What Exactly is the Deep End of Meditation? | Delson Armstrong

Why would that cease suffering? Delson Armstrong is a highly advanced meditator who mastered potentially the most difficult meditation technique, an elusive state called nirodha samapatti, which is essentially shutting off consciousness at will for a specific period of time. While we can't directly confirm Delson's subjective experience, neuroscientist Ruben Laukkonen and his team investigated Delson's brain while he was performing this technique and found that it was different from, and induced, a peculiar state that is something like the effect of ketamine on the brain. Delson's extensive meditation background has given him several insights into the nature of how the mind constructs consciousness. This is explored extensively in his book, A Mind Without Craving. Among many other things, Delson and I talk about what happens in the deep end of meditation, and what kind of leveling up of the mind we can expect from deep, extended meditative practice.

We also talk about what so-called enlightenment or awakening is, and how many traditions of Buddhism detailed a very specific map or sequence of events that should happen on the path to awakening. You can let the cat out of the bag and explain that you have in fact experienced these different levels of awakening. The interview was recorded right after I did a 10-day meditation retreat in India taught by Delson. And that was the first time that I understood the phrase arising and passing away. Yeah. Like the thoughts just arise and then they pass away. Yes. Why don't we just go ahead and get started with your meditation career before you found TWIM? So my meditation career, as you could have started at the age of 13.

That was my first introduction into Hatha Yoga. In 2003, I remember a family friend had invited me to a Hatha Yoga session, and we had done some really advanced postures, and I remember coming out of that practice feeling really high and wondering, how do I re-experience this? What are the ways I've been doing it? That really got me interested in knowing what the school process of yoga is. So you gave me a book which was about the different asanas and breathing practices, you know, different kinds of diet to try out, those kinds of things. So I did that, and I got into a kind of consistent yoga practice with some meditation in it.

But it wasn't until I was about 16 that I was invited to go to the Himalayas by a teacher who was at the school. So I went there. I went to Haridwar, Rishikesh. I spent a lot of time in Uttarkashi. And I was learning different kinds of styles of meditation in yoga, as well as Sankhya and Vedanta.

And so it was more of a rigorous sort of training in philosophy as well as meditation. And then I took separate trips back and forth between Mumbai and Uttarkashi. And I stayed there in a cave for some time and did my own practice. And when I came back to the U.S. in 2009, I didn't do much except for Kriya Yoga. I was introduced to Kriya Yoga under different kinds of lineages. So I had the lineage of Paramahansa, Hariharananda, I had the lineage of Lahiri Mahasaya, and Sri Yukteswar.

And so I did that, and then I got introduced to Ramana Maharshi's self-inquiry process. And then J. Krishnamurti and J. Krishnamurti, while I was in India, and then came to the US. Then, while I was in the US, I continued with my Kriya practice for quite some time. I would practice six, seven, eight hours a day sometimes, doing lots and lots of Kriya.

And after that, around 2011, I got introduced to Tibetan practices. So, Mahamudra, Dzogchen practices. Then from there, in 2000, 15 or 16, I was looking out for metta meditation. And the reason why I was looking for that was because in the Yoga Sutras, it actually talks about using the four brahmaviharas to make your consciousness mutable. In other words, making your consciousness, or rather making it immutable.

And so that's where I was looking into how do I use these as an object of meditation. And I got introduced to Manthirama Ramsey on YouTube. Okay. And from there, we've been kind of starting with the same practice. So to rewind a bit, I think most of you are probably not too familiar with all the different lineages of meditation or different styles of yoga, or even the fact that yoga has meditation within it and it's not just stretching. Right, right. So let's start with yoga, for example. I think the West was introduced to it in the very beginning, when yoga came in, as being a series of exercises and breathing practices.

And to be fair, when Swami Vivekananda came in the late 1800s and Paramahansa Yogananda came later on after that, they did introduce meditation, they did introduce Kriya Yoga. Yogananda introduced Kriya Yoga to the West. But I think in our modern day, Hatha Yoga has been the predominant thing. And through Hatha Yoga, you have different kinds of programs that people do, vinyasa, flow, and liquor yoga, and things like that. But the philosophy of yoga takes its root in many different texts, because the very commonly known one is Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. But there's other ones: there's the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, there's some of the other yoga shastras, there's the Yoga Yajnavalkya, there's the Yoga Vasistha. So these are different rishis or sages who've given some insight into the practice of yoga.

There is in South India a whole tradition on yoga which is from a text called the Thirumantiram, which is a huge body of work. But whatever text you go into, the spine, let's say, of that process is what's known as the Ashtanga Mark, which is the eightfold path in that sense: eight folds, or eight different rungs to a ladder, eight steps, which work in an integrated way. That is Yama and Niyama. Then you have Asana, which are the actual postures and exercises.

Pranayama, which is the breathing practice. And then Pratyahara, which is how to bring your mind towards an object. Dharana, which is selecting an object and staying on it. Dhyana, which is focused concentration, and Samadhi, which is the fruit of that practice, leading you to these elevated, altered states of consciousness. - So these different... you have the poses, the breathing, and then the concentration.

Are they all directed towards a single goal? Is there a specific goal with yoga? - The goal in yoga is very similar to the philosophy of Sankhya. In fact, yoga, the Yoga Sutras, have a lot of terminologies that are rooted in Sankhya. But to simplify that process, what it says is there is one that is the permanent nature and impermanent nature of reality. So that's the purusha, which is the permanence, which could be, from a Vedantic standpoint, like the Atman, the soul, or we should say the greater soul, the universe in existence.

And then there's prakriti, which is all of the different manifestations of nature, including our body, ourselves, our nervous system, our senses, and the experience of our sense bases. And the idea is to go beyond that and come to a state known as kaivalya. So in the idea of Samadhi, there are different levels of experience in Samadhi. Samadhi basically means a mind that is even, an even-minded kind of way. Samadhi means even or equanimous.

