost always be sure that most forms of "feeling like I gained something" in meditation are temporary and the broader implications of the insight eventually balances things out into something much more human.

That said, good work! Enjoy!! emoticon
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Illuminatus, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 7:51 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 7:51 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 101 Join Date: 7/16/14 Recent Posts
Droll Dedekind:
This post read to me like satire. I wonder if anyone has tried a sort of dharmic Sokal affair.

At face value your experiences sound grandiose to me -- by mapping standards in this community, roughly, that should suggest a major A&P event or a particularly fiery review phase. I'm not sure if I recommend believing those standards.

For energetic-feely-magicky stuff this book is often recommended https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18420.Hands_Of_Light?from_search=true

What value do you see in the experiences?

Hi Droll,

I would like to understand a bit better about what makes you think this is satire?

Also, what is grandiose about it? Okay, all the claims about various powers in the subsequent posts (which are true, by the way) might sound grandiose (in which case, why? Magick is a completely normal part of reality to me, and with all the magickal stories in Buddhism I am surprised people still react strangely any time anyone makes such claims) but, returning focus to the original post in this thread for a second, is anything in there grandiose? I am just relaying the sense data how I experienced it. And someone posted a link to those videos showing exactly the same visions I had which have been had by other yogis forever, so how is any of that grandiose?

I really don't understand this community at times.
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Illuminatus, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 8:18 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 8:18 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 101 Join Date: 7/16/14 Recent Posts
[quote=shargrol
...]
Shargrol, that is a really helpful reply -- thank you!

Okay, I understand a bit better now why some of the replies here have been like they are.

I purposely stripped out most of the context behind the original post/experience -- this was intentional as I wanted to get some views on the visual and experiential phenomena of, specifically, that wavescape and starfield realms. I really wanted someone else to say, "Yes, I've had that" as it seems like a rather specific experience, and it has happened multiple times to me since getting into dharma stuff.

The bigger story, which would take me a LONG time to write up (and I'm not sure how helpful it would be to include all the details) is that this was a huge, life-changing event for me. The actual experience itself constituted the worst night of my life, literally. Most of the experience was not pleasant at all but extremely painful, both emotionally and physically. The "Dark Night" after-effects continued for weeks and the investigation of those experiences was far more mundane. Eventually a shift happened where I was able to let go of all that.

The experience was in fact almost all about the nature of experience itself -- the "container" as you call it. It was entirely about that. I didn't include the story about this as, to be honest, I am fairly sure some people from this community would have stepped forward and said, "Oh that's A&P stuff, it doesn't mean anything" or words to that effect. It seems like every time I have written an experience up on this site several people have written it off as X, Y and Z making me having huge doubts about the value of that experience -- but then, without fail, huge perceptual shifts have occurred showing me that the experience was indeed what I thought it was. So I've taken the attitude that it's not worth me writing things up here very often because a load of naysayers will just shoot me down.

Is there a community online who does insight work via magick? The magick board on this site is practically empty, and the seemingly dogmatic right-hand path nature of this community means magickal phenomena are met with a tut and an admonishment to "behave myself". I personally think magickal phenomena point directly towards the nature of reality, as the insight lies in the rules by which magick manifests. I don't consider it any different from everything else that occurs in reality. Even lucid dreams now just seem to me like a continuation of the processes of reality -- so, a lucid dream is no more special to me than, say, "normal waking reality" or magickal reality. These are all just a continuum of experience.

I think the latter point is the primary value I found in all these experiences, and is at the core of the perceptual shift I have experienced as a result.
Banned For waht?, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 8:57 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 8:57 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 500 Join Date: 7/14/13 Recent Posts
Why you think you don't deserve to be shot down by the naysayers?

The experience you had doesn't even make sense to you. You need path and a fruit, so you know what is going on. If i get an experience then i know that its path related but i have seen it only once then i can't do nothing about it yet or draw any conclusions.

