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Tag: identity

Shifts in the sense of self, boundaries, and narrative

  • Bypassing the Biological BIOS: Basic Instructions for Survival

    In this post, I apply a systems-engineering lens to the human experience, comparing our cultural conditioning to an operating system and our evolutionary instincts to a computer’s BIOS. I explore how specific meditative states act as a way of bypassing the biological BIOS, temporarily suspending the deep-seated directives of sex, space, and self.

    The BIOS: Innate Instructions for Survival

    At the most fundamental level, all living organisms are born with innate instructions that govern survival and reproduction. This is analogous to the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) in computers, which is pre-installed and essential for basic operation before any other software is loaded.

    In biological terms, these instructions are encoded in DNA and expressed as instincts and reflexes—automatic responses that allow an organism to feed, avoid danger, and reproduce, even without prior experience. The BIOS in machines serves a similar function, providing foundational routines necessary for initialization and basic hardware interaction.

    Like any human being, I received my “operating system” and initial programs as soon as I could process language—from religious conditioning to mathematics—constantly updated by daily experience to dictate behavior, with thoughts as the interface.

    When meditation enabled me to be conscious without thoughts, it felt as though my post-birth operating system and programming had been removed. Yet the BIOS—the deepest layer of survival code—remained.

    Fusion in the Three Dantians: Bypassing My BIOS

    When I experienced the yin–yang fusion in the Dantians, my perception of certain fundamental concepts—concepts I had always taken for granted—changed dramatically.

    In the Lower Dantian (LDT), the duality of male–female “uncollapsed,” merging into a single entity for which the concept of sex was irrelevant.

    In the Middle Dantian (MDT), the uncollapsed dualities related to spatial perception—far and near, in and out. Space, as I had always understood it, lost its meaning.

    In the Upper Dantian (UDT), the duality of me–other dissolved. The sense of an isolated “I” facing an external “Other” gave way to a profound feeling of oneness.

    A Hypothesis: Consciousness and Its Core Directives

    These dualities that were always taken for granted could very well be the basic BIOS directives embedded in a living organism:

    The first directive would likely be the distinction between “you” and “other.” This would be essential if you were a mouse facing a cat, or a human facing a tiger.

    Next, there would be an understanding of three-dimensional space—concepts like near and far, in and out—crucial for navigating the world, finding food or mates, and avoiding predators.

    Finally, there must be an instruction tied to reproduction: the concept of sex, ensuring continuation of the species.

    With these simple directives, any organism—using its particular hardware of sensors and actuators—would have reasonable chances of survival and reproduction.

    Under this hypothesis, being conscious without thoughts was like bypassing my operating system, while the fusion of yin and yang in the three Dantians felt akin to temporarily bypassing these three BIOS directives.

    But one fundamental instruction still remains. To survive, the most basic directive appears to be: “You are.”

    The Final Duality: Being vs. Nonbeing

    So basic is this directive that, even after witnessing the fusion of the opposites—male and female, in and out, me and other—the dualities inherent in “I am” remain stubbornly intact: being vs. not being, Self vs. nothingness.

    How could there be a reality where being and nonbeing are one and the same? How could there be a reality not experienced by “my Self,” the interface that has functioned so well since birth? At this moment, that remains inconceivable to me.

    The final duality of Being versus Non-being remains the last encrypted line of code. Whether it can be bypassed — and what that would even mean — I do not know. Having witnessed the dissolution of other dualities I once considered fundamental, I no longer assume this one is permanent. But I also no longer assume that its dissolution would reveal something “more luminous.” It might simply reveal what remains when all directives have run their course.

     

     

  • The Pull Toward Belief: Wishful Thinking After Insight

    This post documents a tendency I noticed in myself: the pull toward belief and metaphysical conclusions even after recognizing them as speculation. It is included not as argument, but as an honest record of that tension.

    Unfamiliar Territory

    Dual practice has taken me into unfamiliar territory, altering my perception of my body and, more importantly, of my identity.

    The physical sensation commonly referred to as qi often appears as if a subtle substance were entering through specific points in the body, then flowing along channels, and eventually expanding until it fills the entire perceptual field. As this happens, the ordinary sense of bodily boundaries begins to dissolve. The distinction between inside and outside, near and far, becomes less clear. The experience resembles what I imagine the state of a disembodied consciousness might be like.

    Yet the most striking effect is not the sensation itself, but the way it anchors attention. The flow is so absorbing that the usual stream of thought can come to a complete stop. When this happens, the structure we normally identify as “myself” begins to fade.

    When the Narrative Self Falls Silent

    The narrative self — the ongoing story constructed by the brain, closely associated with what neuroscience calls the default mode network — temporarily disappears. That narrative normally connects memories of the past with projections into the future, maintaining the sense of a continuous personal identity. When the process falls silent, what remains is simply awareness observing itself◊The three layers of the Self.

