What is luminosity?

Jason Massie, modified 5 Years ago at 9/2/18 2:02 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 9/2/18 2:02 PM

What is luminosity?

Posts: 124 Join Date: 10/18/16 Recent Posts
I have checked out the pages where it appears in the mctb2 index and the fire kasina. I have done searches here. However, I think a definition using simple terms would be helpful. Also is it different when we are talking concentration vs. Insight practice? Could you give an example? What is the luminous aspect of an itch?
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Dream Walker, modified 5 Years ago at 9/2/18 2:25 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 9/2/18 2:25 PM

RE: What is luminosity?

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"I think a definition using simple terms would be helpful."
yes, damn right it would, so first please describe a rainbow to a blind man, its as simple as that! get busy!

I'm actually working on this, years in the making. Every single shift that comprises luminosity.....quite an endeavour....what have you done lately to help others?
I'm kinda a lazy bitch, not to dangle shit over your head but do you got second path yet? if so, your ready to do some sub aspects of luminosity.
Please be patient,
Thanks,
~D
Jason Massie, modified 5 Years ago at 9/2/18 2:42 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 9/2/18 2:42 PM

RE: What is luminosity?

Posts: 124 Join Date: 10/18/16 Recent Posts
Dream Walker:
"I think a definition using simple terms would be helpful."
yes, damn right it would, so first please describe a rainbow to a blind man, its as simple as that! get busy!

Yeah but if you ask a seeing but non-english speaking person to point out the rainbow, there will be a different kind of disconnect that could be overcome. Haha

Is it a synonym for empty? As in the phenomenon is just part of the flow of cause and effect? Like the antithesis of free will? That is kind of what I get when I read the passages and observe life.

Yes on 2nd.
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Daniel M Ingram, modified 5 Years ago at 9/2/18 2:44 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 9/2/18 2:44 PM

RE: What is luminosity?

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Luminosity is both a useful and possibly very misleading term.

Here's what it is doesn't mean: that a person will suddenly see things more brightly, that there will be more light in things than the standard amount, or anything like that.

Here's what it points to, said a number of equivalent ways:

1) In the seeing, just the seen. In the hearing, just the heard. In cognition, just the cognized. In feeling, just the felt... This standard line from the Bahiya of the Bark Cloth Sutta in the Udana is one of the most profound there is in the whole of the Pali Canon. It means that sensations are just sensations, simply that, with no knower, doer, be-er (not beer, as that is a beverage), or self in them to be found at all.
2) Point one, taken in its logical inverse, means that the "light" of awareness is in things where they are, including all of the space between/around/through them equally.
3) Said another way, things just are aware/manifest/occurring where they are just as they are, extremely straightforwardly.

Helpful?

Daniel
Jason Massie, modified 5 Years ago at 9/2/18 5:01 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 9/2/18 5:01 PM

RE: What is luminosity?

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Daniel M. Ingram:

Helpful?

Daniel


Maybe. Haha.

So it is like perfect comprehension of the not self characteristic in a phenomenon. To the point that comprehension of it is not needed.

I can get that with something like a single mental image that comes up. However if I try 100% capture mode like you describe in your video, there is still a lot of trying/looking/scanning/effort/tension that goes on.

Does it get to the point where you can be aware of multiple senses doors at the same time or is there still a flicker between them? Does the rate of change in the sense doors syncing up have anything to do with this? 
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Noah D, modified 5 Years ago at 9/3/18 11:19 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 9/3/18 11:19 AM

RE: What is luminosity?

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Jason Massie:
I have checked out the pages where it appears in the mctb2 index and the fire kasina. I have done searches here. However, I think a definition using simple terms would be helpful. Also is it different when we are talking concentration vs. Insight practice? Could you give an example? What is the luminous aspect of an itch?


It happened to me in 2 parts, this is what I wrote about it:

March 2017

I felt this psychic force turn inwards.  In that moment, I realized that force was extra effort.  It did not need to be there; there need not be a ‘force’ that works to turn inwards.  It is all one continuous space.  Then, on the 23rd, I was walking to the bus stop and I noticed how intensely bright all the colors were around me.  It was as if someone had turned up the saturation knob in Photoshop.  I felt pure, exquisite delight looking at these colors and it was as if all the objects that contained them were somehow alive and possessed with my identical ‘spirit’ or ‘consciousness.’  Also, it was like spatial ‘contrast’ was turned up as well: everything was no longer one huge space, but rather, everything was occupying its own unique x/y/z coordinates in space and the inherent value of each of these coordinates on the grid became much more obvious -- and the sense of referencing between coordinates became much less pronounced because each cube is “good enough” right where it is in the hologram.   In short: the awareness is in the object - everywhere, all at once.  

August 2017


those two aspects effortlessly fused together such that I no longer was able to toggle between the two modes of nonduality.  Also, the vibrancy of objects previously took place on the surface of the object.  It has now deepened into a volumetric knowing which penetrates into the depth of everything.  There is a visceral, uncanny familiarity to the outside world, as if I were looking at parts of my own body or my own reflection in a mirror.  It feels like I’m “zoomed in”, as if I were looking through a microscope lens or maybe moving forward out of head & into the air around me (hard to express).  It is very pleasant.  

T DC, modified 5 Years ago at 9/3/18 2:34 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 9/3/18 2:24 PM

RE: What is luminosity?

Posts: 516 Join Date: 9/29/11 Recent Posts
Jason Massie:
I have checked out the pages where it appears in the mctb2 index and the fire kasina. I have done searches here. However, I think a definition using simple terms would be helpful. Also is it different when we are talking concentration vs. Insight practice? Could you give an example? What is the luminous aspect of an itch?


I think Noah is right on with his description of luminosity as 'objects possessed with your identical consciousness'.  Similarly, in the section on Tantra in Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chogyam Trungpa, he discusses luminosity as the perception of the basic energy behind phenomena.  Traditionally speaking, the term 'luminosity' is generally paired with 'emptiness' as these two terms describe the two sides of the coin for how phenomena appears at an ultimate level.  

Emptiness refers to the perceived lack of inherent existence of all phenomena, that the world is seen to be empty of any permanent, conceptually apprehensible form or substance.  Luminosity instead refers to the aspect of 'fullness', that although phenomena is understood to be empty of separable, inherent existence, it is nevertheless seen to be continuous with our own living awareness.  Essentially, at a very advanced level of the path, we perceive the world to be permeated with the light of awareness itself - this ultimate awareness permeating the world is the same ultimate awareness we have uncovered in our own mind.  

This is both highly advanced and technical, but the famous quote "I am everything and I am nothing.." sums it up well.  With emptiness we see we are nothing, with luminosity we see that we are everything - luminosity is the living, energetic quality of awareness that permeates the world, and of which we ultimately realize our unity.  (Emptiness in turn is simply the inability of this awareness to be contained, pinned down, or otherwise conceptually apprehended).
Todo, modified 5 Years ago at 9/4/18 1:17 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 9/4/18 1:17 PM

RE: What is luminosity?

Posts: 86 Join Date: 8/20/18 Recent Posts
Ultimate reality is luminosity
Luminosity is always in flux
The flux of luminosity has patterns
The mind recognises theses patterns as meaning (the ten thousand things)
The meanings are interdependent: thus with a number of meanings as causes & conditions others meanings emerge
The energent meanings join the flux of causes & conditions...

The sense of self / knower / doer is one such emergent meaning & therefore there is nothing wrong with it except that its appearance unfortunately creates an artificial point of view.

This flux is happening effortlessly by itself... our strivings are also part of it:
All minds are meaning seeking devices... understanding can follow any number of the existant great many axes of understanding
Dependent on causes & conditions a certain pattern within the flux (a particular mind) is drawn to seek more & more understanding along the axis of fundamental understanding... Again dependent on causes & conditions some of these minds reach the source, are annihilated in the process & emerge again, identical to what they were and yet radically different...

This looks right right now!
JP, modified 5 Years ago at 9/4/18 3:31 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 9/4/18 3:31 PM

RE: What is luminosity?

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The good news with luminosity is that you're likely to get a glimpse of it in the course of normal practice eventually, and after that you'll have a good idea what it's referring to.  That glimpse and that good idea are different from what it would be like to permanently stabilize that perceptual change, which is a lot further down the path and probably requires poetic language to describe properly.  

I personally experienced it the first time I made it up into Equanimity.  I'd been doing some visual concentration work by watching the patterns on a spinning ceiling fan, and both sat for much longer than I previously had and also became much more concentrated than I previously had.  When I got up afterwards, I glanced at the wall and it suddenly felt like that wall was suffused with "the mental idea of that wall", and that it was perceiving itself in space exactly where it was rather than being "perceived from" the muscle tension in the center of my head. That was a fairly surprising experience, even though I already thought that I was seeing stuff as out there and I knew that it was possible based on reading about meditation.  
Stian Gudmundsen Høiland, modified 5 Years ago at 9/5/18 5:04 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 9/4/18 10:03 PM

RE: What is luminosity?