So reading that someone saw a God, well he/she can write any elaborate scientific theory. But like what!? you talking about there? Then after 200 pages of descriptions you read drug abuse then sorry you just flushed your theory down the toilet pro. Well everyone has the flush down the toilet somewhere and if it triggered, you should be thankful that you are being pointed out where or wahts maybe wrong. Or you can also remain in a fluffy surreal fantasy realm like forever and gather people around you who clap hands when you appear.
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Noah D, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 9:21 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 9:21 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 1211 Join Date: 9/1/16 Recent Posts
Edd:
So I've taken the attitude that it's not worth me writing things up here very often because a load of naysayers will just shoot me down.

Yeah the DhO isn't really useful for dharma diagnosis.  Its more useful for practice logs, and discussions of how conceptual paradigms intersect with different practices, that kind of thing.  

I've encountered three 4 Path Models so far.  I can not dismiss any of them, because they all have relevant data points in my own experience and that of others.  I have always relied on close work with a teacher to help move things along and understand where I am.  But it sounds like you're not into the teacher-student thing, so your best bet might be to try private messaging individual DhO people.
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Illuminatus, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 9:28 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 9:28 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 101 Join Date: 7/16/14 Recent Posts
Rist Ei:
Why you think you don't deserve to be shot down by the naysayers?

The experience you had doesn't even make sense to you. You need path and a fruit, so you know what is going on. If i get an experience then i know that its path related but i have seen it only once then i can't do nothing about it yet or draw any conclusions.

So reading that someone saw a God, well he/she can write any elaborate scientific theory. But like what!? you talking about there? Then after 200 pages of descriptions you read drug abuse then sorry you just flushed your theory down the toilet pro. Well everyone has the flush down the toilet somewhere and if it triggered, you should be thankful that you are being pointed out where or wahts maybe wrong. Or you can also remain in a fluffy surreal fantasy realm like forever and gather people around you who clap hands when you appear.

So, let me translate your points here:

- An experience is only valid if it rigidly follows the path of some school.

- If a drug is involved at any point in the experience, the experience is instantly invalidated.

"Why you think you don't deserve to be shot down by the naysayers?"

Because the naysayers tend to be rigid dogmatists trapped within the narrow framework of their particular affiliated school.
I am not confident that they know what they are talking about enough to shoot me down.
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Stick Man, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 9:39 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 9:39 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 396 Join Date: 9/23/14 Recent Posts
Tunnel through to bardo state and clear light, isn't it ? Higher than A&P I would think. Ski lift through the jhanas and straight to the snowline.
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Dream Walker, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 10:24 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 10:24 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 1657 Join Date: 1/18/12 Recent Posts
Edd:
Dreamwalker:
I called this 3D space. It was the experience that led me to finding MCTB after I got first path.
Can you tell me more about your experience? In detail please!
It was pretty cool at the time as I had not been meditating long and it made for a great story. I was not doing anything special, just following the breath (poorly) back when. I thought it was the 5th jhana for a long time(its not). I could not repeat it. Over time I stopped caring so much about one time experiences and tend to worry about the permanent shifts. Over the years you collect tons of 'one off' experiences that really dont mean much unto themselves but are neato at the time.
3D space was just that, the black behind the eyes went from flat, then zoomed out volumetrically. There seems to be a gradient shading to it but very subtle, its the "feeling" of spaciousness that makes the impression.

Visionary experiences tend to work in metaphores that are personally recognisable. The first representation that pops up might not be the very best one, it is just the quickest one to be accessed. Most likely you understood the representation as if happened because it got you a shift. Other than that, I would let the meaning stand for itself and move on to the next thing. If it repeats itself then dig a little deeper into it, otherwise you got what you needed from it.
Good luck
~D
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Dream Walker, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 10:51 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 10:51 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 1657 Join Date: 1/18/12 Recent Posts
Noah D:
Edd:
So I've taken the attitude that it's not worth me writing things up here very often because a load of naysayers will just shoot me down.

Yeah the DhO isn't really useful for dharma diagnosis.  Its more useful for practice logs, and discussions of how conceptual paradigms intersect with different practices, that kind of thing.  

I've encountered three 4 Path Models so far.  I can not dismiss any of them, because they all have relevant data points in my own experience and that of others.  I have always relied on close work with a teacher to help move things along and understand where I am.  But it sounds like you're not into the teacher-student thing, so your best bet might be to try private messaging individual DhO people.


