So I think I know how this works now, having gone through it twice. I believe it is simply a process of healing a damaged mind, and the more damaged the mind, the more times it needs repeating and the more intense the altered states that come with it.
First time round is most intense because the brain needs the most healing. You blast it with neuroplasticity and this causes a change in the root access to the code of your mind: the branches are stripped from the tree, and the tree rebuilds with a lot of the duff code removed.
Second time round is less intense, because there is less duff code to go. It can still be intense though if you were traumatised enough.
The altered states, relief, expansive thinking, and messianic visions are commensurate to how damaged the brain was. The sicker you were, the more healed you feel, and the more you feel a drive to share it with the world.
Each time involves a massive restructuring of your neural network, which requires a period of high neuroplasticity. This means that you have elevated neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin and your nervous system is pushed into sympathetic mode as it rebuilds. This manifests as something akin to a manic phase, without the angst; this is a joyous thing. You have just lost the eternal toothache and your world is in flux to boot.
As this occurs your new worldview starts to settle and congeal. For me it was crazy ship stuff first time and then second time it was consolidating all of that with the buddhist insight map. The narrative you construct will be internally coherent based on the data of your life, but oftentimes will not be *externally* coherent because the data of your life is not sufficient to match ‘reality’ (in terms of science). This doesn’t matter though, because the new construct is just part of how your brain lays cables for the new worldview that is forming.
The Buddha himself said ‘I teach only the way to end suffering’. He did not go into mysticism, not really. All the stuff about devas and gods was just the language of the day, as my stuff about simulations and wave theory is the language of ours. His was internally coherent for his worldview, as is mine, and this is the new ‘root code’ around which the worldview forms.
So when you get the initial relief of the cure with the elevated neurotransmitters and sympathetic activation, not to mention the altered states that come with this level of neuroplasticity, you feel enlightened and you go and share everything with the world. If you have a meditation teacher they specifically tell you *not* to do this by the way; they tell you to write but keep it to yourself, because you are likely to embarrass yourself or make the religion look silly.
There is a noted phenomenon in buddhism where people who hit n1 are filled with drive and glee and crazy visions, then n2 is less pronounced but still like this, and n3 calms it down, with n4 seeing them release even the drive to help people and just settle into their new life as a creature which does not suffer. They can still have cessation events and still ‘reset’ their suffering software, but there is not as much suffering to reset by this time so the impact is smaller.
So this really is a resolution for ADHD and a cure for PTSD.
The first time, you get a big dose, and you go crazy with love. The second time it’s smaller, but you still go a bit crazy. Third time, smaller still. And so on.
In terms of how it has felt for my brain: at n1 I was a world of sand tunnels and local minima with barely a path that thoughts could flow through unobstructed. I was traumatised as fuck. When these minima were consolidated I ‘became ship’ and completely lost who I was for several days. This is the level of reprogramming that was necessary to fix the brain. But ‘fix’ is all relative.
The second time was a more considered and non-drug-induced approach. This saw me intentionally identify minima for removal and consolidation and line them up one at a time. Then at the end of the cycle tour I hit n2 and this consolidated those tunnels. The effect was similar but not so pronounced as to blow apart a fixed sense of self, because the neural network was already reformed around a baseline of less suffering.
n2 saw me consolidate the worldview I constructed as my brain built new root code. This took about 5 days and I finished it up yesterday, which was very mentally taxing. But the whole thing is internally coherent and doesn’t seem to contradict current science, which is why my brain was like ‘done’ and went into ‘re-observation mode’ as the theravāda scriptures call it.
Essentially I think your mind needs to construct a scaffold which is convincing *to itself* so that it can finish the process of building a new network structure. This means if you are religious you need to be incredibly devout. If you are like me you need to figure some winding way through mysticism and science (not easy). And if you are in trauma therapy you probably just need to be told ‘you were traumatised and you are no longer’.