And buddhi is mind or the intellect. And so once your mind comes to these states of Samadhi, their experiences are of different categories, like a sense of joy, a sense of beingness, an objectless awareness, so being just pure awareness, which then leads to the experience which yoga's goal is, which is kaivalya. Kaivalya means to be alone, or rather it's basically of the mind, so that you are beyond just the facets of everyday, ordinary experience.

And you integrate back into it with that new realization. Okay. This, I mean, it's sounding similar to TWIM, which we'll get into in a bit. But so, let me see. So you reach this state, I'm trying not to keep the twin words, this state of aloneness, right? And is there a permanent shift in your consciousness after that, or is it kind of like an immensely peaceful state that you enter into to enjoy for the time that it lasts?

You know, the way to look at it is, yeah, with Samadhi, those are temporary states. Samadhi states, there's Savikalpa, Nirvikalpa. There's a whole bunch of different Samadhis, but they're taking you, very similar to the Buddhist practice of jhanas, where you're going through having experienced joy and equanimity and collectiveness and all these different things. So there's an overlap of those states, and those are impermanent. But there does come to be a shift in your perception, a shift in your perspective, based on what the underlying philosophy of yoga is. Yoga comes from the word yoga, which means to unite, to join together. It's joining together the small soul with the super soul.

That's the philosophical underpinning of that. And so it does create a shift in your consciousness in how you perceive reality. And so actually coming to that experience, the goal of yoga is similar, maybe qualitatively different, but similar in terms of Buddhism, which is, you know, the second line of the Yoga Sutras, which means yoga is the cessation of mental vibrations. And so before we get into the Buddhism part, one of your claims to fame is that you had mastered each of these levels of Samadhi.

Up until the, I forget the term, but the aloneness. Yeah, and can you tell us a little bit about what that was like to experience personally? Like, did you find, say, a personality shift, or a way you experienced the world after being able to bring your mind to achieve each of those states? It's interesting. When you get into this practice, first, when you are studying the texts, especially from a beginner's mind, you have all these sort of ideas based on what you read, which is like, oh, samadhi. At least in my personal experience, it was like, samadhi is the greatest. Like, there must be some super consciousness that you experience, or there must be, like, the heavens will open up and you will experience God, and you experience the divine light, all of these different things that have built up in the mind.

But then when you actually do it, and as you talk to your teachers and your guides, and they confirm for you this is the experience you're having, you realize, oh, it's only that. So, for example, there is this Ananda Samadhi, which is where you experience great amounts of joy. But that joy is said to be otherworldly. The reason being is because it's not connected to any of the five physical senses. experience.

It doesn't arise from, like, the joy from eating a really great meal, for example, or sitting out and basking in the sun. It's a joy that's integrated in the mind that comes from the mind. And then when you realize that, you start to see, oh, happiness comes from within. That's a powerful shift in mind for you to actually experience, because we hear it all the time.

People say, don't look outward, look within, and happiness comes from within, and it's become this sort of tacky way of understanding what spirituality is. But when you actually understand it, then it makes a lot of sense, then you stop becoming interested. It's not like you're giving up, you can still enjoy those same things, but when you have a greater happiness than that happiness that you experience through the senses, then you don't get agitated by things that come and go. Would you say that made you say more? It sounds like you were already pretty diligent if you're practicing six, seven hours a day, but would you say, like, having that experience of cultivating that joy from within yourself, and realizing you don't have to seek all these sensual pleasures to experience joy, would that make you say less of a, you know, maybe you wouldn't procrastinate as much, or you have more willpower, things like that, because you didn't feel like tugged.

I say, like, oh, I want to play this video game. You don't have this work to do. Yeah, I think there's something to be said about that, as you mentioned, diligence and work, because in the Yoga Sutras, it does talk about that. It says that if you want to achieve the goal, there are levels of, you know, in terms of somebody can have a little diligence and a little effort. Somebody can have a medium level of diligence and a medium level of effort. Or they can have, like, large amounts of effort and diligence.

And depending upon how long, how, how that is, will then determine how long it will take you to get to the goal. So, yeah, I was pretty motivated, let's say, to get there. So it is about how much effort you put into it, but the right kind of effort, that's another thing to understand, and how nostalgians you have, which is to say, study and practice. Those are the two cornerstones of the path of yoga: study and understand, and the ability to actually apply what it is that you study, and practice it through the process of meditation. So it isn't just about the effort, because you could have wrong effort. You need to have the right foundation in terms of, this is how to do it, and then apply it. And obviously it's not about just knowing how to do it, but actually What about that?

So that's the highest level, right? What was that like? Was there some big bang moment? Was it mind-blowing? Well, I'll tell you what. When I had the experience of yoga cessation, it's like I was in the middle of doing this Kriya. And as I was doing that Kriya, I suddenly, everything just stopped. Kriya is a meditation? It's a meditation practice. It's actually a practice of using different kinds of energy in the body and using the chakras and things like that. So I was doing a specific kind of practice where I was doing large amounts of that consistently.

And then when you come in, you experience these vast amounts of bliss and energy and relief. And then when you come out of it, it's like when you see the world around you, it's vibrant. The colors are brighter. The colors are sharper. There's more detail in different things that you see, of like equanimity, and everything is just fine, you know. And then that kind of wears off, but the shift there is there must have been something going on in that cessation experience, which then makes you see through the senses. And what I mean by that is, yes, normally when we experience the world we experience them through the senses, but now there was this connection to a sense of an observer, a sense of this eternal witness.

And then you identify it as that, looking through the eyes, hearing through the ears. So you don't get attached to the hearing or the ears, but you just become this awareness. That was the experience. It was like I was in a, this body was like a meat suit. I was just taking on this sort of, it was like VR. And everything was just like, okay, I'm experiencing, this is allowing me to experience this world, but I am not part of this world. Okay. Wow. So in that yoga cessation experience, you still had some amount of awareness, or? There was no awareness at all of that. Okay. I only knew about it at Pichimara. I see.

I knew somehow I'm unconscious. Okay. Let me tell you real quick how I stumbled upon TWIM, or how I really got into Buddhism. So I was talking to my friend on the telephone, and we were talking about learning Japanese, and he has fantastic Japanese, much better than mine. We talked a little bit about that, like what to do to improve the accent. But anyways, near the end of it, he just mentioned, hey, have you heard of this thing called, this subreddit of Reddit called StreamEntry? I was like, no, it's that. He's like, yeah, so basically there's these guys who say that enlightenment is actually a real thing and they're trying to do it. I was like, what?

Because when I was younger, I was exposed a lot to Zen Buddhism. And I think at the time I couldn't realize the value of it. But basically, whenever I sat down, I was just waiting for the cat to come and sit on me. At least from my limited knowledge of the Zen texts, it didn't really seem like enlightenment was the goal, or maybe it was, but it's not something you should strive for, because my interpretation is you probably won't get it. And then I had these doubts, like, well, is anyone enlightened? What is enlightenment? I didn't really see too many definitions of what exactly that would be. So it's just kind of, for me, this word of like, everything's perfect, whatever that means.

So anyways, I got into that. I read this really large book by Daniel Ingram. We'll get into that too much, but he kind of explained very clearly that there are these different lineages of Buddhism, and depending on the lineage of Buddhism, they have specific roadmaps to get to enlightenment, like, you do this and then this happens, and you continue to do that, you'll experience this specific thing, and after you experience that, you're here, and then near the end you're at this stage of enlightenment, and you're at this stage of enlightenment, and then you're at the final stage. So that was really mind-boggling to me. So for the audience, assuming enlightenment is a real thing, how would you describe it in simple terms? So the understanding of enlightenment, we use the word enlightenment, but let's say we could use the word And the reason is because you're waking up from the dream of existence, which is we take this body to be ourselves in some ways.

We take our experiences through our senses to be ourselves, or that we own them in some way. We take our relationships and everything in our lives in some way or another to be ourselves, a part of ourselves, or that this is mine. And awakening is just awakening from that dream of existence, which is the dream of taking that personal, identifying with it. So awakening means that you find out what actually happiness is.

And you realize, as I was alluding to earlier, that that happiness is not bound by any kind of experience that we're having here through our senses. And so if you were to talk about the qualitative experience of enlightenment or awakening, I would boil it down to two words. It's contentment and acceptance. Not being able to assert yourself. But you're okay because your mind is beyond what is impermanent.

Because you have found an experience that is permanent, which is that long-lasting happiness. You can call that Nirvana or Nibbana in Pali. But that experience is the cessation of suffering. The cessation of suffering sounds pretty dramatic. Yeah, but I was talking to, um, unfit mind before, and I said maybe we could just call it the beginning of happiness, true happiness, okay, unconditional happiness. Unconditional happiness. Okay. Okay. I think nowadays people are more and more aware of the hedonic treadmill. I think at some point in my life, as a kid, I always had this frustration with the concept, the concept of upkeep. Like, oh, I had some chores that I needed to do.

Right. And then I do them. And then the next day I have to do them again. And I'm just kind of frustrated that I had to re-experience this discontentment, and it couldn't be dealt with once. And I could expect to experience that discontentment to some degree. I guess I was a bit of an anxious kid. Anything that didn't allow me to play video games was not enjoyable. Yeah, this kind of frustration. And then as you get older, you kind of realize, well, I could work really hard to get a cool car, but that will only make me happy for a little while. And then nowadays, the concept of the dopamine detox.

It's like, okay, we realize there's this hedonic treadmill, so what if we take a step back, don't do anything too fun, and so then when we go back into life we can, yeah, you can re-experience those things in a more enjoyable way. But then what do you do? You just keep doing that every right forever, until you die. Yeah. So, yeah, the cessation of suffering, that sounds kind of... I guess it would be inconceivable, right? So how does this realization that there is no permanent self, why would that cease suffering?

Yeah, because what happens is you start to look at how this world is mind created. Everything that we experience, even if it's through the five physical senses, arises in the form of concepts. So everything we experience, and these concepts are, they are concepts that we apply to the world, but then we collectively also apply to the world. For example, I talk about it where you see this as the color red, and I too see this as a color red.

But your vision of red, how do I know it's the same as my vision of red? But yet we say, yeah, that is red. We have come to an agreement that that's the color that it is. So all of these concepts, the mind then creates a sense of self around it. When you grow up, for example, you were talking about, you would do whatever you could to just get back to playing video games. So we find sources of happiness and we attach this idea that that source of happiness helps make me comfortable, a sense of me happy and comfortable.

Now, that sense of self is very intrinsic to the mind. Even as infants, we start to develop this idea of, okay, I need nourishment, and the only way I can get nourishment is by crying or making a sound. So we start to condition what is good for us, or how we think is something good for us, based on how it makes us feel. So you talk about a dopamine detox. Back to that, it is based in the idea of certain neurochemicals. When you go on a retreat, for example, you are doing a sort of deep dopamine detox, but it goes deeper than that, where on an experiential level, on a mental level, on an emotional level, you start to realize, oh, there's this thing, this self-conceit, that's starting to create what it thinks is a source of happiness.

But if you disengage with it, if you let the mind kind of pull back and just observe things as they are, then you start to see, oh wait, this is impermanent. So it's not really long-lasting happiness. And so I can't say that that's me. And not to get too philosophical about it, but in ancient India, there was a notion of the self.

Which is going back to that notion of the Atman, which is that it is something that is permanent and provides eternal happiness. That is our source. That is our true nature, that we are eternally happy. And the Buddha took that, let's say, and he said, okay, I won't comment on that. But what I will say is let's use that as a touchstone.