There are several problems with getting information about third path practises off of the forums. First there are few practitioners at this level and so good advice is a rare commodity. People tend to get frustrated at this level and reach out to individuals to talk to in real time. This helps some as the written advice rarely emphasizes the correct thing to work on or it sounds hokey and is dismissed. When you talk to someone they can emphasize the right things and this gives you a much better understanding of what is important. Writing about stuff at this level tends to sounds a bit like nonsense or trying to point out such very subtle things that it just sounds like they are describing the effect and not the practise that gets there....try reading about pointing out practice and see if you make any headway...
shargrol:
The later paths are more about wondering about "the nature of mind/awareness" rather than what appears "in awareness". So less about specific experiences and more about the container that seems to hold them.
This is great advice for working at finishing the last part of 3rd path. It also applies to 4th path work.
Breaking down the boundaries that contain the sense doors especially thought is good stuff. Take your spaciousness off the cushion and dwell in it all day, notice the things that interfer with it and that points directly on what needs to be worked on next.
Good luck,
~D
Banned For waht?, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 11:49 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 11:49 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 500 Join Date: 7/14/13 Recent Posts
Edd:
Rist Ei:
Why you think you don't deserve to be shot down by the naysayers?

The experience you had doesn't even make sense to you. You need path and a fruit, so you know what is going on. If i get an experience then i know that its path related but i have seen it only once then i can't do nothing about it yet or draw any conclusions.

So reading that someone saw a God, well he/she can write any elaborate scientific theory. But like what!? you talking about there? Then after 200 pages of descriptions you read drug abuse then sorry you just flushed your theory down the toilet pro. Well everyone has the flush down the toilet somewhere and if it triggered, you should be thankful that you are being pointed out where or wahts maybe wrong. Or you can also remain in a fluffy surreal fantasy realm like forever and gather people around you who clap hands when you appear.

So, let me translate your points here:

- An experience is only valid if it rigidly follows the path of some school.

- If a drug is involved at any point in the experience, the experience is instantly invalidated.

"Why you think you don't deserve to be shot down by the naysayers?"

Because the naysayers tend to be rigid dogmatists trapped within the narrow framework of their particular affiliated school.
I am not confident that they know what they are talking about enough to shoot me down.
To whom you dedicate drug induced experiences? who is going to accept those experiences? You develop smell around you, ordinary people look with stern faces at you and keep distance or are polite with you just that not to trigger your antidogmatic depressive melanholic self.
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Illuminatus, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 12:13 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 12:13 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 101 Join Date: 7/16/14 Recent Posts
Dream Walker:
Edd:
Dreamwalker:
I called this 3D space. It was the experience that led me to finding MCTB after I got first path.
Can you tell me more about your experience? In detail please!
It was pretty cool at the time as I had not been meditating long and it made for a great story. I was not doing anything special, just following the breath (poorly) back when. I thought it was the 5th jhana for a long time(its not). I could not repeat it. Over time I stopped caring so much about one time experiences and tend to worry about the permanent shifts. Over the years you collect tons of 'one off' experiences that really dont mean much unto themselves but are neato at the time.
3D space was just that, the black behind the eyes went from flat, then zoomed out volumetrically. There seems to be a gradient shading to it but very subtle, its the "feeling" of spaciousness that makes the impression.


Exactly my experience.

I also thought it MIGHT be the fifth jhana but did not commit to that belief.
I also thought the infinite wavespace realm might be sixth jhana.

One of the main reasons I made this post was to ask about that, to find out if I experienced those jhanas or not.

Can you briefly describe the fifth and sixth jhanas with comparison to those states? Thanks.


Visionary experiences tend to work in metaphores that are personally recognisable. The first representation that pops up might not be the very best one, it is just the quickest one to be accessed. Most likely you understood the representation as if happened because it got you a shift. Other than that, I would let the meaning stand for itself and move on to the next thing. If it repeats itself then dig a little deeper into it, otherwise you got what you needed from it.
Good luck
~D


That was also my experience.

The reason I got what I needed from those visionary experiences was because I CONSTANTLY applied insight meditation to them, i.e. noticing the three characteristics. I treated the entire experience as sensations to be investigated, in line with the instructions laid out in MCTB.

