A long story short, about a year ago I had a real gambling problem. I was doing a lot of LSD at the time, and would stay up for 18 hours straight, enjoying non-stop gambling, drug abuse and wanking. All in all, it was probably the best thing I ever did.
These experiences were all underwritten by jhana. I have known for some time that I have a talent for visual concentration meditation, meaning using a mind-made image as the object. This transposes onto gambling seamlessly. LSD just intensifies object-creation by about tenfold. Visualize the desired outcome, spin the reels, and it comes true before your very eyes. I was seemingly pulling money out of thin air, such as this disgusting £3140 GBP win — about $5000 USD — from a single spin:
As I already have Stream Entry, I can get access concentration just by resting my awareness on any object for a few moments. With the LSD in my system, I was slipping into second jhana in a matter of seconds, with the reels taking on a life of their own in my mind’s eye against a backdrop of fireworks and fractal geometry.
The visual jhanas are some of the most mesmerizing, beautiful and addictive jhanas available. It is well understood in concentration meditation circles that, the more pleasing the object, the easier it is to attain jhana on that object — and the more likely you are to want to come back to that object again, and again, and again — which hinders enlightenment through attachment to that state. Slot machine gambling provides extremely pleasing visual objects, plus the reward circuit activation required for jhana. Gambling objects are, in short, some of the easiest objects on which to attain jhana.
It is also understood however that, the more pleasing the object, the more one will want to cling to that object and its associated jhana state. This is one of many reasons why the breath is used for the purposes of insight — it is a neutral object. While capable of generating rapture and bliss, those factors are nevertheless easier to let go of in the breath, allowing more unattached states to develop. Visual jhanas on the other hand are stunning and highly compelling; vivid and vivacious, a galaxy within themselves.
By using visual jhanas of the slot machine reels, every time I gambled, I would win hundreds of pounds in a matter of minutes. This was always from stakes of no more than £2.
The problem however was GREED. The logic went something like this: “If I can make £500 from a £2 stake, what could I achieve if I bet a £10 stake?” I have this jarring memory of being ripped to the tits on LSD, ethylphenidate and a bottle of vodka, and being £6000 up, with my initials on the casino’s homepage on every leaderboard, having won all the small jackpots. Then I turned the stake up to £10, and next thing I knew I was about £7000 DOWN. That is quite a turnaround — and was money I didn’t have. In short, I fucked myself with my own cock.
Once you have attained Stream Entry, concentration practice usually ends up causing you to cycle through the Stages of Insight. It is basically automatic and difficult to avoid. Most of my wins were done in the Arising & Passing Away, a stage well known for the spontaneous arising of magickal powers. With skill, it is possible to keep triggering an Arising & Passing Away by repeatedly entering the second jhana. This is how I maintain a constant stream of wins, and I have done this publicly with witnesses, including somebody who reads this blog (and hopefully he will step forward and corroborate this story. You remember our joint jhana on the Baywatch machine, right? 
).
The problem with greed, and turning the stake up to £10, is that it rubs up against my belief system. £2 is nothing to me, but £10 a spin seems a lot. Even though that is not logical, based on the wins I was getting on £2, that is the nature of belief systems — they are largely irrational. Once betting is no longer fun, the Arising & Passing Away blends seamlessly into Dissolution. This presents as a tangible drop in energy. Suddenly the wins are no longer happening, and the visualizations are difficult to make and are fuzzy. The spin cycles seem to be out of sync with your thoughts. You’re clicking the mouse, but nothing is happening except the money counter is going down. Then: Fear. There is a palpable adrenaline spike. Visualizations are rippled by fast vibrational currents and are basically impossible to control. The losses mount. You enter Misery. Then you feel Disgust with yourself. Thoughts on the nature of things begin, and the revolting pointlessness of it all. The mouse is tapped at angrily, almost losing intentionally to spite yourself. Then, futures begin to be pondered with thoughts of, “What if I actually DO get everything I want? THEN what?” A Desire for Deliverance from the whole nihilistic process arises — a yearning for release from the captivation of material things. Suddenly, an Equanimity is reached, with both wins and losses. The nature of reality is calmly perceived and accepted, and allowed to play out. The Equanimity phase is the other vipassana stage known for the spontaneous arising of magickal powers — but from a place of a calm allowing of reality to unfold as it wishes, rather than via the ostentatious “Devil may care” displays of the Arising & Passing Away. I remember playing two machines simultaneously, being £3000 down on £40 a stake, then suddenly hitting Equanimity. A voice said, “Everything is going to be cool! Everything is going to be cool!” Then I won feature on both machines, raking in £1500 each to recover the full £3000 in just a couple of spins. THEN I lost it all again — because everything is going to be cool man, no matter what, and winning and losing are just mental formations. Gambling while in Equanimity is very dangerous.
Fast forward a year, and a few days ago I received an email telling me that my BetFilter licence — the program that blocks all gambling sites on your devices — had expired. The sensible thing would have been to pay the thirty dollars (or whatever it was) and renew it. However, I was interested to see how nine months of daily jhana had affected my manifestation abilities, and instead went to the shop to buy a case of energy drinks and a bottle of vodka — and then settled into a very special night of non-stop gambling and masturbation.
My rule now is very, very simple: NEVER go above a £2 stake. I proceeded with my usual second jhana/ Arising & Passing Away system. The wins began amassing almost immediately and by the time I went to bed at 4am I was £500 up. I woke up with my head pounding, but happy, and basically lounged around in bed for most of the day. Then I had my usual cold shower which woke me up and got some kundalini flowing. While the gambling had been fantastic the night before, I was looking for something bigger to happen — something to affirm my magickal powers, and really to just blow my mind and give me an amazing experience. I loaded up Bier Haus, which is my favourite slot of all time.