And then take all of our experiences that we have, our mind and our body and our senses and experience through the senses, our consciousness, our awareness, our thinking faculties, our intellect, everything. And let's use that touchstone and let's compare it. And then you start to realize, oh, these things are dependent on other things. They're not independent. And so when you realize that, you see, oh, then it can't be considered as an independent permanent self.

When you realize that, then you see, okay, I can detach from this. And that happiness doesn't come from there. And then you find a new source of happiness, which is independent of all of these impermanent experiences. One thing that came to mind when we were talking about the self and these ideas, self is and why that leads to dissatisfaction. Oh yeah, that's one thing I wanted to point out. I feel like the word suffering is kind of dramatic. Yeah. So, would you say something like dissatisfaction is a little more accurate? I would say that dissatisfaction would be a good word to use, because you think about, as I said, the qualitative experience of awakening is contentment. Somebody else talked about this, Lee Brazing, and he called it everything is a bummer.

That's the experience of suffering. Yeah. Okay. And the root word, I really like that, how you're saying that the root word of it is dukkha, and what that means literally is that it's a wheel where the, I guess, the axis is off-center. Yes. So it's just kind of everything's never quite right. Exactly. It's just kind of bumping around. Yes. Yes. And so, to bring this back to video games a little more time, I started playing this game, Tekken, recently. And at first, I was just having fun. I was like, oh, that's a cool new game. I never really played it. Let me learn it. But then, the moment that I thought I was kind of pretty good, I was like, hey, I'm getting good at this.

I developed this self-identity of, oh, I'm someone who's good at Tekken, to lose, then it started to generate a lot of frustration. Whereas when I first started, I was just playing the game, which is a game we played, I had a lot of fun with it. But then as soon as I had that self wrapped around it, that's when I started being frustrated with the game. So one of the realizations is this experiential, this direct experience, that there is not a self. That is the result of awakening, right? And so, which is, I would say, I imagine vastly, incredibly more different than someone logically explaining, well, here's how your brain works.

So you probably don't have a soul. Right. But just to address that intellectual bit a bit, I thought that the best example, the most concise way to think about it, was something that Sam Harris said. He said, I think he was talking more about free will, but I think it equally applies to no self. He said, you don't choose the thoughts that you have. Yeah. That would mean that you would have to think them before you thought them. Yeah. Yeah. And so I thought, wow, that's just the simplest way to put it. Yeah. So we're learning all these different genres. And that was one of the really exciting things for me about TWIM, is because I was learning about these maps.

So the concept of jhanas and then stages of awakening are in different traditions, not just TWIM, not just... Vipassana has this too, and they say there are these things called jhanas, and then you have stages of enlightenment. And so there's one, you know, those are two different things, at least in that tradition. Well, yeah, there are different things, but I was learning about these jhanas, and they were these altered states of consciousness, basically, kind of similar to the yoga samadhi states that you're talking about. And so I was learning that, oh, in the first jhana you feel immense joy, and then in the second jhana, I feel like the first, second and third will be a little hard for me to explain right now, but you get later to states like, say, the fourth jhana onwards, where basically you lose most all perception of your body, or at least the mind isn't concerned with the body much at all, to where everything is just right here. So I guess I was thinking

Okay, I was still a little skeptical about the possibility of awakening being an actual thing, and so then I thought, okay, I don't have to get awakened just to see if this leads somewhere. So maybe if I could just experience a jhana and see that if you meditate you can actually get into this really enjoyable trance state, because up until then all the meditation had done was focusing on the breath, and that was basically just a chore. The whole thing, there were a couple moments of nice focus, but more or less a joke. So anyways, I experienced these jhanas that you teach. And one of the things in the jhanas is that your mind is like, the activity is just, you're just in a storm of mental activity, and you're kind of there in the background just watching it happen, and you can't do anything about it. You're just there, and it just keeps going. You have pretty much no control. So would you mind quickly explaining, just in simple terms, what is the experience of each of the jhanas?

So there's eight jhanas. Right, right. So the first jhana is accompanied by a few things. Number one is, it says, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, which means you close your eyes and now you center your mind around something, which is an object of meditation. The second part of that is secluded from unwholesome states, thoughts or mental patterns that obscure your ability to be collected.

So those are the five hindrances that we call them, which is sensual craving, getting attracted to things, attachments, aversion, getting irritated and frustrated by things. Restlessness, the mind becomes agitated. It's just a lot of energy going on. Sloth and torpor, the mind gets dull and sleepy. And doubt, wondering what's going on in the mind and wondering if I'm doing the practice right or not. And then the first jhana means that your mind, first of all, centers on an object.

And then it's free of any of these states that obscure your ability to see reality as it is, these five instances. As a result of that, the mind actually feels this sense of a micro sensation of relief. And from there comes what's known as piti, with this joy. And from that joy, there's also sukha, which is the sense of happiness in the body.

And ekagata, which is single pointedness or single mindedness. I wouldn't say it's one pointedness. It's rather that the mind, the analogy I use is, here is a planet and this is your object of meditation. And here you are where your attention is. And it orbits around the object of meditation. And so there's enough space for you to be able to see anytime the mind starts to get distracted and then bring it back into orbit. And that's using the 6R's, which we'll get into later. But then from there, the thinking and examining thought, which is part of the first jhana, is bringing up an object and staying with that object. Once that happens, then there's no need to keep doing that.

Now the mind has a level of self-confidence and there's a flow where the mind's awareness rests on the object of meditation, and as a result of being further collected, the joy and happiness deepens in the second jhana. In the third jhana you start to lose awareness of the body. Parts of your body start to feel like they're going away, like maybe you might feel a heaviness in the body or you might feel a lightness, a flowing kind of sensation in the body. Would you say there's a maybe another flavor that could be kind of like distorted perception of body, like maybe it's been elongating? Yes, yes, it feels like it's expanding, it feels like it's elongated, like even feels like it's just disappearing completely. And so this is part of the third jhana, where the mind starts to experience deeper levels of tranquility and steadiness with its object of meditation. And so that energetic vibratory joy that you experience flutters away, and now there's just this longer sustained happiness that's happening in the third. There's total equity. The mind feels completely at ease and is completely balanced.

