Delson Armstrong on cessation vs jhanas vs anaesthesia

If I've understood, you're very adept at going into cessation. I had an interview on this channel with Ruben Laucanin, who defined it as the complete... because some people who I think are very deep into non-duality from the Advaitan perspective, who maybe arrive at those states where the mind gets very, very quiet, and there is just pure, spacious, zero phenomena, but there's awareness of awareness, which maybe is only present in those moments where some reflectivity comes back and goes, oh, I was just kind of aware of nothing for a while. But he defined it as something beyond that, just as you said, where there's no awareness even of awareness. So I have two questions. I'd love to understand.

most people feel like they have a experience a little bit at least a little bit similar when just by going to sleep at night I go to sleep and I wake up a few hours later and I've got no memory of anything that passed before then i wasn't i wouldn't say oh yeah i was aware of awareness i'm like i've got no idea what time it is until i look at the clock um so there's that and then much even deeper than that for some people is a general anesthetic i wonder if you've had an anesthetic and you could speak to the difference between what i experience i've not had the session but i've had a general anesthetic and it feels like okay you click your finger kind of blink and it's five hours later or whatever

And I only know that because I'm in a different place, right? So I'm curious, how's this? Have you had a... no, I haven't. And actually that might be something to ask you about, is what was that experience when he came out of that anaesthetic? I've had it twice as an adult. The second time my friend was there and I just asked her, "Okay, so when are we doing this operation?" I was a bit drowsy but not awake enough to realise I was drowsy. I was just aware that I'd blinked. My mind wasn't awake enough to kind of go, oh wait, I'm in a completely different room and my friend has suddenly appeared. I just felt like, okay, I blinked, and my main question was, okay, when does this start? So I was really aware of no passage of time. The second time I had an operation.

I was like, okay, it's not going to catch me this time. I was kind of getting ready, like, when I open my eyes, if it's a different room, the operation is happening. And sure enough I was able to immediately go, okay, it's happened, I'm still alive. So presumably nothing terrible happened. But there was no awareness of a passage of time. Some people say we should probably get an anaesthetist here, because they inject a couple of different drugs, and one of them is to stop any memories forming. Interesting. So some people say you do retain consciousness.

But they inhibit any memory formation. Interesting. So who knows what's really going on. It would be fascinating to get someone with your meditation experience to be able to report that. But yeah, how is cessation different from having a really deep sleep? Yeah, this is a good question. I think one thing to understand is, at the very surface level, it's almost the same, where it feels like, okay, no time has passed at all. There's an intention to stay in that cessation for, let's say, an hour or two hours or three hours or whatever, and your mind, you see your mind kind of dipping into this space, and then boom, you're out. And then when you come out it's like no time has passed. So you're not aware of any passage of time. You're not aware that, you know, two hours have passed. You're just aware that I was gone for a moment and now I'm back. So at least it felt like a moment, let's say. But I think the thing about the cessation experience also

is that there's a certain level of lucidity and hypervividness that happens when you come out. It's like the mind becomes ultra sharp and you're looking at everything in, like, super 16K. So colours are very bright, sounds are crystal clear. Basically your senses have become resharpened to such an extent that you're just taking in everything in a very, very almost unfiltered way. And this, just before, I know, after the cessation, right? After the cessation, yeah. After this is the opposite, yeah. This is why I was asking you how did you feel when he came out. Because that could be one major difference: there is an alertness of mind, and there's an actual light that I can see when I come out. It's just for a moment, or a few moments, that it comes, and then there's just a burst of energy, a burst of joy, a burst of relief that comes up every single time when I do this. And so the

There was also an interesting fact, a little side note here. A couple of years ago I was giving the symposium on dependent origination. And Stephen Zerfis, who is one of the co-founders of Journey, I don't know if you've heard of them, J-H-O-U-R-N-E-Y, Journey, they're primarily all about getting people to jhana or jhanic states. But before all of that started, he had come to my symposium with his team, because his idea was to create or reverse engineer how we could get into jhana. And so he wanted to study the students there, their brainwaves, get their neurofeedback, the EEG, infrared, heat sensing, all of those interesting gadgets, to figure that out. And then see if they can replicate that using some kind of a machine or system.

But I think maybe it was too ambitious for him. He can speak for himself, but I guess that it didn't really work out. And so then they went into the idea of letting just people go to jhanas through the usual route. But what was interesting is, in that time, I said to Stephen and a couple of other people who were there in the room with the EEG, they wanted to see what cessation was like. So they saw that, and I said, hey, do you want to look at what nibbana is like?

