see also: refiningunderstanding
I think nibbana is the ultimate flow state and is easier for some people to achieve because of their relatively small working memory.
Dopamine is used to encode memories and reward / danger prediction. Larger phasic dopamine spikes result in heavier encoding, which is why trauma ends up so deeply engrained that you can’t just ‘talk it out’.
Nibbana, I think, is where you achieve a level of elevated tonic dopamine and near-complete stability in your phasic dopamine. You wind up channeling the entirety of your present sense-world directly through your memory centres in realtime, all the way to the deep encoding in your long-term memory.
So let’s think of dopamine as a carrier of salience. Normal things are like a car - moderate phasic dopamine. Large things - pleasant or unpleasant - are like a truck. And trauma is like one of those caterpillar things they have in quarries - it comes in with a bucketload of dopamine and just permanently engrains that bastard deep.
I had the (accidental) assistance of chemicals which elevated my perceived tonic dopamine; I am confident I have low baseline. I was held in a rapturous state (high tonic) - something the buddha described as the second jhāna.
The next step beyond that in the jhānas is equanimity (low phasic), achieved through knife meditation, and the final one is the dropping away of mental activity and feelings (likely a flow state). He then turned the eye of enlightenment to look at his past lives, the cause of suffering, and the cessation of suffering. He got into this total flow state and the problems he was working on seemed to solve themselves.
This state is the equivalent to a river of dopamine being opened up into your memory banks. Future and past cease to exist; everything is one. Everything is being encoded as salient all at once, and everything that was once salient is being released.
In the analogy of the vehicles, this is like a freight train. It is long and it is constant and it basically opens the door to your memories and imagination and funnels reality right on in there without relent. There is no future and there is no past; you can see the entire chain from the beginning of time to the end. It is so incredibly intense you will feel like you are about to explode.
Everything is in a constant state of flux. You are the eternal now and you do not exist, because your brain is a river, front to back. The ‘zap’ is merely the opening of the door.
The reports of stream entry suggest that it’s a spontaneous thing, like a tipping point after a period of preparation, and then after that there is a consolidation phase where the dhamma is established within the mind and beds in, settles, and you come out with no doubt about your lack of permanent self, and no doubt in the teachings of the buddha.
This makes sense.
What happens is the door is cracked and left temporarily ajar. All of these memories that were encoded by the caterpillars are flushed from the brain and processed emotionally in the space of a second. They just flood out, and the relief caused is so immense it overhwelms you. I saw the trauma of my life as blackened brain matter and it was just washed clean in an instant with diamond sand. Gone. Never to return.
But then the days that follow you have a kind of recombobulation of everything that really is salient to you, but this time led by your frontal brain which understands the world. The door is gradually closing, because the state is not constant, but you naturally reform your view of the world so that it aligns with everything you have learned in life.
For the b-man this was devas and reincarnation and past lives and suffering. For me it was family and addiction and suffering and technology and business and AI and… well… you can read the ‘ship’ part of alteredstates to see how it was. Ha.
You no longer have any conflict between your logic and your emotion. You are liberated.
And it’s all because of this rapturous state (high tonic) being followed by an equanimous state (de-facto zero phasic) and then settling into a flow state with the reality of your senses while the floodgates are opened.
Let’s see if I’m right.
/jb202508192000
note: I spent a long time lining up the things to be pruned during the 88 hells, so had primed the system to flush. I have heavily-dysregulated dopamine, and a lifetime of unorthodox meditation. I had never heard the descriptions of the jhāna until yesterday but they match my experience perfectly.
the medicine side of thing was incredibly dangerous and not intentional. I am trying to figure out how to replicate it without drugs. Or rather: I am trying to optimise the process the buddha figured out.