And the mindfulness or awareness or observation power of the mind is at a maximum, like you are completely stable with your object. And so from there, from the fourth jhana, there are these ayatanas. Ayatanas means, like, the dimension or space or the realm or access point. And so it's the base of infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, in either perception or non-perception.

You get to the fourth jhana, and all of this experience of the body completely kind of becomes imperceptible. And now you're deep in your mind. And from there, there are these altered states where you experience a sense of expansion and boundless spaciousness. So your mind becomes space itself, or that is the experience that you have. And from there, you start to experience what's known as infinite consciousness.

Your awareness becomes part of that space, but then it becomes granular. In other words, now you actually start to see that this consciousness, just like a layer of light, is actually made up of quintillions and quintillions of individual photons. That flow of consciousness and awareness you're experiencing is actually made up of millions and millions and millions of arising and passing away of consciousnesses, dependent upon sense experiences.

And you see it for yourself. And then from there, the gaps widen between each arising and passing away of consciousness. And you experience that gap widening further until there's nothingness. There's no thing there in the mind, there's just a blankness, but you're aware of the blankness. So this is the perception of nothingness. This is the seventh jhana, so to speak. And then from there you get into the eighth, which is called neither perception nor non-perception. It's a very interesting state to be in, where the mind feels like it's awake but asleep at the same time. It's like you are in a lucid deep sleep. There's just pure awareness there, and you start to notice the percolations or the forming of a thought before it becomes fully formed.

And then you get even quieter and go beyond, down to the depths where you have an experience of quiet. You call it quiet, but it's really just mind, that subtle mind. Then there's a state known as the signless collectiveness of mind. This is like jhana 8.5, if you will. And in that experience, the mind itself dissolves and all there is is this awareness.

And the analogy used is like you take a flashlight, you point it up to the sky, and assuming that there's no meteorite, no asteroids, no planets, nothing that the light can kind of just bounce off of, that light just continues on into space. The same way, your awareness is just aware but not aware of anything in particular. And so it's signless in the sense that it's objectless awareness. And then, well, while you're here in this aware state, because there's no object for your attention to grab onto, the mind just shuts down and experiences cessation. - Okay, quick couple of comments on that.

So the interesting thing is, I feel like there's this idea floating out there that the object of meditation is to think, note thoughts, which it kind of is, but people don't realize just the level up to really think and know thoughts. Your level of meditation has to be pretty amazing. But I think that's the idea of, oh, I'm going to meditate, I'm going to sit down and think, don't think. If you can do that, it's amazing. And one thing I wanted to add is, so these, so infinite consciousness, yeah.

I think it's really hard to grasp just what that would look like. But I had a quite visual experience of that, or at least I did this. The first time I did it, I didn't really know what it was. And then afterwards I had to read and be like, oh, I think that's what that is. So I'm not really sure if this was what it was. But I had this feeling that I was sitting in my chair and then there was just a void around me completely.

And then I sort of had a sense of, I'd say, my body, the sense of my body was flickering in and out, because I had a little bit of back pain. So it's kind of like you have the VR goggles and someone's tapping it from the outside. And I had this feeling that the top part of my skull was erased.

But let's go over to cessation. So we can let the cat out of the bag and explain that you have, in fact, these different levels of awakening, and the way to experience these levels of awakening is through these cessations. So you get to the 8th jhana and the 8.5 jhana, and then the mind just kind of, like, you reach the end game, over, and just kind of shuts off, then it boots back up. So there are four stages, and you have to do a cessation. And to lock in, you do a cessation, you get the first stage, but then to lock in that stage, you have to do another one again.

Right. So the idea here is cessation allows the mind to kind of go to a level where it does touch the unconditioned, which we call nibbana, or nirvana, really. What that means is no fire, like the lack of fire or the quenching of fire, which means that all of that mental activity that creates our sense of self goes away completely. And so that experience, from there the mind boots back up, and as a result of experiencing that, has a lot of relief that happens. From this relief there comes realizations and seeing of what we call dependent origination. Basically what that means is you realize how the mind creates its sense of reality and the sense of self, and when we talk about the sense of

I just want to add one thing here, because that's something people always wonder. Okay, fine, we say we have no sense of self, but who is that self that says that there's no self? Right, because you have the sense of the observer observing your thoughts, and then you say, okay, fine, these thoughts are not me, these feelings are not me, these perceptions are not me. Then who is the me? Is it the observer itself? And this is something that the mind might have to take some time to wrap around. When you have to see for yourself through experience, so to speak, is that the observer arises in dependence upon the object of observation. Okay. Okay. So, you, I guess, another way to put it is there is no self without an experience, right? So coming back to that, there is something that the Buddha gave, which is a very concise teaching

which he said: in the seen there is only the seen; in the heard there is only the heard; in the cognize there's only the cognizant; in the experience there's only the experience. The problem is that when the mind adds a sense of self, superimposes a sense of self, in that experience, before that experience or after that experience, but if the experience is just the experience, then the sense of self or the observer arises depending upon that experience and passes away depending upon that experience.

Okay. So to put this, I guess, in a more brain-oriented way, it's like you have some mental activity responding to some stimulus. Yes. Another piece of mental activity that says, that was me. Yes. Okay. Yes. So at the moment of cessation, you cease all mental activity, all conscious mental activity, but your body's still working. And then the brain boots back up, and it's kind of like, the way I thought of it, maybe you have a better analogy, it's kind of like, let's say a computer fan. If you look at it, it's just spinning so fast. Maybe you have no idea how to answer it. It's like spinning so fast, you're like, what is that thing in it?

