Samadhi chart

[Alexander]

I made this today at work. What do you think of it, Jhanananda?

[Jhanananda]

Hello, aglorincz, please see how this chart works for you.

Chart of 13 stages of the religious experience

[Alexander]

I would often be hostile to the cognitive psychologist (the last column), since he is usually the biggest skeptic of mysticism, but in this context his notes for the third and fourth samadhis are very useful to me. The experience is indeed of perception falling away, and a state of catatonia even in day to day life. It is like all the organs used for intercourse with the world are "closing up," or that they are "going to black." That is the closest explanation I can give for it.

[Jhanananda]

Thank-you aglorincz, I too have little respect for cognitive psychology understanding the religious experience.  I just took their definition of key terms and mapped them onto my chart of religious experience, so that any cognitive psychologist could, if he or she wanted, to map it onto the larger picture of the religious experience.

I did not include the stages of religious development, because it takes more than one experience of the 4th samadhi to become an arahat.  One has to consistently meditate to that depth to be sufficiently transformed to become an arahat.