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I like what Daniel said. Or, maybe not quite what he said, but maybe what he meant. I don't like to say that "the 'light' of awareness is in things where they are". I think consciousness is distinct from say the sense door and the sense datum. But when everything is seen not to be self, then tell me, from where is all this known? The constituents of experience appear, including consciousness, but there is nothing finally prioritized as the anchoring of those factors of experience. So what perspective is there? An attempt to signify that mysterious "lack of perspective", but which doesn't mean that things do not appear, is "luminosity".

Here's another more concrete phrasing: If it is possible to slice up experience and account for all factors of experience with the six ayatanas, then consider this: Eye(s) appears, form appears, seeing appears. Ear(s) appears, sound appears, hearing appears. Nose appears, odor appears, smelling appears. Tongue appears, taste appears, tasting appears. Body appears, touch appears, touching appears. Mind appears, thought appears, thinking appears. All of this, as one way to give a complete account of experience, appears. But nothing looks at it. There isn't for example another consciousness that knows seeing--seeing is already visual consciousness. When all these things just appear, right as they do, and there is no more other factors that could in turn be aware of them appearing--because all types of awareness are already accounted for and appears--, or around which they could be organized, and yet there they are, appearing... I think luminosity is an attempt at expressing that. There is nothing that carries over together with all the occuring factors of experience. There are just the causal factors of experience. What may have looked like a stream were just discrete events smudged over and assumed to have a principal unifier, but over, above or beyond the discrete events there is no stream giving the discrete events some kind of built-in cohesion.

In short, it just means not self.
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(D Z) Dhru Val, modified 5 Years ago at 9/5/18 6:38 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 9/5/18 4:19 PM

RE: What is luminosity?

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Luminosity refers to the illuminating quality of consious experience. Without consious experience the universe is 'dark' in the sense that it cannot be experienced.

Most people operate from a framework of subject-object duality - the obective universe is illuminated by the subjective consciousness.

Once this duality is seen through, then objects, sounds, itches etc are "self-luminous", there is an illuminating quality of their mere presence.
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Bismuth, modified 3 Years ago at 9/1/20 11:29 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 9/6/18 12:51 AM

RE: What is luminosity?

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(D Z) Dhru Val, modified 5 Years ago at 9/6/18 8:22 AM
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RE: What is luminosity?

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@bored vaccum...

You seem to be suggesting that people are auto-brainwashing or deluding themselves into no-self due to buddhist doctorine.

This happens sometimes ( often a genuine insight, that is latched onto by mental delusion), but is not the case with realization / insight.

The way to differentiate between to the two IMO is to pay heed to the role that inferential thought plays in a perception. Inferential thought can be a tool to trigger insight, but the result of insight isn't inferential thought it is self-evident perception.

Also in Buddhism, self isn't a problem, the reification of self, free-will etc. is a problem becasue it leads to unnecessary suffering.
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Bismuth, modified 3 Years ago at 9/1/20 11:30 AM
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RE: What is luminosity?

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(D Z) Dhru Val, modified 5 Years ago at 9/6/18 2:11 PM
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RE: What is luminosity?

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If people could attain supreme bliss, via simply wishing for it within one minute of meditation.

Then there is no need for insight or all this complexity or systems or books, etc.

I haven't really found this to be the case.

There are some "do nothing" type schools of practice, that have some value for people stuck at specific points.

For the most part though I hold their practical efficacy in low regard.

I think many people in these schools start thinking they are already enlightened, instead of fully realizing they are already enlightened (often a mix of the two). The former is delusional, and the latter is a recognition of the true nature of awareness.
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Bismuth, modified 3 Years ago at 9/1/20 11:30 AM
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RE: What is luminosity?

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Dream Walker, modified 5 Years ago at 9/17/18 10:50 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 9/17/18 10:50 AM

RE: What is luminosity?

Posts: 1657 Join Date: 1/18/12 Recent Posts
Dream Walker:
"I think a definition using simple terms would be helpful."
yes, damn right it would, so first please describe a rainbow to a blind man, its as simple as that! get busy!

I'm actually working on this, years in the making. Every single shift that comprises luminosity.....quite an endeavour....what have you done lately to help others?
I'm kinda a lazy bitch, not to dangle shit over your head but do you got second path yet? if so, your ready to do some sub aspects of luminosity.
Please be patient,
Thanks,
~D

ugh, sometimes I read my stuff, *blush* musta been frisky that time.
ok, so there are a lot of visual shifts that make up the so called "luminosity" thing.
I have experienced each one instead of a package deal, so that means I'm slow.