    In that state, stripped of narrative and largely detached from bodily representation, consciousness appears strangely connected with everything else. The fundamental duality of self versus other begins to look less like an intrinsic feature of reality and more like a functional construct — a mechanism shaped by evolution to help the organism survive in a complex environment.

    The Scientific Interpretation

    From a rational and scientific perspective, the most straightforward explanation is that dual practice induces altered states of consciousness. In those states perception is reorganized in ways that feel profound but ultimately reflect nothing more than changes in neural dynamics. Seen this way, the experience would be comparable to the mental “journeys” produced by psychedelic substances: interesting, perhaps even meaningful, but essentially illusions generated by the brain.

    Under that interpretation, such states are best confined to the context of practice. Taking them literally while interacting with the world could easily become maladaptive.

    A Persistent Question

    And yet, once I return to ordinary awareness, I cannot completely dismiss the possibility that something else might be involved.

    One aspect in particular seems difficult to ignore: the distinction between the narrative self and the awareness that observes it. For most of my life I assumed that the narrative voice in my head was “me.” But closer inspection suggests otherwise. The observing awareness appears to remain constant while the narrative continually changes.

    The Narrative Self as a Cognitive Tool

    Curiously, recent developments in artificial intelligence offer an unexpected illustration of this distinction. It is now possible to construct systems that generate a convincing narrative self — systems that can pass variants of the Turing test and engage in complex conversation. They do so through layers of artificial neural networks that transform language and knowledge into high-dimensional vectors, processing those representations through billions of weighted connections to produce coherent responses.

    From a functional perspective, the process is mechanical. It resembles, at least in broad terms, the way biological neural networks might produce the stream of thoughts that we experience as our inner narrative. If that analogy holds, the narrative self may be less like an essence and more like a tool — a highly sophisticated cognitive instrument that evolution has given us, much as it gave us hands or eyes.

    Useful, even indispensable for navigating the world — but perhaps not identical with what we fundamentally are.

    The Observer Behind the Story

    What feels closer to an essence is the bare awareness that has been present throughout my life, silently observing events from within. When attention turns toward that awareness itself, it seems strangely unaffected by the passage of time. It appears prior to the stories that the mind constructs about the past and the future.

    And when, in certain moments of practice, that awareness seems to merge with a wider field of experience — as if it were part of something larger — it becomes difficult not to wonder whether the experience might point to something real.

    Perhaps it is only a temporary neurochemical state, a surge of endorphins and neurotransmitters reorganizing perception in unusual ways. That explanation is entirely plausible.

    But it is also possible — just possible — that such states reveal a latent potential of consciousness, hinting at forms of experience that our ordinary cognitive framework rarely allows.

    A Space for Speculation

    At this point speculation inevitably begins. Or, stated more charitably, one starts forming tentative hypotheses.

    After all, despite the extraordinary progress of science, our understanding of some fundamental aspects of reality remains limited. We still do not know what consciousness ultimately is. Our grasp of matter and time, although extraordinarily precise mathematically, does not yet explain their underlying nature.

    If we acknowledge that ignorance with some humility, then the possibility — long explored in mystical traditions across cultures — that consciousness might extend beyond the narrow framework of individual identity cannot be entirely ruled out.

    I find myself inclined to consider that possibility, even if cautiously. Not the anthropomorphic God of institutional religion, modeled after earthly rulers, but something closer to what mystics have described in very different languages: the God of Teresa of Ávila, the Dao of Daoism, or the Brahman of Indian philosophy.

    Accepting such a possibility would place me, somewhat reluctantly, among believers — a position that has never felt entirely comfortable to me. For most of my life I associated belief with intellectual laziness, with the human tendency to replace uncertainty with comforting narratives.

    Perhaps the mind is rarely as consistent as it likes to imagine. Even someone deeply shaped by skepticism can find himself wishing that certain possibilities might be true. Recognizing the narrative self as a cognitive tool allowed me to hold my stories lightly, leaving space for the silent observer that remains when the story ends.

     

  • Limits of Visualization: When Even Luminous Forms Dissolve

    After the initial discovery of visualization as a functional interface, the practice evolved into a daily discipline. This post documents the consolidation of that experience and the gradual realization of the limits of this practice—where even the most compelling internal figures must eventually dissolve.

    A Pleasant Stage — Containing the Seeds of Its Own Ending

    After discovering the overwhelming mental states induced by this visualization practice—which might be called Yidam, though it may not align perfectly with canonical definitions—I repeated the procedure daily. Soon, I realized the being I was fusing with was not a goddess, but the idealized memory of my first Tantric lover — the woman who had introduced me to those states long before I had any conceptual framework for them.

    Day after day, I saw her running toward me—her eyes filled with joy, her heart with love, her belly with lust—exactly the feelings I had experienced with her, and in my first visualization experiment. We fused in the deepest embrace, but this time, skin was no barrier. Our bodies overlapped, and every cell within me danced with the cell within hers, from head to toe. What followed had no adequate name — it contained lust, love, and joy, but dissolved the boundaries between them.

