Ajahn Brahmavamso's Dark Jhana

Not a Buddhist, never even heard of your jhanas until this last year, don’t find the description’s adequate - eg: I could quote 3 diff comments just from Ajahn Brahm alone that have made me think 3 different things about the same thing, … then throw in others with more opinions and disagreements, … add that most people talking about them on u tube are totally evasive in their language and basically say nothing descriptive at all whilst trying to sound like they know about something that leaves me thinking they actually have no more idea than I do, and I’m just getting ‘whatever’ :roll_eyes: about it all.

I can say tho, in my non Buddhist lingo, there absolutely are ‘white voids’ and there absolutely are ‘black voids’. Beats me what they are, ( I just call the dark one ‘the black cocoon of perfect peace’ …. I kinda just think of the white one as somewhere in ‘the spirit realms’ ( coz there are always infinite people in the white one, ( the black one is empty of people) …. all this may have nothing at all to do with what you Buddhists are talking about, but weird states exist, they can be repeatedly visited, you can think you have spent 10-15 min in one of them and find out 5-7 hours have actually passed, you can come out with ‘side effects’, insights, etc ….

I can 100% say tho, that given I don’t know Spiritualists who have this happen, and I have not once ever sat meditating with any Buddhist idea from any Buddhist teacher in my head, that I find the OP’s idea that these perceptions are ‘groomed’ in to people to be just not applicable. No one has groomed me. No one ‘put’ these ideas in my head. I don’t know what these states even are, let alone if they are something akin to jhanas or not. They just are tho …. And long before I ever came snooping at Buddhism to see if I could figure it out. :woman_shrugging:t2:

…. Do you all have to have identical experiences? Does it have to have the ‘right label’ to count ? Shouldn’t just the insights and your personal growth be what matter? Does someone having ‘light jhanas’ have to invalidate someone having ‘dark jhanas’?

But you guys keep debating what’s what with each other, comparing with each other, dissing on each other’s experiences ( as I’ve seen at times) … and no wonder people are confused. :rofl: … well I know I am anyway

Edit: I’m just adding tho thank you ( whoever it was ) for bringing this topic back up the list, coz all this talk about light I’ve been reading on here ( when I’m more often in the dark void / dark space) had recently made me start wondering if there was something ‘wrong’ with me, … if I just sucked as a person ( bad sila) even tho for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what the basis was since I know I’m a moral & compassionate person. I’d even started scanning ‘did I do something bad as a kid’ etc - coz I’m in the dark void more than the light one. It was really making me question myself - now I read this thread tho, I’m just dropping all those questions about myself that recently arose and can go back to just hanging out in the dark and being totally fine with it. :blush: