Hi, im wondering if it is possible to achieve the pure land jhana without the formless jhanas, i mean, if you are a 3rd path practicioner with access to the 4th jhana, could you achieve those states? or it is neccesary to have the formless attainments in order to reach the pure land jhanas?. Thanks

The pureland jhanas, as defined by MCTB and as I experienced them, are concentration states that occur after the eigth jhana.  The Jhanas are progressive, such that the First is less concentrated than the Second and so on.  Due to this, unless, and even if, one is highly advanced in practice, the jhanas are always attained in a linear progressive order.

If your cutting edge is the 4th jhana, the next best state you can reasonably hope to attain is the 5th jhana.  Only after working up to the 8th could you hope to attain the pureland jhanas.

So, no it is not possible.  But if you are third path, you should be able to develop access to the formless jhanas fairly easily, and then can go from there. 

While in theory one might jump to any jhana out of order using any object, in practice I personally find that I need to get up to the 8th jhana, come out, and then, in that state I call the Post-8th Junction Point, suddenly things are available that weren't before, including the jhanas that we theorize correspond to the Pure Abodes as well as Nirodha Samapatti. That's just one practitioner's data point, and thus not good science. I must admit that, as I have relatively easy access to the 8th jhana, I have never really tried hard to do it the other way. That said, one can definitely, with strong enough concentration and practice and interest, craft all sorts of remarkable jhanas, creating fusions and combinations of elements that one wouldn't find in the more standard sequences, and I used to play around a lot with that sort of thing back in the day and really enjoyed it.

Thus, perhaps we should put it out there to the concentration explorers in the group and see what they are able to do and come up with and see what they describe and how they feel it is best mapped.