for any buddhists and hindus, if you have experienced samadhi, what was it like?
My writing may be incoherent/garbled/disconnected/not flowing but I hope you can bear with me :)
The reason I am asking is because several weeks ago, I experienced this kind of incredible blissfulness that is hard to explain - though, most traditional accounts and descriptions characterize what I experienced very well.
To preface and explain what led up to this experience:
in my metaphysics and epistemology class we were talking about time travel, and it caused me to think about causality and infinity. I made some 'realizations' in regards to both concepts and following that I had this incredible sense of detachment from my 'self'.
It was like everything I saw was HD, everything I heard was clean, crisp, and beautiful. I also stopped judging everything, I stopped making these micro-judgements whenever I saw people - the way they dressed, looked, acted, etc. I also felt like I was 'floating', in that my body felt incredibly light and my attention/awareness was very vivid. Everything that was happening around me felt harmonious. I listen to some gurus/yogis/spiritual teachers (e.g. Rupert Spira, Mooji, Eckhart tolle, Alan Watts, etc.) and everything they said to try and explain "awakening" made so much sense, as though I understood everything they were trying to say. Also, ever since I went to college, I have had some very negatively impacting social anxiety, where speaking and conversating with strangers was something I was extremely fearful of, but after this experience, my anxiety towards things has pretty much cease to exist.
The way I have interpreted this experience was a kind of "awakening", and maybe even samadhi. While, it was going on I surely felt as though it was samadhi, especially since it lasted for several days. But, eventually it faded away and it was like my ego took back control of my mind. I mean I feel very different from who I once was, for sure, but I often find myself reverting back to my conditioned-egoic ways - in that I recognize some conditioned responses arise, and sometimes my emotions and sensual aversions and desires take hold.
I've read and heard that once you reach samadhi/enlightenment "there is no going back", but for me it seems like I haven't been able to sustain this blissfulness. And maybe its because I didn't really experience/attain the fullness of enlightenment. Maybe I only experienced a taste of what samadhi is? And that I have to become more disciplined with meditation?
I guess the point of this post is to discuss the experience of enlightenment/samadhi/awareness with others and to get different accounts and perspectives on these kinds of experiences.
Enlightenment/Awakening
some cool pics to bump thread.
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sounds more like you were simply in the moment, or in the now, making you feel cleared without the voices.
well, yes I do believe I was very in the moment, but there was still internal dialogue it was just dampened, less critical, and detached.
unironically wont discuss this topic because of how much ((((I)))) hate this board
>Person posting on Yea Forums thinks they may have reached enlightenment
Is this real life?
Why?
This wasn't enlightenment because what you experienced were still just inner objects, you had intense feelings, intense experiences, but they were still not you. They were things "you" saw, which means they are not "you".
The bliss talked about in the Hindu texts is a bliss of the self. It's not something you feel, see or whatever: it is You. You aren't feeling anything in that state because you 'are' it
I had the same experience when I was 15 (maybe 14) I decided it couldn't hurt to try a Hindu meditation and so I did Hare Krishna because Krishna was the God I had known the most about. Anyhow I tried it for the first time and it was this beautiful flow of energy as if coming up through my body. It was the most powerful yes softest feeling I have had in my entire life. A bliss of flowing.
I understand what you went through, I suppose some people are more spiritual than others.
You will return to it yet again user, it will call to you.
You are feeling it but not in the traditional sense. You do not comprehend it because it is a simple knowing of it. It is still feeling but in a different unquestioning, unthinking and all knowing way.
Perhaps what you experienced was a heightened state of attention, it definitely sounds like a greater level of awareness, "presence", temporarily more awake, less identified with the false feeling of self,but not permanent, and not samadhi. You could describe it as temporarily inhabiting a higher part of your "psychological country" a part closer to real 'consciousness' (not in the sense as modern people understand that, but in the sense of nous or chitti) which often can happen unintentionally, being brought about by external circumstances but it will not be permanent. The old problems will return soon, maybe in weeks or months. You will become re-identified with the interior objects which were their cause.
