I like to explain the terms I use, pl feel free to ask anything if my brief comments confuse you.
Text speaks of
Kama-loka. Rupa-loka, and Arupa Loka
We are discussing meditation, so lets us forget about how these are applied to Buddhist cosmology, and use the terms in relation to buddhist meditation.
Terminology like
kamavachara, rupavachara, and arupavacahra
used by early Abhidhammikas relate to the same thing. In meditation, when we say
Kama Loka it means the sensory world we are all born to, and are engaged in. However, when we meditate as in
right Samadhi
the first step is to remove our minds from the sensory world. Hindrances block our entrance into this samadhi.
Once the mind is free of these, we can easily enter first samadhi, or first jhana. We cannot enter samadhi with a muddled mind. This calming is facilitated if we think of images like a current spreading through water, impacted by impingement of a rock, or water suffusing through soap powder making the soap a uniform sphere, or breath spreading evenly through every body cell, in a calming manner.
These actions are also called
vitaka, vicara
not a big deal. Vitaka is the first impact of the thought, and vicara is the spreading nature of the activity.
When the mind is settled in this activity, one has entered first jhana. Try it at home, it is just this ensuing calmness you feel for a moment, or more. You choose.
This happens to some people on their own, sometimes. For instance there is a point in the day when nothing affects you, of the sensual world, there is a welcome spirit of awakened quality, thought
rests.
This is very similar to the quality of first jhana. There is nothing supernatural about it, perhaps the quality of thought is sublime, that you might feel like you are in the the deva world, free of the vicissitudes of human life. That experience is one of the Rupa world, of course abhidahmmikas called this kind of citta Rupavacara citta, but right now we are not concerned about abhidhmma terminology.
Has anyone felt like this? Pl share your thoughts, one must not start meditation thinking, I am never gonna get this, right?