The insight knowledges are the tradition's map of the stretch where meditation stops being pleasant. After the meditator perceives arising and passing clearly, the commentarial sequence runs through dissolution, fear, misery, disgust, and the desire for deliverance before equanimity arrives — and the Visuddhimagga names them plainly rather than softening them. Western vipassana teachers, encountering practitioners falling apart on long retreats, rediscovered this and borrowed St John of the Cross's phrase for it, which has since caused its own confusion. The traditional advice is that the way out is through, under supervision; the modern addition is that intensive practice can genuinely destabilise people and that screening matters.