The significance of knowing your mind spaces.
“Meditation Mind Spaces” explores the transition between wakefulness and sleep, emphasizing the significance of experiencing and understanding the nine Jhanas in meditation. The text highlights the importance of these mind states, originally described by Buddha, in gaining insights into the brain’s functioning beyond ordinary consciousness. By examining these meditative states, one can achieve profound relaxation, mental clarity, and emotional regulation, much like Yoga Nidra. The journey through the Jhanas, from initial concentration to the ultimate state of peaceful rest, reveals the rise and fall of emotions and thoughts, leading to enlightenment and a deeper understanding of the self. Buddha’s teachings on these states demonstrate the highest benefits of the ascetic life, including psychic powers, clairaudience, and the end of defilements, thus transforming one’s perception and experience of reality.
There is awake, sleep and all your 9 Jhanas during meditation.
This is just a summary to try and see the overall pattern of your mind spaces an the significance of experiencing some of them, knowing how they operate/think differently and then the reason why this is important.
What is the use of meditation we do not know why we are doing it.
Most of the Jhanas and its importance is from information by the Buddha himself, translation from Pali text I think, and with this we can see what Buddha was all about and what he is trying to tell us about our brain-mind.
We know awake and sleep (and dreaming) because we experience this everyday. It is when we cross into the edge of darkness — what happens there and how does the brain work when we are not conscious.
We are crossing the line at the edge and we want to know what is happening there — why? Well we have to see what Buddha saw and then realisation and awakening and enlightenment. Why crossing the edge of darkness was important to the Buddha. This story of the Jhanas by Buddha is a story of the King and the mendicant.
Meditation — this is the journey we will be taking to experience the different Jhanas, mind spaces:
So we have awake and then sleep — so that in-between mind space just as we get to sleep mode below 4Hz brain operating frequency,
Yoga Nidra, often referred to as “yogic sleep,” is a state of conscious relaxation that combines guided meditation with deep physical and mental rest. It typically involves lying down comfortably while following a guided meditation that leads the practitioner through various stages of relaxation, body awareness, breath work, and visualization. This practice aims to induce a state between wakefulness and sleep, allowing for deep restoration, stress reduction, and a sense of inner peace. Unlike regular sleep, Yoga Nidra encourages mindful awareness, helping to calm the nervous system, improve emotional regulation, and enhance overall well-being.
So Yoga Nidra is to get into sleep mode without disappearing in darkness in mind — Unlike regular sleep, Yoga Nidra encourages mindful awareness, helping to calm the nervous system, improve emotional regulation, and enhance overall well-being. Thomas Edison and Einstein used to use this mind space while still conscious to solve problems they had in anything they were working at that particular time. The insights they had from a calm silent mind help them solve the problems.
So here you are already starting that journey of the Jhanas. So we take a deeper dive into the brain-mind:
First Jhāna:
Description: In this stage, the meditator experiences a deep state of concentration with initial and sustained thought, along with intense joy and happiness.
Second Jhāna:
Description: Applied and sustained thought are abandoned, leading to a deeper state of concentration characterized by rapture and happiness without discursive thinking.
Third Jhāna:
Description: The meditator experiences a more refined state of concentration with a calm, pleasant feeling, free from rapture but still maintaining happiness and mental unity.
Fourth Jhāna:
Description: The meditator reaches a state of equanimity and perfect mental clarity, with no pleasure or pain, only a deep, stable concentration.
The Five
Description: The meditator transcends the perception of form and enters a state of infinite space, experiencing boundless spatial awareness.
Sixth Jhana
Description: Moving beyond the perception of infinite space, the meditator realizes an infinite field of consciousness, experiencing boundless awareness itself.
Seventh Jhana:
Description: The meditator transcends the perception of infinite consciousness and enters the realm of nothingness, where there is a profound sense of absence or void.
Eight Jhana:
Description: This is an extremely subtle state where the meditator’s awareness is so refined that it is difficult to determine if there is perception or not.
The Ninth Jhāna
Description: This is the ultimate state of meditative absorption where all mental activities, perceptions, and feelings cease entirely. It is a state of deep, peaceful, and profound rest.
So you ask the question, if one has experienced all these mind spaces, what is it going to get us, do for us? How are we going to change with this experience. I mean it is the ending of time in the brain and mind:
The Ninth Jhāna
This is the ultimate state of meditative absorption where all mental activities, perceptions, and feelings cease entirely. It is a state of deep, peaceful, and profound rest.
