roy:
claudiu:
As I sit here now reveling in the purity, I can report my experience and maybe it is helpful. […] It is immaculate in its existence. It thoroughly permeates everything. As I allow it in more, my body responds with joy and lightness. There is a carefreeness and lightness of spirit it readily engenders. It is like a pure stream of richly flowing silk-like quality that permeates my experiencing. At times it seems like golden is a more apt descriptor, other times like a cool breeze, other times like something richly flowing. In some moments it’s like a deep richness, as if something in the very air turns in on itself and out pours this deep and enduring thoroughness and saturation. […] It exists, clearly, on its own, and is available for me to avail myself of to whatever degree I want. It does not force me in and it does not reject me out. It is pure in its self-completeness. […] It readily reveals the universe is far from indifferent. There is a benevolence, a being well-suited for life and the flourishing of it. […]
There’s a lot here and I missed it because we apparently replied at the same time. I thank you for describing your experience in such detail. I have a follow-up question but to be honest I’m afraid it may be misinterpreted. But here it goes anyway… You have practiced/studied a buddhist tradition in the past, have you not? I haven’t so I don’t have experiences to compare to, but there’s a lot of literature about the subject. Have you experienced bliss / blissfulness in the past? If so, are they different from this and in which ways? I thank you in advance and of course I understand if you don’t feel like answering. It may be a stupid question. Again, I’m simply trying to understand what is actual, what is not actual, and the differences, comparing my experience to the ones other actualists have. I’m not trying to pass a judgment or saying that any of the experiences you have/had are fake.
It’s an excellent question, actually!
I have definitely experienced the bliss and trance-derived and trance-induced pleasure of Buddhist meditations. I spent a lot of hours meditating and developing that ability while I was on the spiritual path.
It is vastly different, a totally different phenomenon, an entirely different ballgame.
Superficially it can seem to be similar at first, so I understand your question. With the jhanic (i.e. trance-state meditative) bliss, it is felt in the body (at first) like there is a bliss and pleasure coming forth from every part of the body. With practice in meditative concentration (ie blocking out thoughts, single-pointedly focusing on just one thing), you can develop this bliss to encompass more of your body, to fully drench in it. Then it is like every part of your body is emanating forth this blissful pleasure.
The key, or trick, to developing the ability to do that (and take it further) is in seeing that the jhanic bliss derives from a viewing of the normal sensate phenomenon that you experience as dissatisfactory or displeasurable in some way. In that way you train your psyche to reject and distance yourself from them. This withdrawal from the senses is what produces the jhanic bliss[1] . And the more thoroughly you do it, the more you besorb yourself in the bliss.
The deeper trance states from there follow the same pattern and it works remarkably well. If you do it enough you start to see (either naturally, or from instruction) that this bliss you are experiencing has a ‘coarse’ quality to it. There is a more ‘refined’ bliss that is ‘underneath’ the coarse one. By then finding the coarse bliss dissatisfying, it sort of evaporates off, leaving just the refined bliss instead, which is more equanimous/peaceful yet you perceive it as better[2] .
If you go deeper still then you ‘see’ even this remaining pleasure as less desirable than not having any pleasure at all, and you enter a deeper trance that is marked by equanimity and calm [3] . At this point you are still percipient of your body, and if you are able to stick through it, this is the next thing to be seen as dissatisfying and to slough off, which brings you to an out-of-body experience (ie no perception of your body at all)… and deeper and deeper it goes.
I say all this from experience – that is how it worked for me, I actually experienced all these things – with corroboration from the Buddhist texts that I studied as a guide.
So with that background in mind, what is the difference between that and pure intent?
The experience of the two is simply totally different. The bliss felt in my body was affective in nature. It had a hedonic tone – a positive one but a hedonic tone nevertheless. It was something that I felt
By contrast, the purity experienced as pure intent, is not affective in nature. It is anhedonic pleasure. It has no ‘cap’ to it the way hedonic pleasure does, it can increase forever without it being “too much”. I do not experience pure intent via my senses or my feelings, neither sensately nor intuitively. It’s a different sense, an existential sense. It quite simply is not an emotion, mood, or feeling, it’s not affective in nature at all. It is not something ‘I’ generate, ‘I’ cannot direct it anywhere. Rather it is something I can attune to, and increasingly allow myself to experience more of it – but I am not directing where it goes or how it is experienced.
In other words the bliss is something I generate/generated inside of me, while the pure intent is something already-existing that I allow myself to experience more of.
It is also notable that the bliss is something derived from withdrawal and seclusion. It is in a sense incompatible with worldly sensate existence – hence needing to tuck oneself away and meditate quietly to go deeper into it. Following the bliss leads you to another world – at the very least, away from this world. By contrast, as pure intent originates in the actually-existing universe itself, following pure intent leads you more towards
In short, they are very different, and the way of knowing the differences is experientially, so I can easily compare the two and give an answer such as this one.