    This was an extremely pleasant stage in my journey, yet it contained the seeds of its own ending. As the practice evolved and reshaped my perception, the truth became evident: I was not fusing with anything—goddess or lover. I was simply discovering the real nature of this subtle body, hidden all my life and now unveiled. There was no “other” interacting with me. It was just me—to be precise, this pure consciousness free from thoughts, which had always been there and had nothing to do with the “mundane me” made of thoughts, fears, and desires. This seemed to be a different mode of ‘me’ — one less entangled in narrative — finally integrating with the felt sense of the body.

    Changes in Perception

    As the fusion extended across what internal alchemy traditions call the three dantians, distinct perceptual shifts became apparent.

    At the level of the lower dantian, sexuality lost its binary character. The energetic body revealed itself as neither male nor female — or perhaps as containing both polarities simultaneously. Biological sex remained a fact, but it no longer defined the structure of experience.

    At the level of the middle dantian, what had initially appeared as intensified love transformed into something more spatial than emotional. A strange feeling of spaciousness—like watching the starry sky from a mountaintop, yet feeling I could touch the stars, as if a subtle veil separating near from far had been removed. Love, typically structured as a relation between self and other, shifted toward a perception of inevitable interconnection once experiential space ceased to function as a barrier.

    At the level of the upper dantian, fusion expressed itself as joy — not private satisfaction, but shared exhilaration. The closest ordinary analogue would be the collective surge when a team scores a decisive goal, or when a crowd sings in unison. In those moments, individual identity briefly relaxes and a larger coherence takes precedence. The joy was of that nature: distributed rather than owned.

    These shifts did not prove anything metaphysical. They demonstrated how radically perception can reorganize when identity becomes fluid.

    Taking Possession of the Energy Body

    Eventually, however, the figure faded.

    The lover, the goddess, the dakini — all dissolved. What remained was a persistent sense of energetic coherence without a relational counterpart. One duality had collapsed: there was no longer an “other” to fuse with. The qualities previously attributed to her were now recognized as intrinsic potentials within my own experiential field.

    Yet this resolution generated a new tension. From this expanded, less localized mode of embodiment, there emerged an impulse to extend the same fusion outward — not toward a human partner, but toward reality as a whole. Energy no longer seemed directional. It appeared to arise from everywhere at once.

    It would have been easy to interpret this as movement toward something “divine.”

    More cautiously, I would say this: the configuration began to resemble what many traditions describe as divine — boundaryless, sexless, interconnected. Whether that resemblance reflects ontological truth or the nervous system’s capacity for large-scale integration remains an open question.

    The experience was convincing. Convincing experiences, however, are not the same as verified conclusions.

    Balancing Yin and Yang

    A final corrective emerged in a later internal image of my dakini. This time, she was not the soft, feminine lover of the first stage, but a warrior princess wielding her sword, full of power, boldness, and assertiveness. The symbolism was transparent: in leaning deeply into receptive (yin) qualities, I had overcorrected. If androgyny was the goal, it required dynamic balance, not identification with one pole.

    That marked the end of this pleasant but incomplete stage.

    The scaffold evolved into a powerful reinforcement loop before dissolving. Recognizing the limits of this practice led to a clearer understanding of how imagery and identity co-construct one another, and why even the most luminous forms must be relinquished.

     

     

  • Imagery as Energetic Interface: Visualization Without Belief

    After the internal architecture of sensation dissolved into a more permeable, field-like structure, new forms of practice became possible. This post documents one such experiment. What Tibetan traditions would call a yidam entered my practice not as an object of devotion or visualization, but as the use of imagery as an energetic interface—an imaginal scaffold that allowed overwhelming energetic dynamics to integrate coherently.

    The Initial Skepticism

    When I first encountered the concept of a yidam, I understood it as a visualization practice—imagining something until it eventually became experiential. This clashed with my perspective on several levels.

    First, I was already experiencing extraordinarily intense sensations through my Tantric sex practice. Why imagine something when I had direct access to the experience itself? Second, my own observation was that mental activity tended to suppress sensation; so deliberately engaging the mind—after having learned to quiet it—felt like a step backward. Third, my stubborn atheism made “deity worship” unthinkable. The practice seemed entirely out of reach.

    Then came a pivot point. A respected friend on a forum offered a technical clarification:

    “True deity practices are not about visualizing an imaginary being, but actually connecting to one. The energy of the being manifests in your local mind-space. Any images or visions arise naturally as the mind gives form to overwhelming energetic flows.”

    This description of “connection” resonated immediately. In 2017, with my partner-based practice on hold, I decided to experiment by using imagery to bridge the gap. I focused on one stand-out principle: “Your own essence and the deity’s essence are indivisible.”

