Antero's practice journal 4

Thanks a lot, Alex!

The mind is reluctant to do noting. This efficient tool has served me well and a ton of insight into the nature of phenomena has been gained using it, but now it seems a bit crude. It feels like it is somehow internally dividing me when all that is needed now is to rest in this
uncontrived, unchanging, unpretentious, unmoving, unobstructed, unconditioned and most of all: empty Knowingness.

This emptiness penetrates all my experience nowadays and I feel like emptied out. There are no other motivations left except to study dharma and try to understand what this process is all about.

Unpleasant physical sensations at the throat and head area have become less common and less intense. At the same time the amount arising thoughts has decreased so much that it feels like my mind is being swept clean.

This state of '˜blank slate' may be disorientating and sometimes it is hard to connect with other people and at times I have to remind myself to behave normally and not be too blank or flat or '˜empty' in social situations. On the other hand the disappearance of personal motives and discursive thinking helps me to stay undistracted an be supportive in social situations. I get the feeling that my expectations, cultural norms and values affect the way how this stage will develop from this point onwards.

Antero, in an earlier post, you mentioned that when sitting with another yogi, you are able to experience sensations that they are experiencing: buzzing, vibrations or mind states that are not part of your everyday experience. Is this still the case?

Have you had the opportunity to be around other enlightened people? If so, did you or the other person notice any resonance or change in state?

Btw, your journal has been wonderfully inspiring to a lot of people, so thank you very much for sharing your experiences.

"Antero, in an earlier post, you mentioned that when sitting with another yogi, you are able to experience sensations that they are experiencing: buzzing, vibrations or mind states that are not part of your everyday experience. Is this still the case?

Have you had the opportunity to be around other enlightened people? If so, did you or the other person notice any resonance or change in state?

Btw, your journal has been wonderfully inspiring to a lot of people, so thank you very much for sharing your experiences.

- JohnFerguson
"

Thanks John!

Sorry for the delayed response, I just came home last weekend from my trip to New York and New Haven.

Yes, I can still experience other people's vibrations and when doing meditation with other yogis: mind states as well. At least that is how it feels to me. The experience itself seems to be quite genuine, but there are many ways one could explain the result, depending what one wants to believe.

With some advanced practitioners the vibrations are quite subtle and with others even nonexistent. When I stayed at Jud's house in New Haven with Nick, we experimented with the phenomena a couple of times. I cannot normally sense any vibrations coming from Nick, but if he turned the '˜vibration mode' or '˜energy body' back on filling his body with changing gross vibrations, I could sense when that switch happened with my eyes closed.

When skyping with Owen, we did the experiment vice versa: Owen couldn't pick anything coming from me, but when I willed the vibrations back on, he could point out the general areas where the energy was moving around.

Perhaps it could be even possible to make a double blind test to see if information is really passed between the yogis through some way currently unknown to science.

Perhaps Prof. Charles Tart (or someone he knows) would have an interest in doing such tests?
www.paradigm-sys.com/

Hey Antero, that's very interesting, thanks for your response.

During the past month my practice has instinctively shifted more and more towards recognizing the perfection that is already present in all phenomena. Seeing, hearing, and smelling, all sensations arise and pass continuously and without effort. The consciousness is spontaneously aware by nature: stainless, unobstructed, perfect. Awareness that arises at sense contact is the pure presence of the mind.

Doing this seems to relax the attention bounce and make it more diffuse and panoramic and dissolve the harsh vibrations in the body.

These ideas got some confirmation when I spent several days with Nick in New Haven and talked about various ideas on the practice all that time. The brain scan at the Yale University one week ago also seemed to point to the same direction. Also talking with Jud, Owen, EndInSight and some other yogis helped me to get fresh perspectives on my current stage. I will probably write more about it after I have had some time to digest it all.

Mind's dualistic process of conceptualization that takes place after sense contact is physically manifested by the rapid oscillation of the attention between the point behind the eyes and the sense object on various frequencies. This gives rise to conceptual thoughts and all kinds of unpleasant gross vibrations in the body that may also be read as wholesome and unwholesome emotions. As the baseline changes through practice, the peaks of this basic fluctuation of the mind are cut deeper and deeper that result in decreased grasping increasing stability and stillness.

During the past two months my practice has been focused on trying various approaches to reduce the remaining attention bounce.

Noting of thoughts that has so far been very helpful, turned out to be too crude a technique as the act of noting itself changed the subtle phenomena too much. Moreover, most of the time there are no clear thoughts to be noted in this mind space, mostly just vague fragmentary proto thoughts, especially if one directs the attention to study them closely.

Doing full bodied jhanas with diffuse foci or deep absorption in the exit stage of Sutta Nirodha attenuated the attention bounce for a while. Doing Arupa jhana practice also made my mind much clearer day and night, reducing the need for sleep and resulting in some level of continuous awareness throughout the night.

(Cont.)

"Mind's dualistic process of conceptualization that takes place after sense contact is physically manifested by the rapid oscillation of the attention between the point behind the eyes and the sense object on various frequencies."

Does the experience of attending to the point behind the eyes and to the sense object involve the same experience of attention in both cases?

(Cont.)

The spontaneous presence of Awareness exists at all times even without thoughts and concepts present. One way to experience this void like knowing emptiness is prolonging the exit stage of Sutta Nirodha (or '˜ninth jhana'). Staying in that state for a long time made the mind slowly approach the point of losing awareness and falling asleep. As I practiced it during the day, the mind got used to that feeling of suspending the mind space and slowly shutting it down and started preferring to do the same thing when going to bed in the evening, but so far I have been unsuccessful in continuing awake state into sleep. Sometimes I could extend a tiny thread of awareness to mind states where the dream state is not yet properly solidified and the sensory experience is shadowlike lacking vividness and clarity. Dreams and lucid dreams that sometimes followed soon after were very vivid and clear indeed.

Even though this shamatha approach seemed to be somewhat useful, there were some drawbacks as well. Although I used the '˜letting go approach' to jhanas by looking at the unsatisfactory aspect of each jhana so that the mind would let go of it and shift to the next one, I started experiencing increased pressure in the head. Apparently there was too much effort involved in this direct manipulation of the attention bounce. It seemed that I was unwillingly strengthening the bounce by giving it too much importance by making it the target of my investigation.

"... the rapid oscillation of the attention between the point behind the eyes and the sense object..."

Antero, I experience this "attention bounce" in a different way, as the oscillation between an object as mentally represented and the subject as mentally represented. The "external" object is modeled by mind, as is the "internal" subject. Or are we experiencing different phenomena? The way I see this there is only an imaginary separation, all in mind and not "outside" or "inside."

Just curious as we may be describing the same thing in different terminology.

Chris, I am interested in your question, and would like to ask you something in order to clarify it for my sake.

Are you describing

1a) a mental representation of the object (represented as "external"), and
2a) a mental representation of the subject (represented as "internal"), and
3a) a rapid shift between the two,

or

1b) a sensory object
2b) a mental representation of the subject (represented as "internal")
3b) a rapid shift between the two

or something else entirely?

chris: This conceptual understanding makes a lot of sense. But what is the experience of this conceptual understanding? Or is it that this "all is mind" understanding changes the experience of it?

"

1b) a sensory object
2b) a mental representation of the subject (represented as "internal")
3b) a rapid shift between the two

or something else entirely?"

It seems to me that if the mind generates consciously a mental representation of the subject as "internal", then the "external" also has to rise. So perhaps option"b" is the same as option "a" except for the fact that one has not recognized the mental representation of the "external", and thinks that only the "internal" exists.

I may be wrong but I think option b is not possible. What do u think?

"It seems to me that if the mind generates consciously a mental representation of the subject as "internal", then the "external" also has to rise."

Well, I agree with your basic point, because I would describe the phenomenon that I have seen (simplified) thus:

1c) a sensory object
2c) a mental representation of the object (represented as external) in relation to an implied subject (represented as internal)
3c) a rapid shift between the two

i.e. the moment of representation is full-blown duality, and subject / object come as a package.

