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He related to some of the descriptions, but inconsistently. like first and second jhana he was like ??? never felt that, but I read third jhana and he was like oh yeah that sounds very familiar. overall he didn't find them to be much of a pattern match

Not sure what this means, but it updates me slightly in the direction of "ppl who experience jhanas are doing so because they've been previously primed by hearing ppl describe jhanas'

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I'm not sure I personally count cause I did most of my own meditation while on psychedelics, but I have spent very many hours in bizarre states, most of them before hearing about jhanas, and I also do not find the jhanas to be a natural description of anything I've experienced.

tho mebbe u gotta do very specific jhana meditation to experience them, and it's not just something that happens to anyone who stares at their own mind enough?

er to clarify: I was under the impression jhanas are supposed to be a progression, but he claimed to have experienced something that the third jhana description sounded like, but not the first two; maybe he did independently discover them, but not in order?

Replying to

They’re not rungs in a single ladder that everything else happens in - but they are real. I’d been in a thousand variations of mystical states until I accessed jhanas by deliberately aiming there. People are only confused for lack of experience. Hard jhanas are unmistakable.

Replying to

and

Once you experience a hard jhana, when it just fully locks in, there’s no confusion about whether these are “real” or not. They’re just obviously the way consciousness folds up when you concentrate. There are many more dimensions of play besides concentration, many other states.