The Philosopher's Stone

Quid est veritas? – what is truth? – this was Pilates response to Jesus, after Jesus had stated that he had come to testify to the truth. It is likely that the question was asked in Greek, however, since this was the only language that they had in common. So, we repeat: Τί ἐστιν ἀλήθεια?

What is truth?

It is difficult to state what truth as such is. We are not asking whether this or that concrete fact is true, but rather what truth means. As it happens, there are many theories of truth. One may, for instance, conceived of truth as a correspondence between a fact and a representation of that fact. One may also conceive of truth as the coherence between different statements. Which theory of them is correct? What do we use as a measure to find out which one of them is true? When I ask like this, however, I presuppose that one of them is true and that one may succeed or fail in articulating the “true theory of truth”. Having some pre-reflective fundamental notion of truth seems inescapable when discussing truth. Can we articulate what this background understanding of truth is? Let’s try.

I.

Whenever someone states that this or that is true (this or that fact or even this or that theory of truth), it seems relatively easy to raise doubt about whether it is actually true, especially if it is some controversial matter that we might wonder about. Take, for instance, any deep philosophical issue. Looking back at hundreds or even thousands of years of intellectual inquiry, it may seem like people have just expressed different opinions, and as a civilization, we have not come any close to agreement on the most fundamental issues, such as for instance whether there is objective morality, or how truth and beauty should be defined. We can call this the empirical objection to truth. There have been so many different opinions on most matters that what we at most can say is that truth is subjective. Hence it is unlikely that we will ever reach consensus on any weighty issue.

We can strengthen this objection into a universal skeptical objection to truth. Most sane people would agree that they have made mistakes before. Before we realized that we had made a mistake, we thought that what was false was indeed true. Now, if we make any new statement – do we know for sure that we are not mistaken this time around? Could we be wrong? Yes, it has happened before, so it could be the case this time as well. Hence, we can never really know whether any statement we make is absolutely certain. There is always room for doubt.

To know whether anything is certain, we would need absolute or direct and complete knowledge of all truths in the universe. Then there would be no room for doubt. However, it may be shown that such absolute knowledge is impossible*:

Imagine that you have full access to the complete set of all truths.

If you do have such an access, you also know that it is true that this set is the complete set of all truths.

Before you realized this, your knowledge was not part of the set. But that means that the set was not complete. Your knowledge of knowing all truths must be part of the set of all truths. But that knowledge only arises when the set is complete. Whenever the set is completed, new knowledge arises, meaning that it cannot be completed – even if it is must be completed for there to be absolute knowledge. So, your knowledge of the complete set of all truths must be part of the set and cannot be part of the set. Hence absolute knowledge in the sense of knowledge of the complete set of all truths is inconsistent.

We can conclude that we cannot know what is true – in a way where there is no room for doubt. If I claim that something is true, I will always have to agree that I could be wrong. So truth can never be grasped. True knowledge may be a possibility in principle, but it is impossible for me to be in possession of it.

II.

If I say that I don’t know what truth is, then at least I know that that is true.

Whenever we deny truth, truth reappears.

If I make an empirical objection to truth, claiming that truth seems unlikely since human beings disagree on most fundamental issues, I at least know what seems unlikely.

If I make a skeptical objection to truth, claiming that knowing what is true is impossible, since I cannot know whether any statement that I make will turn out to be false, then at least I know that truth is impossible.

If I state that absolute knowledge is impossible, then I at least I know that absolute knowledge is impossible.

We can conclude truth is both impossible and necessary. Truth is entangled in two opposite forces. The strength with which truth is denied equals the strength with which is affirmed. It seems that silence is the only option. The silence of the death of truth.

III.

There is one way forward. We can understand truth as a process. The first step of the process is to propose this or that, or, minimally, that truth exists. The second step is to deny that this or that is true, or that truth exists as such. But in denying truth, we affirm it. This affirmation is different than simply stating that this or that is true. This affirmation arises through the self-negation of its opposite. In other words, it is a truth that is established by the self-removal of untruth. It is truth that incorporates and is enlivened by untruth.

This kind of truth must be enacted for it to appear. There cannot be any arising of truth without the affirmation of untruth. Truth is a process that necessarily contains its opposite. Once truth is alive and is realized as such, the process of its disappearance has already begun. But this disappearance is a condition for its reappearance.

Insight into this process gives rise to the knowledge of how to enact truth so that we may become part of it, which essentially is about manifesting it, becoming one with it, and reflecting on it.

IV.

This kind of insight does not give us insight into concrete truths of specific matters. It does not give us knowledge about what the surface of the moon consists of. However, it gives us insight into the essential structure of truth. And while this insight may initially seem strange, unusual or far removed from daily life, it gives expression to how we typically relate to truth in actual practice.

If we do philosophy and you make a claim, I will ask for your reasons. Insofar as the reasons are essentially connected to what you claim, you enable me to take part in truth. Of course, there is always the potential of being wrong, so long as the process is limited.

If you make a scientific claim, you also explain your method for arriving at that claim so that the whole process may be reenacted.  Of course, there is always the potential of being wrong, so long as the process is limited.

If you make a claim in daily life – for example, that it is raining outside – I know what to do, namely, to go look outside, and I trust that you have done so already. Of course, there is always the potential of being wrong, so long as the process is limited.

But it is not possible to be wrong about truth itself. Or, more precisely, because we enact truth as such by affirming its negation, truth is unlimited. We cannot be wrong because we incorporate being wrong into the process. What is opposite of truth, what stands against it and limits it, is part of it.

* This argument is a simplified version of one presented in Graham Priest’s book Beyond the Limits of Thought

Once upon a time there was an Indian King who had twelve sons. When he was a young prince, he had stolen a golden ring from Yama, the god of death. This golden ring would give the holder eternal life in heaven if it was given to Yama at the time of death.

Afraid that Yama would come to take the ring back, the king cut the ring in twelve equal parts and gave it to his sons. 

When he was on his deathed, the king called his twelve sons to him, letting them know that each should bring their part of the golden ring. The next morning, nine of the sons had come to the palace of the king. Where were the three others? The nine sons went out to pay each of the missing sons a visit and ask why they were not present and whether they could turn over their part of the ring. If one single piece of the ring was missing, it would not be whole and Yama would not accept it.

The first of the missing sons that they visited had simply forgotten that he had gotten a message from his father, the king. He had also forgotten where he had put his part of the ring. The other nine helped him find his piece of the golden ring. 

The second son of that they visited, had just sold his piece to buy extravagant clothes. He didn’t want anyone else to know this, so he did not come to meet his father. The nine forced him to go sell his extravagant clothes and buy his piece of the ring back.

The third brother that they visited, did not want to give his piece to his father. This was the first-born son. He was angry with his father because he had not been given a special right to the palace of the king. He was still angry with his father and did not want to meet him. He said that they should give the other pieces to him instead of their father, as his father had dishonored the tradition. The nine tried to convice him to give his piece back. After the king was gone, they said, he could come live in the palace with his brothers. He could even get most beautiful room in the palace, if he should wish. He did not accept this and attacked his brothers with a swrod. Enraged, he killed the youngest brothers before he himself was mortally wounded.

The ten remaining brothers travelled back to the king with the twelve pieces. The twelve pieces were put together again by the king’s goldsmith.

The king then died, and the ring disappered. The sons mourned their father’s passing for three days.

After three days had passed, as the remaining sons woke up, each found a golden ring next to their bed.

There is a scene in the Christian Easter narrative that has puzzled me. When Christ stands before Pilate, Pilate asks Jesus:

“Art thou a king then?”

Jesus answers:

“Thou sayest that I am a king.”

This is obviously not what Pilate is saying. A question is not a statement. It is the opposite of a statement. This part of the exchange between Pilate and Jesus often struck me as a case of bad rethoric. But there is something happening later that seems essential to understanding what is going on. When Jesus was crucified, Pilate added a sign to the cross, stating, in Hebrew, Greek and Latin:

“Jesus Of Nazareth The King Of The Jews.”

The chief Priest of the Jews asked Pilate to change the sign to say that he says that he is the king of the Jews (implying that he has made a false claim and now has to suffer for it).

Pilate refused to change what he has written, stating: “What I have written I have written.”

In other words, Pilate affirms that Jesus is king and that Pilate believes this to be true. Pilate says that Jesus is king. And hence the words of Jesus become true. Jesus lives within the whole of the event: Everything that happens, happens as it is supposed to happen. From the betrayal of Judas to the crucifixion itself, all of this is God’s will. Jesus seems aware of this throughout what happens, as exemplified by what he says to Peter when Peter tries to defend him (the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?).

Put simply, Jesus lives beyond time, and he speaks from the perspective of the future when he answers Pilate.

As Husserl has shown in relation to time experience, we retain parts of the past and anticipate the future in musical experience. One could say that this is true for many aspects of human cognition, as shown for exmaple by the idea of predictive coding.

Contemplatively one may say that time is illusory. Hegel indicates this in the Phenomenology of Spirit: 

“Es wird das Jetzt gezeigt, dieses Jetzt. Jetzt; es hat schon aufgehört zu sein, indem es gezeigt wird; das Jetzt, das ist, ist ein anderes als das gezeigte, und wir sehen, daß das Jetzt eben dieses ist, indem es ist, schon nicht mehr zu sein. Das Jetzt, wie es uns gezeigt wird, ist es ein gewesenes, und dies ist seine Wahrheit; es hat nicht die Wahrheit des Seins. Es ist also doch dies wahr, daß es gewesen ist. Aber was gewesen ist, ist in der Tat kein Wesen; es ist nicht, und um das Sein war es zu tun.”

Through contemplative practice, this conceptual truth may be realised experientially. In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, there is a practice for transcending time:

“III.16 pariṇāma-traya-saṁyamād atītānāgata-jñānam 

When saṁyama is performed on the three transformations [of characteristics, state, and condition], knowledge of the past and the future ensues.”

This is not the place to unpack the details of this. I just wish to point out that practices exist within the traditions that enable other forms of cognitions — forms of cognition that underpin the religious narratives.

And this reminds me of Plato’s words about what one ought to do: “To become like God, so far as this is possible”. Who knows what is possible? It is the aim of contemplative science to figure this out, theoretically and empirically. 

During Easter I usually read through the different accounts of Jesus Christ dying on the cross and the events leading up to it. I tend to notice something new every year. This time I had a thought, a kind of discovery, relating to a question I’ve had for many years: Why did Christ have to die on the cross? An almighty and all-good God could simply have removed all sins, making the crucifixion unnecessary. And it would seem quite sadistic (or even masochistic, considering the Christ is God) to let someone go through something like a crucifixion for no reason. To me, the whole ordeal of the crucifixion seems deeply meaningful, but in ways that I am only barely able to understand, let alone put into words.  

However, as mentioned, this Easter, I had an idea. It relates to a quite well-known passage. The scene is Jesus being taken prisoner in the night before the crucifixion. One of Jesus’ disciples cuts of the ear of someone who wants to seize Jesus. As the passage states:

“Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” – Matthew, 26:52–53.

From this the saying “live by the sword, die by the sword” is derived. Although “karma” isn’t a concept one typically connects with Christian thought, here it is. Someone who uses a sword to solve conflicts, will also perish in that way. But there is something more here. Jesus is addressing a disciple who wants to protect him from being captured in the night. As Jesus indicates, if the Father would have wanted to protect Jesus, he would just send legions of angels. In other words, what is going to happen, is meant to happen.

Sometimes I am puzzled by the seeming powerlessness of monastics, of monks and nuns, of Christian saints. Shouldn’t someone connected to divine power – someone who can send a legion of angels – also appear powerful? At least have armor to protect them from evil and a weapon to strike down demons? The way Jesus reacts, however, reveals an attitude that is connected with the view that karma is a reality: If you strike someone down, you will be struck down yourself. There is no need to take care of this from the outside. The divine order will see to it that things happen as they should, that justice is done. This, I think, holds true for the crucifixion as well. First of all, I don’t think the statements of dying by the sword and the possibility of the Father sending angels are unrelated. Humans live in sin (and in Christian thought, they are fundamentally sinful regardless of their acts or will continually be lead to sinful acts because of original sin). Let’s say “sin” means something like living in a way that keep you disconnected from the divine. The consequence of living or being like that is something like a crucifixion. If we live in a way that distances us from the divine, the final consequence of that is completely dying away from God. Disconnect yourself, and you will end up completely disconnected. Karma is divine law and one consequence of that is the crucifixion. Christ exemplifies what everyone has to go through. In some sense or another: Dying on the cross.

But Jesus did not live by the sword, he did not live in a way that enhanced disconnection. This is one further aspect of the mystery of Golgotha. What happens if someone takes on the consequences of someone else’s actions? The one who committed them are then freed from the consequences. And what happens to the ones who take on the consequences? They are resurrected in a higher form.

That this has been enacted once by the Christ does not necessarily mean that it is done once and for all. As Angelus Silesius, the Christian mystic, put it:

Wird Christus tausendmal zu Bethlehem geboren
Und nicht in dir, du bleibst noch ewiglich verloren.

Das Kreuz zu Golgatha kann dich nicht von dem Bösen,
Wo es nicht auch in dir wird aufgericht, erlösen.*

Voluntarily suffering the ultimate consequences of one’s own disconnected ways of being may be called the internal Christ process. When someone voluntarily suffers the consequences of someone else’s disconnected way being, this is a social Christ process. The end of these karmic processes – one may hope – there is a resurrection and a higher form of experience.

*English translation:

Though Christ a thousand times
In Bethlehem be born,
If He’s not born in thee
Thy soul is still forlorn.
The Cross on Golgotha,
Will never save thy soul;
The Cross in thine own heart,
Alone can make thee whole.

A story recently came to in the dreamworld. The title is:

How tall is God?

Two persons, a man and a woman, had recently died. Their souls were approaching the pearly gates. In front of the gate stood St. Peter, who was going to decide whether they were allowed to enter heaven.

St. Peter addressed the man: “Before you can enter heaven, you will have to answer this question: How tall is God?”

The man looked confused and did not know what to say. Is it at all possible to say how tall God is?

St. Peter addressed him again: “I can help you a little and will pose the question a bit differently: How tall was God before He entered heaven?”

The man was still quite confused. “Isn’t God always in heaven?”, he pondered to himself. “What will happen if I give a false answer? Will I not be allowed to enter?”

He did not know what to say. Suddenly an answer dawned upon him. He said: “God is 1 meter and 83 centimetres tall”. That was exactly the height of the man.

“The answer is correct”, said St. Peter. “You may enter”.

When the man had entered heaven, God asked him again: “How tall is God after he has entered heaved?” The man answered him with a smile on his face: “1,83”.

The man turned around and looked at the woman, who were still standing at the gates.

St. Peter walked over to her and asked: “How tall is God?” “She is 1,74”, said the woman. “That’s exactly right”, said St. Peter, “you may enter.”

Buddhist and Christianity may be seen to have different views on suffering. At least in early Buddhism, the aim is to end suffering, to dissolve the ego, abandon attachments, extinguish the thirst for life, realise Nirvana, and to finally end the cycle of rebirth. At the center of Christianity, there is the cross, a symbol of utmost suffering and of torture that ends with death – or rather, with resurrection, which brings a totally different view of suffering, more aligned with the archetype of the phenix rising from the ashes. A new kind of life arises as death is conquered.

But certain developments within Buddhism bring it closer to the Christian view – some aspects of Buddhism may even be regarded to be more Christian than Christianity itself is. It is these two ideas that I will try to make sense of and justify in the following, using Hermann Beckh’s “From Buddha to Christ”, which I have just finished reading, as a starting point.

Hermann Beckh (1875–1937) was a legal practitioner with a deep personal interest in Buddhism. Being unsatisfied with job, he started studying Indian and Tibetan philology. Eventually he became professor religious studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin for a few years around 1920. He then became active in the Christian Community in Germany, lecturing and conducting independent research. He also authored a number of books, which have been “rediscovered” recently. All of his publications are now being translated into English.

“From Buddha to Christ” treats many aspects of the relationship between Buddhism and Christianity, most of which I will not go into here. One central idea, however, which Beckh received from Rudolf Steiner, is this one: It is because Buddha was right in saying that life is suffering that the deed of Christ is of utmost significance. Through Christ, new ways of relating to the sufferings of life become available. In other words, without the Buddha being right, there would be no meaning to the life of Christ.

Beckh illustrates this by considering a Christian response to the five fundamental ways of suffering that were central to the Buddha. The Buddha stated in the famous Sermon at Benares that:

1. Birth is suffering
2. Old age is suffering
3. Illness is suffering
4. Death is suffering
5. To be united with what one does not love or separated from loved ones is suffering
6. Not obtaining one’s wishes is suffering

Beckh refers to a lecture that Steiner held on the 11^th of April 1909, where he comments on each of these one from a Christian perspective:

1. Birth is not suffering: It is a portal to finding Christ
2. Old age is not suffering: As we age, we grow more and more into the spiritual world
3. Illness is not suffering: It is an opportunity to overcome an obstacle through the healing power of Christ
4. Death is not suffering: Death has been conquered by Christ
5. To be united with what one does not love is not suffering: Through Christ, love expands to include even our enemies. To be separated from loved one is not suffering: Through Christ we can find a way to remain united with everyone, both during life and after life has ended.
6. Not obtaining one’s wishes is not suffering: Through not getting what one wants, one is purified, and Christ makes one sense that even compelled renunciation purifies

In short, suffering is an opportunity, a way to grow, a way to heal. Suffering can be conquered, it can lead to an expansion of love, and it purifies. All this can be gained not by seeking to escape earthly existence and reaching Nirvana, but by taking part in human life, and especially by encountering its hardships. On such a view, a deeper transcendence can be found through or even in immanence.

However, as Beckh indicates as well, later forms of Buddhism, such as Mayahana, may be seen to have already been influenced by Christianity (p. 14). The most obvious example of this is the Boddhisattva vow, or the ideal that the individual postpones their own awakening until everyone can awaken and seeks to help others along the way. There is an interesting connection between this ideal with the notion of the higher guardian of the threshold in Steiner’s work, which we will not explore further here. However, we can make Beckh’s view even more radical, and argue that later forms of Buddhism in some ways are more Christian than Christianity itself.

A related point is that, in Beckh’s view, Buddhism differs from Christianity in that Buddhism has laid down a clear path of spiritual realisation. This could be shown by comparing the comprehensiveness and specificity of Buddhist meditations manuals to Christian ones. I will not do this here. However, to justify the claim that Buddhism in a way realises the Christian response to Buddhism stronger than Christianity itself, I will look into a few examples from the Buddhist meditation manual The Royal Seal of Mahamudra, written by the Tibetan Buddhist Ngawang Kunga Tenzin (1680-1728). This manual outlines a way in which, among other things, suffering, illness and death can themselves be made part of a path of spiritual realisation aiming at experiencing the whole of reality, including all aspect of earthly existence, as sacred.

One essential part of the practice of using the hindrances or obstacles as part of the path consist of understanding. One understands why, for example, suffering arises. Then one recognises that further thoughts about being in a good or bad situation, including clinging to a better life and related hopes and fears, are not helpful. This may seem like a familiar view from early Buddhism. However, then something strange follows: One takes the suffering itself as the path – one rests right on the problem. One concentrates on whatever the suffering consists of directly. For example, if there is suffering because the body hurts, one focuses on the painful sensations and the felt resistance in the body. Furthermore, one uses the suffering to awaken love and compassion towards everyone that is suffering. More specifically, one can use practices such as Tonglen, in which you take on the suffering of others on order to transform it.

When using illness as a path, the approach is basically the same: You work with your view, your understanding of the phenomena of illness, and meditate on whatever experience of the illness is present:

As to actually using sickness as the path, when there is pain, don’t slip into blocking it or curing it. No matter what disturbance in the elements or pain arises, think that it is a cause for purifying negativity, recognize the vivid feeling of physical and mental sickness and pain itself, and entrust the core of the meditation to that very recognition.

So, the illness is understood as leading to purification – it is “a broom that sweeps away obscurations”.

The meditations on death are in fact quite complex, but the pattern is similar: One uses the experience of death as a meditation object and this makes death a catalyst of realisation. If successful, one learns to control the process of death and rebirth in such a way that one is no longer reborn – which would equal the awakening of early Buddhism – but one may also choose to be reborn at a place where one may be most effective in participating in the awakening of all beings. Interestingly, these practices seem to be practiced with some degree of success. I’ve written about this earlier, and recently a study about this was published in the journal Mindfulness.

To summarise: Suffering can become part of the way, it is not necessarily something to avoid or be liberated from. Rather, it is a portal to awakening. Illness may lead to removing of obstacles. And death may be conquered. Through these examples, it has hopefully become clear how some Buddhist approaches are indeed aligned with the Christian view. Furthermore, the theory presented in Buddhist meditation manuals, and the practice of Buddhist meditators, may be deeper than the one found in the Christian tradition, essentially making Buddhist practice more Christian than the one found in Christianity itself. Where do you find the most concrete instructions for conquering death? Buddhist meditation manuals. Who are actually working on conquering death? Buddhist practitioners.

 

Yesterday I visited Sacre-Coeur in Paris. I had been watching the building from afar the lasts couple of days and really wanted to visit that place.

While I was inside the church an interesting experience happened. I was a bit tired and sat down. Soon I started meditating. Immediately there was energetic movement in my head. There were flowing waves, tingling all over, and this sense that my head was being slowly energised. That grew over the next 20 minutes and after a while the upper part of my head felt, in a way, like the dome above me; it was energised all over in a kind of static way while more dynamic things happened on top of that.

I reflected on the meaning of Christianity. I felt into the sense that it is about bringing the transcendent realm/nirvana close to the human realm/samsara.

From time to time I looked at Christ doing the big arms thing:

It seemed to me that he is blessing people. I relate blessing to fullness, overflowing, bliss, expansion, pleasure, etc. Then I notice the wounds in his hands and that the position really corresponds to someone hanging on the cross. Pain, despair, contraction, etc. At one point I realise that what this image represents is inseparability of pain and pleasure. Contracting and expanding, blessing, bliss, suffering and despair are non-dually present in the very details as well as the whole of the image. That’s why it’s beautiful, holy, and awe inspiring (I also notice now that the face is equanimous, while his body/soul radiates light; during the experience the focus was on non-duality). And the insights continued to come: This very image is the presence of non-duality within relative consciousness. Art manifests non-duality within duality. So, interestingly, art — something “made up” — is closer to absolute reality than physical reality (the real real to many). This also indicates that certain parts of relative reality is closer to absolute reality than others.

I could go on and on here, it’s like these ideas come by themselves (piti in the mind?) but I’ll leave it at that.

And I also had this in the back of my mind, Shinzen talking about pain and pleasure merging: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSobyZjJSvs

Oh, I forgot about the nuns. Nuns walked in and started singing while this was happening. I acted like I was catholic and tried to stand up and sit down at the right times.

In April 2018 I went to this place in France — Frogwarts as it has been called — to do a fire kasina retreat with a group of people:

The place was almost as amazing as the things that happened during the retreat. Every evening, with one exception, I made an audio recording of some of the most important things that had happened during the day. In total, I recorded around two hours of material. The audio recording is available below, and also a transcript, for those who prefer to read.

The meditation practice itself is quite simple: You look at a candle light for a minute or so, then close your yes, and use the afterimage — or whatever shows up — as a meditation object (“whatever shows up” can be a whole lot of things, and that is where things start to get interesting). Here is a link to the fire kasina website, which has an in-depth explanation of the practice and a lot of material, including further audio reports, on the practice.

Some further explanation of terminology and some aspects of the practice might be helpful to understand the different reports: The murk refers to the visual space after that is there afterimage is gone. It appears greyish or blackish, but you can usually find that it contains a lot of tiny bits of colours and is actually quite dynamic if you closely. Most of us used a mantra as a supplement to the kasina practice; this quiets the mental chatter and can lead to interesting auditory experiences. The nimitta is another word for the afterimage. Piti is a term I use to refer to a constellation of phenomena that often appear together, but primarily I mean blissful bodily and energy-related sensations. Jhana or jhanic state is a form of deep, meditative absorption. Top-down (conceptual knowledge/interpretation) and bottom-up (sensory input) processing are central terms in the predictive coding theory of mind.

That should be enough to understand this (my voice might be perceived as a little strange at some points; this is in part due to me being both very content, tired, and trying not to wake up people in the rooms next to me — most recordings were done around midnight):

A big thanks to Daniel Ingram, all my friends and fellow explorers, for making this happen!

Here is the full transcript:

Day one, April 2nd 2018. Today we pretty much just got settled. Got maybe around 3 or 4 hours of practice in. I did a couple on the way here, on the train. Nothing much has happened. There were a few occasions where the imagination seems to intrude into the colors, but that’s quite quick. Like it goes away very quickly. And there have been some … some patterns showing up in colors sometimes, like a fractal image. One case … yeah. Feeling … feeling good, quite blissful, focused, and tired.

This is day two. So quite a lot of interesting things happened today. Let’s see. There were some geometrical figures appearing, lines, triangles, as part of the afterimage. They don’t stay that long. There have been some very nice sits, blissful, calm. Also, especially towards the end of the day I had some pretty strong pain coming up. Just the body hurting from all the sitting. Did at least 10 hours today, or I did at least 10 hours. And I had a headache. Some strain around the eyes specifically. And at one point I switched to the breath. This was actually in my last sit now. And suddenly, as I settled down, a lot of colors started sweeping in, in the visual field. So that might have to do with just relaxation and that I might have been focusing too strongly.

My other sits … there were also cases where there were sort of clouds appearing and some … well I typically get sort of yellow, green, like shiny colors coming out of the murk. There were also some vision like appearance coming, figures starting to take shape in the murk. There was one where I saw a shiny, reddish triangle surrounded by blue clouds. That was pretty stable for a while, which means five to ten seconds, something like that. Also, different, other figures. Sometimes I can sense, or I get this fantasy image of what it might be that is starting to appear in the murk or the afterimage space, which is different from the fantasy space. And I try to see if I could shape the forms by imaging them or also wishing, for instance, a square to appear. And that happened on some occasions. So I managed to get a square shape appearing, which hadn’t appeared before that. It kind of takes some seconds before it appears from when you set the intention.

The mantra also in a sense spontaneously changes, but it kind of like I’m also inspired to change it. So I started to sing the mantra, a melody came to me, and as that happened I kind of got the sense, or imagined, that a big choir was singing the mantra, like an angel choir or a human choir, with very strong devotional voices. And as that happens, I got quite strong bliss with tingles across my body. And that repeated itself. So I have kind three versions of the mantra now. One is just saying it internally, one is singing it more in one tone. And another one is this big choir with a specific melody and so on. And I kind of go between those. Got a few cases where the breath stopped as concentration grew, but it only stops for a few seconds.  

Some interesting memories come up. Emotional situations from long ago. There was some aversion that came up, but nothing strong and it didn’t stay. I didn’t have to work with it.

And I’ve been thinking about bottom-up versus top-down processing. So one explanation of what is going here is that you stop the process … so much sensory information from the outside, you kind of limit the external impressions, and still retain some of it as the afterimage. And you allow that space to become open to top-down processing, which you control by setting intentions and imaging things, and also things spontaneously happening, just coming from somewhere else.

I also had some cases where I have something happening and then I forget it pretty quickly afterwards. Similar to when you wake up in the morning and you’ve had a dream and then it’s pretty clear and suddenly it’s just gone. This typically happens if there is some strong visual change, but it’s more dreamy, strong maybe because it’s dreamy, you kind of drop into that, and then you exit it, you wake up, and then the thing you saw or what happened is gone.

I think that’s everything for today.

Day 3 of the retreat. Feeling good. Just past midnight. A lot of things happened today. It was a bit rough at points, starting about midday. Well, there was this situation where I was just looking … was walking around looking at the corner in the building, sort of yellowish color, and reality suddenly started flickering really fast. I kept staring at that, and that kind of signaled a change, and while sitting I had a very strong pain in the back, sort of the backside of the solar plexus. It was quite familiar. And I decided to stay with the pain and asked if could tell me it’s story. And the answer was pretty clear: There was this sentence “I can’t find my place in the world”, like “I don’t fit in”. And I dwelt in that sense of feeling for a while. The pain got better at times, but strong, difficult emotions were coming up and I went out, went outside, started walking, felt this sadness come up, it was, yeah, a sense that there is a place for everyone, somewhere that they fit, except not for me. There was this deep sense that I’m wrong, there’s something wrong with me, I’m useless. This light crying, without tears, and I walked for maybe ten minutes, feeling into that. And there was also this underlying that this is ok, this is good, it’s good process, I’m used to this, I know where it’s heading, which made it quite easy to feel into and deal with it. And walked in on Daniel and Duncan trying to turn on the stove, getting ready to cook, and they couldn’t, but I could. And [there was] this funny sense that “yeah, I’m not completely useless after all”. And as I sat down again a sentence came to me “the fire will teach me”, “the fire will teach me”. And when meditating, when focusing, I also felt that … that process, that activity in itself kind of opened up that space, that sore space, that woundedness. And in order to go deep, I had to go past that or into that at least. Yeah.

And as concentration grew, the colors became almost laser-like, very clear, even without the afterimage from the candle. And again, the “the fire will teach you”, that became the mantra for a while. And I had this realization: Reality itself is a fine-tuned teacher as it is. You just need to pay attention and listen. It’s all around you, in all people, everyone present, it’s in the silence, it’s in the noise. [There] was … bliss arising together with this insight, [a] tingling sensation and deep gratitude. But this sense of being tender or wounded, sore, lingered in the background.

And some greyish, brown, saturated fields formed. “The fire will teach you”. And I had this sense that “well, I want a real teacher, not reality, but a specific teacher”, and there was this immediate sense of an answer “any specific teacher will be impermanent. The invisible teacher in all things is a teacher you cannot lose”. And with that insight there was some deep peace.

The practice after that was quite good, kept on deepening. Pain was less strong, but my breath kept on stopping, not in a jerky way, but in a slow, peaceful way. And as I got into that space, the body became more rock-like and hard. I kept going with that, going into that. Letting concentration grow. And yeah, that was pretty much the first two sessions. And the final one … then things started getting interesting. I had more images coming up. There was this Greek column showing up. It was white and black. Also a rose, or a row of roses actually. Black roses, but that wasn’t very clear. And after that I had my first 3D-image. Like very thin columns, square shaped. And there was red and green on top. Kind of like a graph. Very, very fine, very high detail. And then an insight popped up, “so ok, if the world doesn’t have a place where you fit in, then reshape the world, it’s that easy”. And more 3D-images showed up. One was with a lot of bubbles. Tiny, tiny bubbles. Amber-colored. A third one was pink crystals. And also a couple, two-three times, flowers started appearing in the after image, right after closing the eyes.

That’s pretty much it for today. Oh yeah, I had a pretty rough night last night. I woke up with a strong headache and also had very strong tension around the eyes tonight, or during this day actually. And I decided to shift the energy downwards a bit, focusing on the sensations at the nose, when the breath goes in and out. I tried that just before going to sleep last night. And I dropped into a focused state pretty quickly, and a lot of colours showed up, like waves, different colours, again and again. And I could focus on them if I wanted and have the breath in the background, or focus on the breath and have the colours in the background, so I knew already that it’s possible to combine things like that. So I switched to this kind of practice also at certain times during the day, to lessen the strain on the eyes. And now it’s pretty good, we’ll see how it is tomorrow.

Day 4 report. Half past midnight. A lot interesting things happened today, [and] wasn’t so difficult as yesterday. In the morning I started working with the … the idea, the sense, that I’m entering into the fairy realm, the magic realm, and that they had put up barriers to this world – this was an idea that was inspired by something Daniel during breakfast. And so as I was working with this … this question came up in meditation: How do you open up a gate for which you have no key? And this answer came: You become the gate and then you open. So the barriers themselves are magic, they only let the worthy pass. And do you become worthy? By encountering the barrier over and over again. It’s like the obstacle is the path, these are perfect magic barriers, they send those away who aren’t ready, and let those pass who are.

And images showed up. A pentagram was forming in the nimitta, but it was imperfect. At one point there was a partial but very realistic image of a cow. Then turtles appeared. Teenage ninja turtles. Then I had the first 3D image of rocks. First they were photo realistic and then [they had] more magenta outlines, more like computer graphics. And at one point I had the first stable image. It was of a gate, it wasn’t in full detail, but it was stable, maybe 20-30 seconds. And this was followed by and image of a … it was the upper right side of a multi-colored ball, with something like hairs on it. Very strange. This is more like computer graphics, 3D.

The afternoon wasn’t so exciting. I spent a lot of time sitting in this grey area where nothing happened. And I had some pain as well, similar as yesterday. Pain in the back. And at one point I felt a stream of energy shooting up in front of the chest from the solar plexus to the heart. And there was a nice, slightly burning sensation there, now also actually. But this thing in the back stayed and as a consequence of that I switched to the bench. And I spent quite a while, at least ten hours a day, I think, total of meditation today. And towards the end of the night I discovered a trick. You place attention around the body. Expand. Go into that space, leap into that space, dream into it. And the first time I did this, the most intricate image I’ve had showed up. It was of a brown stone tablet with hieroglyphs, couldn’t read them, but they were there. Yeah, and after that some more fearful material appeared. A snake, the head of a snake, and some bush-like structures, more like thick branches, black. Yeah.

And I felt quite dreamy during the evening. Walked around a bit and could feel the whole room flickering. Also the meditation room. And I also had deep gratitude for everyone at the retreat. All of them in quite specific ways. Kept thinking about what I am grateful for, what I want to say to them, yeah. This is a special, magic time.

Day 5. Half past midnight. Very, very interesting day. A lot happened and I tend to follow this patter where I build concentration in the morning, have some challenge in the afternoon, then I go into steady practice in the evening and get some new stuff. So let’s see what I’ve got. The pain was much less today, which was good. Sitting a lot on my bench. And I do dream a lot, but I can’t remember [the dreams], so tomorrow I’m going to start writing them down as soon as I wake up.

And I noticed in the meditation room that there was this slow pulse or flickering at the periphery of the visual field, and I had this sentence come “trust your mind, it will show you, i.e. itself, what you need in the form of a language or an image that it, the mind, can recognise”. A sort of communication between the sub-minds. It was a case where a dream space image imprinted itself on the afterimage space, and it is interesting that the dream image is in a way clear, detailed, but quick and lacks awareness, and therefore also control — attentional control. The afterimage, in contrast, is not so detailed, but it lasts, and you have attentional control and its kind of brighter in a way. So the idea would be to develop awareness, metacognitive awareness, of what’s going on, and have equanimity with whatever is going on, so you don’t drop out of that, so that kind of what I’ve been working on, most centrally, today.

I did a have very strong agitation though, before cooking and checking emails. And yeah, that went away after we were done eating. And then I started noticing that people felt very unreal. It’s was a slightly intense experience, like everyone around you is just part of the scenery. There’s this sense of distance. Derealization. And as I sat down, this was in the afternoon, I got a lot of fear. And quite specifically in relation to the sense of ending up somewhere, where I can never get reality back as I know. Like I’d stay in this derealized state, this dreamy state, forever, like I was broken. And as I sat down to practice the tinnitus-like sound started increasing, which I often get when concentration gets strong, or as I go into a disembodied state, like an out of body experience or sleep paralysis state. It’s very strange, it’s like I hear something, like you could maybe call space, like I hear something but don’t really hear something. Yeah.

A funny thing that happened today as well was that Daniel discovered that the whole castle where we’re at is made of flint stone, like a fire castle, you can make fire with every part of it. And not only that, it had some, well, two alchemical symbols. One, or fire, in the middle, and a little larger one, for water, surrounding it. And they kind of combine, which then would make them the ether or space element. Yeah.

And back to the fear. I felt like I needed to kind of prepare for anything that could happen. What … or how would I react if something came up that I couldn’t handle? And I got into this elaborate, really elaborate fantasy about all kinds of protective beings. This is really bordering on crazy but kind of funny. I have like a big pantheon of beings surrounding me and all of them help with specific powers, specific weapons, in defeating demon.

While writing this, this reverie, I sensed that some quality was missing, some calm quality. The final being was missing. That was the being of fire that also brings deep, deep calm, through the agitation, through the fire. This was kind a transformation of the idea of that the fire will teach you. And she appears as kind of an angel and her wings form a dome around me. Then I get this sense, and this is actually when I’m sitting, I get the sense that fairies are washing my body water brought by Mary, mother of God, and then the fire being becomes my consort. I’m instructed to take to take refuge in every sensation. She says: Take refuge in every sensation as me. When your body burns with pain that is making you ready to become fire. You gain my knowledge and abilities. Your body is earth. I burn you up. Bliss will arise as water and steam. The spring of eternal life will wash over you. You will become fire, your body will become black as coal. In pure awareness it turns into a diamond. Eternal life. And you will become the space of awareness. Practice soaking up every moment as it is. Every moment is perfect and contains exactly what you need. And then this Imogen Heap mantra starts: “You decided this … wathcha say, it’s just what we need, you decided this, mmm watchcha say, that it’s all for the best, of course it is, whathcha say, mm, that it’s just what we need, you decided this, whatcha say, mmm, that it’s just for the best, of course it is”, and as starts in the background I get bliss waves, piti level II-III. “The more present you are, the more I can share my wisdom. The more present you are, the more I can share my wisdom”. Then she starts to dance, there’s this symbol, a triangle with nimitta in the middle. She holds nimtta fireballs, her eyes are nimittas. She takes the position of Kali and everything burns. And she becomes a consort again. Take refuge in every caress of fire. Pure, calm, in the presence of fire. Pure compassion and fast, intense love that’s always ready and present to you. Amen.

In the evening I had complex 3D figures. Well, geometrical figures, pyramids and cubes. Rainbow colored or nimitta colored. I had some white curtain like structure appear, stably, and then I suddenly saw the image of the girl with an earring, also in the nimitta space. Then it dawned on me that it seems like dream space has some more immediate and content … content-laden and emotional imagery. Then I had some skulls, […] some skulls around the nimitta. They kept on reappearing, were quite stable, but not so detailed, and I couldn’t make out sort of the different shapes. I tried to imagine a skull, I tried to bring the image of the skull to mind, and that actually made the skulls clearer, which is kind of interesting. I’m hypothesizing that that kind of plays into the function of top-down processing and helps the image and the after image space become clearer. The nimitta also became a bug at one point. Three, no, six legs. Also reddish, yellow, as the nimitta, and I had some more skulls and a dragon. That’s it for today.

Day 6 of the retreat. This was a very interesting day. Recorded some dreams. Not much interesting, but I remember them nonetheless. In the beginning sitting there were complex geometrical patterns. No, that’s not right. That was actually while lying in bed, that’s right. And I also woke up with a very, very strong headache. Yeah. I also had complex geometrical patters appearing in the afterimage space while lying in bed and had a very strong headache and I woke up with that. I also spent some time in the morning sitting in chair, trying to connect more with dream reality. Approached the goddess, and then she put her hand on my forehead, and blue light entered visual space, the afterimage space, very clearly. And after that the third eye was vibrating, and it kept on vibrating, and I also had many dream-like images while sitting. And throughout the day I worked on combining attention and awareness and equanimity, trying to unify them, spending some sittings in the chair, falling half asleep sometimes, and then a sitting in front the candle, working more on clarity and wakefulness. And I had one … one moment where I felt intense beauty and gratitude. It’s kind of like I felt like … I’m at Hogwarts and I’m becoming a magician. And just looking around everything was intensely beautiful. So beautiful I felt like crying.

I noticed that working with this goddess being feels like a mix of reality and fantasy. It fully starts out as fantasy and then interesting things happen, like there’s no doubt that blue light was appearing in after image space. And even if you have a physiological explanation of that some parts my mind react well to the mythological imagery. So it’s kind of a mix of something subjective and objective that works very well together. And, to use Shinzen-language and Culadasa-language, it’s like there is a combination of the mythological sub-mind with the wisdom function. And that leads to interesting stuff, definitely.

And since the third eye was still buzzing, I tried to direct my attention there, and had many strong colors appear, amber, blue, and I tried to shoot yellow from the gold spots on the sides into the middle, to create a triangle, which was semi-clear. I also noticed that the goddess was silent. And I asked her if I could hear her voice. Then she replied, “yes, you can” in a totally beautiful, deep, loving, playful, warm, compassionate voice. And I kind of responded, “you don’t talk much, do you?” And she replied: “I don’t have to”. And the conversation kept on going like that. It’s like I know the answer immediately and then the wording follows. And I kept on shooting “om” into the forehead chakra, where I felt the buzzing sensation. And at one point, really, really vivid purple colors appeared, like a sail almost. It was mesmerizing. Totally beautiful. It’s like I’ve never seen anything like that, it’s so clear. I mean, it can get clearer, but I hadn’t had this that strongly, and it’s kind of unbelievable.

And then while sitting in the chair I had some … well, actually, a lot of dream imagery, where I kind of fall half asleep – strange things, nothing really interesting, but many dreams of the participants. Like someone putting cabbage in the heater in the kitchen. And we later had cabbage for dinner. And then there was one scene where Alex hands me a chair, Will comes by, yeah, and like that.

Something new was like many mini-nimittas, maybe around 20, appearing sort of between the center and the periphery. And right before dinner I had very clear, or, I should say, relatively clear, images in the afterimage space, but they were very detailed. Inside houses, in the kitchen, and they were starting to get realistic. And after that I felt quite burned out. So I took an extra break. Talked a couple of guys and, yeah, recharged for a couple of hours.

In the evening I continued to focus on the third eye. Concentrating on that spot while sitting in a chair. And concentration got very, very strong. It was like it was a continual stream in the background. And although there was some mental chatter, it was like I was just pulled back into this concentrated stream of consciousness or focus at the third eye spot. And it felt great, cozy, strong. And then suddenly there were a series of white light appearing, flames, waves, and I focused that light into a kind of beam, and the mantra got really strong, it was like a laser beam shooting through consciousness that lasted for, maybe, two minutes. And I stayed in strong concentration for maybe around thirty minutes. I had the sense that I could keep on going for forever, but the energy eventually wore off. And I sat down and the same thing happened. I found it really quickly again. It’s like I’ve discovered the third eye jhana. There is a momentum that builds and it doesn’t stop. The mind is still active to a certain extent, I can think, but again it’s like the mind, attention, is drawn back to the center. And then after maybe 40 minutes there is a drop in energy, but I sat like that for about, I think it was two sessions, yeah, and I tried to see if I could drop deeper, like shut down the mind completely. There was some energy activation, piti flowing over the body and the mind became more quiet, but didn’t fully shut down. It was like I wasn’t completely submerged. We’ll see how that works tomorrow. And I had some skulls again, just to mention that, and they were clearer than yesterday.

So I just woke up to a beautiful Sunday morning. Can hear all the birds. It’s kind of misty, it’s been raining. The sky is clearing up.

Day seven. Just finished the first practice session. We’ll soon have lunch. Wrote down some dreams from the night. Some really nice, some more nightmarish, and I had one more that I forgot to write down and it’s gone and that feels lazy, I had the sense that it’s important to take notes like this to bring consciousness, attention, into that domain. I also did a practice, maybe half an hour, before getting out of bed, and I did that also before falling asleep, like looking at the afterimage space, looking for colors, finding shapes, and I woke up during the night once, and also continued that.

During the first session I noticed that the concentration from yesterday was still present, or it was quite easy to build it up, it took some time, but then it was really strong, and I experimented with keeping concentration strong while standing up and moving around. That worked quite well. I did long […] practice sessions, about three hours in total, shifting positions maybe three or four times. I still sit in a chair from time to time, but mostly on the pillow. While sitting in the chair I try to get into dreamland, some reverie. I had some funny situation showing up, like Will feeding me meatballs — and I don’t eat meat — Neko flew out of the chimney to save the world, shooting rainbows out of his head. Things like that. That kept on going. And I tried to bring that imagery into afterimage space, but it’s not so easy. But I do find that I’m growing used to that space and I can bring more awareness to it.

I did one strong determination sitting and as the pain came I envisioned the goddess and three dragons flying around, purifying me with fire. And after a session like that I took a break and sat in a chair and practiced there and got back to the cushion. And then a dragon showed up in the background, different shapes, mostly friendly. And I did one more round with the candle light, and then the dragon showed up in the purple light. Or like the outline, but much more clear.

And I keep having ideas and inspirations, things I want to do in the future, more retreats, what I want to work on in research, people I want to introduce to the practice and so on. It’s quite nice.

So — second half [later that day]. Worked a bit on color and shape control today. Got some shapes, colors, but it was disappointing. I also had a nimitta that was constantly flickering. And after a while I kind of ended up in a bad place. Took a long break, walked, picked up some stones, worked out a little, and started working again. Had some success with kind of dreaming into and becoming one with the shape that I wanted. Also tried at one point to kind of pull energy from above down through the crown, to the third eye, and the result was lots of colors. Which was fun. And then it happened again, I felt a bid down, bored, sad, low energy, and started walking again. Then I managed to enter the third eye first jhana again. Which was good. Back pain won’t go away. This little being showing up in the white. I had a lot of white and black. And this image, the being, was of a young guy, friendly, incredibly pure, wise, and silent. There was one even with a castle, that was in dreamspace. There was a crusader knight, [a] very nice, detailed picture, nice mood.

And before dinner I had very clear purple that I could bring up through intention and I started working with that a little. And was ready to continue that after dinner, and then it was gone. Completely gone. So I started working on concentration again and I definitely had as strong concentration as yesterday today. But it didn’t grow any. And I had some very complex, geometrical 3D-figures appearing, and patterns. Patterns are more holistic, maybe more in the background as well sometimes. 3D-figures kind of take shape out of the nimitta, which was fun.

Worked a bit also on starting to draw stuff in the air, and that is slowly starting to work. [It] kind of starts with some things coming out of the fingers. Particularly fun is holding two fingers up against each other. I could see different forms of light, I had some white light today, it’s kind of like you shift into afterimage space. The same thing with trying hold a ball, you kind of zone out a little and feel the ball there and then the colors appear. But on a whole energy and motivation has dropped a bit today, [and I’m] kind of working through that and looking forward to sleep.

So this is day 8. Just had a very clear case of dreamspace merging with afterimage space. So it’s as if I’m in dreamspace on the left, a little bit upwards, and kind of in the middle, on the right side, slightly, I have the afterimage space colors. And one part of my mind is in this dreamy realm, and it sinks into that, creates images, which are clear, but without awareness, and as I wake up the image moves forwards, it’s in the back initially the landscape, the barn, comes from the backside, and imprints the afterimage space. And I get the outline of a barn in the multi-colored afterimage space. And at that point I’m awake. And it still lingers this sense that I was in a dream right now, and can watch this process of merger.

Day 8 [continued]. Had a long, long dream last night. Going around in Oslo with friends, lot of good and bad stuff had happened. I also remember before falling asleep last night, that I had my first high resolution image in the visual, afterimage space. There were some discs that appeared and were totally clear and vivid. Yeah, and today I’ve been working with filling the whole inner space with purple. That took some time and effort, but I managed eventually. Let’s say the intensity of the light was 20% [in comparison to a fully clear and saturated purple color] with some black in between. And I had a series of images coming up, I’m not going to go through all of them. For instance one that were … that was more like a dream image where I drop a snake onto the ground from the second floor and there is a horse nearby. There was one clear case where there was a merger of the visual, afterimage space and the dream space. There was a landscape in the dream, and that imprinted itself on afterimage space, which is … lies before it. But when there’s a merger the image takes [the] colors of the afterimage space […] that are already there. And yeah, I still do some sessions in the chair and I try to kind of go into a daydream. Different images. It feels like I’m creating them, but I’m also in some state of flow, so it kind of happens. But what next … what comes next just dawns on me and I just follow, images show up. Yeah.

So a little more about, maybe, the … I worked with filling the visual space with purple. There were initially a lot of gold colors around the edges of the visual field and they kind of interfered with the purple. And in the end I managed to remove them, and the whole visual field was then purple. And there was some kind of intrusion again of this amber-yellow, green-like color, but I managed also to switch back to the purple space.

And in the evening I worked on the whole body jhana, managed to get into it, as I mentioned, and was very peaceful for the time after that.

Took a break and started working the seed practice that I got from Steiner. And it was interesting, it was quite easy, I didn’t meditate long and I got the purple color, although that is a real purple color that I see hanging in space, like an afterimage. Also maybe around 25% of the normal visual intensity. And I made some drawings on that and so on. I also had some greenish things coming up like tiny flowers, they were purple on top, like tiny leaves, which isn’t part of the original description by Steiner. And yeah, I got the flame in different areas also. One time it was on the front, one time it was covering the whole seed. I’ll try that again tomorrow. Interesting was that it was very clear that I sensed activation in the third eye area while doing the mediation in preparation for that. And when I meditated on the sentence “that which is hidden will become visible” [there] was a very clear pull upwards from chest area.

And in the late evening I had a very strong stable bliss, positive thoughts, tried to bring some bad things that happened today into that space and it was very relieving on a deep level.

And the final sitting was in complete darkness. It was really a light show. Many different colors floating around like flames. [They] also become very intense, let’s say maybe 40% up to 50% and some very strong 8-90-100%-intensity fields that also came up. And [with a] similar intensity, like around 100%, I saw some geometrical shapes, round, yellowish, red, black, lot of lines, very, very thin lines. And some flower shapes that were more muddied. Yep. That’s it for today.

So this is a report on day 9, it’s day 10 now. I decided to not do a report yesterday, to let concentration be very strong as I was falling asleep. And yeah, day 9 was certainly very interesting. I had back pain again, difficulties getting concentration, and yeah, nothing much happened, it was kind of a dry day initially. Then I managed to get into the whole body jhana again, seem to be nailing that quite well at the time. It’s like I can build the momentum for a while then kind of check to see if it’s possible to drop into it. And then I use the sentence “may jhana arise” and I fall right into it. And it stays for quite a while. An what was really interesting yesterday was that I was able to maintain background concentration all throughout the evening meal. I’ve never experienced anything like that, and I could drop right into it when I went back to sit afterwards. Yeah.

And this high-pitched sound kept on increasing. And before I went to bed I decided to just sit down and see if could increase concentration even more, and something funny happened, I felt like I could intensify concentration around the head, and the high-pitched sound increased even further, and it was as if my body kind of fell asleep, slightly, and became like a cloud while the rest of the body was more sharp. Yeah, and I maintained that for a while. And there is this typical [thing] that happens, it’s that I kind of build momentum, and then it slowly fades, and then I’m not able to into it, and then I have either take a break or take some time to build it up again.

And when I laid down to fall asleep I could hear the high-pitched sound increasing, like short bursts, and that’s a clear sign that an out of body experience will take place, I just have to slip into that, let it happen, and I decided not to this time around, because I want to go that deep while I’m sitting, and the out of body landscape can be quite confusing and there is often not much stuff that I can do there. Yeah.

And I got a lot of gravel images while I was meditating. The image was pretty stable. I could also notice that it was flickering. Well, the content of the image, that it was gravel, but sort the image itself, the visual quality, the colors were flickering all the time, and I tried to into the gone space between the flicker, the blackness there, and I felt like that would take me into the dreamscape, landscape, and the stronger the concentration, the stronger I manage to sort of go into that area with … and maintain clear images and awareness. Yeah, that pretty much summarizes the day.

And I keep having very nice insights and sort of prayers coming up about what I want to do with my life when I get back. And very sort of comforting insights, deep insights into the connections between everything basically. Like the idea that when it is dark, one just needs to remember that this is an illusion created to take one to the light, and to make the light appear, because if you are the light, you can only shine and you cannot experience it, so you need to go outside of the light, and from there you will see it.

Day 10. Enough interesting things keep on happening so that I’m not bored. Concentration was just as strong today as yesterday in the morning. And I had strong bliss coming up during the first session, but also deep pain and aches in the body, and I worked on loosening up, allowing fire to build in the belly and letting flow up to the solar plexus.

I also had one blip, where I was suddenly gone for a moment, and as I wake up, I realize I’ve been in pure, white light for a split second.

