/lit/ - Literature

>>18971404
In Vajrayana Tibetan Buddhism, another body is added over those three — the Vajrakaya (diamond body, transcendental body, the enlightened state containing the other three bodies within itself), corresponding of course to turiya samadhi, the fourth state in Hindu philosophy, pure awareness that includes and transcends physical perception, dreaming, and the state of deep dreamless sleep (which also corresponds to the causal body).

Would you like to go even deeper, too far out for most of our readers’ tastes, perhaps? This same division is made in Carlos Castaneda’s books about Nagual shamanism he learned under his shamanic guide, Don Juan Matus, in which they are called the first attention (ordinary, physical, waking life), the second attention (the state of dreaming), and the third attention (the state of deep dreamless sleep). Nagual shamanism is essentially about learning to do acrobatics with awareness. The second attention, for instance, is developed by lucid dreaming, which eventually turns into astral projection in the Castaneda books. The third attention is reached by (???) — unexplainable. Read the Castaneda books if you want to learn more, although, ironically, the Nagual shamans never get into the truth of the enlightened state which is beyond all these attentions, but rather is about basically living one’s life in a very specific, controlled, mindful way, including through lucid dreaming and the use of hallucinogenic drugs, to hone the higher attentions most humans don’t have control of, enter higher states of awareness, meet immaterial beings in this dreaming realm while lucid dreaming, astral projecting, having out-of-body experiences or the like.

In the modern day, some of this was even somewhat “scientifically” confirmed and looked into — as much as it can be — by Robert Monroe, the businessman-turned-unconventional-paranormal-researcher who became obsessed with OBEs (out of body experiences) then eventually claimed he learned how to do it at will by getting into trance sleeps between waking and dreaming, meeting with ghosts of the dead as Nagual shamans claimed to be able to, and so forth.

I sound batshit insane, don’t I?