Wisdom Notes on Spirituality

The Moods of Jhana

The links in the table on the left take you to sub-headings on this page.

Love and Bliss
Narcissism = vanity + love. Jealousy = self-pity + love.

After jhana riding (going up and down the jhanas) for two years, I reached the point of loving myself, no matter what emotion was going through my subconscious mind. I also love my body. This is the way to handle the subconscious mind. Divine love is found in jhanas 1 and 2 because both narcissism and jealousy have a factor of love. Divine love appears to have little or no intense character; sometimes it seems to be an intensifier of other emotions. At first I thought that the intensity of the bliss takes its effect from divine love intensifying the love modes of narcissism and jealousy. Then I thought that it was the neutral feeling producing the rush. Finally I opted for the view that it is the positive primary feeling that does so.

Pride and Hate
Pride = vanity + hatred of other people.

I am content with life, despite all the sorrowful parts of it. I feel contentment, and this comes from pride (vanity mode) in the sukha state of jhana-3.[²]. Pride is the basis of jhana-3. Since it does not have a love mode, divine love does not affect it. Instead, it has a hate factor, and so is on the negative feeling. The negative feeling enables detachment to be attained. My eyes narrow their focus when I switch to detachment. Detachment takes no thought of the future, and so the seeker becomes detached to the influences of evolution. Detachment means indifference to pain and pleasure, so the person becomes detached from any valuation of experience. Hence I can build my character without being influenced by pain and pleasure. I can accept responsibility for whatever I have done, and I hum the mantra whatever will be, will be. Detachment is built on contentment. Because I am content with my life, so I can easily attain detachment from it. I suppose it would be much harder to attain detachment if I were not content with my life.

Adventure and Freedom
My life has been an amazing life, a life of psychological adventure. The sense of adventure comes from jhana-1 sukha, which is narcissism (vanity mode). Some thinkers have divided the issue of freedom into freedom to do what one likes, and freedom from restraints. The freedom to do what one likes is based on narcissism (vanity mode). Freedom from restraints is based on pride (vanity mode).

Peace
Peace does not seem to have a “feeling” (whether positive or negative) that I can recognise. But then peace must be on the neutral feeling, because it is in jhana-4, so no “feeling” is to be expected. The attributes of any emotion are many, but the neutral feeling does not have any. Hence the neutral feeling can energise any emotion without changing it in some way. The rush of peace as it takes you to the intense levels is actually the rush of the neutral feeling underlying the peace.

Equanimity and Peace
Equanimity and peace do not have love modes, so divine love cannot stimulate them. Equanimity means that things don’t matter since they are not important. Even evolution does not matter. Instead, I put my life in God’s hands. I have trust in God; trust means that nothing bothers me and I can accept anything that God does to me. In jhana-4 there is no judge; there is no one to judge me. Hence I can accept everything about me. I can accept everything I have done, whether good or bad, with no recriminations. When I attain peace, a gleam comes into my eyes, after the narrow eyes of detachment. 

Jhana-4 is not affected by divine love. However, the seeker can add his own love, if he chooses. If he adds his love to peace, he experiences loving peace. And if he adds his love to equanimity, a new emotion appears, that of serenity.

Serenity
I was puzzled by references to serenity in books of mysticism that I read. I had thought about it intermittently, though I had never experienced it. After two years of jhana riding, I began to experience it occasionally. I decided that it had to go in one of the jhanas. Serenity is not a form of bliss or happiness, and it obviously does not go into jhana-3, and the sukha mood of jhana-4 is equanimity. So how did serenity fit in?  One night, thinking about serenity, I got the answer. Serenity is a compound emotion and consists of equanimity plus love. I only experience it when I add my own love to equanimity. More accurately, 
Serenity = equanimity + narcissism (love mode). 

It is a lovely emotion, more desirable than bliss. It avoids the extreme highs of bliss, and is more suitable for normal activities whilst in a state of raised consciousness. It is a sukha state of jhana-4.

Space
Once when I was in intense peace, I chanted “space”. After a little while my mind went to jhana-5 sukha. Jhana-5 is the realm of space, which is independent of time. Space gives the feeling of etherealness. Occasionally since then, when I am in jhana-4, by focusing on the ethereal, I soon get to jhana-5 sukha. It doesn’t seem to be impressive, and so I have not really explored it. I am not interested in jhanas higher than jhana-5.

Attributes of Self
I list three important self-attributes which I feel when in the jhanas.
Jhana-1: self-esteem.
Jhana-2: self-worth.
Jhana-3: self-mastery.

Metaphysics of Love
When I am in jhana-2, I feel that I am bathed in divine love. I love my body. I love my mind. I love myself. I love my higher self. Then I become love. I am love. This result indicates the transforming ability of love. Divine love does not make any judgements. Love goes to everyone, good or bad. Love is the basis of life. God loves everyone. This means that if the devil exists, then God loves him. 

Even empty space is filled with love. In my view, the aether is divine love. This belief implies that light always travels through divine love. There is no vacuum anywhere in all the galaxies. Any vacuum would indicate an absence of love. Therefore all the celestial galaxies are bathed in love.

Intensity of the Moods
Now I come to the intensity of the moods in jhana. Peace is on the neutral feeling, so that means love is on the positive feeling and hate is on the negative feeling. What is the cause of the rise of intensity of the intense states, which can vary from moderate to overwhelming?  I now consider that in the intense states, the emotion stays the same but the intensity of the primary feeling changes. The alternative explanation is that the primary feeling stays the same and love changes in intensity, but I don't think so.
Consider a scale or range of values with an intensity that varies from 1 to 8. Consider the bliss states in jhana-1 as an example.

a). In moderate bliss, this equals 3 or 4 units of intensity: 1 unit of narcissism, plus 1 unit of love, plus 1 or 2 units of the positive feeling.
b). In intense bliss, this equals 5 or 6 units of intensity: 1 unit of narcissism, plus 1 unit of love, plus 3 or 4 units of the positive feeling.
c). In overwhelming bliss, this equals 7 or 8 units of intensity: 1 unit of narcissism, plus 1 unit of love, plus 5 or 6 units of the positive feeling.

Jhana-2 is similar. As I go up to jhana-3, the primary feeling changes to hate. Hate is on the negative primary feeling. So the intensity of jhana-3 is mainly due to that negative feeling varying in intensity. And in jhana-4, the primary feeling is neutral, and intensity means that the intensity of the neutral feeling increases. Only the intense states are energised by the primary feelings; the sukha moods are not affected.

Summary so far
The intense states can be summarised as follows:

Divine love flows through jhanas 1 and 2; the positive feeling is dominant.
Divine hate flows through jhana-3; the negative feeling is dominant.
Peace flows through jhana-4; the neutral feeling is dominant.

Issues with Divine Love and Hate
I consider a few issues that love and hate can cause.

d). Love and Confusion
Divine love seems to cause a lot of confusion for seekers. It is rarely felt just by itself. It is usually felt in combination with other emotions. By itself, it is just a nice emotion, and it does not seem to be outstanding in any way. I feel it when I begin a session of raising my consciousness. When I open my heart to receive love from the divine, the love comes in – it’s my moment of communion with the divine. Then I add my own love to it, and the combination takes me immediately to the excitement of jhana-1 bliss. 

Divine love does not bring any excitement with it. The excitement is added by the seeker. It is the same with bliss. In the combination of love and bliss, the bliss is added by the seeker. All in all, love brings with it nothing but love. Any other emotion is contributed by the seeker.

In mystical writers, the combination of love and bliss is felt as coming from God. The mystic feels that the bliss is part of love. This illustrates confusion. I would imagine that if a mystic was bathed in love on its own, he would not know what to make of it. The mystic wants to connect with God; the thought of it makes him happy. So when he does connect with God, his happiness is intense. Add love to that happiness, and he feels a wonderful emotional buzz. The love comes from God, and the happiness comes from him. To be more accurate, when he adds love to his happiness, the rush takes him to ecstasy. So he is actually experiencing love plus happiness plus the positive feeling. 

The average mystic will experience love plus bliss only a few times in his life. This means that he is unable to analyse love. I experienced love regularly, averaging two or three times a week, for over two years before I could analyse it. You have to be thoroughly familiar with a phenomenon before you can analyse it.

A significant event that happens only a few times is extremely hard to analyse, assuming that the person wants to analyse it. So, for example, if a person experiences what he calls intense divine love, he is actually experiencing divine love plus bliss plus an intense positive feeling all at once. So he feels that he is only experiencing love, and mis-labels it as being blissful.

Buddhist meditators say “I am That”.
As a mystic, I say “I am Love”.

e). Kundalini
Another source of confusion about love is illustrated by the fourteenth century English mystic Richard Rolle. He wrote about the fire of love. This has baffled commentators and theologians who read his works. What does Rolle mean?  They don’t know, so the fire of love is usually treated as being allegorical or symbolic. Nothing can be further from the truth.

