Kasina Meditation and Prophantasia

Six years ago I started practicing a form of meditation called Kasina meditation. This form of meditation comes from the Buddhist tradition. From this practice and activities relating to it I developed my imagination to a degree such that I possess the ability of "prophantasia" which is the ability to project, in a controlled manner, aspects of my imagination outwards in such a way that it overlays what is perceived as the external input from my senses. For example, this means I can imagine what an apple might look like and see it in such a manner that it takes the quality of having a clear external presence within my surroundings instead of just within my own mind.

This journey into exploring my mind was a long one and came with many surprises. The purpose of the earlier parts of this blog is to try to record these experiences with a generally neutral tone to which then I will add my own conjecture and opinions while also trying to stick to some rigor of scientific merit. To be clear about this point. At the beginning of this journey I started off as someone who was agnostic, then became a very spiritual person, and now I am of a very secular tone in my views. The later parts of this blog, after I try to describe the developments of these explorations, will take on a more auto-biographical account of the fallout of indulging in all of this.

Despite maintaining a secular viewpoint I find it interesting to link what I uncovered during the course of this to various other publications and philosophies including Buddhism and I may sometimes draw comparisons in an attempt to both record my musings on the matter and potentially offer the practice of Buddhism a valuable source of information about the practice of Kasina meditation that seems to be unavailable throughout extensive searches of the internet and the associated literature. 

 

In Buddhist circles Kasina meditation is noted as being a "special culprit" for having a tendency to cause people to lose touch with reality and I will certainly try to document my experiences in a way that could lend further aid to anyone who is mentally suffering as a result of the practice.

 

Practicing Kasina Meditation

If you look up Kasina meditation on the internet you might see that you run into a lot of fluff about it being some practice that leads to the development of various metaphysical super-normal powers of Buddhism amongst other things which one easily rejects as nonsense, and little information into the basic practice itself. I will attempt to convey the practice as I did it and adhere to describing the subjective phenomenology accompanying the practice.

 

The practice of Kasina meditation I did was as follows:

1. The meditator builds a quiet space in which a calm and focused mind can be cultivated. This space should be free of the distractions of life: Clean, tidy and uncluttered and removed from influences which lead the mind astray. I also preferred to do this practice with below-average lighting. Not dark, or dim, but enough so as to be able to comfortably see things without effort.
   
2. The meditator creates something that fits the properties of a "kasina" object of focus that will be used in the first stage of development in the practice.

The kasina objects traditionally used are a circular disc that ranges between 12 and 18 inches of a particular colour representing an "element". In this case it suffices to be just a uniform colour be it red, green, etc. The object should be uniform but free of properties like glare or shine or be uniformly irregular in that if it has irregularities that they have no discernible regular pattern (such as a flat square of earth). A good example of this is a uniformly red cloth wrapped around a wall-clock. There is a wealth of information about what can be used about this available on the web.

    3. The meditator finds a place to sit within the prepared space. For myself, I just used a cushion to support me as I sat down on a carpeted floor comfortably.

    4. The kasina object is affixed to a position which is traditionally three feet ahead of the meditator. It should not be too low and no higher than eye level.

    5. The meditator then begins a practice of quietening and stilling the mind. This is the same technique as other forms of meditation where it is encouraged to sit quietly and let thoughts arise and pass away without latching onto any and being spurned into ruminating upon them. If you have practice in other forms of meditation then this step will come naturally.

    6. When the mind then becomes quiet it is then that allows for the mental processes and concomitants to be turned evenly and rightly towards the subject of focus.

    7. The meditator at this stage sets the object of their focus to be the prepared kasina object. This means that you look at it and try to let your focus sit with it. There should not be any internal mental discourse about the object itself such as its structure or various other qualities. It is just a simple matter of sitting quietly and looking at the object with focus.

    8. At this stage the literature then describes the process of building up the "sign" (sanscrit: nimitta). The building up of this sign is what happens by the mind while it focuses on the object and starts to build up a sort of subconscious model of it and gains familiarity through this quietly focused exposure. Your mind and it's memory becomes familiar with the kasina.

    9. The next stage in literature is traditionally practiced differently from my own way in which the meditator is expected to make a "spatial translation" which involves getting up and going somewhere else to continue the practice. I did not do this and I think it is not necessary - although I would admit that I conjecture this is a practice that is designed to try to produce a plethora of intervening stimulii that serves as a way of eroding the results of the focus obtained to this point. This is an activity which is traditionally practiced over and over again. The purpose of this I would suppose is to help the meditator cultivate a way to gradually reduce the effect of external stimulii on what has been gathered so far. I did not do this myself and so proceeded directly to the next step.

    10. The meditator closes the eyes and should then perceive what is called the "counter-sign". This actually was exhibited to me as something like retinal fatigue - similar to how it looks when you would look at a bright object such as a candle or otherwise illuminating object for too long. Initially I thought this was all it was but then when continuing the practice I saw that there was another aspect to it for me.

    11. Taking focus of this "counter-sign" then, the meditator continues to quietly focus on the perceived image and by means of gentle but appropriate mental effort cultivates so that it should become a stable image. During this process the image may change colour or become warped or otherwise start to lose its qualities. For me, the primary activity was to preserve the general structure of this countersign and the quality of its appearance for as long as possible.