Now you know these things are possible, you can become free, so you need to start consciously working towards making it permanent, which can only be accomplished through jnana yoga or other similar techniques. If you don't you'll have your old problems back again.
It's still just an experience of something which is not self. Was your "I" itself the thing which you experienced was it something your "I" experienced.
*Or was it something which your "I" experienced
It was the I itself which I experienced, of course at that time it is still technically an emotion but it takes the more traditional sense of emotion from after thought and memory.
At the time did you have a heightened awareness of your own existence, becoming aware of yourself as the one who is aware of other things, or was it mostly experiences of other things? Was there "seeing", becoming aware of yourself as something which "sees", sees itself while seeing other things?
It's important because these kind of experiences can lead to delusions if imagination takes hold of them.
ITT a bunch of knuckleheads are caught up in passing moods and thoughts
That was satori. Everybody gets em, that's why Buddhist dogma tells adherents not to get too caught up in thinking about it.
All things are I'm permanent
This is the law of life and cessation
When life and cessation perish
Nirvana will be bliss
>At the time did you have a heightened awareness of your own existence, becoming aware of yourself as the one who is aware of other things, or was it mostly experiences of other things? Was there "seeing", becoming aware of yourself as something which "sees", sees itself while seeing other things?
It was a purity of experience that is all I can say. I at the same time saw nothing yet everything as there is all truth self evident within music and words free it from there primeval prison.
I have invested many years in Jung so I am aware of the Psyche.
Jung misunderstood many things. He still makes the fundamental mistake of taking the "seen", objects of consciousness, for the Self.
>Jung misunderstood many things. He still makes the fundamental mistake of taking the "seen", objects of consciousness, for the Self.
Would it be any other way?
you might want to check out this channel, OP
The Self is what sees, not what is seen.
What are "you" really? You are something that sees/feels/experiences all these things, so logically you can't be any of those things; anything that appears before your mind, which you feel, that is not you.
>The Self is what sees, not what is seen.
>What are "you" really? You are something that sees/feels/experiences all these things, so logically you can't be any of those things; anything that appears before your mind, which you feel, that is not you.
I did not feel any Self but to say I was not the Self is idiotic. Damn Hindu's. Meditation is simply relaxing to the state of the unconscious in which there is no judgement but simply pure unadulterated experience for judgement is a product of the ego.
It did not appear before but it just simply was, I cannot explain it any further than a purity of experience, an experience of purity yet purity of experience. An emotion yet an objective, an objective yet nature, nature yet emotion.
>I did not feel any Self
"Who" was it that did not feel there was any self? You said I, who is this I who didn't feel it?
It sounds like just a heightened sense of awareness but not much more.
You have fundamentally misunderstood what meditation is. Meditation is a step towards becoming more conscious, more "here", more present... not more unconscious. Relaxing into an unconscious state would mean becoming less aware, more asleep. The opposite of awake..
Sounds like you just got caught up with an intense feeling of awareness and are making too much of it.
Are you just butthurt?
Jk. To say that I experienced it is a given produced from after thought, for at the end of the day even if I am experiencing myself I am experiencing myself through myself.
The fact that "I" am experiencing is a self expected given. As Descartes said - "I think therefore I am".
The experience itself however was just that total experience, nothing else of a energy. It fits the description of Samadhi. And it was my first time, ever since then I have been able to achieve it just after meditating. I guess some people just naturally have greater spiritual ability as if some are gifted by nature. Or perhaps it is all simply Psychological and existential than I suppose some are more gifted within the orientation of the Psyche/Self.
Also you do understand what the Jungian view on the 'Self' is?
Samadhi is a very high state. Not something transitory. I'm not saying what you experienced was nothing.
Yes I am familiar with Descartes and Jung, I've read all of it.