And they said, oh, that would be interesting. So I had the intention of going into nibbana, and then whatever the EEG picked up was whatever the EEG picked up. And on the last day, what's nibbana? Sorry, what is nibbana, as opposed... Yeah, there, that's a good question. So cessation is really a cessation of subjective awareness, right? Subjective consciousness. So the complete levels of perception and sensation and feeling, all of that is paused, all of that is ceased in that space. Nibbana is that touching of the nibbana dhatu, which is that paraconsciousness that I'm referring to. So the fact that your mind inclines there and touches upon it, so there is an awareness there that arises based on it, and then goes back into it. The analogy that's given in the suttas, Sariputta, one of the chief students of the Buddha, says it's like when you throw wood into the fire, the sticks into the fire, there's certain embers that come up. And so those embers are like just bits of awareness that come up reflecting

the state of nibbana. So it's like a coming in and out, coming in and out. You're touching nibbana, coming out, feeling the bliss of nibbana, going back into nibbana, and so on. So that's really what was going on. So they had to look at the EEG, and on the last day they showed us my data, just for the fun of it. One of the people there was a newer... I think she was a neuroscientist, something to do with neuroscience. She was part of the team, and she said it's very interesting, because when you look at the patterns that were showing in cessation, and then you were looking at the patterns of nibbana, it looks like this person is in a coma.

Like this person is comatose. I think it was in both cases, but I, I mean, I believe he may have been referring to nibbana itself, because I think they were more interested in showing what nibbana looks like. And it was like the EEG, the way it was showing everything, was like smooth, like butter, like there was no... what could we say... there was no variation. So she was like, this looks like somebody who's comatose. That was her first sort of assessment on it. So the reason I bring that up is because I think, then, in that case, our machinery, whether it's maybe even fMRI, because I've been under studies for fMRI as well with Matthew Shachat at, I think, sorry, Massachusetts General Hospital, and there too they were talking about something happening with the brain stem and all of these things. But my point is

We can only know so much through machines. We can only know so much through EEG and fMRI, and we can only kind of interpret the data based on what we know and based on what we can speculate and hypothesise. But I think subjectively speaking, those experiences will always be different, even though it might look like a comatose patient, even though it might look like somebody is under the influence of anaesthesia. Subjectively, I think it will be different. And that's really dependent upon the alertness of the mind, the brightness of the mind, the vividness of the senses, these kinds of things post that space. - And is there an advantage to it, do you need to do cessation to go to Nirvana, or vice versa?

Or they can be two separate tracks. So one is just the dissolution of subjective consciousness, which is cessation. And the other is letting the mind incline towards nibbana and then coming out, experiencing the bliss of that, and then going back in. But that happens not because you will it. It just happens that you go into nibbana, you experience the bliss, and your mind drops back in. So it's like a continuous process of dipping in and out.

You don't consider nirvana to be this para-consciousness? You think that's more there in the cessation experience, where something must have been keeping the body alive? Did I understand you correctly? Yeah, this is a good question. It's basically, I believe that the consciousness of bliss that arises in the second case of, let's say, nirvana, is that nirvana itself is not bliss, but nirvana is the para-consciousness.

So in both cases, we may be touching, let's say, the Nibbana element, in the sense that in cessation there's a complete lack of subjective consciousness, but there may be the mind folding back into para-consciousness or into Nibbana dhatu. Whereas with the inclination of going directly into Nibbana, there's a reaction to that, which is the Vinyana Mani Dasana. In other words, there's a reaction to it, with the awareness of having gone into Nibbana that comes up. So that awareness is not equal to Nibbana; that awareness is as a result of touching Nibbana. Which is why I think when we come out of cessation we're still feeling that bliss, but it might just be after cessation. Whereas this is like cessation or going into Nibbana, coming out feeling the bliss, going back into nirvana. So it's like short trips back in and out, let's say.