Where does the air come from? It's like this magical circle that just generates air. And then you turn it off, and then it finally stops moving. And then when it turns back, even though it's turning back on, it's turning along real slow. So you can see, oh, it spins. Right, exactly like that. So when the mind boots back up, you see, oh, this is how the protophiles arise, the formation of sankhara.

Oh, this is how consciousness comes to be, and then you realize, oh, this is how feeling and perception—there's no self involved in that process. It's happening dependent upon previous causes and conditions, and the seeing of that, the observing of that, arises in dependence upon the experience. This is where the very root of the self goes away, is eliminated, at the fourth level of awakening, but it takes time, only because our minds have been conditioned at such a deep level from when we are born until whenever it is that we have that experience, that it takes time to let go of these so-called fetters.

And so there are delineation points between each of these levels of awakening. So in the first case of stream entry, you let go of certain fetters, like the intellectual understanding that there is no permanent self. The letting go of clinging to rites and rituals, because you realize, oh, those are also coming from some kind of sense of self. And there's total conviction. Traditionally speaking, it's a mission without, but what that translates into is realizing, oh, this is the way to start to see reality as it actually is. There's total conviction in following that roadmap. As a once-returner, or sakadagami in Pali, what happens is you weaken the fetter of sensual craving and aversion, which means you stop taking those things so seriously.

You might still experience them. You might still grab onto things, but your mindfulness is so sharp to be able to recognize the percolation of wanting to grab onto it. And even if it does, you recover from it faster. So you're like, oh, there was the mind starting again, there was the mind getting irritated again, and you're able to kind of backtrack. So then from there is what's known as a non-return, or an anagami, where they completely let go of any kind of sensual craving and aversion.

And so their mind will never generate any kind of irritation, frustration, longing, desire or anything in terms of the sixth sense basis of that deep intrinsic sense of relating a sense of self to things, and from that comes restlessness, craving for existence, craving for non-existence, because it all comes from that deep sense of self. When that goes away, it's like a house of cards that gets demolished, and then finally ignorance, which is not being able to see things as they are, being able to see reality in its completeness. The obscuration of that goes away as well. Now, there are other points where it's called path and fruition, which is what you were referring to, which is one cessation can get you into the path of an experience of awakening, but it might take you a few more cessations to get to a point where you get your fruition. Not necessarily, but usually one cessation equals one path, and then another situation could be a fruition.

And if it is, and it might take you a few more fruition, because it takes time for the mind to suddenly drop these fetters. So each cessation is an opportunity for the mind to either drop that fetter or to at least grind away at that fetter until it does drop. Okay, so you have to do, basically, to progress on this path of awakening, each stage gives you these upgrades. Yeah, you have to continuously do this process of shutting the brain up and rebooting it, so it's like you keep rebooting it to, like, try and figure out, oh, that's how that works and that's how this works. I wanted to talk more about the fetters from an experiential perspective, so why don't we talk about what your personal experience of experiencing stream entry, or the first half, was like? So what was that like?

So I have to tell you, for me, in my experience when I was doing the TWIM online retreat, I progressed through each stage quite quickly. I didn't have a chance to really experience what the sakadagami and anagami was, in terms of comparing the two. All I understood was at stream entry, the actual experience was like, again, like a blackout.

Coming out of that blackout, experiencing this volcano of joy and energy and belief. And then that lasted for a whole day, basically. And everywhere I looked, everything was just so vibrant again and so colorful. And I was just content with everything. And looking back in my mind, it was like, wow. Yeah, there is no permanent self here. The mind had an experiential understanding of it. And so at the level of mind, at the level of thought, there was this knowing that, yeah, there is no point in self.

And then there was this understanding, oh, yeah, this is the path. Like, this is what I'll keep doing. Like, there's nothing I can do outside of this now. Because you see it for yourself. So you still had, so you said you had an intellectual understanding that there's no self, experience of, I'm doing this, I'm doing that. It's not like you were sitting in an automatically moving Gundam or something like that. Right. Right. Exactly. Okay. So because that's still quite profound for the beginning, because it's like a lot of people do experience themselves as some kind of like homunculus who's like experiencing it through, oh, I am a self, but it's in my body or I am the body or whatever it might be.

have ideas about. That completely goes away. But there's still a relating of a sense of self in the first few stages. And so then later on, when you get to the level of anagami, you completely have such a mind that's purified of any kind of craving, sensual craving and aversion, that you're completely content. If your flight's late, you're waiting on line, you're looking at the microwave, waiting for your food to heat up. There's no agitation, like, when am I going to get that? It's just like, you can wait for it. It doesn't matter. So there's complete contentment there.

And as it progresses to the final stage, that's where you completely let go of all the fetters of any sense of self to reality. And that experience is basically like just always observing, complete mindfulness. There. Just like everything is arising and passing away, it's unfolding. Reality is unfolding. And the sense of the observer itself is also an experience that's being had. And so going back to that same statement, in the experience there's only the experience. It's a complete flow of processes that's going on. There's no restlessness in the mind.

No agitation, which means when you go sit down for your meditation there's not this whole period of time where you've got to settle the mind down. The mind is already settled whether you're meditating or not. I'll look at the clip later, but when you did the interview with Metnamna and you did the Muse example, he was practicing that well. It's a Muse, it's not as good as, like, octopus electrodes, but it was picking up on what it could pick up on, and it was like the moment you closed your eyes everything just went, yeah, it's like dropped dramatically, yeah. So yeah, that's going to be pretty nice. One of the funny things was in the letter you're telling us: so in the retreat, people have never done a retreat for several hours a day for 10 days.

And then at some point in the day, you get to speak with the teacher for a little bit. They'll ask about your practice and guide you and answer any questions you have. And so Delson would do that for us. And then we were talking to him at dinner on the last day, and we were asking him what it's like to be fully awakened. And you said, you may think I'm listening only to you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, this was at, that's right. That was at dinner and we were talking about this, and yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah. I basically said it might look like I'm paying attention to you. And by the way, I am paying attention to you, but I'm also paying attention to the birds in the sky.