Descartes makes the mistake of identifying the I with the thinking part of the mind, "manas" in sanskrit, the outer part of the mind that consists of words and images that arise. You are not that, since you are the one who "hears" the words in your mind and sees the images as they appear. I already said what Jung's problem is. All these western intellectuals make the same mistake , mistaking what is seen/known for the seer/knower/Self..
The problem with Jung's "self" is that he he identified it with what is the totality of personality, what he calls the self is actually the false self.
Descartes did not literally mean "thought" as in what will I eat today but in as simply experience.
>Yes I am familiar with Descartes and Jung, I've read all of it.
A cultured man then.
>Samadhi is a very high state. Not something transitory. I'm not saying what you experienced was nothing.
Well I mean I might be wrong, I am not exactly an expert in meditation but I have done what has intuitively worked. Would you care to explain in greater detail?
Although the ego is not the Self it is definitely part of the self.
Also in regards to Jung. Those seen Objects may well be the self, he states seen as simply the experience. The term "seen" as with my case is a product of after thought as we realise that it was myself that had "seen" it. Jung delved greatly into Buddhism but believed that man should return from the unconscious (void in Buddhism) to still function and make use of rational. The way I see it is that we have strayed so far from the animalistic will/purity of experience to this cold un-living rational that kills all meaning in its path. I believe Man must unite these two aspect for we did not develop such a gift of rational for the sake of rejection. But for unification. To unify the newly found rational with the animalistic experience is to found a new level of existence, to reach that animalistic purity of experience with an all knowing of rational.
>The problem with Jung's "self" is that he he identified it with what is the totality of personality, what he calls the self is actually the false self.
Why is it a false self?
I think I just reached Nirvana on my first try, it's the only form of meditation based experience that fits my description in any way at all.
>Tfw achieved the highest from of meditation that takes followers years on end to get close to on my first time as a 14 old kid.
You did not reach nirvana, you had one enlightenment experience and that's it
You still have an entire lifetime of spiritual mastery ahead of you
Nirvan or Paramatma. One says it is the Self another claims a God.
>You did not reach nirvana, you had one enlightenment experience and that's it
>You still have an entire lifetime of spiritual mastery ahead of you
It seems pretty obvious that I did, even if it was just for a short moment and I snapped myself out of it because of the confusion. The point still remains ever since I first tried it I do it occasionally and the same thing happens of course now I do it for hours.
Nothing else fits the description other than reaching Nirvan/Paramatma.
Guess I was just gifted.
The fact that you are having to conceptualize your experience and categorize it means that you did not experience enlightenment. At least not in the non-dual sense. Why not go burn some books or something.
Enlightenment is a boatload more than just having singular enlightenment experiences. To be truly enlightened you need to embody awakening in every action, though and speech you do, which can take decades and decades to perfect, even for advanced meditators.
>The fact that you are having to conceptualize your experience and categorize it means that you did not experience enlightenment. At least not in the non-dual sense. Why not go burn some books or something.
Why does that mean so?
So you are saying when I experienced this Meditative state (it was non-dual mind you) that fits perfectly in the description of Nirvan and its Hindu counterpart and with nothing else. And after I left this state back into the ego based mind or consciousness and think over it which is the purpose of the ego it somehow means that the past experience didn't happen?
The fact that I wasn't entirely sure does not change what it is. Did Buddha even know what it was? No of course he did not but he understood it in a descriptive way rather than whole.
>Enlightenment is a boatload more than just having singular enlightenment experiences. To be truly enlightened you need to embody awakening in every action, though and speech you do, which can take decades and decades to perfect, even for advanced meditators.
I guess I am just a Buddha tier master meditator. Also could you explain how exactly one remains in a meditative level of existence while not in a meditative form? One cannot.
Guess I reached Nirvana now.
For someone so enlightened, you sure have a lot of ego
Im the OP, i just woke up from sleeping. Im reading this thread and it seems as though you are pretending to be the OP.