The fire of love indicates the kundalini power, which is well known in the East. It is partly a psychic phenomenon and partly a desire enhancer. The psychic phenomenon occurs when the second chakra produces an enormous amount of physical heat. Hence the lower spine becomes exceedingly hot, so hot that you feel that you can fry an egg on your back. The desire enhancer mode will greatly increase the intensity of a person’s sense of sexual beauty. So sometimes the person will feel the grandeur of sexual beauty – this is the beneficent side of kundalini. However, if the sexual desires are orientated around pleasure and lust, kundalini turns malignant and can quickly (over a matter of a few days) turn the person insane. I call this form of kundalini by the label kundalini psychosis. Kundalini psychosis is the binary form of madness to schizophrenia. I have experienced both forms of kundalini, and it is something that I prefer to avoid, because of the dangers of the malignant form. I will describe my experiences of kundalini in a future book on psychology, which deals with mental and psycho-somatic disorders.

f ). Divine Hate
Divine love stimulates evolution, Divine hate retards evolution. The process of evolution is an interplay between love and hate. When love stimulates evolution, that evolution may become excessive in its aims. An episode of hate allows evolution to become more balanced. The potentials of love become more balanced when hate offsets the excesses of vain and grandiose ideas. Hence hate is just as important as love is.

For example, consider the evolution of the primitive ego as it descends (emanates) down the jhanas for the first time. It has dwelt in equanimity during its sojourn in the higher jhanas, and has no boundaries to itself and feels oneness with everything. As it descends to jhana-3, a break occurs with equanimity; the ego is no longer enwrapped in equanimity. The break is caused by pride, in its mode of hate. Hate provides the seeds of motivation. That is, motivation of the ego first begins in jhana-3 as it experiences hate for the first time. The ego begins to see differences between itself and other egos. As it gets motivated, the ego begins to form boundaries around itself, separating itself from other egos. The evolution of the ego could not happen if love was the sole basis of evolution – there would be no reason for it to separate itself from everything. Hate has helped me to create the character that I have now.

Overwhelming States
Sometimes I focus completely on feeling – I just feel the bliss and nothing else. Or sometimes I feel the music playing in the background (usually it is white noise or similar low-frequency tones). When I am just feeling, I don’t want to cognise anything. I understand why overwhelming states, or states of complete feeling, can’t be remembered. When the person is fully focused on such states, time has no effect. Emotion is 100% and cognitive attention is 0% (or zero). There is nothing mysterious about this effect. 

The seeker can be blissed out for what seems an hour and actually find only 10 minutes have gone by. The bliss experience cannot be remembered, since nothing is cognised. All the person, afterwards, can do is classify the experience as good, bad, or indifferent.

Purely emotional experiences cannot be remembered. So I cannot remember how great the experiences were. I need memories that I can remember. Memory needs cognition in order to be active. This reminds me of the occasions in the 1990s when I was very confused and wrapped in anxiety. Being totally focused on anxiety meant that I couldn’t remember what I did on such occasions. Emotional experience just by itself does not leave memories.

Moving Up the Jhanas
The transition from one jhana to the next one is not sharp. There appears to be some degree of overlap at the boundary, so for a moment or so I’m not sure which jhana I am in. In general, I think my way to a jhana, and the mind follows suit soon afterwards. The mind obeys the command. The mind can do this because I float in a mental world; the jhanas are not places, they are just states of mind. So what is the method to think my way to jhana?  There are two ways.

The Slow Way
I am in jhana-1 bliss, and I want to get to jhana-2 bliss. I relax my face muscles, including the eye muscles. Then I relax my anxiety. The relaxation causes me to move to jhana-2 sukha. I focus on the feeling, which then intensifies and gets me to jhana-2 mellow bliss.

When I have been in mellow bliss long enough, I release the happiness and the sorrow. In addition, I release all striving, all ideals. Releasing all these emotions and ideas makes me content with my life, and I enter jhana-3 sukha, or contentment. I also feel more self-mastery in the daily world. Because I am content with my life, I can focus on the feeling, and soon go to jhana-3 detachment. Contentment is the basis for detachment. 

When I have experienced detachment for long enough, I let go of the hatred within it. I embrace acceptance, along with trust in God. Now I am in jhana-4 sukha, or equanimity. I can, if I want, add my own love to equanimity, and so feel serenity. Then I follow the feeling again and it intensifies, taking me to peace.

This procedure can be summed up in the following way, with the arrow symbol denoting the direction of movement.
Jhana-1 bliss → jhana-2 sukha → jhana-2 mellow bliss → jhana-3 sukha → jhana-3 detachment → jhana-4 sukha → jhana-4 peace

The Fast Way
I adopt the body and mental signs of the jhana that I want to get to. Then within a few seconds I am in the sukha state of that jhana. Any intermediary state is bypassed. I am not actually travelling anywhere; all I am doing is changing mental frequencies. The jhanas are not places where I can go to; they are just frequencies of the mind.

Overall, adjusting to the mental characteristics, or mindset, of any jhana will soon take me to the sukha state of that jhana. Then following the feeling will get me to the intense state of that jhana. Therefore, the procedure is mind first, then feeling.