The rest of this is more difficult to explain — the significance of knowing about and experiencing the Jhanas. What is in it for us. If you see it then it almost completes the story of the mystical journey of discover via the mind and perception and then you can get on with getting deeper and deeper into the Jhanas.
Buddhas answer was this:
In the same way, when their mind has become immersed in samādhi like this — purified, bright, flawless, rid of corruptions, pliable, workable, steady, and imperturbable — they project it and extend it toward knowledge of the ending of defilements. This too, great king, is a fruit of the ascetic life that’s apparent in the present life which is better and finer than the former ones. And, great king, there is no other fruit of the ascetic life apparent in the present life which is better and finer than this.” The Buddha roars his lion’s roar. His teaching leads not just to some benefits, but to the highest benefits that are possible.
Experiencing of this mind spaces TRANSFORMS a person — the mind spaces shows one how the brain-mind rises and falls with emotions and feelings and how the deeper mind spaces just does not allow this rising and falling in the brain and mind with emotions and feelings. When you experience how the brain flatlines vis deep meditation and experience of the Jhanas you juxtapose and see what the awake and the deeper silent mind spaces are all about.
The King asked Buddha — what has the ascetic life done for you and your mendicants and he told him:
DN 2: Sāmaññaphalasutta — Bhikkhu Sujato (suttacentral.net)
Psychic Powers
“They wield the many kinds of psychic power: multiplying themselves and becoming one again; appearing and disappearing; going unimpeded through a wall, a rampart, or a mountain as if through space; diving in and out of the earth as if it were water; walking on water as if it were earth; flying cross-legged through the sky like a bird; touching and stroking with the hand the sun and moon, so mighty and powerful; controlling the body as far as the Brahmā realm.”
Clairaudience
“Clairaudience” is a literal rendition of dibbasota. The root sense of dibba is to “shine” like the bright sky or a divine being. The senses of clarity and divinity are both present.With clairaudience that is purified and superhuman, they hear both kinds of sounds, human and divine, whether near or far.
Comprehending the Minds of Others
They understand the minds of other beings and individuals, having comprehended them with their own mind. They understand mind with greed as ‘mind with greed’, and mind without greed as ‘mind without greed’. They understand mind with hate … mind without hate … mind with delusion … mind without delusion … constricted mind … scattered mind … expansive mind … unexpansive mind … mind that is not supreme … mind that is supreme … immersed mind … unimmersed mind … freed mind … They understand unfreed mind as ‘unfreed mind’.
Recollection of Past Lives
They recollect many kinds of past lives, that is, one, two, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand rebirths; many eons of the world contracting, many eons of the world expanding, many eons of the world contracting and expanding. They remember: ‘There, I was named this, my clan was that, I looked like this, and that was my food. This was how I felt pleasure and pain, and that was how my life ended. When I passed away from that place I was reborn somewhere else. There, too, I was named this, my clan was that, I looked like this, and that was my food. This was how I felt pleasure and pain, and that was how my life ended. When I passed away from that place I was reborn here.’ And so they recollect their many kinds of past lives, with features and details. Empowered by the fourth jhāna, memory breaks through the veil of birth and death, revealing the vast expanse of time and dispelling the illusion that there is any place of eternal rest or sanctuary in the cycle of transmigration. The knowledge of these events is not hazy or murky, but clear and precise, illuminated by the brilliance of purified consciousness.
Clairvoyance
And so, with clairvoyance that is purified and superhuman, they see sentient beings passing away and being reborn
Ending of Defilements
They truly understand: ‘This is suffering’ … ‘This is the origin of suffering’ … ‘This is the cessation of suffering’ … ‘This is the practice that leads to the cessation of suffering. When they’re freed, they know they’re freed. This is a reflective awareness of the fact of awakening. The meditator reviews their mind and sees that it is free from all forces that lead to suffering.They understand: ‘Rebirth is ended, the spiritual journey has been completed, what had to be done has been done, there is no return to any state of existence.
When you experience the nothingness that is you, you come to realise why things arises and falls in you — realisation, awakening and enlightenment.
There are 2 of you in you and there is transformation via experiencing one’s mind spaces — Jhanas.
