Episode Details

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-jhanas

This was a fun one. I think it’s the first time half the commenters accused the other half of lying.

Okay, “half” is an exaggeration. But by my count we had 21 people who claimed to have experienced jhanas (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21), and 7 who said they were pretty sure it wasn’t real as described (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7).

The former group include people like Tetris McKenna, who wrote:

I've experienced samatha jhanas. I don't do it so much now. The first few times you get on the edge of 1st jhana, it's difficult to achieve, because you see the wave of pleasure approaching, and grasp for it, and that grasping takes you away from it. So it's a carefu