Your writing is very interesting. Enough so, that I believe I can see signs of your own awareness of, or memory of, such matters. "Matters": one searches for words and finds none.
This state of mind you refer to: I sometimes call it "The Universal Background Memory."
For a long time of my life I got habitually attached to things that happened, and I forgot that memory. It happens all the time. The memory is there for everyone, because according to that memory there is neither one being alone nor are there many beings. But the memory returned to me at crucial or demanding times. A few times it stimulated vast corrections of misunderstandings about the things that otherwise distracted me. The most memorable (during "this life", whatever that means) was the first. It was so early that there are no handles to it such as words or well-structured clues.
The best materialist explanation I have read for such events--one that I can seem to locate within myself--is the calming and inspiring flush of DMT and Endorphin as the emergency result of extreme stress--something to do with the Pineal [corrected]. But I have not directly experimented in such or similar things. Your brain wave explanations are really quite interesting. Was there any attempt to correlate the patterns electrical changes with levels of relevant hormones. I think that a long time ago I read about measured correlation between actual death and DMT levels, and the idea that brain/hormone activity continues at some level for hours (or even days) beyond cessations of other life signs. But you are the expert in that area, certainly not I.
One of the problems I have found working with people who seem to have had such experiences, is that the human mind (if I may use that otherwise hijacked notion) is a notorious liar. When something unexpected happens like a loud noise in the middle of the night, the mind invents a story to explain it all. In the case of a noise while dreaming, the mind routinely invents the story to explain the noise and then plays that story as part of the interrupted dream before awakening the rest of the system, perhaps up to a full minute after the actual noise. A most curious behavior, I think. The same happens at an extreme level with these no-self or cosmic-self experiences. On earth they last about 3 seconds. Then upon resumption of 'mind' the explanations begin, and the explanatory story, well, explains it all. As I think you noted, with practice at concentration or meditation, the event can be assessed far less judgmentally. I know that the state can be induced in some people--I have done it a few times and I have seen it done reliably. Some subjects notice the profundity, but most explain it away. You can lead a horse to water, etc.
This particular event that I allude to above as recalling the cosmic background memory, occurred in the moment of my birth, as far as I can calculate. Whether I consciously recalled it or not in my first 20 years, it has figured very strongly in how I have viewed the world, from well before I could differentiate my physical senses or recognize figures against ground.
Those who take upon themselves certain meditative puzzles, such as “Where is here?” “What is reality?” or The Heart of Perfect Wisdom typically do so because they seek answers to troubling questions, such as “What is this world?” “From where did it come?” or “Why is it so painful and difficult?” For the most part, those who today take up puzzles of this sort expect that the answer will not come from the world outside them but will instead come from within themselves. They believe that if they take up the right problem, and if they work diligently to understand and resolve that problem, then in time the answer will simply become quite clear to them one way or another.
At some point along the way, perhaps at a time when effort and hope are both exhausted, the world of ordinary things dissolves before your gaze. If your attention does not waver in this moment, then what remains within awareness is for a few seconds a perfectly calm and clear intuition of reality, something completely beyond name and form, something so simple and obvious that it can never be mistaken for an illusion or a passing fantasy.
This is not a matter of calculating or reasoning out a pointed answer to a pointed question. It is about giving the puzzle all the attention and energy that it needs. Then, when the stage is fully set, it is about letting go of unreality all at once so that nothing in particular remains.
--
Solving these puzzles always means
letting go of unreality in order to see
precisely what remains.
--
In the moment you let go, the puzzle makes perfect sense and the answer is perfectly obvious; illusion dissolves, but reality remains exactly as it has always been and will always be.
Reality never changes. Being, which is the same as reality, never changes. Awareness, that you faithfully devoted to the puzzle, never changes in spite of all the distracting, ever-changing experiences within your awareness. In this moment nothing at all distracts you from realty.
If on this quiet occasion you understand this, then you truly know what reality is, which is no different from being and no different from your awareness even right now as you are reading these words. This is what is meant by intuition of reality: perfect self-knowledge of being; perfect self-awareness of reality.
One of the world's great puzzles is suddenly realizing that you are about to die. You let go, just to take one last look at the world, ... and ... ! ...:
Your writing is very interesting. Enough so, that I believe I can see signs of your own awareness of, or memory of, such matters. "Matters": one searches for words and finds none.
This state of mind you refer to: I sometimes call it "The Universal Background Memory."