And in the afternoon I noticed that I just need about 5 to 10 minutes of mediation and then I can sort of slip into jhana and it stays. It seems like the longer the buildup, the longer and lasting the jhana will be. And I’ve been trying to figure out how to work with this, sort of going into it, letting it play itself out, and then bringing more energy back into it as I fade out. And it feels like I can fire it up, but that needs effort, and after a long sit the energy drops, and it becomes necessary to take a break.

The high-pitched noise is there also more or less the whole time. And I sense that my mind is very noisy, and I think it’s got to do with the sound, but also that I see all the tiny gestures and fluctuations that are going on, which is quite paradoxical, considering how calm my mind is. So I think this is sort of where I’ve ended up in this retreat. It’s the edge of my practice. Concentration has never been this strong, but this is also where I need to work. It’s also very noticeable how loose consciousness feels in daily life in contrast to the jhanic state.

And I worked on a specific technique, which consists of bringing painful experiences or memories into the bliss, into the peaceful state, and watch as those experiences kind of melt. It’s like the visual or tactile sensation or whichever sensations are connected to the experience become associate with a good rather than a bad vedana or feeling tone. So if the original experience was difficult you bring it into this very nice state and slowly it … well, it marinades in this, but it’s a … you learn to associate that situation, those experiences with good emotions, or good sensations, or a good feeling tone rather than a bad one. And then I had wishes of well-being and watch as the painful sensations merge with the bliss, and there’s this slight dissolution of difference between pain and bliss. And I replace the good … the bad aspects of the memories with good intentions and positive resolutions and forgiveness and so on. And I did that in one situation there was a very clear psoas release on both sides, I could feel both of the muscles deep on the inside in my belly.

In the evening sit I had strong, strong … well, I guess you say a painful sensatio

Notes taken directly after the visionn in the third eye. It was like it was boring deeply on the inside of my forehead, and it lasted for 30-40 minutes, and still kept on going, but it faded after a while. And then an interesting series of images showed up. I initially was at like, in front of it. There was a forest in the background. And I could small Buddhas staring to appear out of the water. As if they were being pulled up or just floated up. There were two, and a third one was appearing. And I thought “hm, yeah, well, let’s see what happens if I go with this”. And then suddenly a giant Buddha head rises from the water, flies upwards. It’s big, radiating light, and it moves to the top of a mountain, where it rotates, where it just shines it light. And I get strong piti or showering tingling sensations. Mostly strongly on the right side of my body, but they kind of move all over. And then a new scene appears. I’m in a clearing in a forest. And I feel this amazing presence. And I kind of see a being there in the middle, tall, has this gold, brown, and green shine to it. It’s got a robe. I can’t really see the head. And there is a person bowing, or standing first, and then bowing before this figure. And I hear the sentence “you have arrived”. And the presence of this figure, it’s … I can hardly describe it in words, but it’s very clear. Well, I can feel it very clearly, and it’s got this extremely honorable mood, it’s deeply, deeply balanced, clear and pure, incredibly pure, but still contains some substance. Something very refined and strong. And it almost makes me cry. And then the scene switches and I see a young woman walking on a plain of grass. There’s a forest on the right side and some mountains in the background. And she has the same quality as the figure. And she walks towards the horizon, and it dawns upon me that she’s walking the path to purity, and she already has those qualities in her, but the path consists of making them grow. And an interesting thing about these images is that they represent a continual partial merger of the afterimage space and imagination. And the feeling of that magnificent presence lingered for quite a while.

In the final session I had a lot of black and white images. Well, first, there was a high resolution black and white image, abstract simple forms, but it was breath taking in its clarity and it’s presence … I mean, it stayed for a while, it was not this very short dip in and dip out, but it stayed and was yeah, magnificent, breath taking. It was the first time I had that so clearly while maintaining awareness. And then I had this long stream of really fast, half-formed black and white images just continuing on really fast, as if my consciousness was trying to make out what those, yeah, lights and shadows or figures, impressions, that were going on, were. It’s almost unsettling and quite tiring.

I also had a funny vision. I kind of dipped into a dream and pulled to tarot cards with Duncan, some question was asked, but I couldn’t remember it when I came out of it. But I had the sense that the one the right was ace of swords and the one on the left was the tower. Couldn’t sense any meaning to it.

That’s it for tonight. May all be well.

Day 11. Final day. So … I feel I spent much of the day kind of downloading information, essential aspects of the experience I’ve had. Got some ideas for new techniques and tips and tricks on how to relate to visions or things that come up in fire kasina practice. And many insights relating to suffering, impermanence, no-self. And I had a long philosophical excursion on duality and oneness, watching the plant seed I’ve been growing and using as part of my practice here. And I have this vision like thing that became the foundation for reflecting on the whole cosmic process, practice, being a human being, and so on. Too much to list.

One really interesting thing that happened towards the final sit of today was that I could start to feel something happening in the spot in the back, the middle of the back, that’s been bothering me throughout the whole retreat, suddenly opening and then energy started flowing, and flowing, and flowing, really intensely and nicely and pleasantly, and it kept on going like that for I think around a couple of minutes and warmed up the whole place. And I feel like that is an important thing that has happened. It will allow me to go deeper in my practice in the future. Specifically going into this space where there is a merger of image or visual space and dreamland. So that’s, yeah, pretty much an end to this retreat and an opening to the next one.

And I spent some time also just getting back to mundane life. Went for a long walk. I had many conversations, reflected on the whole the retreat with the groups, which was also a very good experience … seeing the richness of everything that’s been happening here and how it can be integrated, and yeah, I think that’s it. I’ll be doing one more sit now before I go to bed, and I can still feel   that concentration is strong. And yeah, I’m signing out, thanks for listening.

Aftermath. There have been a few days now since I got back since I got back from the retreat, I haven’t been mediating that much, but I’ve seen interesting effects, like images continuing to play out of consciousness in the visual field when I fall asleep in particular. Also during sitting I tend to get purple colors mixed in with green and amber-like fields, blobs floating around, playing around, and that is spontaneous.  

Also, what I’ve noticed — and I just finished a session now, so I thought that I’d make a recording of it directly while the experience is fresh — is that I can, or I could now at least, quickly drop into this jhanic state, that I’m having some issues with regards to how to analyze and understand it, so I thought I’d just describe it while it is fresh. So I can switch into this other state of consciousness, this other space, just by bringing that state to mind, remembering it. Although I have to kind of sense that I’m ready for it. There is an opening there, and then I go into it. And what happens is that consciousness becomes unified, much tighter, in a sense, in particular in comparison to the ordinary state of consciousness, where one goes here and there, and it just feels like everything is more loose in ordinary consciousness. While in this jhanic state, things are more unified, tighter, and it feels like I’m continually drifting back to that state, so there is a reversal of the typical thing that is going on in consciousness, also when meditating, where one is continually drawn to something going on in consciousness. One continually has thoughts, distractions and so coming up, and one has to pull oneself back. And it this state, this jhanic state, consciousness’s focus has got its own momentum. It’s like there is a gravity to it. So whenever there is distraction or a thought, there is an automatic pull back, which I don’t know from any other states. None that I can think of at the moment at least. And in general the mind slows down, there are thoughts, there are distractions and so on. But those feel much thinner or not so strong or, like they have less weight to them, less pull. And in this jhanic state there is also tranquility, bliss can come up, in particular in the background, and I had some piti, some showering sensations going across the surface of the body while sitting just now. [It] didn’t last more than maybe 20 seconds, but anyway. And there is some more, deeper, or an underlying tone of bliss and happiness. There ’s also something very beautiful to this state. And I can also feel the aftereffects of it now. Consciousness isn’t drifting as much as it usually does and I’m much more content. Let’s see if there is anything else. Yeah, there a simultaneous broadening and tightening of the visual field. I don’t really have an object, although I tend to be much more centered around the face and the head. And the funny thing is that there is an effortlessness to it when I’m in this state, it keeps on going by itself, as if I’ve thrown a wheel down the road and it just keeps on going. But I’ll slowly also drift out of it, and it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the state stops. But what’s also funny is that I can fire up the state again by raising the energy level of consciousness. And that is something I’m also working on. It can get a bit dull, but it’s also very easy to raise the intensity of consciousness, the wakefulness. And I’m doing that by kind of directing energy from the chest up into the visual field, the head, where the eyes are, where the nose is. And it’s like I’m fuelling this fire that is burning by itself, from time to time, in order to not let it burn out. I also have the sense that I can just keep on going and going and going, like sitting, and sitting, and sitting, for however long I want. But there is also an underlying, subtle discontentment, something that is not satisfactory, which also kind of grows after I’ve sat for a while and that is then the reason why I get up and break this state. Alright, I think that’s it.