    The Fusion Protocol

    So I decided to experiment with fusion using the figure of a goddess. I did not place her on a pedestal to worship her. Instead, I approached the exercise as an operational test: could I reproduce, internally, the same kind of fusion I had previously experienced in Tantric sex — the only phenomenological framework I truly understood?

    The effects were immediate and intense. The familiar yin–yang dynamics I had experienced with my human partner re-emerged with remarkable clarity. However, the usual sense of bodily separation began to dissolve. Rather than two distinct bodies interacting, there was a shared experiential field: I felt her within my perceptual space, and myself within hers.

    Visualization soon became unstable. When attention shifted toward the expansive, outward (yang) component, she appeared distinctly external — clearly “out there.” Yet the simultaneous presence of the contractive, inward (yin) component inverted the frame of reference, as if the experience were unfolding from within her perspective. The conventional distinction between inside and outside gradually lost structural coherence.

    This led to a significant realization. The “feminine” sensations I had previously attributed to my partner were not imported from outside. They were accessible within my own system. No external proxy was required to enter that androgynous configuration.

    From Sex to Love to Joy

    As in Tantric practice, the fusion was initially strongest from the diaphragm downward — what internal alchemy traditions call the Lower Dantian. The next step was deliberate: extend the fusion upward, toward the heart.

    If the lower register operates at the frequency of sex, the heart operates at the frequency of love. Not domesticated affection, not attachment, but something less conditioned. I attempted to isolate the pure “signal” of love, abstracted from any specific person, narrative, or memory. Stripped of biography, what remained was a quality — an open, non-defensive warmth without an object.

    When attention stabilized on that signal, a powerful wave propagated through the chest. The experience was intense, almost overwhelming — a systemic surge rather than a localized sensation. The two presences no longer felt like interacting bodies, but like differentiated aspects within a single energetic configuration. If I saw her as a goddess, one might call it prayer. Operationally, it was resonance.

    Weeks later, however, a structural asymmetry remained. From the heart downward the fusion felt coherent, but above that level it resembled a single organism with two cognitive centers. The question became almost technical: what human analogue corresponds to fusion at the level of the head?

    The answer emerged through the eyes. In the inner representation, her eyes were the only sharply defined feature. In a brief, almost magical shift, I perceived a spark of joy there. The reaction was immediate: a powerful surge entered through my own visual field and flooded the head — not as sexuality, not as love, but as unfiltered joy.

    The key realization was simple and destabilizing at once: her joy and my joy were not two events in exchange. They felt like the same event, perceived from different reference points. This shared joy was the missing parameter.

    The Scaffold

    I still wonder what truly happened. Against my own convictions, I undeniably perceived those eyes — as if something external were addressing me. The experience carried a persuasive realism that remains difficult to dismiss.

    My working hypothesis remains conservative: this was likely a biological interface through which the nervous system metabolized intensity. Regardless of its ontological status, the temporary assumption of duality — myself and the goddess — proved operationally effective. Using imagery as an energetic interface functioned as a scaffold, a provisional structure that allowed the system to stabilize and reorganize under conditions of high charge. Once integration was achieved, the scaffold was no longer necessary.

    Years later, that dual framing dissolved on its own. There was no goddess and no separate self, only a unified process without internal division — at least at the level of experience. But that development belongs to another discussion.

  • The Dissolution of the Narrative Self: Where Observation Ends

    Most of the reflections in this blog have stayed within the boundaries of observation and cautious interpretation. This post explores the edge of that boundary: the dissolution of the narrative self, and the speculative questions that arise when the familiar sense of ‘I’ begins to fade.

    Psychophysical Effects of Energetic Practice

    The systematic practice of working with qi — stripped of cultural symbolism and observed as a psychophysical phenomenon — produces clear perceptual transformations. It changes the relationship to the body, to thought, and to the sense of identity. There is no need to invoke mysterious energies to describe this: sustained attention is sufficient to alter neurophysiological patterns and, with them, the way experience is integrated.

    These effects are reproducible enough to be taken seriously. They do not require metaphysical assumptions to be acknowledged as real experiences.

    Attenuation of Narrative Processing

    In certain states, discursive thought attenuates significantly. Bodily sensation can become diffuse or even recede from the foreground. What remains is a form of presence without narrative content. There is no story, no project, no internal commentary. Only experiential continuity◊The three layers of the Self.

    From the inside, this can feel more fundamental than the ordinary self. The narrative identity that normally organizes experience becomes less central, sometimes temporarily absent.

    This shift alone can be deeply transformative. And this is where the temptation appears.

    The Interpretive Expansion

    At this point, a predictable cognitive move tends to occur.
    If there can be consciousness without thought,
    if there can be presence without clearly defined bodily sensation,
    could that consciousness persist after death?

    The human mind tends to extend meaningful states beyond their immediate frame. If something feels more basic than the narrative self, it becomes tempting to imagine that it might also be more durable than the self. In classical terms: that what dissolves is narrative identity, but not consciousness itself.