However, Chris' experience may be different, and I was interested in understanding it better. He seemed to imply that he thought it was not like this.

There are without doubt or question things outside of the body as defined by the boundaries of the skin. But, if you look closely, we do not deal with those objects other than as mental representations. That's all we have, folks. Our brains exist inside a deep, dark skull and have to rely on our senses to interpret anything from "outside," and none of the signals that are being interpreted are real time. If you believe otherwise I have a nice bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you

So when we see, hear or touch anything, it's a mental model. This is how perception works for us It's physics and biology that describes this as much as anything else, and the whole system can be fooled quite easily; think stage magicians and optical illusions and such. As I watch the process of perception occur any determination (model building) of what is an object and what is a subject is taking place in mind.

So Justin, "all is mind" is a very extreme position and I'm not saying quite that. I'm saying all, everything, is interpreted by mind. We may call something "external" but in our stream of experience is it, really?

So let me ask -- if we always use words like "external" and "internal" to describe these phenomena, how careful do we have to be not to set up a duality? And how long will it be before we can just admit that this is all there is? Just this, where there is nothing "outside," nothing "inside" and where everything just is?

ANTERO - since this is your practice diary we can move to a new topic -- just say the word and I'll do that.

@EndInSight (#107)

It makes sense to me that the quality of the attention would be different in those two cases, although investigating a single bounce is beyond my abilities. What I remember of grosser bounces that I experienced previously, they felt like some involuntary contractions of the mind, pulling the attention to the head to reinforce the feeling of a separate observer. Now the oscillation is so fast that it is experienced as a kind of screen or filter on top of the actual sensory experience and I cannot isolate one bounce from another.

@cmarti (#109)

Even though I use different terminology to describe this phenomenon, I have reasons to believe that we are talking about the same thing seen from another angle and I think that the whole development of meditation practice could be measured in how much we are changing our modes of perception from mental representations to actual sensory experience.

What makes discussing about this phenomenon difficult is that this process seems to happen on many levels of experience and subtlety and it is hard to tell what pure sensory experience is in the first place, or if it even exists. As the baseline shifts, the perception that at first seemed to be pure and untainted by mental representations will later be seen to be affected by another previously unseen filter that is just one level more subtle.

@EndInSight (#113)

That sounds sensible; although it might even be that both cases that you presented (in post #110) are possible.

At times when we are not paying attention to our surroundings, we might just be experiencing our internal model of the outside world without knowing it. According to neurologist David Eagleman, our brain is very skilful in making us to believe that we are experiencing external objects through our senses, when most of the time the brain is only showing internally generated illusion of the outside world.

(cont.)

'The deep secret of the brain is that not only the spinal cord but the entire central nervous system works this way: internally generated activity is modulated by sensory input. In this view, the difference between being awake and being asleep is merely that the data coming in from the eyes anchors the perception. Asleep vision (dreaming) is perception that is not tied down to anything in the real world; waking perception is something like dreaming with a little more commitment to what's in front of you.'

- David Eagleman, Incognito, p. 53

'One of the earliest examples of this framework came from the neuroscientist Donald MacKay, who in 1956 proposed that the visual cortex is fundamentally a machine whose job is to generate a model of the world. He suggested that the primary visual cortex constructs an internal model that allows it to anticipate the data streaming up from the retina (see the appendix for an anatomical guide). The cortex sends its predictions to the thalamus, which reports on the difference between what comes in through the eyes and what was already anticipated. The thalamus sends back to the cortex only that difference information'”that is, the bit that wasn't predicted away.'

- Ibid, p.58

This being the case, it is quite a challenge to tell the difference between 'internal' and 'external''¦

"ANTERO - since this is your practice diary we can move to a new topic -- just say the word and I'll do that.

"

I think it is a good idea to branch this interesting discussion into a new thread. Much appreciated, thanks.

Edited to add:
The discussion continues here:

kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/48...+-+Duality+or+Not%3F

Other side effects manifested as I returned back home from the trip to New York and New Haven. My sleep
cycle got mixed up by the jetlag and a couple of times I became conscious in a dream state after I had managed to freeze my mind space completely using my attention in the dream. The mind was completely blank, more so than I have ever before experienced and for a disturbing moment I was sure that I would remain that way. This took place a couple of times.