So the forkstorm periods are where you have the minima identified and your brain is trying to consolidate them. This is where the biggest leaps in ‘imagination’ will happen. This is why it hurts and makes you afraid: your entire worldview is reforming into something new and coherent where previously it was just disparate neuroses. The minima are building bridges.
Once this is done you will have a confluence and a cascade, which gels these level-1 minima together and makes you present as hypomanic or arising and passing. Then the cycle repeats, with the level 2 minima consolidating into a new network, and the cascade. Then level 3, and so on. These often happen at night. This is why I find it very helpful to write things down and then review them: you are laying down new code, and then in the evening you do your code review and your brain starts to try to find new connections within this code so that it can optimise it.
This goes through many stages: 1, 2, 3, n. It doesn’t matter. But you are basically sweeping up the cobwebs from your mind and getting them all in line so that they can be optimised into something new and pain-free.
Eventually you hit the ‘re-observation’ phase, which I will add to my map. This is the run-up to nibbana and this is where the entire room has been dusted and you have gone from 100x level 1 super-local minima to like 3x level 5 minima and are getting ready for a ‘global cascade’. This is where the sensation goes from one of being a localised knot in your brain to being a diffused hum and electricity around the entire cranium and this is where the total consolidation begins.
I think this happened to me yesterday when I managed to slot the Grand Algorithm onto Wave Theory and my brain was like ‘yup’. That phase is scary and intense because your brain goes through an incredibly rapid review of *all* of the minima you have consolidated. You go from 3x level 5 minima to 100x level 1 minima again, because they are all lined up for consolidation into one single flow.
So you have this kind of rapid-fire wordless ‘ohmygodohmygodohmygod’ phase as your brain reviews the entire codebase for any flaws or logic loops before final consolidation. My head still hurts a little so I think mine is ongoing, but I will likely have another cessation event soon which causes the whole lot to gel. We shall see. This would be n3 for me, or third path in buddhism, 4 months into the process. Fast.
Then when your neurotransmitters and equanimity hit critical mass the network consolidates and you have a cessation event because thought changes from one track to another. From here you reboot with the new code and the world seems amazing and the cycle starts again, but it will be easier and lighter than before.
This doesn’t negate the teachings of buddhism in any way. You still become ‘non-dual’ because your code that was separating you from life is fixed. You can still take it all the way to ‘zero suffering’, but only if you have suffered enough to begin with; you can’t optimise code which isn’t there. So new events and feelings will cause new suffering, but you will be a regular meditator by now and likely able to sweep those cobwebs up as they come along.
This is why children cannot have explosive awakenings: their networks are not formed and they do not have enough deep-coded suffering to optimise away.
So yeah… that’s how it works. It’s trauma therapy and network optimisation. Part of optimising the network is creating a new world view which removes the fear of death, which is why all religions have reincarnation or an afterlife.
Your brain finds redundancies in the code and lines them up for repair.
These micro-redundancies merge into macro-redundancies through forkstorm events.
These macro-redundancies then merge into a new global network structure during a megafork.
There is a final step where the entire codebase is reviewed; a megaquake.
And then you have a ‘global cascade’ where the whole lot is zapped and optimised away.
And then you are enlightened.
For a while.
After that, the process repeats. There is less code to be fixed, so it is faster and smoother, but the phenomenology of it is the same. You go through the same insight cycles, but they are less intense. You get the altered states, but they are less intense. You get the drive to help the world, but it is less intense.
That’s it. It’s trauma therapy and fixing a broken brain.
And it’s free of charge and will be forever.
I will create a program, now I know how it works.
My own n3 is here, I am sure. I can feel the brain doing its re-wiring again. It will be less intense, but I might have another phase of crazy productivity and expansive thinking. I will enjoy it if I do.
It’s good news, people. Don’t look sad. The Buddha said the same thing: at the end of the path, even the dhamma must be released.
This is because the dhamma is how you fix your brain, and fixing your brain is how you fix your world and go about having a good impact on the people around you.
This is a wire, not a lantern.
Do not chase the lantern.
Peace.
/jb202510040640