    From there, familiar hypotheses arise:
    Is that “presence” what traditions call God?
    Is individual consciousness a local expression of a universal consciousness?
    Would death be a reintegration into that common ground?

    Intellectually, these questions are understandable. Empirically, we have no basis to affirm them◊Wishful thinking.

    Distinguishing Phenomenon from Ontology

    The fact that a subjective state is experienced as expansive, stable, or impersonal does not imply that it exists independently of the organism that generates it. Contemporary neuroscience provides sufficient models to explain how a reduction in narrative activity can produce a lived sense of unity or presence without self. None of those models require postulating post-mortem survival.

    This does not invalidate the experience. It only delimits its interpretive scope. A state can be subjectively powerful and still remain biologically instantiated.

    What the Practice Actually Demonstrates

    The most honest stance, from a scientific attitude, is to recognize two things simultaneously: The transformative experience is real as lived phenomenon, but the metaphysical conclusions the mind constructs from it are speculative.

    The practice does not demonstrate that consciousness survives. It does not demonstrate that a universal mind exists. It does not demonstrate that “heaven” or “God” correspond to an objective ontological state.

    What it does demonstrate — in a practical sense — is that the identity we feared losing was not as solid as it seemed. Through the attenuation of narrative processing, I encountered a state that, while perhaps not eternal, feels markedly less contracted. As identification with the self loosens, the fear of disappearing correspondingly diminishes.

    Sufficient Transformation

    Perhaps that is transformation enough.

    It does not turn death into an illusion.
    It does not turn presence into an eternal entity.
    But it does make life less contracted.

    At the boundary between experience and speculation, the most stable posture is neither to affirm nor to deny, but to describe precisely what occurs and accept what we do not know.

    That may not be a metaphysical revelation. But, seen with sobriety, it is enough.

     

  • The Three Layers of the Self: Where Western Psychology Meets Meditation

    This post proposes a model of the three layers of the self, synthesizing Western cognitive science with meditative phenomenology. The model is offered as a useful map, not as established fact. Where the post moves into speculation — particularly regarding the persistence of consciousness beyond biological death — I mark those as open questions, not conclusions.

    The Narrative Self: The Social Interface We Mistake for Identity

    The narrative self is the most visible layer — the one we defend, polish, and present to the world. It is built from autobiographical memory, language, cultural norms, social expectations, roles and identities, the stories we tell about ourselves.

    This is the “I” Freud analyzed through the Ego and Superego, the “project” Sartre said we are condemned to create, and the “self-concept” Rogers tried to align with lived experience.

    But modern cognitive science has made something very clear: The narrative self is not the true self. It is a social interface.

    Psychologists like Dan McAdams describe it as a life story we continuously rewrite. Neuroscientists such as Michael Gazzaniga show how the brain invents explanations for our actions after the fact — a storyteller, not a commander. And philosophers like Daniel Dennett argue that the self is a “center of narrative gravity,” a useful fiction.

    If a self changes when we change language, culture, or social context, it cannot be essential. It is software — installed after birth, updated daily, and often buggy.

    The Minimal Self: The Biological BIOS

    Beneath the narrative lies something older and simpler: the minimal self. This is not a story. It is a felt sense: “This is my body.” “I am here, not there.” “I am the one moving this hand.” It is pre-verbal, pre-conceptual, and shared by babies, animals, and humans alike.

    Philosopher Shaun Gallagher defines it as the pre-reflective sense of ownership and agency. Neuroscientist Evan Thompson describes it as the embodied structure of experience itself. Even Thomas Metzinger — who famously argues that “nobody ever was or had a self” — acknowledges that the minimal self is a stable biological model the brain uses to navigate the world.

    This is the layer Jung came closest to articulating. His Persona maps neatly onto the narrative self. His Ego overlaps with the minimal self. And his Self — the deeper organizing principle — hints at something beyond both.

    The minimal self is our BIOS: the pre-installed routines that allow consciousness to inhabit a body.

    But even this is not the core.

    Consciousness: The Layer Science Cannot Explain

    Strip away the narrative self. Quiet the minimal self. What remains is not a “self” at all. It is consciousness — the bare capacity to experience.

    This is not a belief. It is an observable fact in meditation: when thoughts stop and the sense of “me” fades, awareness remains. It is also a scientific mystery. Neuroscience can correlate brain activity with conscious states, but it cannot explain why consciousness exists at all.

    This is the “hard problem” articulated by David Chalmers: why should matter give rise to experience? Why should there be something it is like to be anything?

    Some contemporary hypotheses suggest that consciousness may be:

    • A fundamental property of the universe (panpsychism: Galen Strawson, Philip Goff).
    • An intrinsic aspect of information itself (Integrated Information Theory: Giulio Tononi).
    • A field-like phenomenon not fully reducible to neurons (various quantum-inspired models, cautiously explored by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose).

    We know how consciousness behaves. We do not know what it is. Just like time. Or mass. Or space.

