I'm somewhat self-conscious making this post. I'm wondering if someone can put a name on an experience of mine or maybe point towards some literature.

About six months ago I got stream-entry. In the days following my mind worked very differently. It felt like another dimension of my life had opened up.

One or two days after the first cessation, I sat for a meditation session. My consciousness shifted drastically so that I could see the objects of my entire experience with clarity. As I observed this messy soup, it seemed like I could see through the "cracks" between the objects. I saw something that is very difficult for me to describe.

It seemed like it was deep deep down at the absolute base of my experience, and that it was literally "shining through" to me as light would, except I saw it with my mind. That's really all I can say.

Thanks.

Hi Klayton and welcome to the DhO.

Take this with a grain of salt, but it sounds to me like "luminosity".

Or a "pure consciousness experience", or a "non-conceptual experience", or a glimpse of "rigpa", awake awareness, which is the underlying awakeness within and indistinguishable from all aspects of experience, the "thing" which is what makes experience always already be experienced, or in Ingram parlance, points to the fact, or self-exemplifies, that "these sensations are the knowledge [of those sensations]".

You could check out a blog called "Awakening to reality" which is written by a guy who posts here under the name An Eternal Now. It's full of descriptions of similar experiences, in a way that I haven't really found in other places. He classifies them under interesting categories. I think yours would qualify as "intensity of luminosity" - you could look that keyword up in his meditation guide which is online and see if the descriptions there ring a bell. One of them is mine

May I ask what your sense of self was like during this experience ? Did you get any insights from it ?

Out of curiosity, in terms of clarity, was it like all of a sudden new levels of details just started manifesting without you doing anything, and in terms of panoramicity, like attention just opened up into "awareness", let's say ? What were you doing when this happened ?

Cheers

Do you know the distinction between sems and rigpa, mind and awareness ?

Here's something, if you know a bit about phenomenology and are not afraid of jargon : https://www.academia.edu/43739603/The_Phenomenological_Method_In_the_Light_of_Our_Mind_Knowing_Phenomenological_Form_and_Our_Awareness_Knowing_Phenomenological_Being_003_

> May I ask what your sense of self was like during this experience ? Did you get any insights from it ?

My sense of self seemed to be normal while it was happening. When I stopped I felt deeply unstable. My world was already turned on its head but after this it felt like I was a couple steps away from losing my mind.

> Out of curiosity, in terms of clarity, was it like all of a sudden new levels of details just started manifesting without you doing anything

I wouldn't use the word "detail". It was like a completely different mode of perceiving things that I haven't touched before or since. It was like the normal "gestalt" way of seeing my reality suddenly broke apart and I could see the edges of everything manifesting. A thought over here, a breath over there in that x/y/z coordinate. It was like that with absolutely everything. It was at the point where I was disgusted with the complexity of my experience.

> In terms of panoramicity, like attention just opened up into "awareness", let's say ? What were you doing when this happened ?

That's about right. I was sitting in a chair.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiF5_Sp_4Mw

Sounds good. I experienced similar things after 1st path.