I will note a theory I have here that the process described in the preceding step may indeed be quite the whole "trick" to this form of meditation indeed. As the mind is not actually receiving valid data from the senses (even if this image comes from depleted chemicals in the eye or such) then there does still exist the perception that this is not coming from the senses. As the image gradually fades but the focus on continuing to perceive it remains constant there comes a kind of crossing of a threshold whereby what one sees versus what one is attempting to preserve by holding on to it tends to intermingle and produces a curious sensation of not quite knowing if you are seeing the retinal after-image or if "you really are doing it". Again, key to progression here is to remain focused and continue to cultivate the image for as long as one can. This paragraph is just my own theory of what is happening and I include it mostly for curiosity as it leads into other notions I may discuss later.

    12. After repeating this exercise enough times then the meditator, having been able to stably hold on to the image of the counter-sign for long enough... should actually be able to focus on actually producing this mental image with the mind closed. For myself, this was possible by proceeding normally into a quiet and focused state and then resolving to build the structure and colour of the counter-sign from before by gentle but firm resolve to see it. At this point I had been doing this form of meditation for about two weeks.

Nimitta in literature - Something for reference.

    13. One of the next details that is mentioned in the Buddhist literature is the process of "expanding the countersign" which builds on generating within the scope of your mind with your eyes closed and then pulling it closer and outward so that it comes to envelop your view. It takes some time to build up the capability not just to generate some stable counter-sign but then to start to have it manipulated in a way it can grow or otherwise deform by the process of a gentle focused willpower towards the goal of doing so - but once you can stably generate the counter-sign the process of plying the object as if it were malleable should be already fairly apparent.

   14. Traditionally now, at this point the practice proceeds by taking the generated counter-sign as itself an object of focus for a process called "meditative absorption" which is used for entering a Buddhist trance. (dhyāna/jhana in Buddhism). These are altered mental states which proceed in a progression of deeper exploration of the mind and are supposed to represent increasing levels of mental concentration one after another in a graded, step-wise fashion. While I did certainly find the subject interesting and took it upon myself to try to explore some of these states of consciousness... I don't really think it is appropriate or relevant here to go into any sort of detail about them for the purposes of this blog and so I will abstain.

At this point I had been practicing for about two to four hours a day on average for a period of three weeks. I changed over to exploring my abilities differently which is not part of the mentioned Buddhist literature but seems to be referenced indirectly as part of accounts whereby it led people astray. (I hadn't read any of that though at the time).

So following this, I would sit in the same space and stare instead at a hand-painted bajot table which had a hole at its center similar in size to a traditional kasina object. I remained in a state of meditative quiet and continued to stare fixedly in this spot. As I slowly went deeper into a state of quietude my vision of the surrounding environment tended to become altered in that it would slowly lose its detail starting with a light blurring of features progressing to shifting of colour until eventually I was sitting with my eyes opening observing the room completely in an almost monochromatic perspective where all objects seemed to have been drained of any cohesive substance except just being defined by the outlines of the edges of various features. At this point I began to see hallucinations. I call them hallucinations quite properly from my categorization of the observations because they manifested spontaneously without my own wish. These hallucinations occured as a coalescing of particle clouds of purple which seemed to grow organically out of various parts of the spaces in front of me and coalesced to form balls of roughly spherical clouds which curiously would move around the room or into and out of objects in various different manners.

I did not pay too much attention to these as I simply dismissed them as being part of my mind just playing tricks on me which I interpret years later as certainly the correct thing to have done. To further this point I quote a passage from The Eye of Discernment written by Phra Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo:

"For the most part, if meditators lack the training that comes from associating with those who are truly expert and experienced, they can become deluded or schizoid in a variety of ways. How so? By letting themselves get carried away with the signs or visions that appear to them, to the point where they lose sense of their own bodies and minds. Playing around with an external kasina is a special culprit in this regard. Those who lack sufficient training will tend to hallucinate, convinced of the truth of whatever they focus on, letting themselves get carried away by what they know and see until they lose touch with reality, making it difficult for any sort of discernment to arise. For this reason, in this guide I have taught to focus exclusively on the body and mind, the important point being not to fasten on or become obsessed with whatever may appear in the course of your practice."

So to summarise this post. It seems that this method, for me, was a way to cultivate the ability known as "prophantasia". However, at this stage it was uncontrolled so it can be adequately described as "hallucination". Later on, I will go into more detail about controlling these aspects. Considerable curiosity has recently been spurned into this ability and it's associated cousin "hyperphantasia" which was the spark which formed the motivation to produce this blog.

Lastly, I want to re-iterate the point by the teacher put previously that Kasina meditation is known to be dangerous and can go wrong when practiced by people who are inexperienced and not accompanied by a good guide to help them. The last thing I would like to hear is someone who was curious about developing something like prophantasia who read this and attempted to do something similar and went bananas. At the very least, if you are intent on doing so, then you should read what I have to offer on the subject to gain some tips regarding some appropriate measures to bolster your mental fortitude before exploring this yourself.

In the next posts I will continue to describe how my practice in meditation later proceeded from there into an exploration of prophantasia and discuss further the trials and tribulations of these experiences.