I think some people reading this just think I had some wacky visionary experience that I did not investigate, and which I have allowed to impress me. Maybe that's my fault for not writing out clearly how I proceeded in the face of those visuals (and there were a lot more visuals I left out of the post, such as characters and other worlds). I endeavoured to see the three characteristics in each experience.

By the way, it was various kundalini energy flows that began by themselves and proceeded erratically that threw me into those visionary states. My experience matched up very well with the various descriptions of kundalini awakening I have since found on the internet. The commonalities were all there.
I was glad I had the insight tech to investigate each experience them else I could potentially have ended up on a psych ward. And the valium (which I originally had left over from an LSD trip the year before, having bought it as an emergency measure) was well needed at that point. The experience was like a mega Dark Night condensed into about a 24-hour experience.
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Illuminatus, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 12:17 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 12:17 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 101 Join Date: 7/16/14 Recent Posts
John:
Tunnel through to bardo state and clear light, isn't it ? Higher than A&P I would think. Ski lift through the jhanas and straight to the snowline.

That was actually my first assumption. The first travel through the tunnel actually ended in a realm where creativity was total boundless -- an intention would instantly generate any object or scene. It was like a lucid dream, except even more vivid and wondrous. That's another experience I'm having trouble placing in the various maps.
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Illuminatus, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 12:25 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 12:25 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 101 Join Date: 7/16/14 Recent Posts
Rist Ei:
[quote=
]
To whom you dedicate drug induced experiences? who is going to accept those experiences? You develop smell around you, ordinary people look with stern faces at you and keep distance or are polite with you just that not to trigger your antidogmatic depressive melanholic self.
Translation: You don't like drug users, and you're using your religious views to contextualize and focus that dislike.

I'm glad I could help you identify your own contempt and biases; but the person you are describing does not have much to do with me so I am happy to leave this here now.
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Illuminatus, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 12:27 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 12:27 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 101 Join Date: 7/16/14 Recent Posts
Thanks to all of you -- that is very useful advice. I am glad I have some people here I can private message if I need to!
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Illuminatus, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 1:00 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 1:00 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 101 Join Date: 7/16/14 Recent Posts
tom moylan:
howdy edd,
i posted a question here a few years back which has some similar elements to your experience but not with the kind of lucidity you mention.

[url=]http://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/4766513?_19_redirect=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dharmaoverground.org%2Fdiscussion%2F-%2Fmessage_boards%2Fsearch%3F_19_redirect%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.dharmaoverground.org%252Fdiscussion%252F-%252Fmessage_boards%252Fmessage%252F5876749%26_19_threadId%3D0%26_19_cur%3D2%26_19_keywords%3Dstars%26_19_breadcrumbsMessageId%3D0%26_19_advancedSearch%3Dfalse%26_19_delta%3D20%26_19_resetCur%3Dfalse%26_19_breadcrumbsCategoryId%3D0%26_19_andOperator%3Dtrue%26_19_searchCategoryId%3D0

it was a fascinating trip and during the retreat it happened on was replicable but not as reliable as the description of your experience.

tom

Hi Tom,

Can you post that link again, please?

This forum is absolutely fucked and broken in innumerable ways which I have complained about again and again in the site suggestions forum. Even just installing some off-the-shelf forum software like SMF would fix most of these issues in one hour. Sure, people would have to sign up again, but it's a small price to pay for not having to circumvent the dozens of bugs that plague literally every single one of my visits here.
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Dream Walker, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 1:50 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 1:50 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 1657 Join Date: 1/18/12 Recent Posts
tom moylan:
howdy edd,
i posted a question here a few years back which has some similar elements to your experience but not with the kind of lucidity you mention.

[url=]http://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/4766513?_19_redirect=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dharmaoverground.org%2Fdiscussion%2F-%2Fmessage_boards%2Fsearch%3F_19_redirect%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.dharmaoverground.org%252Fdiscussion%252F-%252Fmessage_boards%252Fmessage%252F5876749%26_19_threadId%3D0%26_19_cur%3D2%26_19_keywords%3Dstars%26_19_breadcrumbsMessageId%3D0%26_19_advancedSearch%3Dfalse%26_19_delta%3D20%26_19_resetCur%3Dfalse%26_19_breadcrumbsCategoryId%3D0%26_19_andOperator%3Dtrue%26_19_searchCategoryId%3D0

it was a fascinating trip and during the retreat it happened on was replicable but not as reliable as the description of your experience.

tom
try this - Formations - clarification / confirmation / question
after copying and pasting it directly that's where I got to
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Dada Kind, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 4:49 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 4:48 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 633 Join Date: 11/15/13 Recent Posts
Hi,

I never said your experiences are grandiose. At face value your experiences sound grandiose to me. Similarly your post read to me like satire. I even laughed.

