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The MIT Press eBooks February 6, 2024
First, many meditators report a phenomenal character of spatiality as such, a vast openness lacking any more concrete frame of reference.Often, we find this coemerging with some of the specific experiential qualities we have already investigated, like existential ease, simplicity, brightness, unity, a velvety character, high precision, clarity, wakefulness, and connectedness.Here are ten...
The MIT Press eBooks February 6, 2024
The world reflecting in a mirror without a perceiving observer.[#1735] An impression of " there are impersonal eyes in the room."[#3451] "Witness consciousness" is a global phenomenology.This is to say that the totality of all experiential contents appears as if being observed by something that isn't really an "observer" at all-by a timeless, impersonal, knowing presence.Witness consciousness...
The MIT Press eBooks February 6, 2024
Our reports show that the phenomenology of "pure being" can either be the sole defining characteristic of a full-absorption episode or coexist with other forms of experiential content.Next, you will find nine examples of the phenomenal quality that I am trying to isolate here.Note that some of the descriptors explored in earlier chapters-like "body dissolution," "peace," "silence,"...
The MIT Press eBooks February 6, 2024
When openness touches openness.[#1444] For many centuries, meditators have been describing states of direct perception, the experience of seeing what is.Meditation involves a distinct phenomenology of perceiving, timelessly, without any conceptual overlay or any form of judgment, interpretation, or choice.Seeing what is out of a state of pure awareness often reveals another par tic u lar and...
The MIT Press eBooks February 6, 2024
It was as if my body / my being was pixelated and dissolved into the rest of the pixels that make up the entirety of every thing else.[#3086] There are countless ways in which the experience of pure awareness can shift from background to foreground.The phenomenology of translucency is one way: "It's like real ity shining through when all ideas, concepts . . .step aside for a moment" (#2528; see...
The MIT Press eBooks February 6, 2024
A constant still presence that cannot be touched by words, does not live in the realm of objects.[#789] I was very pre sent, but not there.[. ..]Pure existence.[#2943]The quality of "presence" is a central feature of what it feels like to abide in pure awareness.But we must be careful, because "presence" may actually mean slightly dif fer ent things to dif fer ent people.One reading of...
The MIT Press eBooks February 6, 2024
A bodilessness in the consciousness of a body [#302] My body dissolves into a micro-foam of impermanence, zooming into the fractal edge of pre sent which endlessly unfurls fern-fronds of scintillating *now*-fuzz.[#1832]The experience seems to be similar to a thread which forms a seam and holds on one side the body and on the other side infinity together, so both are there and yet they are not...
The MIT Press eBooks February 6, 2024
Like a contented stone [#808] Every thing comes, every thing goes.I or rather It rests.There is nothing I have to do.It is easy.[#2511] Imagine that you discovered that what really creates satisfaction in life has nothing to do with achieving goals, or even with acting in any specific way.Imagine that you discovered this not in some intellectual or philosophical way, but as an unexpected and...
The MIT Press eBooks February 6, 2024
Infinite simultaneity" and yet wide awake.[#2312] One classic definition of pure awareness is "restful alertness."There is a quality of relaxation and calm (see chapter 1), but also an ele ment of nonagentive vigilance, of attentiveness without doing.We now turn to this ele ment, the experience of being fully alert.Interestingly, modern science tells us that there is more than one kind of...
The MIT Press eBooks February 6, 2024
Without an observer.Nobody on the cushion meditating.Every thing on the cushion meditating.[#635] I perceived subject and object as the same substance, facing each other like the two inner surfaces of a folded sheet of paper.As if subject and object were created by folding the fundamental substance and the observer were placed arbitrarily on one of the two sides.[#2916] There was a...