 

Today is Christmas Eve. Some of us celebrate that a special child was born — a divine human being that was later to be humiliated, tortured and killed.  And Christ not only dies, he resurrects, signalling a deep change. Speaking to Christians, I have often asked: Why did Christ have to die in this way? The answer I typically get, is that he came to redeem us; to save our from our sins. But couldn’t an almighty and omnipotent God just make redemption happen? Why did His son need to be sacrificed? Why did he have to be sacrificed in such a brutal way? It seems utterly senseless to me. I’ve never really gotten a satisfying answer to such questions.  Throughout the years, I have slowly been able to formulate an answer to my own questions.

Many years ago I had a conversation with Arnfinn Haram, a Dominican monk. This was, I believe, the last conversation I had with him before he died. Arnfinn was both warm, open, smart, funny and deeply religious. We discussed the nature of Christ. My claim was that Christ couldn’t have been 100% human and 100% God at the same time, because being human means being less than 100% God. Arnfinn agreed with this argument — to my surprise — but still claimed, as a matter of dogma, that he believed that Christ was fully human and fully God, even though it was beyond his comprehension exactly how that could be the case. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d admit adherence to a dogma, but I was at also fascinated and confused, and only slightly disappointed that he accepted belief in a contradictory proposition. In my view, there is a way out of this contradiction: In order for God to become fully human, he must stop being God. He must turn away from himself. He must lose his powers. This is how I’ve view the saying on the cross, where Christ exclaims: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). God becomes human in this moment. He stops being God. Then he becomes god-like again through the resurrection. So through a process, God can be both 100% human and divine; but a concrete unfoldment of a development needs to be accounted for if we are not to end up with a contradiction.

So can we now say something more about why Christ had to go through all the utterly harsh things that happened to him? Or was his death just a morbid display of events? How is sin connected to redemption in the life of Christ?

Sin is a difficult concept. I conceive it, roughly, as failing to act in accordance with what you truly are. In the Christian view, man is inherently sinful. I imagine this to mean that without divine intervention, the human being will continue to act in a way that slowly makes it move away from itself; base acts will proliferate and slowly turn the human being into some kind of monster, an inverse image of what it could have become. Here is an analogy (presented by Rudolf Steiner in GA 123): Picture a wolf. A wolf has fangs, eats meat, is aggressive, kills to live, and so on. Image this wolf growing teeth that are larger, imagine the wolf growing stronger, more aggressive, more in need of meat and blood to live. At one point the wolf would become indistinguishable from a monster. Do the same thing with the image of a human being. Magnify all bad habits, thoughts, deeds and words. At one point the human being becomes something like Jabba the Hutt. A world without divine presence would result in a proliferation of monsters like this.

One classical Buddhist response to this, is to have the human being purify itself and leave the world behind. The Christian (and perhaps also Mahayanist) answer would be to tame the wolf. Have it play longer as a cub. Let it develop its good traits. It will become friendly, caring, and faithful like no-one else; it would become like a dog. A human being can also be “tamed”; Christ is an image of what the human being can become if it does not leave the world, but stays in it and purifies and transforms not only itself but also its immediate surroundings.

Ideas like this is what is what attracts me to anthroposophic christology. Humanity is slowly drifting apart from its spiritual origin and will continue to do so by virtue of the inertia of its lower nature. There is a possibility of reconnecting to the source, but this isn’t something God can do by simply choosing to. The best of humanity needs to come together, human wisdom, simplicity of heart, strength of character, the endeavour of self-purification, and then it needs to stretch upwards, so to speak, so that divinity can enter into the stream of earthly life. God does not know fully know what it is like to be a human. In order to be able to offer the possibility of redemption, He needs to be touched by evil. In order to fix something, you need to know how it works. What is pain? What is it like to be mocked? What is hopelessness? What is death? Try it on, if you want to fix it – if you want to show another way.

One of the most interesting thinkers I’ve discovered this years, is Jordan Peterson. He’s caused some turbulence with his ideas about gender and identity politics. I find he’s exaggerating somewhat. But his other thoughts about psychology, human development, religion, and so on, are utterly stimulating. In particular, I find his Jungian perspectives valuable – and I’m still baffled that a psychologist with Jungian affinities can find his way into the mainstream. In one of his lectures, Jordan talks about the fact that Harry Potter can talk to snakes. The ability to speak with snakes comes from the evil one himself, Lord Voldemort, and was transferred to Harry when he was attacked by Voldemort. The ability to talk to snakes becomes essential in Harry’s further quest. As Peterson points out, being touched by evil can become, in a paradoxical way, what enables us to conquer it. And so Christ enters into the human world, severs the connection to his divine roots, becomes fully human, comes to know the ways of the world, including death, and thus is able to offer the potential of transforming it. And now the choice is here. Tame the wolf or become Jabba the Hut.

Merry Christmas!

Here is a response by Norwegian philosopher Jonas Lillebø to my earlier post on why I don’t use technology for meditation:

I think this is an interesting reflection on an in general interesting blog, so I am very sympathetic to your views. I may partly agree on your conclusion (I have a rather spiritual non-reductionist interpretation of meditation myself), however I think there are a number of questions, clarifications and reflections that could be added. My response here stems partly from my ongoing meditative practice with krya yoga, my own experience with different kinds of entrainment induced by technology (brainwave entrainment, heart wave entrainment etc.), and my training as a philosopher. Adding also the fact that meditation seems be so manifold and full of paradoxes, I find it difficult to not give an ambiguous conclusion.

First of all, I have not tried the technologies you mention, like neural feedback. I have heard of it but I will not comment on it. However, what I find surprising is that you have not mentioned the (probably largest) industry of meditative technology: brainwave entrainment. In short this is the use of sound pulses that entrain your brain into states. A brainwave state is measured and distinguished by the level of electric activity in the brain (beta, alpha, theta, delta are most acknowledged, but gamma and epsilon are also claimed as distinct states/waves). This activity changes all the time depending on what activity we are doing, however it can also be manipulated through sound waves. Three brainwave techs are now state of the art: binaural beats, monochrone tones and isochrone tones. They have shown to have different kinds of short and lasting effects on the brain. Some new companies now claim to have developed tech even beyond brainwave entrainment and aim at entraining the electromagnetic field of the heart. And from here it becomes (interesting but) even more esoteric and difficult to follow.

So how is this relevant to the discussion? I have used and experimented with these technologies the last twelve years or so and I have tried all the most famous and popular programs. My conclusion from this is that they have had a tremendous impact not just on my perception of meditation but on my own meditative practice and experience. These technologies have had profound but subtle effect on my mood, ability to cope with stress, sleep, my patience has grown. In short it has enhanced my well being. But it has also been a way into the more spiritual domain like who I am, the reality of distinctions and duality, and a deep experience of for short moments to lose my identity and experience just being energy.

So how do I see this in relation to your questions? I am currently working with simple but potent kriya yoga meditative sessions, without any technological “support”, and have become more and more convinced that there is a distinction between the effects of meditation on the general well being (which is a good thing), and meditation for spiritual purposes and insights. But I think that this tech has made me experience the different levels of meditation, it has made me able to meditate without tech in a way that I think I would have taken years to accomplish without. As I see it, this tech is a crutch that some need in order to stand but that eventually can be thrown away when the feet remember their own strength. Do I depend on it? I will be dishonest and say no. But I use it more seldom, and I can now sometimes go “deeper” without it than with.

1. When you mention Ken Wilber among some of the contemplatives that you look up to you should look at a video where he talks about brainwave technology. He has certainly used it:

By this I do not mean that is a good argument to begin with technology! As I said, I think I agree more with you now than I would a few years ago. But on the other hand, I do not think I would have been on my level of comprehension without it. To put it paradoxically: the technology has taken me on a path that has shown me something beyond the technology.

2. If we for a minute accept that meditation is not just about well being (of mind and body), but about spirituality, then it could perhaps be admitted that consciousness is linked to the brain without reducing meditation to brain? As one of the internet gurus, Sadhguru, says; can a finger be spiritual? No it cannot, but it can be used in a process to induce a spiritual process. Likewise with the mind: it powerful, it is limited to the physical, but can be used in a process to gain access to something beyond the physical. I am turning into mysticism here, sorry, but these are just reflections. My point is, even though it is not the end why cannot technology put you on a path?

3. My experience with this technology has not made me rely on it, rather the opposite. It has made me more independent and increased my comprehension of meditation, made the mind more liberated. My patience with not being able to concentrate in meditation has increased. I would in fact say that it has made me see how ridiculous the desire itself for enlightenment is (not enlightenment, but the desire for enlightenment) because this is also “maya”, an illusion. On the other hand, I think you are right that there are some potential pitfalls here. And I do not think for instance that without my own persistence could have made such a “progress”, and this persistence stems perhaps from my own discipline rather than from the tech?

So, to conclude. I do not know if we go down different routes or will ever attain enlightenment, but I would love to compare notes.It is said that Shiva revealed that there are 112 ways to get enlightened. How many ways have we discovered so far?