Moving Down the Jhanas
I see the process of descent in the following way.

g). First I am in jhana-4 intense, which is peace.
h). Then the hate mode of pride breaks the connection with peace, so I descend to jhana-3.
i). When I descend to jhana-2, the mellowness softens the harsh judgements of jhana-3.
j). Then narcissism arises so I can enjoy life as an individual, as I finally end up in jhana-1.

I can always drop down the jhanas very fast by using humour. When watching a phantasy, a good joke drops me down to jhana-1 straightaway. When trying to reach jhana, the physical body and the mental body have to learn what to do. As the process becomes learned, then jhana states are reached faster than before. Mind and body have to learn to work together.

Anxiety in the Jhanas
Now I turned my attention to the issue of anxiety in the jhanas. Anxiety seems to be absent in high states of mind. However, this assumption is not verified by experience. One day my sensitivity must have been very sharp. As I went up and down the jhanas, I sensed the anxiety underlying the desire for happiness. Normally the joy of bliss overlays and hides the anxiety, and so that anxiety is very difficult to detect. Therefore jhanas 1 and 2 are not free of anxiety.

Happiness exists only in relation to sorrow. When I go from jhana-2 to jhana-3, I release the happiness. Now I understand that I have to release the sorrow as well. Hence to move from jhana-2 to jhana-3, I release both happiness and sorrow, and then find myself in jhana-3 sukha. Two weeks later, as I went to jhana-3, I sensed the anxiety underlying the pride. Hence even jhana-3 has anxiety within it.

Then on consideration, I decided that it was the sukha states that hid the anxiety. Narcissism in its sukha state of joy begins abreaction, so that the abreaction is caused by the underlying anxiety.[³]. The intense states do not contain anxiety. Hence it is anxiety that separates the sukha states from the intense states. 

None of the sukha states of jhanas 1, 2, and 3 are free from anxiety. The function of anxiety is that of motivating the person to change. Is there any anxiety in jhana-4?  I have not discovered any, and it is unlikely that I will. Jhana-4 is the state of harmony and peace. You cannot have harmony and peace if anxiety is affecting you.

What is the purpose of the anxiety? Anxiety drives the desire to change, and so it is the primary agent in stimulating evolution. As we emanate down the levels of reality, once we descend to jhanas 3, 2, and 1, so anxiety begins and gets ever more powerful in each succeeding jhana. Hence evolution really begins from the jhana-3 level and reaches its greatest intensity in jhana-1.

As an interesting aside, how long I stay in each jhana may relate to the time necessary to discharge the anxiety in that jhana. The longer that I need to discharge the anxiety, the longer I stay in that jhana. 

These ideas have relevance to the moral ideas that each person has.
Consider pride and jhana-3. Pride by itself, with no accompanying anxiety, leads to soft moral views. The views are tolerant. Add in anxiety, and now the views become hard and intolerant, and judgemental, with perhaps accompanying anger towards liberal views.

Consider jealousy and jhana-2. With no accompanying anxiety, the person has caring views. Whereas, when anxiety is present, his jealousy produces licentious and promiscuous views.

Consider narcissism and jhana-1. When there is no accompanying anxiety, we witness fun-loving views. When anxiety is present, then we witness egotism.

When I am in jhana-1 bliss and want to go to jhana-2, I relax my anxiety. Then I go to jhana-2. The relaxation of anxiety can be done whenever I change jhanas. I just chant “relax anxiety”, and feel the anxiety relaxing. In fact, the relaxation of anxiety can be done anytime, so long as it is fairly frequent. It seems to lessen the intensity of the phantasies. 

Relaxing anxiety is the key to safe jhana riding. Having trust in God will also relax the anxiety. As I go up the jhanas, the anxiety level decreases. Then when I am in jhana-3, I trust in God and this removes all remaining anxiety, allowing me to reach jhana-4 sukha.

The number in brackets at the end of each reference takes you back to the paragraph that featured it. 

[¹]. I have three articles on Emotion on the Home page. [1]

[²]. Each jhana consists of a moderate state, which I call the sukha state (after Buddhist terminology), and an intense state. [2]

[³]. I have six articles on Abreaction on the Home page. [3]

The articles in this section are :

Copyright © 2026 Ian Heath
All Rights Reserved

The copyright is mine, and the articles are free to use. They can be reproduced
anywhere, so long as the source is acknowledged.

Ian Heath
London, UK

If you want to contact me, use the address at the bottom of the Home page.

Also, since there are numerous articles on this site, please include the title of the article if you want me to clarify or discuss particular issues.

It may be a few days before I can respond to correspondence.