As a product of my daily meditation practice of more than 38 years, I have been experiencing a series of subjective experiences that I have not been able to find anyone to explain with satisfaction. I had not found literature that accurately describes these experiences until I began reading the Discourses of the Buddha, and corrected them for many translation errors. I also found guidance in the writing of Patanjali, Kabir, Rumi, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross.
I once wanted guidance from a knowledgeable teacher, but I now know there are none. I have also since found a whole community of contemplatives, who like myself, have found ecstatic and charismatic phenomena in their meditations, but they too did not find anyone who understood or valued their meditation experiences, until we found each other on the web. You can find some of those case histories at the URLs below. Together we are finding an authentic commonalty in our subjective experiences in meditation. I am sure there are many others, who like me are asking, "Where am I, and where do I go from here?"
the GWV archive of personal case histories with meditative absorption
http://www.greatwesternvehicle.org/casehistories/casehistories.htmMy predicament was the state of my daily rigorous meditation practice has produced regular ecstatic experiences that conform to some of the descriptions in the various Yoga and Buddhist treatises. My difficulty was in finding someone to help me to contextualize and direct my experience, however, I gave up looking after 30 years and now direct people myself.
I began the study of dharma and a daily meditation practice in the tradition of Advaita Vedanta in 1973. A year and a half later I was introduced to the practice of Vipassana Meditation in a ten-day meditation retreat that was led by Robert Hover, who was a student of the Burmese teacher Sayagi U Ba Khin. I have attended about 15 ten-day meditation retreats, and about 40 three to five day retreats from a number of meditation teachers in various traditions. I have also spent 90 days in a Kundalini yoga ashram some years ago (1974), and completed two 3-year solo wilderness retreats (1974-1977 & 2003-2006). I have had a daily meditation practice for almost the whole of the intervening years. The contemplative traditions that I have practiced have been primarily Advaita Vedanta and Theravadan Buddhism. I have recently found an excellent complement to these traditions in Mahamudra and Dzogchen.
The symptoms that I am experiencing in meditation are: within a few minutes of engaging in the observation of the tactile field and breath, my mind begins to settle to stillness, which I understand is the tranquility of the second jhana. Shortly this stillness becomes stable and unmoved by sensory or mental state variations, which I believe is the equanimity of the third jhana. At this point awareness seems to expand, and my concentration becomes more focused, and a kind of energy builds gently along my spine, as my meditation deepens. This energy seems to be consistent with how the terms Kundalini, vîrya, viriya are described in Asian canonical literature.
Soon after the calm is established a series of sensations follow soon after. Typically the sensations I have, other than full body awareness of the surface of my body and the internal organ functions, muscles, circulatory system and connective tissue, is primarily a general full-body vibrator sensation, which is often concentrated in my hands, feet, chest, throat, forehead and top of the head. These phenomena are consistent with how the upper four chakras and stigmata are described by various mystics.
It is my understanding that the generalized full-body vibratory sensation is the aura. The localized concentrations of sensation appear to correspond to the chakras of the yoga tradition. These vibratory sensations are the most dominant tactile sensations, and they are often accompanied by a very loud ringing sound, which often has sufficient intensity as to be nearly deafening. The sound often goes through a series of frequency changes from a cicada like chirping, to ringing, to a roaring, like rain, or a water fall, or perhaps the ocean at a distance, to a high pitched whine, or ring. Many mystics have described such sounds.
There is typically a very gentle bobbing of my head and a gentle swaying of my torso to accompany the above sensations. The bobbing and swaying seems purely autonomic, and appears to be an elastic rebound response in the frame of the body caused by blood pulsing in my legs, torso and neck without the counter balancing effect of tension in the muscles, which have become relaxed, and therefore don't hold the neck and torso in check. I understand this spontaneous movement is called a ‘kriya’ in the yoga traditions.
Often shock waves like a deep shiver also run up my spine at intermittent intervals, at which time my fingers and lips may twitch and my torso becomes very erect, which causes the period of the oscillations of my torso and neck to become more rapid in the same way a guitar string oscillates more rapidly if drawn taut.
In company with the shock waves is usually a sensation of intense ecstasy, which culminates in a sense of luminosity. I believe this is what has been described as kundalini in the yoga literature.
Since I practiced Vipassana meditation in the tradition of Sayagi U Ba Khin, I was introduced to contemplative practice in various forms of body scanning in the tactile field. Over the years I have modified my meditation practice as a consequence of experience, deepening contemplation and broadening awareness.
I have found that scanning is no longer necessary for me, because scanning, like any other concentration technique, seems to serve the primary purpose of occupying the mind until it comes to rest. Since I can settle my mind fairly quickly, I have found I can simply observe the tactile field as a totality without having to force the mind to observe it.
Once I'm observing the whole of the tactile field, then this whole-body vibratory sensation soon emerge. Once I am established in observing the tactile field, I begin to observe the other sense fields simultaneously. I usually add the sense field of sound next, which eventually becomes, as I have said a ringing.
The ringing is really much more a combination of sounds such as ringing, whirring, buzzing, chirping, and a rushing sound much like the wind or a waterfall all at the same time. I believe the ringing in the ears is to the auditory sense, as the vibrations are to the tactile sense. I have found the other senses have their own manifestations of unique expression during these deep absorption states as well. Therefore these charismatic phenomena appear to manifest in their own unique way in each sense field.
