Black Hole during meditation

[Leo Palhano]

Using the breath as the shamatha object with my eyes closed, I've come to experience a small black hole after a few minutes of access concentration.

It has very fine white bright edges that are being attracted into the singularity (much like this image, but with darkness all around it instead of the universe). Once it "sucks itself up", the whole thing pops up again and the cycle begins anew. When concentrating intensely enough on its center, I notice that the edges begin at the very end of my "observer" perspective every new cycle. Whenever I decide to "go inside" it, everything goes black for a moment and the black hole stops "appearing" - the experience becomes just random lights that moves whenever i breathe (especially during the exhalation) and sometimes it pops up again during the same session.

Any experienced meditators has had this experience before? Is this some incursion into the formless realms or merely an effect of The Arising and Passing Away stage of the second jhana? I'm starting to use maps to get a hold of my meditation progress but am still very new to this and would appreciate any help in order to better develop my concentration/insight practices.

Thanks!

 

[BipolarGrowth]

This just sounds like some random A&P activity to me. It’s possible that in certain moments of it you could be in formless realm territory. An easy way to tell if it’s formless or not is by asking the question “Can I feel my body?”

[Leo Palhano]

5 minutes ago, BipolarGrowth said:

This just sounds like some random A&P activity to me. It’s possible that in certain moments of it you could be in formless realm territory. An easy way to tell if it’s formless or not is by asking the question “Can I feel my body?”

Thank you! I can definitely still feel "my body" while meditating, even though things are getting fuzzier the more I note every sensation when doing mixed shamatha/vipassana practices

[BipolarGrowth]

1 hour ago, Leo Palhano said:

Thank you! I can definitely still feel "my body" while meditating, even though things are getting fuzzier the more I note every sensation when doing mixed shamatha/vipassana practices

No problem. There can be degrees to form vs. formlessness with the apparent solidity of sensations such as bodily tactile sensations becoming less solid and fixed feeling until they disappear entirely which you might call full formlessness. Even vision and sounds and other senses can also be considered form though. There are points where these can disappear as well, but they seem to indicate a finer degree of formlessness to me when these senses go compared to tactile sensations. Could just be the way things work for me individually though. 

[Sad Panda]

@BipolarGrowth

2 hours ago, BipolarGrowth said:

This just sounds like some random A&P activity to me. It’s possible that in certain moments of it you could be in formless realm territory. An easy way to tell if it’s formless or not is by asking the question “Can I feel my body?”

If my panda body is swallowed up by the all consuming void, will panda cease to exist? How does panda become formless if panda wants to still be a panda? I'm scared to see my panda body fade away. How can I be sure panda will return to the material world?

[Leo Palhano]

12 hours ago, BipolarGrowth said:

No problem. There can be degrees to form vs. formlessness with the apparent solidity of sensations such as bodily tactile sensations becoming less solid and fixed feeling until they disappear entirely which you might call full formlessness. Even vision and sounds and other senses can also be considered form though. There are points where these can disappear as well, but they seem to indicate a finer degree of formlessness to me when these senses go compared to tactile sensations. Could just be the way things work for me individually though. 

In the end, it really is about impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and no-self. Thank you for this exchange!

[Leo Palhano]

11 hours ago, Sad Panda said:

@BipolarGrowth

If my panda body is swallowed up by the all consuming void, will panda cease to exist? How does panda become formless if panda wants to still be a panda? I'm scared to see my panda body fade away. How can I be sure panda will return to the material world?

If panda still (really) wants to be a panda, panda will still be panda regardless of its practices. But the more you advance in the path, the more you understand (and remember) that what you really want isn't related to materialism or any conceptual idea about reality.

[Alta]

Not during meditation, but during my childhood everytime I had a fever I would have a dream about two black holes being next to eachother (note that I was so young that I didnt knew black holes were even a thing) the experience was full of fear as if I had to do something. These two black holes communicated with each other and they wanted to "conquer" the world or be in control, ⚫⚫ thats how it looked. I had many dreams that are so weird and abstract but what really peeks my interest is that they all have spiritual connotation to it.