I love Bier Haus so much. A year ago, while my friends would talk about football and load clips of goals on YouTube, I instead would watch videos of people winning big on Bier Haus. This game was my sport. Here is a fantastic video of an absolutely massive win:
The goal of Bier Haus is to get at least five women, starting from the leftmost column, and preferably the purple women as she becomes a “sticky wild” on the free spins feature. Five women unlock five free spins, and each additional woman unlocks an extra five spins. If every space on the screen is filled by a woman, that’s a total of 80 free spins possible. The free spins can also retrigger (by getting at least five women again during free spins), making endless winning a possibility.
This game is pure simple genius. You hardly ever win any prizes, but when you do, you win shitloads. Getting the feature is one of the toughest things in the world to do, because the odds are so ridiculously stacked against you. However, when you do get the feature, if you have even a couple of purple women (for the sticky wilds) then you are going to get a prize on every spin, making all the free spins pay out an absolute fortune. Getting the feature on this game is probably the biggest buzz I’ve ever got — better than sex, or even cocaine. The special noise it makes when you get a “Big Win” (screen filled with a good symbol) is amazing. The world just seems to stop, then that noise is made, then all the coins start flying out the screen as your bank balance skyrockets. Watch the video to see what I’m talking about — the machine makes the noise at 0:54. The guy goes crazy throughout, and this is the reaction I have to this game, too. I literally start clapping, screaming, and pounding the air with my fist. The “pint of beer” symbol is the wild symbol, meaning it substitutes for all symbols, and a purple woman makes a beer symbol stay on that spot throughout free spins. You are always hoping for streams of that beer symbol to come down and settle, and for the machine to make that special noise — it’s Heaven.
Anyway, I loaded up the game but didn’t play it quite yet. Instead, I stared at the image of the woman symbol — my muse, the one I hoped to fill the whole screen with — and got some access concentration on her. After about a minute of this, when I closed my eyes I could see an afterimage of the woman symbol. I went and sat on my bed with spine straight and feet planted on the floor for grounding. Hands were rested on my lap with thumb and forefinger pinched together to generate kundalini nerve current flows up the spine and into the woman symbol afterimage. In my mind’s eye, as jhana was attained, the afterimage began to become more and more lifelike, until it was a perfect mental recreation of the original symbol. Then, because I had been staring at a whole screen of symbols, afterimages of the other symbols appeared around it, with the outline of the computer monitor around that. So, my mind had generated a replica of the entire screen based on the afterimage. Then, I implanted the suggestion that ALL the symbols were going to turn into the woman symbol that had already been recreated in the centre — and waited. This is how you do visualization properly — you don’t “force” the object to appear, but rather suggest to yourself that you are going to see it at some point, then just kind of let it filter into awareness. It just drops itself in. Sure enough, all the symbols on the “monitor” just changed into the woman symbol.
Ordinarily, at this point, I would rush back to the computer and hit “spin”. But I didn’t, this time. I stayed with the miraculously-created mental picture of a screen filled with women and allowed it to climb me through the jhanas, to fourth jhana, where I stayed for several minutes before being called for dinner. This whole process took about 30 minutes. The fourth jhana is a highly absorbed, dissociated state with little awareness of the body. One’s awareness is firmly on the object but there is no rapture or delight — the object is just, very matter of factly, the object. This equanimous view of the object creates a kind of “reality reset” where commands are allowed to filter through to the “main reality” without prejudice. This is why attainment of the fourth jhana is said to be the start of the psychic powers (though those with natural talent exist who can conduct magick at lower states of absorption).
After dinner my friend came over. We had a few drinks and I showed him some of the other games. Then we went out, and I forgot all about the magickal night of gambling that awaited me when I got home. Instead, I had the total sense that the intention had been handed over to an old friend who was going to disappear and take care of everything for me behind the scenes. That is the real trick to manifesting desires — knowing that it is all going to be taken care of, and then relaxing into the present moment secure in that knowledge. If I had to train you in magick in one sentence, it would be what I just wrote.
The all-pervading equanimity generated by entry to the fourth jhana lasted the whole night, and I had a bloody great time seeing some old friends who happened to be out. I threw a couple of coins into the pub slots and won about £20. It was weird to feel physical cash in my hand following a win, and nice. I got a peri-peri burger from the vendor next door, which is really, really fucking good food. All in all, I would say I was just loving life at this point.
I got home, set the burger down, poured myself a vodka, and sighed. I loaded up Bier Haus and just smiled at it. No jhana, no forcing it. I pressed spin. Three purple ladies appeared, and two green ladies, giving me five free spins with three sticky wilds. The feature began, and a ton of beer pint symbols filled the screen, giving a massive initial win. I reminded myself to relax and just go with the flow, and that everything was going to be all right. Then, the whole screen filled with women (bar just two spaces), giving a massive 70 additional free spins. The vision had come true. Furthermore, one of these women was purple, meaning I now had four sticky wilds — and their positioning on the first three columns meant that every spin was going to be a win.
I have never felt so relaxed gambling. This was a rare moment where I knew that I was definitely, without doubt, going to be getting everything I ever wanted, every spin, for the next seventy spins. It took about fifteen minutes for the whole thing to play out, during which time my breathing depressed to the contented level of a heroin addict, save for the occasional “Big Win” noises and coins-flying-out-the-fucking-screen when my state would be more reflective of cocaine. Here are selected screenshots showing the progression of the feature and its winnings (sorry about the bottom being cropped off — I just used MS Paint, which is SHIT):
£1766.50 from a single £2 stake. I didn’t even jerk off. I just sat there thinking, “This truly was the best day ever.” And everything I ever wanted had just happened, right there, and I went to bed with a big smile on my face.
These truly are blessed times.