Post second path you can hold the panoramic view  open, take in the whole field of vision as one thing.
I looked at flowers and got a colour contrast upgrade
walking in the forest I got a parallax upgrade
nailed the panoramic permanently and got an acuity upgrade
got a stereoscopic upgrade
I'm missing the last bit of it but have had previews, its darn nice when this is the same as that blooming
so I'm working on it. If you get it all at once, nice, and amazeballs.
slow and steady ....
Good luck,
~D
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Daniel M Ingram, modified 5 Years ago at 9/17/18 8:21 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 9/17/18 8:21 PM

RE: What is luminosity?

Posts: 3268 Join Date: 4/20/09 Recent Posts
While it is true that all sorts of "visual upgrades" can occur, increased vividness, increased directness, increased peripheral awareness and panoramicity, etc., those are not actually what lumonisity is talking about, as it applies to all sense doors equally, not just the visual one. It is a fundamental characteristic of all sensate experience, not a retrofitted or upgraded aspect.
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faB, modified 5 Years ago at 9/18/18 6:19 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 9/18/18 6:19 PM

RE: What is luminosity?

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Interesting and fascinating topic. I always loved the Bahiya sutta.

I was actually thinking about variou symptoms of the visual perception itself, that isn't talked about much. Perhaps for good reason, because any attempt to see this way or that way seems futile. It just happens indirectly as a result of relaxation of the mind.

Vision is one of our primary senses right? So naturally changes are more noticeable there.

Symptoms I've noticed, which may be indicative of nervous system healing, and not "luminosity" then, as Danil Ingram noted:

- vision seems more panoramic : this one has a biological explanation that seems to make sense: when we are in a state of fear / vigilance, our field of attention is automatically reduced in order to focus on the predator / danger. So this may be a sign of the nervous system healing, and the body coming slowly out of a state of vigilance (which can be both of traumatic origins, but also the more subtle state of fear that we've all come to think is natural due to our way of living). This makes even more sense to me as I remember in my 20's I had so much anxiety and I clearly remember that feeling of having "horse blinkers".. my eyes fully open, yet feeling like I could only see a limited angle in front of me. The contraction / expansion is very clearly symptomatic of the state of the nervous system, so luminosity or not, it's a good sign.

- vision becomes more contrasted / more colorful : I think that falls in the category of "more attention in the immediate experience", hence immediate perception seems more vivid. I suspect it can also be a small improvement in eye sight from relaxation. Since myopia and astigmatism blur edges, the light tends to "wash out" everything, hence a small improvement there also contributes to making colours and blacks especially deeper / sharper

- when the seeing looks like a painting... it feels like it "pops", for example looking down while walking outside, the cobblestones "pop" in a way that it looks like I'm on a movie set. In those moments I think this is closer to luminosity because there is something intriguing in that the scene appears like a movie set in the sense that there is nothing behind it. So eg. this monitor would appear as a "fake" monitor, and the sensation that this is the end of it, no electronics or anything else potentially "in" the monitor, this doesn't seem to make sense, maybe it is beginngin to perceive a sort of incongruity between what the mind sees (a "monitor / screen") and what the eyes sees (colours)

- sometimes the sense that things are more real, hyperreal even -- I think this is another way of expressing when the seeing looks "like a painting". I like this one because it seems paradoxical.. teachings seem to suggest "the world is not real", and yet... in the obviousness of simply appearing .. it becomes even more real.. I think that may be in the direction of luminosity as well?

- a few times now I've felt like the seeing is fresh for lack of a better word .. I think it is in the continuation of "increased vividness" .. only now there is an added sense that what you look at is new somehow...

Back to luminosity indeed I have been wondering recently what does it mean for the other senses?

Logically this means the sense of "freshness" with the hearing, etc?

I have tried paying more attention lately and started noticing something that I heard many times yet never really paid attention to. In buddhist writings, but also Greg Goode I remember, points how the senses are not connected. That never really stuck with me, like, what is the point? What are you trying to say? But lately I was just looking at someone speaking on the tv.. and started noticing indeed how it is the mind that forms a story about where the sound comes from. It is another variation of this incongruity I mentioned earlier. That the seeing doesn't say anything about the sound. A face is moving, lips are moving. There is no indication of sound. Then it is not as obvious that the sound comes from somewhere..

I understand it's worth investigating the sense more. HoweverI  still don't really get the point of emphasizing how the senses are not connecte,d or how they are multiple 'streams of consciousness'. Or maybe that was the point: to guide the seeker to pay attention to where the color / sond / touch / comes from (or doesn't).
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Dream Walker, modified 5 Years ago at 9/19/18 11:00 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 9/19/18 11:00 AM

RE: What is luminosity?

