Generally there are so called four imponderables in Buddha Dhamma:
From AN 4.77
https://suttacentral.net/an4.77/en/sujato
“Mendicants, these four things are unthinkable. They should not be thought about, and anyone who tries to think about them will go mad or get frustrated. What four?
The scope of the Buddhas …
The scope of one in absorption …
The results of deeds …
Speculation about the world …
These are the four unthinkable things. They should not be thought about, and anyone who tries to think about them will go mad or get frustrated.”
In general the second imponderable is reffering to possibilities and depth of jhanic states.
I think it contains both jhanic experiences, siddhis and generally as I call them “raptures” or “singularities” or as Ajahn Brahm call it generally “power mindfuless” or “superpower mindfulness”.
Generally, there is literally infinite possibilites regarding peculiar meditative states. It is one of four imponderables.
So generally, every person may have and eventaully will have some extraordinary perceptions in meditation. It is part of the path.
When people encounter such experiences, I usually reffer to them as “singularites” or “peculiarities” and advice to just let them happen, don’t attatch, have fun and keep exploring. But it is just so my friends in meditation know that “yeah, this is normal, you’re not going nuts”.
I had a lot of such experiences, but I think it would be against the forum policies to share them, and I actually agree with that, because it could go too far if we all started sharing them But thing is: every dedicated practitioner has some of them, and they are usually unique. Sometimes they repeat, and sometimes they are completely anicca and happen only once in life. Sometimes they are useful on the path, and sometimes they are just “nice” or “unpleasant”. Sometimes people have abundance of them, other have very few (but they can or can not relate to other aspects of practice).
For example there can be:
- a person with lots of singularities developed in wisdom and metta
- with lots singularities not developed in wisdom and metta
- with few singularities developed in wisdom and metta
- with few singularities not developed in wisdom and metta
There is really no rule and no end regarding this stuff. But they are surely interesting and can be motivating for a lot of people to keep practicing But from a deeper dhamma point, it is more importaint to watch nature (dhamma) of a singularity, than its content. But there is no rule to it also. Sometimes contents of singularities are very useful, and sometimes they are meaningless.
Ajahn Brahm actually writes in his book “Mindfulness Bliss & Beyond” that such things happen on “nimitta stage”, where mind is powerful enough to project stuff onto itself, but not in deep jhana yet. Nimitta and jhanas are also related to “power” and “superpower” mindfulness described in the book, which are generally related to many extraordinary modes of perception.
I guess it is connected with arising of piti (spiritual pleasure) or niramisa sukha (hapiness born of not grasping) and most types of samadhi, certaint amounts of it starts the singularities. It is totally in line with teachings of Ajahn Brahm. It is also related to EBT, where siddhis (and extraordinary modes of perception are form of siddhi), are generally connected to development of higher mind (through samma samadhi).
I’m not sure if pali canon describes these things with such detail as modern manuals of meditation like for example Ajahn Brahms “Mindfulness Bliss & Beyond”.
But it would be great if there was more about it in the EBT.