I chose not to speak about subjective versus objective perspectives, because at the heart or bedrock level of my understanding of reality, both are illusory. However, in regards to your question about what occurs during meditation and how to talk or compare it, I go to pains to distinguish our direct, unmediated imperiences, from our indirect, meditated experiences. The latter are our interpretation — our apperception based on our current understanding — of what has happened while we meditate.

I go to those pains to distinguish the unmediated from the mediated so that when I speak about meditation, I can talk more clearly about both. So I can point out to a reader why their interpretations may be unhelpful or even damaging to their progress (one corner of your trilemma). This is nowhere more evident than in a delineated list of progressive stages of meditation. Knowing these stages beforehand can cause us to imagine that we have imperienced something that hasn’t really happened. Afterwards, the delineated stages add nothing to our results.

The key “metric” for me is not to be found in descriptions of either imperiences or experiences though, but in changes in our being — whether they be physical changes, or behavioral changes, or changes in our understanding, which come about because of our meditative practice. If meditating does not have such impacts on our being, then it isn’t worth doing.

So for me, I am interested in seeing that my practice gives me the ability to attenuate, or temporarily stop thoughts from arising in my mind (tranquillity), or results in an improved understanding of how things work (insights), and finding my reactions to daily events to be more considerate of others, more patient towards them, more caring for their pains, and being filled with the desire to help them (great responsiveness).

I really don’t care what “jhana” I’ve reached, or if I am “enlightened,” because these can’t be known with any assurance, and aren’t really productive of anything valuable, and in fact can cause us to become lost in a mistaken belief about our accomplishments.

We may misinterpret our meditative imperiences, either because we interpret our imperiences within the framework of some traditional understanding which we may not completely understand — or which was taught incorrectly to us — or because we do so from an idiosyncratic understanding that may not be well thought out, or even delusional.

From my perspective, if someone need two levels of reality, or two aspects of reality with different “truths” that apply separately to one or the other, thus two different understandings, then they do not have a coherent understanding of reality. I made this my goal — to have a coherent understanding in which both spirituality and science were equally supported, along with the manifested changes I mentioned just above.

If you are interested, Pedro Lincoln, I speak about the difference between experience and imperience in “Understanding Experience,” and the specific guides that I adopted in order to keep me from falling into any corner of your trilemma, in the “Seven Metanoic Guides (Sequence).”

I want to thank you sincerely for taking the time to pose these very substantive, and informed, questions, Pedro Lincoln, and also for your kind words that you opened your response with.

James