Is that the one where the mind is completely quiet and all thoughts have subsided, or is that a third? Oh yeah. So when we talk about where all thoughts have subsided, then we have the awareness of awareness. And so we can say that the first category is cessation, right? So that means complete cessation of subjective consciousness. The second category is Nibbana, where consciousness arises, coming in and out. And so the third category is more to do with an awareness of awareness itself, and it can be seen as a non-dual experience. But if there's somebody there to experience it, then you come out of it right there. But there's an awareness there, which is what I call objectless awareness or objectless meditation, where it's just pure awareness of nothing in particular, but there's just the knowledge of that awareness. So it's its own category, let's say a third category. My friend who went on, oh, I might have to edit this out, but

My friend who went on retreat with you said that they experienced cessation on retreat with you, and what they had understood from others is that it's relatively common for people to experience cessation on retreat with you, compared to, you know, if you speak to people going to other retreat centers. Maybe it's happening, they're not talking about it. But potentially either your way of teaching, or maybe there's some kind of transmission, which, if that sounds too woo-woo for people, could be as simple as, uh, there's mirror neurons and we're picking up your state of consciousness a little bit, just by my facial muscles kind of mirroring yours a little bit. You know, who knows what's happening? Do you think that's true? Is that your intention? Do you think it's really important for people to experience cessation if they want to get the deeper fruits of this? I mean, what's possible? Yeah, I believe it should be that people should experience cessation at least once in their lives.

And I also do believe, this is my personal opinion on this, because there are a lot of opinions about, well, that wasn't really cessation, that was actually something else, and things like that. But I do believe that people may experience cessation without even knowing that they experience cessation. That it could happen for a split second, and it's very nuanced. But if I know to ask the right questions to pinpoint what they were actually experiencing, then there is very little doubt that it was a cessation experience. And so that's where I come in as the teacher, let's say, or as the guide, doing the personal interviews with the person and being like, okay, but let's go deeper into it. It's almost like micro from an analogy. It's just going, okay, just in that moment, tell me, go back and tell me what exactly happened. And I realize that it's not necessarily an unflawed thing, because the person's memory at that point isn't necessarily the best.

They might be just thinking back and being like, this, that. And so I never really say, okay, congratulations, you've experienced cessation and now you're this and that. I'll just say, okay, here's your badge, here's your certificate. But more of, like, it's a possibility that you've experienced this. And I think then I'll tell the student, maybe you should reflect on how you're observing the mind and how you're understanding the mechanics of dependent origination.

Because cessation is one thing, you know, and jhana is another thing. Jhanas have sort of become glorified as these wonderful states of awareness where we can experience great amounts of bliss and awareness and joy and equanimity and calmness and so on. But if no wisdom comes out of it, then it's just a state. So that's where I think the pinpointing of what kind of wisdom is arising, what kind of insights, what kind of intuitive knowledge is arising, that can verify for yourself that indeed you had a very deep experience. So especially amongst teachers or practitioners, when I'm interviewing them, I'll say, oh, so you've had a deep experience. I won't even say cessation, because it's become such a glorified word, like jhana. And I'll just say, okay, you probably have had a deep experience, and if that's the case, then reflect back on how do you see these points. And some of the points are like, how do you experientially understand dependent origination?

How do you see the emptiness of self, if you do see that? And how do you relate to the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha? And so the reason I'll do that is because that will then help them see if they're on the path towards, you know, the traditional understanding of stream entry. Because the traditional understanding is one has let go of self-view intellectually. So they've seen experientially that there's the emptiness of self. And they realize that there is a confidence in the teachings of the Buddha, the teachings and the Sangha, in terms of the community.

And the third is that there's no longer the desire, you know, to be supported by or depend upon rites and rituals as the path to awakening, because they've seen this path of meditation and practice has taken them to a certain deep experience, and that it is, let's say, repeatable, so that you can actually go to it over and over. It takes time, it takes effort, it takes consistency, but definitely it is repeatable. And so I can't speak for other, let's say, communities or schools, what they might be doing or might not be doing. But I think TWIM has this history of being very open with what they would consider their success rate, you know, of people experiencing these stages of awakening, the jhanas and so on.

And a lot of people will criticize that and say, well, you shouldn't really be talking about it because it can create a certain sense of confusion in the person's mind. It may create doubt. It may do all these kinds of things. And to that, I say, fair point. I do understand that, and that's why I take a more balanced approach. I know in the past there's been a lot of emphasis on getting to awakening as soon as possible, and it's a wonderful intention, but I definitely want to bring that responsibility, or that understanding, that experience fully into the students' hands. This is why I'm just here pointing to them and saying, look at this and look at that. And then your own experience, your own wisdom will clarify for you whether you've actually had it or whether you're just hypnotizing yourself.