Don Merchant:
To Stick Man,
No, not quite. Almost. It was a heat of intensity that felt like flowing lava, then the heat of the sun. It was more internal heat than has EVER been felt. The first time it built up, then it flowed up and out through the top of the head in what felt like a volcanic eruption. There's more to this 1st time but enough for now.
Do you think this is the same heat Martha sang about ? Heat can be experienced in a few different ways, but I've felt heat in meditation and it seems pretty much to be the same emotional warmth I feel in relatinship with people. So I assume that it is the same feeling, albeit found in a different way. Or is it different ? Could it be said that relating to some people in a warm way just means being in a meditative state with them ? Why would one way be less valid, in a spiritual sense, than another ?
What I'm reading on jhanas says that heat is one of the manifestations of piti. Piti seems a bit of a broad term if it encompasses several different types of feeling so I wonder if there are mor refined terms for the different types of piti ?
(Brasington speculates that piti is dopamine breaking down into norepineprhine, which produces heat, and sukha is opiod)
bit more for fun
in her autobiography, ‘The Life of Teresa of Jesus’ (1515–1582). Her experience of religious ecstasy in her encounter with the angel is described as follows: I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying