Chapter 5 - LWC Book 3 - The Fourth Jhana

-This chapter is a continuation from Chapter 4. You can find more about the first 3 Jhanas there.- 

The Fourth Jhāna (catuttha-jhāna):

"With the abandoning of pleasure and pain, and with the previous disappearance of joy and grief, a bhikkhu enters upon and abides in the fourth jhāna, which has neither-pain-nor-pleasure and purity of mindfulness due to equanimity."

In my theory, the Fourth Jhāna involves:

• Opening the doors between moments. Mixing focus between the moments by opening the doors between them.

• During some meditative states, and especially in the first 3 Jhanas, time is not really a factor. It is hard to tell if a second has passed, an hour, or a day -  because the emphasis is not really on any physical reference. It is like meditating in one big long moment.

In the visual terms of the previous chapters, Jhāna 1, 2, and 3 are in the big long rectangular shape without significant internal or external borders.

 Non-meditation and other types of meditation can have consciousness moving through a series of interconnecting moments, like 3D frames of an animation. Each cube's borders represent the edges of spatial senses for that moment.

• When physical and remembered biorhythms, body states, positions or postures, in the Fourth Jhana, are used as references, a general temporal sense can be gained during meditation. This allows noticing the difference between a past part of a 4D mental construct and a present part of a mental 4D construct.

Temporal references are used to distinguish body states.

A mental construct from the 3rd Jhana can expand into 4D this way.

• You can start to connect your meditation to the real world, and to imagined environments, which both run on time.

• Use any useful Qs and pressures as temporary "walls" to divide moments after 3rd Jhana. Multiple 3rd Jhanic structures and/or multiple references for a single 3rd Jhanic structure, can be artificial or natural distinctions between moments.

• External rhythms such as the movements of the sun, moon, and stars (usually an indirect general sense of where they are, from biorhythmic and environmental references and anchors (like circadian rhythm and shadow lengths), not necessarily direct sight of them) can be used as references.

• The body will still affect consciousness during any environment. You can minimize environmental influence on consciousness at the body.

• But good luck trying to minimize consciousness at the body while keeping environmental awareness! You can do this, e.g., to be in a flow state - but unless you already have useful automatic processes set up, like good habits and enough practice, that flow state will run your body in "auto mode" steered by the environment!

• Also, imagined biorhythms and imagined body states and postures can be used as temporal references or anchors for your meditations, though this will take you towards Fifth Jhāna, possibly skipping Fourth Jhanic practice.

Because of the open doors, consciousness and focus quickly learns that it can flow away from most body states that are painful.

Focus will tend to flow towards other body states once this is figured out. Like reliving how a memory felt instead of feeling the present.

But the doors between those moments need to be open to make that option available.

You can begin to feel the differences between past, current, and future.

If you want a specific exercise: Try to think of your very recent past selves as a series of 3D shapes of your body. There are many options - some are: putting the 4D trails in a horizontal row beside you, or in a line behind you, with you as line leader - you can also try putting the trail inside you and growing larger to fit your current body as time passes, or shrinking into your heart. There are many ways to do try out. Think about it sort of like visual &/or proprioceptional trails or palinopsia.

Focus glides through and does not get stuck into any one moment or body state, at first. More practice in the Fourth Jhana allows control over the doors between moments. You can even shut some amount of focus and psi-pressure into a specific memory or into a potential future. To hold that memory in focus. But don't worry. Your focus / consciousness will return to the present moment, even if you spread it out between moments.

(One way of not letting focus get stuck in a passing moment's space or tank! or oneiric subbody, is by "bouncingthru", a technique discussed in later chapters.)

In LWC Theory, the Fourth Jhāna corresponds to 4D.

4th Jhana corresponds to 4D because it drags out, extends, references a 3D mental construct over time.

This means a 3D mental construct can be affected by any spacetime curvature or curl rate of the 4D timeline that's used as reference.

Because of more exposure and practice in the Third Jhāna, focus can also flow away from past or current body states involving pleasure. This is how the Fourth Jhāna can allow "neither-pain-nor-pleasure" as consciousness and psi-pressure become redistributable between various moments along time. How can focus be moved away from pleasurable moments? When starting the Fourth Jhana, your only tool to do this will probably be the tendency for focus to return to the present moment. You can use that. This is one way.

If the present moment is too pleasurable, just try meditating for longer until you become bored. The current moment is much easier to manipulate in terms of discontentment or contentment, than a memory is, for example. 

Otherwise, you can open doors to a more pleasurable moment than the current ones your focus is in, past or potential future. That is another way.

Noticing the flow of time as overlapping moments inside and outside of meditation can help you with opening doors.

Another exercise: extending a 3D mental construct out into a few potential near future moments or into a couple past moments will also help. That can be done in meditation in the Fourth Jhāna.

If you imagined that pressure-balancing over a space in 3rd Jhana could potentially stretch pressures thin

- now consider how thin pressure can be spread between multiple spaces in Fourth Jhana. You can see how the pressures can get low.

So even "joy and grief" can disappear during Fourth Jhana, because discontentment and contentment is able to spread out all over a timeline. Pressures can in this way thin out, weaken, or attenuate.