My main points are:
1. Each person (especially Ajahn himself) needs to see whether the experience described in that book you quote matches the description in the “Sāmaññaphala Sutta (DN 2)“.
– As the Sutta clearly describes, “One enters a jhana knowingly, and one stays in a jhana knowingly.” Each jhana is described with its unique experience.
2. Even if it is a jhana, it is an anariya jhana reached via breath meditation, which is NOT the Anapana meditation that the Buddha described in the Anapanasati Sutta and many other suttas. That breath meditation was there even before the Buddha attained the Buddhahood. He learned it from two yogis in the early days before the Buddhahood and realized the futility of such anariya jhana.
– Of course, most Theravadins have been INCORRECTLY teaching this breath meditation for many hundreds of years. It is not Ajahn’s fault. Until Waharaka Thero provided the correct interpretation within the past 20 years, that was the ONLY interpretation available.
– I will write a few posts on the correct interpretation of the Anapanasati Sutta. We can discuss those posts.
– I have written a few posts (in “Bhāvanā (Meditation)“), but it seems to me that a better approach is to just describe the Anapanasati Sutta (MN 118). We all can discuss it at that time.
P.S. The tendency to translate suttas word-by-word is a key problem that we are facing today. Many deep suttas need to be explained in detail. See, “Sutta Interpretation – Uddēsa, Niddēsa, Paṭiniddēsa”
– Thus “assasa” and “passasa” are mistranslated as “breathing in and breathing out.” That is a mundane translation of those words.