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Daniel M. Ingram:
While it is true that all sorts of "visual upgrades" can occur, increased vividness, increased directness, increased peripheral awareness and panoramicity, etc., those are not actually what lumonisity is talking about, as it applies to all sense doors equally, not just the visual one. It is a fundamental characteristic of all sensate experience, not a retrofitted or upgraded aspect.
Its a vocabulary issue, i tend to use luminosity as the culmination of all visual shifts, the better word i use for all sensations is non particularization. Dropping the filter that selects a subset of that sense door and instead selecting the whole sense door as the thing, until that filter that keeps doors seperate drops too.

There are many visual shifts possible, the coolest being the subject object filter dropping so that awareness blooms from all the visual objects in the field, but I've found that people who got that sometimes didn't get the whole package deal of  all possible visual shifts, so some cleanup is useful if you got a full list.
Good luck
~D
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Daniel M Ingram, modified 5 Years ago at 9/19/18 11:08 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 9/19/18 11:08 AM

RE: What is luminosity?

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It is good to add that qualifier and specific definition when using terms in a very non-standard way, just so that people know what you mean and there is not confusion.
An Eternal Now, modified 5 Years ago at 9/22/18 2:00 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 9/22/18 2:00 AM

RE: What is luminosity?

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Jason Massie:
I have checked out the pages where it appears in the mctb2 index and the fire kasina. I have done searches here. However, I think a definition using simple terms would be helpful. Also is it different when we are talking concentration vs. Insight practice? Could you give an example? What is the luminous aspect of an itch?

I think Daniel has put it very succinctly.

If you're interested in a more detailed discussion on the topic of "self luminosity" you can also check out Nondual Perception chapter in the book Nonduality (available in PDF for free) by David Loy here https://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2018/09/david-loy-nonduality.html
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Dream Walker, modified 5 Years ago at 9/22/18 12:25 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 9/22/18 12:25 PM

RE: What is luminosity?

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Daniel M. Ingram:
It is good to add that qualifier and specific definition when using terms in a very non-standard way, just so that people know what you mean and there is not confusion.
Yep, I agree, I'm lacking when it comes to a common vocab. Working on it.
I'll eventually figure it out or convert everyone to my stuff emoticon
~D
Adam, modified 5 Years ago at 9/28/18 1:35 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 9/28/18 1:33 PM

RE: What is luminosity?

Posts: 110 Join Date: 3/10/16 Recent Posts
I may be able to have a go at clearing up some of the confusion around Luminosity, having now spent some time in the two different mindsets (admittedly largely the visual aspect). This modelling is still quite speculative, but I've had a bunch of both experiences recently, so thought it'd be worth sharing my current thoughts.

To distinguish the two, I'll use the term "True Luminosity" for what Daniel is talking about, and "Visual Luminosity" for what Dreamwalker is talking about.

Visual Luminosity is gradual, comprising many minor shifts, with many possible variations and degrees. These come from clearing up duality/defilement in eye-consciousness and seeing-consciousness via insight. The result is that the experience of seeing has increasing degrees of vividness, breadth, resolution and refinement, which can come in various shapes and forms.

True Luminosity is a quality of all (or almost all) of experience, where all sensations in all sense doors, including core-selfing-processes have "one taste", the glowing flavour of effortless clarity & self-liberation. This a wholly different beast since it is holistic and collapses the primarily dualistic mindset that Visual Luminosity occurs in. True Luminosity also has a different nature, that of minimal variability - comprised of intensity (a function of mindfulness) and thoroughness (the degree to which core-selfing-processes are included).

Though they are related phenomena and to do with the same cause (sensations self-vipassanising into non-duality automatically via mindfulness), relatively speaking Visual Luminosity is a finger pointing to the moon of True Luminosity. They aren't comparable experientially or as markers of attainment.

Visual Luminosity may start to show up for some people before Stream Entry, particularly if they are strongly visually-oriented, or are doing strongly visually-oriented practice, and tends to show up sometime after 2nd path for non-visually-oriented people.

True Luminosity however only becomes possible after the attainment of total effortless vipassanisation of all sensation including all core-processes and selfing such that experience is comprised only of sensations self-liberating/self-vipassanising (which I'm tempted to correlate with 3rd path), and otherwise is only experienceable by chancing into rare and short-lived peak states.
Evangelos Evangelos Papagiannis, modified 5 Years ago at 10/10/18 3:04 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 9/28/18 4:32 PM

RE: What is luminosity?

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Luminosity into insihgt is a personal mental sensetion of the highest feeling that accurs when the 7nth Crawn chacra is activated.....
The whole physical/body is altered to a state of rapture and luminosity, transfiguration into divine.