In the progression of my daily meditation sits I eventually observe all of the sense fields at once. Simultaneously observing the manifestations of charismatic phenomena in all of the sense fields becomes something like witnessing a symphony of pleasant sensations in all six of the sense fields.
From examining various chapters of the Pali canon, it seems that the trajectory toward enlightenment is to go through a series of altered states of consciousness, which the Buddha called “jhana,” which are a subset of “samadhi.” The descriptions of spiritual ecstasy and enlightenment that are provided by the various mystics seem to indicate that one enters altered states of consciousness, which are absorption states through which we must pass to arrive at nirvana, which is annihilation of the self in the infinite. With little else to go on, my solution has been to just go with the surges of energy and other charismatic manifestations, and to continue to experience the various expansion and unification of awareness and annihilation of identity, which occur for me at random intervals during meditation.
To go deeper into equanimity I have found relinquishing grasping is essential. I have found that grasping clearly hinders the progression of the absorption states, so relinquishing grasping has been central to my practice. In fact I have found that a grasping "event" immediately precedes a mind event, or ripple of disturbance on the otherwise quiet flow of my awareness. Consequently, my mindfulness practice for these decades has been primarily focused upon observing the rising and falling of grasping and aversion in response to the senses, consequently I have endeavored to relinquish my hold or obstruction on the senses.
During the progression of my meditation there is often a bit of a shift in my focus and my breathing at discrete moments, which I flow with spontaneously in the progression of my deepening absorption and corresponding expanding awareness. These shifts in focus and breathing seem to precede the surges of energy up my spine, which can be of sufficient force as to give me the sensation as though I'm going to be lifted off the meditation pillow.
It does seem at times, that if the energy rising up my spine got anymore intense, my brain would pop out of the top of my head. It can be a bit disconcerting at times, but that's when I have decided to practice non-grasping to even the body.
As this energy surges up my spine I undergo a series of shifts in focus, which eventually concludes in a wall of light, which impinges on my psyche to the point of overwhelming my identity. At that moment it seems even identity must be relinquished as well. It seems that the trajectory is to get to a place where one doesn't cling to anything, not even to identity. It is this experience that seems to be what the historic Buddha called unification of consciousness.
I have been meditating 4 to 6 hours a day since 2000. Every time I sit in meditation I enjoy some part or all of the above described sensations. I have found that when I begin and end each day with these pleasant sensations my days and nights are filled with the charismatic sensations, as well as pleasant thoughts, feelings and emotions.
I fill each moment with mindful observation of sensation, and I attentively avoid grasping and aversion. Consequently equanimity pervades or permeates my waking and sleep state. In fact from the moment I first become aware of this body until the moment that sleep overcomes this body I am filled with more happiness and contentment than I have ever felt before. And I am always filled with the sweetest sensation of love, as though I have a new romance, although there is no object for that love. And, I seem to be completely free of any anxiety, neuroses or addictive behavior.
This practice and these sensations have even pervaded my sleep state, because I no longer seem to go unconscious when I rest at night. As I rest the body at night I observe mindfully the progression of my repose, which is a succession of deepening relaxation, and deepening breath, in which I travel out-of-body to various domains of existence, and from which my awareness reemerges at about 4 to 5 AM each morning, at which time I sit to meditate for an hour or so before I begin my day.
The pervasion of my awareness into my sleep domain has also produced a kind of shattering of my sense of reality, as well as my dependence upon a linear time/space domain. My dreams are often so lucid as to be indistinguishable from what we call "waking reality." Consequently, even though I "awake" every morning to this "reality, I have also "awakened" to other seamlessly real and equally engaging realities which are not in this space/time domain, so I call them out-of-body experiences in other dimensions. The consequence is that I cannot with conviction state that this reality is any more real, than the other realities that I encounter. I believe this is of course the realization of much of the material within Advaita Vedanta and Mahamudra, in which the very nature of reality is called into question.
It is a bit disconcerting not knowing to which reality I can "rely" upon, or to which I will find myself in the next moment. This lack of reliance upon a fixed time/space domain has produced a lack of dependence on external references, which has produced a great ambivalence toward the objects of the senses. As a consequence I seem to have no ambition for anything in life. I have no interest in a career. I do not care for an ideal relationship, or acquiring progeny. I have no interest in acquiring anything, such as land, a home or wealth. I have no thought toward acquiring wealth, or a retirement. I do not even care if I get sick, or how long I live. Death could come in the next moment, and it would mean nothing to me. And, interestingly enough, I have no fear of the dark.
Another interesting property of my life, is I can not seem to gain my balance. I often feel ever so slightly off balance. I believe this vertigo is related to the heightened awareness I have developed for my senses. One of the most over-looked senses is our kinesthetic sense, which is where we acquire our sense of balance, and yet it is critical to our species method of bipedal locomotion. I believe the sense of euphoria one experiences during the ecstasies is a heightened awareness of the sense of balance. It is this, perhaps overly acute, awareness of the sense of balance that keeps me feeling slightly off balance almost as though I am drunk.
I am 58 years old and a single parent of two children, who are now grown. In the past my spiritual practice had been something that I had arranged in the quiet times after the children and spouse went off to sleep. The spouse left long ago. My children have all grown and left home. Since then, my energies have been fully directed toward my contemplative life, the guidance of contemplatives who have similar attainments as I do, and the teaching of others how to achieve what I have found in meditation.
May you begin and end each day with bliss, and may your days and nights be filled with joy.
Jeffrey S. Brooks (Jhanananda)
February, 2011, Prescott, AZ, USA
