Disturbing daydream about mind

**VagalTone** · 02-08-2014 09:20 PM

Ok, so i was reading this quote from The attention revolution by Alan Wallace ( i ask you to read and see what comes to your mind )

According to accounts from the Indo-Tibetan tradition of Buddhism, the
first sign of the achievement of shamatha is the experience of a sense of
heaviness and numbness on the top of the head. This allegedly happens to
anyone who experiences this transition, regardless of the specific method
followed. It is said to feel as if a palm were being placed on the top of your
shaved head. It’s not unpleasant or harmful, just unusual.
Something remarkable must be taking place in the cortical region of your
brain at this point, but so far, no one has monitored the brain correlates of
this shift using magnetic resonance imaging or an electroencephalograph.
This physical sensation on the top of the head is symptomatic of a shift in
your nervous system (or network of vital energies) that is correlated with
gaining freedom from mental dysfunction (daushtulya), a general state of
mental imbalance characterized by stiffness, rigidity, and unwieldiness.
Consequently, you achieve a state of mental pliancy (prashrabdhi), in which
your mind is fit and supple like never before.

As i was reading those bolded words, it came vividly to my mind an image of a meditator who had freed himself from a kind of machine hardware after achieving some meditative insight. That machine hardware represented the way the human mind apprehended reality, and therefore is/ was responsible for many human afflictions. The meditator was finally freed from a distorted view of reality and suffering

It was a disturbing, somewhat poignant, daydream - but i feel it was an important message

**Dannon Oneironaut** · 03-13-2014 11:23 AM

Hmmm... interesting, kind of like Neo unplugging from the Matrix?

It is funny though that I have never noticed that particular sensation when achieving shamatha... however it doesn't mean that that sensation didn't happen. Shamatha is one-pointed calm-abiding so such sensations might go by unnoticed. If I made that sensation the object of my shamatha I could investigate it. It is an interesting theory that quote speaks of. Certainly there is a shift in the nervous system when achieving shamatha.