Recently I came close to dying. I won't go into too many details for the sake of anonymonity, but this was a medical event that caused me to come in and out of consciouness multiple times and ended up putting me in the ER. I call it a nearish death experience because my heart never stopped, but it had many of the same characteristics of an NDE. This thing snuck up on me progressively over the course of a day or so, and the whole experience was interesting enough I thought it would be worth posting here.

During the day leading up to the ER visit, my state of mind became progressively altered. At first I thought I was just tired or feeling off. Then I recognized how similar this felt to familiar mediational states. Out of interest, I let this happen for a bit, before deciding to come out of those states. However, at that point it was out of my hands. Discursive consciousness had gone entirely and directive consciouness had dropped to a bare minimum. The jhana sequence carried on by its own momentum and became extremely difficult to impossible to direct. There was no getting off the ride.

I made a comment to friends and family who were nearby that they needed to get me to the hospital, and then I collapsed. I was in and out of consciousness after that. At the hospital, things stabilized a bit, although I was still in a severely altered state of consciousness. Friends and family were obviously concerned, but I felt as though I could let go, if not for the grief this would cause those connected to me. Multiple things were going haywire with my body, and I felt moments of physical 'panic/impending doom' but I think due to meditational training I wasn't bothered by this at all. In fact it was amusing. These just seemed like another object, another phenomenon. I was simply playing with it as a meditation object while I was very close to dying. It felt like the last thing to go would be my concern for the wellbeing of friends/family.

At any rate, I was eventually stabilized and recovered. I will be fine for now. Looking back on this experience, I feel very confident that the jhana sequence does in fact correspond to what happens to the mind during the dying process. During NDEs, people often go through an experience appropriate to their individual spirituality. Suggestion could have played a role, but I'm leaning against it since I could no longer resist or direct the experience when I tried. This was a predetermined sequence of experience. Based on what happened, I'd say the jhana sequence is very close to the baseline experience of death and dissolution. There might be other features added (I saw the tunnel vision and light, for instance), but boy it is close. For me anyway, having practiced meditation made it feel as though I had practiced dying already. I had little fear.

Those who've had similar experiences, and also physicians and others who may have heard such reports from individuals undergoing death - I'd be interested to hear your own perspective on what you've experienced or had reported to you by others, especially as it relates to your meditation experiences. Thanks all.