I'm also paying attention to the sound in the air, and I'm paying attention to what's going on with my body. I'm paying attention to my heartbeat. I'm paying attention to the micro movement on your face. It's like awareness is like a full spectrum of awareness is there. And I can see up to here. Like, if I put my hands up like here, my panoramic vision is literally like up to here. So everything opens up. There's this deep level of clarity that your mind doesn't land on anything.

But because it's such a huge broad spectrum awareness, it can take everything in all at once. That's almost... I would imagine that the only people who could imagine what that would be like are people who are really advanced meditators or have done psychedelics. And it almost sounds like you wouldn't be able to function. It's like, if I'm trying to watch a YouTube video, different YouTube videos play on at the same time. But I mean, clearly you can function. Yeah. I mean, I can give you another qualitative experience. Sure. Where I can literally hear you speak and completely understand what you're saying. If there's another person having a conversation, I can also pick up on what they're conversing.

I can have two or three conversations at the same time and completely understand all of them. Wow. Now that's kind of a superpower, right? Because we were talking about it yesterday. I was like, oh, is your memory better? Do you have better reflexes? Can you perceive a monitor's frame rate better? But that is a pretty intense superpower. You would be the world's best simultaneous interpreter if you wanted to do that.

Yeah, if this meditation gig doesn't work out. Yeah. What everyone is probably curious about, and what I'm curious about too, is what is, could you describe some more aspects of, like, for example, you gave us some insight into what it's like to be at the fourth level of awakening, the final level of awakening. So with sotapanna, with the first one, it's not like you get any specific powers, so to say, but you kind of have this conviction, and you can't unsee the understanding of the lack of a self. So your brain has to be like, okay, I've got to do something with that. And then with sakadagami, you said there's less aversion and craving.

It's not gone, but there's less. So what's that like? Are you just a more diligent person? That's part of it, yeah. You become more aware of everyone's thoughts, though. You become more aware of when your mind starts to cling to things. And so a sakadagami's level of mindfulness is much sharper, much clearer. So oftentimes there'll be a time where somebody gets frustrated about something. They might begrudge somebody. They might just take that thought on and just keep working that thought out and be like, yeah, that person was just so mean to me. And why did they say that?

Some people just go on for days thinking about that, you know, and you're in the shower and you're like, yeah, what I should have told them, that kind of stuff. Yeah, all of that goes away for the sakadagami. So even if they get irritated in that moment, it's like they get irritated or they get angry, but then there's no trace of that continuing. Okay. So you still have thoughts like, oh, that guy, why do you do that? But you're like, oh yeah, you just let go of it. Yes. Okay. And so then, for anagami, the third path

I think that's harder to understand, the complete lack of ill will craving or sensual craving. So here's the thing, you know, like an onagami can still enjoy a nice, you know, bowl of ice cream and really enjoy it. Like, just be like, oh, that tastes really good. Or, you know, still have great sensual experiences or even experience pain, just like an arahan could. But the difference is for the onagami, There's no like There's no craving in it the way I would understand craving or help people understand creating this let's say You do like ice cream and somebody gives you a bowl of ice cream and you're like, oh, this is great I'm really looking forward to having this ice cream and then they just snatch it away What is your reaction in that moment?

If your reaction is like, no no no, wait, that ice cream. Yeah, there's craving there. But if that object of craving goes away, or object of potential craving, it goes away and there's no reaction there, like, I really wanted that. There's just, okay, everything is whatever it is. So it's not like they can't enjoy things. They completely enjoy it, and they might have preferences for this or for that, but if that preference isn't met, they don't get agitated by it. What if, so you have no craving now? It almost sounds like your dopamine system is messed up. I mean, I know there was this study where they obliterated the dopamine neurons in rats, and you could put chow in front of them and they wouldn't... or what was it, maybe the chow was obscured, where all they had to do was snip it to go and find it, and they just wouldn't eat it. They wouldn't go for it, but then

when you, I guess, put it right in front of their face, or put it in their mouth or something, in a way that said that they still enjoyed it. So it kind of sounds like if you're an anagami, you just would never eat gummy bears again unless someone put it right in front of you? Right? There's no like, you know, I feel like having a gummy bear or something at that, where, you know, if you do see a gummy bear blow up, I'll have a gun in the bear. But no, no, it's bad, black, similar to that. But I think, and this is just me being in when, you know, just being a couch neuroscientist, and that sense is, I think it regulates the different neurochemicals in such a way that there's no like agitation that arises when that experience is not met. So there might still be dopamine receptors there, but they may be regulated in such a way that you still enjoy it.

You still actually take, you take passion in enjoying it, but there's no like, if it's not there, you get, I agree with you about it. Okay. Okay. Maybe we can tackle that a bit more at the same time. I'd ask you a couple things about the arahant, which is the fourth level, the final level of awakening. So there's still a couple things to me that are curious. You seem like, just a really, how to put it, a totally normal guy, but...

I will say you seem super calm, but at the same time, you keep your sense of humor. But then at the same time, you are writing books, for example. I was meaning to mention this one. He's got some of those. Shameless comedy. Yeah, there you go. Great book, by the way. You were saying that it's likely that a fully awakened person will stop having a career. And is that to say because they feel that the career is, you know, accumulating money, or maybe more money than that is required to sustain life, is only sustaining the satisfaction of a fictional self? Is it something like that? Like, a fully awakened person will still do what is necessary to remain, to keep the body working?

Right. Right. So the way to look at it, and I have to talk about it, from this little cartoon snippet that I saw. It's like this, there's this man and this dog. And this dog is in a suit and he's just walking, and he realizes, this whole thing you guys call life, I realize, is just one big game of fetch.

Right? So for the arahant, it's like a career would mean you're doing a career. What are the motivations behind having a career? Those motivations are no longer there for the arahant. Because that sense of fictional self that you were talking about, for example, that's gone. So there's no relating, like, I need money so that I could do this, so I could be happy. I see, I see. Or even just a career being like, I have to have this title because it satisfies that personal sense of self. All of that goes away.