Removing some pieces from one of your posts,
An example is that I now have total body synaesthesia -- so, I can literally see every nerve in my own body, like I have X-ray vision. I can now also see through other people's bodies.

I also have "IQ halos" -- the ability to predict people's IQs within just a few points based on a glowing halo I see around their head. I see that halo around everyone's heads.

I appear to have a good level of magickal ability. I semi-regularly rip casinos off using magickal gambling. As we speak I just pulled another £1100 profit.

Every time I practise now I just get better at anything I want to get better at.
It just read to me like an ironic brag. Not sure what you should do with this information. Just saying

Also at people dismissing your experiences for dogmatic reasons, I agree. But, expecting an internet community to be coherent/uniform is silly.

At the lack of receptive community,

http://www.buddhistgeeks.com/2015/04/bg-356-pragmatists-take-powers/
http://pastebin.com/sCLRT4Zr
https://web.archive.org/web/20141222004011/http://salomesrevenge.freeforums.org/
https://www.reddit.com/user/honeyflows/m/occultblend
etc
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Illuminatus, modified 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 5:26 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 9/30/16 5:26 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 101 Join Date: 7/16/14 Recent Posts
Droll Dedekind:
Hi,

I never said your experiences are grandiose. At face value your experiences sound grandiose to me. Similarly your post read to me like satire. I even laughed.

Removing some pieces from one of your posts,
An example is that I now have total body synaesthesia -- so, I can literally see every nerve in my own body, like I have X-ray vision. I can now also see through other people's bodies.

I also have "IQ halos" -- the ability to predict people's IQs within just a few points based on a glowing halo I see around their head. I see that halo around everyone's heads.

I appear to have a good level of magickal ability. I semi-regularly rip casinos off using magickal gambling. As we speak I just pulled another £1100 profit.

Every time I practise now I just get better at anything I want to get better at.
It just read to me like an ironic brag. Not sure what you should do with this information. Just saying

Also at people dismissing your experiences for dogmatic reasons, I agree. But, expecting an internet community to be coherent/uniform is silly.

At the lack of receptive community,

http://www.buddhistgeeks.com/2015/04/bg-356-pragmatists-take-powers/
http://pastebin.com/sCLRT4Zr
https://web.archive.org/web/20141222004011/http://salomesrevenge.freeforums.org/
https://www.reddit.com/user/honeyflows/m/occultblend
etc

I'm frustrated with this.

To me, the powers are completely normal. I literally don't understand your laughing at me, or thinking it's an "ironic brag". You just sound condescending.

What I would really like, after posting such things, is for people to come forward and say, "Cool, I have that ability too." Then I could make some friends with likeminded people who enjoy exploring such things.

Every time I post something like those claims on this forum however, I get these dismissive replies. The magick board is practically empty.

I think it's pretty amazing I can see through my own body like it's nothing.

Why aren't the powers interesting to you? I literally do not understand the lack of interest.

It's like, "This doesn't fit in with my particular path, so I will scoff at it." Like the powers are just seen as something to distrust, and some great distraction from some very specific insight method or other, so they're not even worth asking me about.

From what I've read about Buddhism, the Buddha and his pals were fucking around with magick all the time. The Buddha was off in "deva realms" teaching the gods the dharma. His buddies even had their own specific powers. Magick is completely built into the stories. The Buddha just teleports across a river at one point.

So, can you tell me why, when someone shows up making claims, you dismiss them as "satire" or "ironic bragging"?
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Stick Man, modified 7 Years ago at 10/1/16 2:10 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 10/1/16 2:08 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 396 Join Date: 9/23/14 Recent Posts
6 foot ants emoticon. Why, there appear to be six foot long ants walking around the campus, hmm, I shall examine them.