Thanks user.
Thanks! I will definitely check it out!
Im noy sure. I had have a heightened sense of awarness of myself. That is, at the initial onset of this "awakening" i became hyper aware and detached from my usual conditioned responses. For example, I use to be very critical and judgemental towards fat people and whenever I would be on campus and see an individual very overweight I would have these microjudgements that were pretty negative. After this kind of "awakening" i was pretty detached to these tboughts, as though i saw them emerging but as they did they quickly disappeared.
Also, I had this incredible sense of awareness of other people. Where I saw everyone as beautiful, and that I realized how all these people were simply a product of their circumstances. I guess instead of being judgemental I was more understanding of why these people were the way they were. I came to a realization that evil didnt exist.
Also, thanks to everyone who replied and is discussing this! I appreciate getting others perspectives and knowledge of such things!
While on the internet my ego is naturally much larger, I also find some level of humour within this discussion. I do believe you misunderstand the state of Nirvana. It is not a rejection of Self but simply an awareness of Self and all. But you would know this if you had experienced Nirvana wouldn't you? But you haven't so leave it to the master and know your place.
>Im the OP, i just woke up from sleeping. Im reading this thread and it seems as though you are pretending to be the OP.
Yea I created a Yea Forums thread and have been going in between both, I think at one point I seemingly mistook the thread.
>Thanks user.
Yea was pretty interesting.
Oy very, wodda crock of shit.
Feelings come and go. You'll be alive however long you're alive, that satori will just be a nice memory after a while, but there's always other satori
based thread
How are you supposed to consolidate individualist thought with nonduality? Are they naturally opposed or am I just not getting it. It's fucking with my head right now.
youtube.com
youtube.com
youtube.com
youtube.com
I really hope you listen to these videos.
in my understanding, nonduality permits incredible individuality - the fact that all things are so intimately connected yet from the infinity of those connections yield ever stranger realities, the reality of the human, the realities of the flesh and the world lovingly birthing the realities of the mind, the reality of the mind insisting itself back upon the world and body in which it is one with, a divine conversation, self generating, with only the illusion of these adornments. That is what I mean! The heights of illusion and the depths of reality are subsumed together. What spiral caves you find between that snake and coil to form each other's boundaries! Spinoza and Descartes walked the same Earth yet lived in different worlds.
The ego still affects the ego's world that we watch and that affects it - but this realization can seem deceptively simple. How does an ego respond to ideas about its own illusory constitutions? How does the ego come to realize its insignificance (maybe its significance) and learn to yield more readily to the world? It is a strange line, but the admission that "you" do not have power in the divine, deciding sense, but are imbued with mechanisms, now among them the idea of nonduality, that in joyous song unite and harmonize - and the illusion becomes a dance for the sake of illusion! The ego's grip is hard. But eventually it realizes it doesn't have to hold on so tightly! (or even, if you want - at all. but this is harder)
Ill tell you this, the fact that you are questioning, skeptical, and seeking the meaning/intelligibility of your mystical experience tells me that you are a responsible and careful person. I am no guru, but i have had a profound mystical experience and have had the gift of being able to discuss things like this with someone who is incredibly sensitive to these concerns and experiences. It seems like safe advice to recommend this, keep thinking. Don't let yourself get ahead of yourself. Try to raise your experience to understanding and interrogate it from all angles. These things are quite special and they deserve an attentive and careful handling of them.
just throwing you a pearl of personal wisdom and letting you know that there is no distinction between subject and object, there is only awareness of phenomena, and you as that awareness are that phenomena itself. the subject-object distinction is created by you identifying as something "distinct" from the phenomena, which "perceives" it, but really you and that are one. anything you see, anything you hear, anything you feel, etc. you are all of it without distinction. you'll only see this firsthand when you stop identifying as a "receiver/perceiver" of phenomena