To get public funding for a fMRI-study: where is "pit of the void"

Hi guys,

Does anybody know, where in the texts it is mentioned that there is a kind of bad version of enlightenment, which is called "the pit of the void"? (in the classical texts like pali canon/suttas etc.)

Thank you
Loco

The best i can do is that i saw Shinzen Young mention (something like) it somewhere? He was saying that the true dark night is very rare, and involves getting caught up very deeply in the dark feelings on the path. I believe it was in reply to a letter. You might try to contact him

Google "Willoughby Britton" and follow the links to her work. I'm pretty sure you'll find something there.

Both the Vimuttimagga and Vissudhimagga describe bhanga (dissolution.) My guess is that the condition of "falling into the pit of the void" might be found in the Abhidhamma Pitaka.

Thank you guys for your help!

Shinzen Young video: - Enlightenment, DP/DR & Falling Into the Pit of the Void
He says that The Pit of the Void is meditation-induced Depersonalization/Derealization disorder. He claims to have cured some people who were either fully into it or going in that direction.

vimeo.com/18819660

This is an excellent introductory video of Dr. Willoughby Britton's work. In it Dr. Britton cites Shinzen Young as having successfully treated a practioner who suffered debilitating impairment as a result of intensive meditation.

I think Dr. Britton overweights the negatives of meditation.

i don't agree, Chris. She is, i understand, in the process of studying the negatives of meditation. Such a project necessarily involves weighting the negatives of meditation. However, i would say that it is only overweighting if you do not take into account all the preexisting studies of the positives of meditation.

I've heard her speak in person several times, Villum, and I've had one on one conversations with her. I think she was somewhat overly dramatic and focused on the bad stuff. It's one thing to forewarn people, making them aware of the potential and inevitability of the negatives of a practice. It's another thing to describe those things is such a way as to just scare people. I perceived Britton's comments, when I heard them, to be more like the latter than the former. I think her work is important, however, and I don't want to shoot the messenger so much as I want to calibrate the message.

But we can disagree, no problem.

No need to disagree. Your information us better than mine

Probably a big Bias on both sides. people who meditate hang around in an environment of people who like to meditate too, means they had more or less success with it (talent, genetics, psy). they don't realise the others, for those it made things worse (cause they disapear/are not interested anymore in meditation)

Also therapists see mostly people who suffer otherwise they wouldn't come. for them, meditation obviously didn't work or made things worse. the ones who feel well, disappear for therapists.

given the fact that 99% don't get enlightened, a question is what happens to the rest?
everybody wants to meditate, but just a few are able to do it regularly, why?

also and even more important: what is right for whom? and can one create a method which combines both, to offer the right help?

I think the sideeffects of meditation are underestimated. but the sideeffects of a normal life without it are also.

People are such individuals, too. What scares the crap out of one is just weird or interesting for another. It probably is true that there are a fair number of people out there who've tried meditating and ran away in terror when it started bringing up the darker stuff they were hoping not to have to look at. Same goes for therapy - some people stop going because they can't really bear to look too deeply at their troubles; they just want all the pain to go away without undergoing any insight, transformation or personal growth.

"I think the sideeffects of meditation are underestimated. but the sideeffects of a normal life without it are also."

I totally agree here! Whenever I get too spooked by the "bad side" of meditation I remind myself of the "bad side" of life without it. That gets things back in perspective.