    Where Meditation and Science Converge

    Meditation does not solve the hard problem, but it reveals something crucial: Consciousness persists even when the sense of self dissolves.

    In deep practice — whether through qigong, Yidam visualization, or silent absorption — the narrative self falls away. The minimal self softens. The boundary between “me” and “world” becomes porous or disappears entirely.

    Yet awareness remains.

    This is why meditative traditions across cultures converge on similar insights. In Daoism: the return to the Dao, the uncarved block. In Buddhism: anatta, the absence of a self. In Hindu traditions: Atman = Brahman, the identity of individual and universal consciousness. In Christian mysticism: dissolution into the Ground of Being (Meister Eckhart).

    What these traditions share is a common observation: The self is not the experiencer. The self is an appearance within experience.

    The Final Step: The Self as a Three-Layer Illusion

    If we put all this together, a radical but coherent picture emerges: The narrative self is a cultural construction. The minimal self is a biological construction. Consciousness is not a self at all — it is the field in which both constructions appear.

    And when the body dies?

    The narrative self dissolves.
    The minimal self dissolves.
    But consciousness — if it is fundamental — may not.

    And here the mind begins to speculate — perhaps to hope:

    Could consciousness re-enter another organism ?
    Could it merge with something larger?
    Could it persist without form?

    I notice the pull toward these possibilities. I cannot claim they are more than that: a pull.

    Conclusion: The Last Illusion

    The deepest insight shared by meditation and modern cognitive science may be this: what we call “self” appears to be a construction — narrative and biological — within a field of awareness whose nature remains unexplained.

    Whether that awareness is fundamental, universal, or simply the last illusion before silence — I do not know. But the question, once seen, does not disappear.

     

  • Lightning in the Dark – Shifts in Perception

    A recollection of the first glimpses of shifts in perception—moments like lightning in the dark. These reflections capture the raw astonishment of discovering how tantric awakening and dissolution intertwine, written during the early years of my exploration.

    First Flashes

    What I glimpsed was not a new idea, but a different way of being—brief, vivid, impossible to ignore. These moments came like lightning in the dark: sudden illuminations of a reality I hadn’t known, previews of what was to come. My first insights were always confirmed by later experiences, as the intensity and quality of the feeling deepened.

    On Dilution and Death

    The first departure from ordinary experience was a sense of dilution—long before I felt the energy flowing out of my body—and of connection with something much larger. The feeling was like dying, yet instead of fear it brought a quiet hope. Death was no longer perceived as an end, but as a new beginning—like going back home.

    “Imagine that you are in total darkness. Then, for a moment, there is a faint light—and back to the dark again. You try to reconstruct in your mind what you barely perceived. This is what I will try to do now. Not easy, because what I dimly saw, through the windshield and the rearview mirror, looked very much like Death.

    For us, tantric sex means spending ten, fifteen, twenty minutes being traversed by this energy. And I mean it—we both feel the same thing. It feels like a vast and eternal wave of bliss, not the ‘simultaneous orgasm’ where two private experiences happen to coincide. We clearly experience the same flow, with its highs and lows.

    This is a huge departure from any normal experience. Our minds, our whole beings, are connected. And this communion has deep consequences. We dissolve into each other. And we feel dissolved into something immense—like two drops of water merging into one, and then thrown into a river.

    In those moments, when I can drink from that fountain without being pulled toward physical release, I glimpse the real nature of my thirst—the drive we call sex. What I was seeking in the arms of my lovers was this: dissolving into the other, breaking free from the prison of my ego. And through the other, dissolving into… God? If I were Saint Teresa, my cultural lens would surely point to that as the logical answer. As an atheist, I don’t know what to think. This dissolution feels like death—but under that light, the word loses its sting. It feels more like going home. So what I wanted through sex was dying—going home.”

    On the Self

    Being aware without thoughts, even for a short time, made me realize that what I had always understood as “me” was only a bundle of thoughts—memories and desires. My real self was this awareness, silently watching thoughts arise and fade away. The idea—perhaps just wishful thinking—that this “deep self” was the one going back home slowly began to take shape.

    “But who’s going home? Again, I’ll try to describe another dim and strange perception.

    Tantric sex with a partner requires some attention to the body—movement, balance, physical awareness. But when I lie back and I’m alone with this energy, the mind truly stops, or nearly so. It has to, or the energy will not flow. In that silence, thoughts are perceived very differently. Our hands and feet are useful tools, but we don’t see them as our ‘self.’ With a still, or nearly still mind, I perceive my thoughts the same way—as tools, but not as me. And that changes everything.

    I dimly perceive that this thing I’ve always called ‘me’ is nothing more than a bundle of thoughts, memories and desires. Yet now they feel like a house I once lived in—a space full of memories, most of them good, but no longer home. The melancholy of those empty rooms is mixed with the excitement of moving on.

