Are There “Evil Jhanas”?
Can jhāna be a horrifying experience?
A Meditator’s Question:
Lately, I feel assaulted by waves of intense unpleasantness in meditation, mostly when I’m stressed.
It’s as if the clutter in my head steadily multiplies in every direction with growing speed. This intense wave lasts around 5-10 minutes, and at its peak, it’s like rolling down a mountain in a car with no brakes, while everyone is screaming from the back seat.
You may find it relevant that I recently had a breakthrough in my practice, and entered jhāna for the first time several times. But now, I feel as if I might have stumbled into an “evil jhāna.”
Is there a relation between these intense unpleasant experiences and the arising of jhāna? And how should I move forward?
Oded’s Answer:
Fear not - what you’re describing is a common and expected experience, especially following first encounters with jhānic states.
To fully understand what’s going on, we first need to clarify two key terms that go hand in hand: Unification of Mind and Purification of Mind. While I assume you’re already familiar with both of them to some degree, I’ll take nothing for granted and include concise overviews in my reply.
You’ve been meditating diligently and consistently over time, holding an intention to direct your attention to the meditation object. Because of that, the independent sub-minds in your mind-system gradually let go of their inner conflicts and agendas, and began cooperating harmoniously instead.
This is what we call “Unification of Mind,” and it usually matures around The Elephant Path’s Stage Seven - the transitional stage bridging into the jhāna territory of Stage Eight. The growing unification results in a distinct rise of pīti, or meditative joy, and the entrance into jhāna, neatly matching your report of the breakthrough you had in your practice.
However, what’s often neglected on our meditative journey is the realization that Unification of Mind creates new “empty” space in consciousness, onto which other, less unified sub-minds can now project their contents.
This brings us to Purification of Mind - where powerful memories, past traumas, and challenging emotions make an appearance.
It’s likely you’ve experienced Purification of Mind earlier on your meditative journey, around Stage Four. Stage Seven, however, is characterized by a much deeper cycle of Purification of Mind, which can be far more powerful than the purification we meet at Stage Four.
Often, the purification is accompanied by a distinct narrative, linking it to a specific event or a worrying thought, but sometimes it can manifest as an unexplained standalone emotion - such as the sense of intense horror you encountered.
Back to your question, it wasn’t an “evil jhāna”; it was a powerful non-discursive case of Purification of Mind preceding jhāna.
You were wise to open your eyes when the experience became unbearable by your subjective standard. This is not competitive suffering, and we’re not here to traumatize ourselves - quite the contrary. To take it a step further, you can use the skillful means of slowly and mindfully turning your head left and right, behind and above, to inform the part of the brain involved in the fear response, the amygdala, that there’s no physical danger. No snakes, tigers, or dragons to be found, so you’re perfectly safe in your room.
In your next sessions, should Purification of Mind occur again, I recommend you let it unfold naturally. Be as equanimous as you can, and trust the process. Culadasa provides excellent guidance in The Mind Illuminated for dealing with purifications, and I know a few more effective tools that aren’t included in the book. I’d be happy to share them with you, if you’d like to hear.
Moving forward, it’s also worth mentioning that jhānic experiences tend to refine over time. At first, they are quite turbulent, and often unpleasant in body and mind, as you’ve discovered. When we meet that wave of discomfort with equanimity, the sensations gradually become more bearable, then pleasant, then unbelievably pleasant, then blissful, until they finally subside to the profound tranquility of Stage Nine.
Keep going courageously.
Everything you described is by the book, and you’re on the right track.
With Metta,
Oded
