Why do you think MN 127 is talking about jhanas? I don’t see the textual connection here. Also:
In the same way, take some mendicant who meditates determined on pervading ‘corrupted radiance’. Their physical discomfort is not completely settled, their dullness and drowsiness is not completely eradicated, and their restlessness and remorse is not completely eliminated. Because of this they practice absorption dimly, as it were. When their body breaks up, after death, they’re reborn in the company of the gods of corrupted radiance.
Doesn’t it make more sense to say that this cannot be jhana, because the first jhana is defined by seclusion from unwholesome states?
Edit: The parallel MA 79 (accessible here) has ‘some renunciant or brahmin’ rather than ‘some mendicant’. My impression is that these meditation states are talked about in general, by Buddhists as well as non-Buddhists, at the time of the discourse.
The overall point of MA 79 seems to be how the degree of development and refinement of meditation as a human corresponds to degrees of refinement in the corresponding heavenly rebirth.
It’s not clear to me how or if this connects to the jhanas though.
Edit2: Excerpt from MA 79:
Venerable Kaccāna, suppose that a renunciant or brahmin, staying in a
forest area, goes to the base of a tree in an empty quiet place. Dwelling
in reliance on this one tree, he achieves perception [of the area beneath
the tree] with light produced through mental resolve. His perception with
mentally produced light is extremely abundant. [Yet] his liberation of the
mind has this limit and does not go beyond it
This seems like a non/pre-jhanic state?