Can someone get him to draw one ?
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Illuminatus, modified 7 Years ago at 10/1/16 2:38 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 10/1/16 2:38 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 101 Join Date: 7/16/14 Recent Posts
John:
6 foot ants emoticon. Why, there appear to be six foot long ants walking around the campus, hmm, I shall examine them.

Can someone get him to draw one ?
I'm not even going to ask what that's supposed to mean. I've officially had it with the cultishness and condescension of some of the members here.

John, from that quick skim of your posts, it seems like you basically have very little experience in anything. It sounds like you try to grasp stuff conceptually, like an autistic kid sat in front of a jigsaw puzzle, but have no idea how to put any of it into practice.

That ant quote is probably from someone else's experience and you think parroting it makes you part of the "in crowd" -- never mind that it's backed up by no personal experience. You would probably pray even for the negative experiences, just so you had some sign you were making progress.

To everyone who helped, thanks! I will probably just message you directly in future rather than posting and putting up with the above kind of shit.

To all the losers, abusers, cynics and mimics, I might pop back on here in three years' time to see if you've even reached first jhana yet. Somehow, I doubt it! emoticon

You cultish fops.
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Dada Kind, modified 7 Years ago at 10/1/16 4:16 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 10/1/16 4:16 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 633 Join Date: 11/15/13 Recent Posts
The 6 foot ant was a reference to my Pastebin link. It was Shinzen Young's experience with "Powers". I linked it because Shinzen is related to this community and he praises the "Powers", in some ways, in that post. The link will expire soon so this is for posterity.

I wasn't laughing at you nor saying it was an ironic brag. I was telling you my honest reaction to your message. Your posts still sound grandiose. I don't know whether you yourself are actually grandiose at the moment.

I'm interested in the "Powers". My post history is full of it. I don't see that my posts here indicate the contrary. I don't see my posts as dismissive.
Banned For waht?, modified 7 Years ago at 10/1/16 6:52 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 10/1/16 6:08 AM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 500 Join Date: 7/14/13 Recent Posts
You got experiences

The total blackness. You should have available information from there what to do next, like you said intuitive knowledge if you reflect a bit.
.....
Now the state or the perceptional shift there where you see 3D or environment is dreamy, there you have special way to cultivate/meditate what normaly isn't possible.

What you haven't reached yet is "self" as an momentary object, subtle breath as an object, more two things + void as an object . And dhukka between some events.

-----------
also next comes events. Specially when you unlock sensual centers and defeat urges. Celibacy is pretty much unavoidable.
-----

just a sloppy way to tell things but it should give a sense how many stuff there is. You write about one event so long, just tell the location where it happened, it didn't happened in your small toe right?

-----
you tell you enter jhanas...maybe surface layer jhanas where you lack enough doubt. Overall your lack of doubt makes your experiences like you would buy into any little thing as a big thing.

----
To me you are as far as (removed name) is. Got the lobes together. Not yet know how to cultivate 3rd chakra. Not understanding rules, religion, guru, devotion..

edits..
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Stick Man, modified 7 Years ago at 10/1/16 1:32 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 10/1/16 1:32 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 396 Join Date: 9/23/14 Recent Posts
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Stick Man, modified 7 Years ago at 10/1/16 1:39 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 10/1/16 1:39 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 396 Join Date: 9/23/14 Recent Posts
Well grandiose.
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Dream Walker, modified 7 Years ago at 10/1/16 3:33 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 10/1/16 3:28 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 1657 Join Date: 1/18/12 Recent Posts
I would like to take this opportunity to point everyone here to the home page of the Dho. Please read the entire page - http://www.dharmaoverground.org/home
...To help keep the place more inviting of participation by those who can benefit from helpful friends supporting friends in their practices and sharing the intimate and deep adventures that these explorations can produce, the following ground rules have been adopted:
  • No name-calling or ad hominem attacks
  • No on-and-on repetitious, angry rants that marshal no supporting evidence, target an interlocutor, and have the effect of intimidating the interlocutor.
  • No threats of violence, even if metaphorical or aimed at no one in particular
  • No taunting, mocking, or intimidation of an individual or a group on the basis of race/ethnicity, sex, disability (including mental illness), sexual orientation, religious preference, or spiritual practice
  • No speech acts that would be actionable under US criminal or civil tort law 

The Moderators (contact info there) will warn and, as a second step ban posters who are absolutely not willing to respect these rules.



Please respect the rules of the forum.

Thank you,

It is thru open and honest dialog that the good stuff gets to be discussed....anytime someone opens and feels like they should not have; we all lose what is so precious about this forum.

~D (as moderator)
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Stick Man, modified 7 Years ago at 10/6/16 12:04 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 10/6/16 12:04 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 396 Join Date: 9/23/14 Recent Posts
Can you do the horses as well as casinos so we can all have a go ? Or is it a happens-as-you-need-it skill ?
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Stick Man, modified 7 Years ago at 10/6/16 12:05 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 10/6/16 12:05 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 396 Join Date: 9/23/14 Recent Posts
Sorry
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Stick Man, modified 7 Years ago at 10/23/16 6:10 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 10/23/16 6:10 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 396 Join Date: 9/23/14 Recent Posts
I got up in the night and sat on the toilet in the dark and behind my closed eyes I saw a pattern of dots with a dark space in the middle of it, rather like the .gif on the OP.
Sup Dude, modified 7 Years ago at 10/25/16 1:52 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 10/25/16 1:52 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 9 Join Date: 7/31/15 Recent Posts
The amount of dick-wagging in this thread emoticon.

I think this place has the potential for some genuinely interesting and fun collaborative experimentation, but I get the impression a bunch of people are a bit too laser-focused on the maps some a whooole lot of the time. WHICH INTEGER PATH ARE YOU AT FELLOW MEDITATOR IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF AND I CARE A LOT

Ok, man, ok?

But I get it, though - I've had tunnel vision that was just as bad myself, and honestly I'm supergrateful for the mapping work people have done, it was majorly helpful. I get the feeling most people kind of toss them after a bit. I don't think it's all that important to have a 1:1 perfect map of all the terrain and I doubt it's possible anyway - but it sure helps get you there, and that's what matters after all. Practical dharma, amirite?

I've seen that purplish black tunnel from time to time, haven't really fucked around with it a whole lot so it would be interesting to hear what people who have investigated it a bit have come up with.

There is one phenomenon I'm a bit curious about, though. Or a range of phenomena. I've stumbled across some pretty funny visual stuff - eyes open. There is the one thing where vision gets gradually darker and more reddish until I went blind - but only as long as I was concentrating the state. Kind of in the same vein I found black and white vision, and some stuff in between. But what I found the most interesting was when I started to notice rainbows of colour everywhere - not of the kind associated with eye disease, I checked up on that. Like the mind was interpreting the light into baser colours - and what is colour anyway but light hitting the rods of the eyes, fast forward a bit and this all gets interpreted into colour gradients upon arrival. Maybe something analogous to pixel dithering is going on, and a normal experience of colour is a kind of holographic illusion arising from simpler colours.

Anyway... I've messed around a bit with tuning into this subtleish aspect of light and the effect can get a whole lot stronger. Rainbow light all over it seems. Tune into it enough and you see a grid of bright light - or at least that's what I've seen, your mileage may vary.

All the same, pretty weird stuff. Has anyone here had any similar experiences, maybe know what this is? Or if someone fools around with it for a bit, do some hands-on research. Report back here. I haven't seen any mention of this stuff anywhere I've looked, but I find it highly unlikely that I'm the first to have these experiences. I've put my personal investigation on hold for now, doing some other stuff first. But pretty cool, yeah?
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Stick Man, modified 7 Years ago at 10/27/16 12:12 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 10/27/16 12:12 PM

RE: White dots starfield + waves travelling towards a horizon

Posts: 396 Join Date: 9/23/14 Recent Posts
It was a perfectly honest observation emoticon. Not the first time I've noticed it.
never had the red or rainbow things. However, it's been established that mood will influence the visual system and depressed people do indeed see things more grey. Likewise it's not surprising that things look more alive and vivid when the mind is peaceful. I also sometimes see a faint milky light around plants and trees when I'm relaxed. There must be a whole lot more.
I thought the OP is astute and smart.

I don't get all that stuff about 1,2,3,4 path, really. Isn't it just a unique-to-Theravada quirk ?

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