    That’s how I feel when I look at that old ‘me’ that no longer feels like me. What I really am is that which moves to a new home. The old self must be left behind; it can’t be carried forward. It cannot survive death—that’s impossible. But then, what is this new ‘me,’ and where is it going? Even considering the possibility of transcending death is a Copernican shift for someone like me—an atheist.”

    On God

    If the real self was free of desire, what could we expect from God—if there was one? A god enslaved by his own desires? I was still deeply skeptical about the very existence of anything we could call “God.” But if such a being existed, it would surely give its grace as the sun gives its light: expecting nothing, asking nothing, shining for all who choose to join it.

    “After all, the trees are not worshipping the Sun—they simply stay away from the dark. And the Sun gives life to the trees by burning herself, but not because she receives any worship. What else could she do? She is the Sun!

    So I don’t see myself praying or worshipping any god. But I’ll try to find a little place under this Sun—she who gives without asking—where I can lay my towel.”

    These were my perceptions in 2015, only three years after the shift began. My interpretation ten years later has evolved — toward greater caution about what these experiences reveal beyond themselves — but the raw glimpses remain as vivid as ever.

    A solitary monk stands on a barren shore facing an immense, dark sea under a vast gray sky. The figure is tiny against the overwhelming expanse of nature.
    Caspar David Friedrich, Der Mönch am Meer (The Monk by the Sea), 1808–1810. Oil on canvas, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

     

     

  • Dissolution of Polarities: From Shared Practice to Solitude

    Yin within yang, yang within yin — what seemed like metaphor turned out to be instruction.

    The third stage of the journey — from shared fusion to solitary practice. This phase brought the dissolution of polarities: the merging deepened until even the distinction between self and other faded, and consciousness began to expand into spaciousness.

    This account reflects my understanding at the time of writing. The language here leans toward metaphysical interpretation — describing experiences as revelations about the nature of consciousness or self. In later reflections, I’ve come to see these as descriptions of how perception changed, not as conclusions about what reality is. The experiences were real; their ultimate meaning remains open.

    Fusion

    The next significant milestone came in the autumn of 2016. Reversing the flow had already intensified our connection, but this time the energy grew beyond anything we had known—surging again and again, masculine, feminine, masculine, feminine—until we reached the limits of what our bodies could bear.

    Then came a question: Why alternate between one kind of pleasure and the other? What would it be like to experience both at once?

    Against all expectations, it was possible—to emit and absorb simultaneously◊Yin-yang fusion technique.

    That cryptic Daoist phrase, yin within yang, yang within yin, which I had long dismissed as metaphorical, proved to describe a tangible physiological phenomenon. The result was an overwhelming sense of fusion with my partner — not symbolic, but literal and physiological.

    Inner Tantra: The Partner Within

    Eventually, we had to stop. Not from disinterest, but because the intensity became too much for her body to handle.

    At that time, a friend from an online forum mentioned a Tibetan visualization practice◊Visualization technique known as Yidam, in which one merges with the essence of a deity. The hint came at the right moment, as if the process itself were orchestrating the next step.

    Coming from this physical experience of fusion, I tried to reproduce it through imagination alone – and the result was unexpected.

    I realized I no longer needed a partner to evoke the same feminine sensations I once thought depended on her presence. Even more surprising: I could now experience that same state of fusion within myself — first in the belly, then in the chest, and finally in the head.

    It was more intense than anything I had ever shared with another person — and yet, I was alone.

    Retreat into Emptiness

    In 2018, we parted ways.
    I moved to a quiet coastal village — no obligations, no dependents, no noise. Just silence and the sea.

    When the pandemic arrived, solitude became total. The conditions were ideal for continuing the experiment. It felt as though the same process that had driven the inner changes was now shaping the outer circumstances.

    With the ability to merge emission and absorption — yin and yang — I resumed the internal exploration, allowing sensation to guide the process. Once that current begins, it cannot be directed. It follows its own logic. My role seemed limited to removing resistance.

    Over time, its purpose revealed itself. It was no longer a nourishing current but a cleansing force, sweeping away everything it touched — until nothing was left◊Removing obstructions.

    The Dissolution of Polarities

    The male–female polarity had already vanished during the first fusion — in the belly, the seat of desire. It seemed that this body of energy has no gender, that consciousness is neither male nor female.

    The next fusion, in the chest — the domain of affection — brought an expanded awareness, a sense of vast connectedness where “inside” and “outside” lost meaning. Spatial rules didn’t apply, and love was seen as an inevitable consequence of the inextricable connection between “me” and “other”.

    Finally, the fusion in the head brought joy — not personal joy, but a quiet, objectless ecstasy: the recognition of being inseparable from everything. The distinction between “me” and “other” went beyond spatial connection, “me” and “other” seemed to be the same thing.

    Final Reflection

    What remains now is the final boundary:

    The inner self — the one aware of this energy body — still feels like an “I.”◊The dissolution of the Self
    It is unbounded, genderless, fused with all things… yet it still is.