So for an arahant, they would need a support system. And so that support system kind of either comes or it doesn't. And so traditionally it was said that if you become an arahant you go into the Sangha, because that's through which you would get some kind of support for food and shelter and all the other requisites. So, the idea of, for example, an arahant just seeking out things, you won't have them. And so the arahant's mind comes from intuition. Intuition is just understanding, and intuition is basically a mind that was always experiencing insights, so they can make connections. They can use their past experiences to relate to what's going on, but the motivations that are around, for example, having a relationship, why do people have relationships or getting married, and having a career and possessing this and possessing that, all of that just completely goes away once that sense of... okay.

Wow. That's kind of... it probably sounds to a lot of people like, I want to be a fully awakened person. Yeah. But I can say from the experience, it's basically like, okay, all of those motivations go away, but you're still happy. Right. So the motivations arise because there's a need to be happy. There's a need to experience some level of contentment.

All of those motivations go away and there's still happiness. That's something else entirely. So, would you say that? I think it was in one of the suttas that they said, without the Sangha, the arahant will expire in seven days. In seven days, yeah. Do you think that's accurate? I think that's probably accurate for that time, because there was no way for somebody who becomes an arahant, people come and feed me or clothe me, whatever. But now, in today's world, it's very interesting to see, because there are these concepts of people who actually provide for people, you know, through donations and things like that. So I think it's easier, let's say, for an arahant to just be doing whatever they're doing, but I think they would still be part of some kind of Sangha, even if it's not, you know, physically, but some kind of affiliation of us somehow. And when you speak to an arahant, they're always speaking in such a way that it feels like they're teaching or they have something to say.

Yeah, so in that regard, an arahant wouldn't even be inclined to teach, but just because things come together, it just happens. So an arahant, when they work on complete intuition, they're just allowing karma to unfold. Whatever part of this, there was a really interesting movie for those of you who know Peter Sellers. There was a movie maybe a couple of decades ago, maybe three or four decades ago. It was called Being There, and the story is that this guy is just there at the right time at the right place, and everything is just sort of career that he's, like, not even invested in that career. People take notice of what he's doing, and then he gets an upgrade in his career, and then people start to respect him. All of these things happen, but he has no like inclination, no investment, no motivation. It just seems to all unfold, and that's the kind of process of intuition. You just are there at the right time in the right place. Okay, so following your mind's intuition allows you to be there and things just occur.

- Okay, that makes sense, but part of the somewhat persistent question is, what if, so I know you're with Dhammasuka right now. Let's say you just, in isolation, became an arahant, and then you're like, do you just sit there contentedly until you starve? Like, oh, I have money in my pocket. I should go and purchase some food to sustain my body. Or do you say, oh, I don't have money. I should find a way to get money so I can go and sustain my body or, you know, maybe gather or hunt or something? Right. Well, in that sense, there would still be the bodily processes of hunger, or thirst.

And so, it's not like they would just become mechanical and stop completely. But the motivation to get food will just be like, okay, well, there's an unpleasant experience here, so let's go seek out food so that the body continues. Okay, right, so that's why in the sangha you have assistance through alms and donations and things like that. But having a career, the motivations to have a career would be, I think, slightly more complex than just seeking out food. The basic idea is having security of food and water and shelter. But for the arahant's mind, it will be like their mind is always in the coming. That's the thing: their mind is always in the teacher. So for them to kind of seek out doing something, it's just insensible for them. It's just like it doesn't make any sense. The other thing is, I would also say arahants would make great CEOs. The reason is because they use intuition and they listen carefully and they just see things as they are.

So there's no personal gain to be had. It's just like, oh, if this is what's going to happen, let's see how we can do it in a way that's most wholesome and most beneficial for everyone involved. I see. What's in the benefit of the entire company rather than how can I tweak things to raise my bonus? Exactly. And that's also something to be said about the mind of the arahant. Not just that they let go of the sense of self, but they also develop the ethical mind. The ethical mind becomes fully developed, which is to say they speak in a way that is kind to themselves and to others. Their actions will never harm themselves nor others.

So it's also the, let's say, perfection of being moral and ethical. I know you've got to head out and eat real quick, but speaking of using money to buy food, you have a Patreon, right? Yes. Okay. So I'll put that on the screen and then any other links you have. And then one last little question. Say there's some unpleasant experience that is put before you and you know you have to go through it. So what I mentioned the other day was the cold shower, because a lot of times the hot water was going off. Yeah. And then I'll be like, all right, all right, all right, go jump in. All right. And then I was like, finally get in. So I'm just like, well, does Delson just be like, oh, there's no hot water? Okay, pretty much. Really? Okay. Well, but you remember what I told you when you asked me? My exercise is, if it's very cold out and if there's hot water available, I'll have a hot shower, but immediately following that I will have a cool shower as well. So

but let's say in the process of having a hot shower that the cold water arises and there's no more hot water there won't be like a agitation just be like oh it's cold no let's say you know for example let's say i i walk down the stairs and uh my my my foot like i'm walking barefoot my foot hits a thorn or net they'll be painting them absolutely they'll be painting and they'll even be like a sense of ouch what was that yeah but we don't follow that won't be like something that won't be like a mental agitation of like getting upset that i did that or like you know all of that is not present so the emotional aspect of like the cold shower you know like i have to render myself yeah none of that so there is painful experience but there's no mental suffering related to that okay that totally makes sense so you step on a thorn you have that human reaction of ouch pull the thorn out and then you just keep going exactly

Cool. Well, Delson, thanks so much. That was really quick. I mean, one of the people, they said, oh, you're doing a podcast with Delson. He's like, okay, whatever you do, just talk as long as you can. I want to hear it. Get as deep as you can, skip the basics. But thanks so much. Thank you. This is great. Thank you so much.