A couple to times after waking up in the morning I could not at first remember who I was. There was no trace of identity remaining or memories of previous experience of having been someone in the first place. It was like I had woken up to existence for the first time with a vague feeling that this is not how it is supposed to be, mind frantically trying to recall the past. This was very disorientating to say the least.

These peculiar occurrences and the uncomfortable tension in the middle of the head made it obvious to me that some other approach would be more suitable.

In New Haven I practiced actualization of jhanas as described by Nick in The Hamilton Project Blog. Whenever I felt gross vibrations in the body, I inclined my mind to the feeling of seventh jhana to give a reference point to the mind. When these two sensations, unpleasant vibrations and nothingness, were seen side by side, the mind would always choose nothingness and the mental overlay on the unpleasant sensation would drop off, leaving only the sensation itself seen as empty. Because the unpleasant sensations in body were most probably caused by the attention bounce that is the residue of selfing, the tuning of the mind to the formless frequency of experience did away with the grosser forms of the bounce itself after some time.

I can see how one could make a lot of progress with this kind of approach as soon as one starts to have access to the formless realms, refining the sense of being using arupa jhanas as anchors, but for me it was not the right tool to deal with the more subtle aspects of that selfing process. The fact that I was targeting the bounce itself seemed to give it strength and increased the feeling of pressure in the centre of the head. There was also a slight feeling of fabrication to this practice that made the mind lose its interest pretty soon.

I had experienced the unfabricated substrate of consciousness many times. One of my recent practices has been lying down on the bed and taking the mind space itself as an object and freezing it using bare attention. What remains is an experience of unobstructed field of awareness that is fluctuating slightly like a living aware and bright version of an electromagnetic field that is slowly pulsing and fluctuating. These ripples are fragments thoughts that are almost coming into being. They are waves of mind's essence that take various organic, unstained and beautiful forms like some strange fountain of mind matter in slow motion.

(cont.)

Looking at that display of the essential nature of the mind leaves no doubt about the fact that all phenomena that arises in the mind is just a display of the pure knowingness that is spontaneously present and empty of all meaning, field of energy that is continuously evolving and taking different configurations.

"A couple to times after waking up in the morning I could not at first remember who I was. There was no trace of identity remaining or memories of previous experience of having been someone in the first place. It was like I had woken up to existence for the first time with a vague feeling that this is not how it is supposed to be, mind frantically trying to recall the past. This was very disorientating to say the least.

These peculiar occurrences and the uncomfortable tension in the middle of the head made it obvious to me that some other approach would be more suitable."

Wow Antero.
Thanks quite an experience.

Can you please say more about this?

Then I realized that I had only studied the underlying structure of the mind in its immobile phase, stopped to a standstill. The basic properties of the mind, unobstructed brightness, emptiness and spontaneous knowingness that are beyond conceptualization are present at all times and in all situations. It is just easier to recognize them when the mind is tranquil.

I noticed that when thoughts started to arise, there was momentary decreasing of the quality of awareness. Even thought the mind did not start to spin stories and daydreams about the thought, nonetheless there was a lack of clarity at the time of the arising of a thought about the fact that it is empty, without substance and just a momentary manifestation of the mind's essence. Although the thought cannot take hold of the mind by making the mind angry or sad, the mind is embedded in conceptualizing during the thought proces

There was an unmistakeable flavour of clinging to certain thoughts that was at times felt as a change of vibration in the body or a slight contraction of the mind space itself, sometimes unpleasant sensation of pressure in the head.

I found out that '˜in laboratory conditions' it was possible to let thoughts arise and be completely aware of them throughout the process from the very moment the thought was born to its passing away all the way through. This called for completely relaxed, alert, inclusive and unfabricated field of awareness.

[Edited for clarity]

"Wow Antero.
Thanks quite an experience.

Can you please say more about this?"

I am not sure I can tell you anything else about them, Yadid, as these occurences have not repeated after that. I think they were just tell tale signs that my practice was not in balance.