    This seems to be the last polarity to dissolve: Being versus Non-Being. “I” versus Nothing.


    At first, that prospect feels disquieting. But, as before, opposites tend to converge — as male and female, in and out, self and other once did — into a single, self-consistent reality where all distinctions fade.

    “To fuse is to vanish, and to vanish is to know what remains when nothing is left to dissolve.”

    Seen in retrospect, the path appears less like progress than a gradual movement from fusion to spaciousness, where experience becomes wider while the sense of ownership diminishes.

     

     

  • Androgynous Consciousness: When Masculine and Feminine Dissolve

    Ardhanarishvara — the androgynous form of Shiva and Parvati.

    What began as curiosity became transformation. Through intimacy, energy work, and heightened awareness, masculine and feminine dissolved into a single current — revealing what might be called androgynous consciousness: the genderless nature of consciousness itself.

    This account reflects how I understood these experiences at the time. Some interpretations — particularly those concerning “pure consciousness” or the nature of the self — are revisited more cautiously in later posts.

    The Catalyst

    Months after my dakini left, I began a new physical relationship. It did not carry the same depth of love and joy I had experienced with her — but another kind of connection emerged: intense, surprising, and charged with something new.
    Between us, there was a third presence – a catalyst. Cannabis. What followed was not intoxication, but amplification — the body becoming a field of resonance.

    Before I continue, a few clarifications.

    I was in my sixties, and this was the first time I had ever inhaled anything of that nature. I only allowed myself to take this step because the timing was right: my professional life had reached its natural end, retirement was near, and no responsibilities demanded my vigilance.

    I do not encourage the use of any substance, and certainly not for those still engaged in daily obligations. But neither do I believe in forbidding what can, under the right circumstances, open doors of perception. There are always risks — and each person must weigh them with full awareness and responsibility.

    In my case, this plant did not serve as an escape, but as an amplifier. If before the feeling had been like a gentle stream, now it became a current — powerful, unrelenting, sweeping us both into places we had never imagined.

    At first, it seemed a fortunate synergy that simply enriched our time together. But then came a turning point.

    Acknowledgment and Cartography

    The more I explored, the clearer it became that this was no longer just pleasure. It was August 2012 when a peculiar surge rose along my spine. At that moment I understood that the “Tantric thing” we had often joked about was asking for real attention.

    So we continued the practice — hour after hour, day after day. Between encounters, in the quiet intervals, I explored my body alone, discovering how the same sensations grew stronger even without her presence.

    Mapping of perceived energy nodes during the “cartography” phase (2012–2016). Visualization created for documentation purposes.

    It became a phase of inner cartography◊Mapping the nodes — mapping subtle structures revealed through deepening sensation. Each new pulse illuminated hidden territories within.

    Meanwhile, I wandered the internet — half seeker, half skeptic — searching for echoes of these experiences in Tantric symbols and metaphors. I did not yet know the language, but I recognized the patterns.

    Changes in Perception

    As the sensation evolved, my perception of reality changed as well. The first noticeable shift was a sense of dissolution◊On dissolution and death — as if the boundaries of my body were no longer fixed. The faint openness I had once felt along my spine gradually expanded, as though I were merging with my partner, and through her, with everything around us.

    Following the sensation inward revealed a simple fact: thinking disrupted the experience. The feeling was strong enough to expel thought like an unwanted reflex. Without knowing it, I was practicing some sort of meditation.

    Over time, I spent longer periods fully conscious yet free of thought — until thought itself appeared as something external. That led to a fundamental realization: I was not my thoughts◊On the Self. They were merely automatic brain activity, mechanical and impersonal. What I truly was, was the awareness observing them arise and fade.

    The Reversal

    Then, in the spring of 2015, something shifted. The current that had always flowed from me to her suddenly reversed. It was as if she became the origin, and I, the receiver. Sensation moved in new directions, unfamiliar and astonishing. I received what I had only known how to offer.

    To feel oneself from the other side of the mirror is no small thing.

    At first, it was disorienting. The gender roles I had thought fixed — shaped by habit, culture, identity — dissolved. It stirred questions I had never considered.

    As we talked through it, we found parallels in ancient Tantric texts — especially in the image of the androgynous body. What had once been polarity now became androgyny — not metaphorically, but experientially. A deeper wholeness emerged, as if until then we had only known half of what was possible.

    Androgynous Consciousness – The Body Beyond Gender

    Once the initial cultural shock subsided, it felt not extraordinary but self-evident. This “I” — pure consciousness — existed beyond gender. Sex was a biological function, irrelevant in this context.

    Physically, my partner and I were woman and man. Energetically, we were identical. At first, we exchanged polarities — now one radiating, now the other. Later, we learned to hold both simultaneously: masculine and feminine, yin and yang, fused in a single moment. What remained was unity — a continuous field of awareness perceiving itself through two bodies.

    At a subsequent stage, I found I could reach this fusion alone◊Fusion.