For a long time of my life I got habitually attached to things that happened, and I forgot that memory. It happens all the time. The memory is there for everyone, because according to that memory there is neither one being alone nor are there many beings. But the memory returned to me at crucial or demanding times. A few times it stimulated vast corrections of misunderstandings about the things that otherwise distracted me. The most memorable (during "this life", whatever that means) was the first. It was so early that there are no handles to it such as words or well-structured clues.
The best materialist explanation I have read for such events--one that I can seem to locate within myself--is the calming and inspiring flush of DMT and Endorphin as the emergency result of extreme stress--something to do with the Pineal [corrected]. But I have not directly experimented in such or similar things. Your brain wave explanations are really quite interesting. Was there any attempt to correlate the patterns electrical changes with levels of relevant hormones. I think that a long time ago I read about measured correlation between actual death and DMT levels, and the idea that brain/hormone activity continues at some level for hours (or even days) beyond cessations of other life signs. But you are the expert in that area, certainly not I.
One of the problems I have found working with people who seem to have had such experiences, is that the human mind (if I may use that otherwise hijacked notion) is a notorious liar. When something unexpected happens like a loud noise in the middle of the night, the mind invents a story to explain it all. In the case of a noise while dreaming, the mind routinely invents the story to explain the noise and then plays that story as part of the interrupted dream before awakening the rest of the system, perhaps up to a full minute after the actual noise. A most curious behavior, I think. The same happens at an extreme level with these no-self or cosmic-self experiences. On earth they last about 3 seconds. Then upon resumption of 'mind' the explanations begin, and the explanatory story, well, explains it all. As I think you noted, with practice at concentration or meditation, the event can be assessed far less judgmentally. I know that the state can be induced in some people--I have done it a few times and I have seen it done reliably. Some subjects notice the profundity, but most explain it away. You can lead a horse to water, etc.
This particular event that I allude to above as recalling the cosmic background memory, occurred in the moment of my birth, as far as I can calculate. Whether I consciously recalled it or not in my first 20 years, it has figured very strongly in how I have viewed the world, from well before I could differentiate my physical senses or recognize figures against ground.
I wrote "Memory of Being Born" as an illustrative story for the topic, Universal Truth and Universal Context. https://archive.org/details/BurntEliot/page/85/mode/2up
Those who take upon themselves certain meditative puzzles, such as “Where is here?” “What is reality?” or The Heart of Perfect Wisdom typically do so because they seek answers to troubling questions, such as “What is this world?” “From where did it come?” or “Why is it so painful and difficult?” For the most part, those who today take up puzzles of this sort expect that the answer will not come from the world outside them but will instead come from within themselves. They believe that if they take up the right problem, and if they work diligently to understand and resolve that problem, then in time the answer will simply become quite clear to them one way or another.
At some point along the way, perhaps at a time when effort and hope are both exhausted, the world of ordinary things dissolves before your gaze. If your attention does not waver in this moment, then what remains within awareness is for a few seconds a perfectly calm and clear intuition of reality, something completely beyond name and form, something so simple and obvious that it can never be mistaken for an illusion or a passing fantasy.
This is not a matter of calculating or reasoning out a pointed answer to a pointed question. It is about giving the puzzle all the attention and energy that it needs. Then, when the stage is fully set, it is about letting go of unreality all at once so that nothing in particular remains.
--
Solving these puzzles always means
letting go of unreality in order to see
precisely what remains.
--
In the moment you let go, the puzzle makes perfect sense and the answer is perfectly obvious; illusion dissolves, but reality remains exactly as it has always been and will always be.
Reality never changes. Being, which is the same as reality, never changes. Awareness, that you faithfully devoted to the puzzle, never changes in spite of all the distracting, ever-changing experiences within your awareness. In this moment nothing at all distracts you from realty.
If on this quiet occasion you understand this, then you truly know what reality is, which is no different from being and no different from your awareness even right now as you are reading these words. This is what is meant by intuition of reality: perfect self-knowledge of being; perfect self-awareness of reality.
-- -- --
Reality and Being pp. 104-105 at archive.org/details/BurntEliot
One of the world's great puzzles is suddenly realizing that you are about to die. You let go, just to take one last look at the world, ... and ... ! ...:
https://burnteliot.substack.com/p/ocean-of-light-16
And then if you survive, you think about that. ... .
https://burnteliot.substack.com/p/the-five-paths-11