Something happened while asleep

thumbnail
J W, modified 2 Years ago at 3/24/21 11:41 AM
Created 2 Years ago at 3/24/21 11:41 AM

Something happened while asleep

Posts: 671 Join Date: 2/11/20 Recent Posts
I’d like to share an experience I had while asleep a few weeks ago, if anyone has any ideas on diagnosis they are welcome.  I can give more background if it helps, this is not a one-off event.

Lead up to the actual event (not the actual event):
In a dream, I was in some sort of foreign neighborhood, weird kind of place out in the country. staring up into the sky, started noticing more and more stars, becoming fluorescent. Then a ‘portal’ in the sky appeared, it was blue with ‘rungs’ In it. I somehow went into the portal.

The actual event:
​​​​​​​I entered into what I can best describe as a different dimension of experience.  There was an infinite, expansive quality to it, almost like a sort of stretching or warping, but I was not really conscious, and I’m not really sure how much time passed.  I was not ‘in’ my body.  At a certain point I did regain consciousness, I remember there was a period where I became aware, and I made some sort of decision to “return” to my body, though there was sort of this in-between period where the quality of warping/expansiveness was still there, but more in the background.  Once I returned to my body, I felt my center of awareness travel upwards from my spine out of the top of my head. I was then back on the bed in my ‘normal’ consciousness and felt my body sliding downwards to the bottom of the bed and onto the floor. Then I actually woke up. (I hadn’t actually slid off the bed).
thumbnail
Pepe ·, modified 2 Years ago at 3/24/21 12:45 PM
Created 2 Years ago at 3/24/21 12:45 PM

RE: Something happened while asleep

Posts: 712 Join Date: 9/26/18 Recent Posts
A standard OBE / Lucid dreaming fueled by A&P / Energetics? What do you want for others to comment about?

Check recent thread:  RE: entering lucid / astral states via sound of silence 
thumbnail
J W, modified 2 Years ago at 3/24/21 1:07 PM
Created 2 Years ago at 3/24/21 1:07 PM

RE: Something happened while asleep

Posts: 671 Join Date: 2/11/20 Recent Posts
Hmm, I wouldn't say it was a lucid dream, as I wasn't in control of the dream at any point. 

I also wouldn't call it an OOBE, which I have had while meditating, and felt quite different.  When I say I was "not in" my body, I also was not "outside of" my body. The OOBEs I have had were more like I was outside of my body, perceiving it from a 3rd person perspective.  This was more liike there was no locality whatsover, no observation or awareness of my body or mind.

I read the linked thread, I have experienced sleep paralysis and that type stuff before, but this was not that.

I do see some similarities between what you posted on the other thread here though:

"On two occasions I went into a hole/tunnel (in the Z axis), but just a second later I ended up in floating above bed, then gently falling back to bed."

I did experience going through a tunnel/portal, but after I went through the portal, my experience does not match yours, as I was not floating above the bed.

What do I want others to comment about, I don't know, anything they think useful, I guess.

By the way, this was helpful, thanks.
thumbnail
Pepe ·, modified 2 Years ago at 3/24/21 4:19 PM
Created 2 Years ago at 3/24/21 3:40 PM

RE: Something happened while asleep

Posts: 712 Join Date: 9/26/18 Recent Posts
Hey JW, forgive me if I sound harsh. I'm not an expert on the topic, just had a few experiences, long ago. My OBEs where just like yours, not perceiving my body from a 3rd person perspective, but do perceiving going up and down and towards my feet, sometimes going inside a whole (hole), other time attracted to a huge nimitta at the end of the tunnel. All of these experiences are just variations of OBEs in my opinion. The only difference we have is about the energy flow before the OBE. In my case it felt like circling in the X axis (floor level axis) but that was probably a perception glitch, as theory says that energy goes up/down through or near to the column. In fact, the OBEs were always triggered when the energy flowed down from head to chest/feet. Regarding crossing a portal, just two experiences. One triggered a piti and gratitude. The other one had a fear factor instead, as I was exposed to a vast empty white-noise space (in fact, I was in DN then, so not all these experiences are A&P related, but it's the most frequent case I guess).  
thumbnail
J W, modified 2 Years ago at 3/24/21 4:46 PM
Created 2 Years ago at 3/24/21 4:09 PM

RE: Something happened while asleep

Posts: 671 Join Date: 2/11/20 Recent Posts
Hey Pepe, thanks my friend... that's not quite it. 
If you are wondering, I just find it a bit tedious sometimes hearing the same 2 or 3 responses whenever these topics come up (especially when unprompted), almost just like an automated response. 
How to say this the right way...
In my case, I know that A&P is not cessation.  I also know to give it a year and a day, and that if there was any experience at all, that's not cessation.
In this case, telling me that A&P is not cessation isn't really helpful though, if I knew it was A&P I wouldn't be asking the question... does that make sense?

I'm sorry If I sound like an impatient a*hole, just trying to offer some feedback, not like being reminded hurts anything for the most part... it's just something we've all heard a lot already, in my opinion at least, assuming you're on DhO and especially if you've read MCTB. 

​​​​​​​I don't mean to be personal or anything like that, I think it's just better to try to verbalize the actual source of my frustration, so we can better understand each other, rather than to throw assumptions back and forth.


Anyway, back to the topic at hand:

"perceiving going up and down and towards my feet, sometimes going inside a whole, other time attracted to a huge nimitta at the end of the tunnel"

So I wouldn't say for the 'event' itself there was any sense of moving in any direction or any sense of the awareness being located at any particular place on my body.  However, after the event, that is after I had 'returned' into my normal consciousness, that's when there was the sense of awareness moving up my spine.  But, I am most interested in the events preceding that.

So could you describe in more detail the experience about the 'huge nimitta' you mentioned?  Maybe that could be a match here, I'm not sure.  Or possibly the 'going inside a hole'?  
thumbnail
J W, modified 2 Years ago at 3/24/21 4:57 PM
Created 2 Years ago at 3/24/21 4:57 PM

RE: Something happened while asleep

Posts: 671 Join Date: 2/11/20 Recent Posts
So let me ask this - in your OBE experiences, was there always a sense of presence of the body? (Whether you were outside of your body, or inside it in some particular place, or moving along some axis).

In this experience the reason I am not sure that it was an OBE was that there wasn't a sense of body at all.  It's a little hard to describe, I was not in any specific place really, although there was a sense of "being" and that "being" was existing... somewhere?  And there was this sort of warping sense but it didn't really have the sense of motion or expanding that 5th jhana has.  It was almost like a warping of experience itself?  Hope that helps clarify.
thumbnail
Pepe ·, modified 2 Years ago at 3/24/21 6:17 PM
Created 2 Years ago at 3/24/21 6:17 PM

RE: Something happened while asleep

Posts: 712 Join Date: 9/26/18 Recent Posts
Regarding A&P and SE, although I'm interested in the cessation event, at the end of the day it's the collection of insights what's actually the stuff what a yogi gets out of a meditation practice.  I like what Shargrol says about needing to go through 500 near-miss events before landing in SE. Perhaps the real number is drastically lower (hope so! emoticon)  but the point I think he tries to convey is that in High-EQ there are lots of experiences to go through and lots of insights to collect, as you drop to the mixer the vipassana-jhana grade, the form-formless jhana grade, the ability to perceive energy, the ability to perceive the 3C, etc. So it's difficult to diagnose near-miss, and probably pointless as at the end of the road the thing is if there was a significant and lasting  perceptual/psychological change. For example, last week I had an experience that I first thought it wasn't a near-miss (even if some phenomena matched the criteria) but it didn't look like A&P either. But in the few days later I hadn't any of the usual DN symptoms (so I discarded being cycling) plus my mind went silent frequently during the day, and for "large" (for my standard) lapses of time.  So probably it was a near-miss after all, but nothing earth-shattering then.  As I'm in the lower end of the concentration/jhana/energy spectrum nowadays (those OBE and energy experiences happened 10-15 years ago), perhaps that's why I came to peace with low key advances. Should I be in the higher end of that spectrum, then I would probably see things differently. We all work with what we got.

 
thumbnail
Pepe ·, modified 2 Years ago at 3/24/21 6:27 PM
Created 2 Years ago at 3/24/21 6:27 PM

RE: Something happened while asleep

Posts: 712 Join Date: 9/26/18 Recent Posts
No sense of body, but did have a sense of time and space. Those experiences happened 10-15 years ago, before getting in touch with buddhism and reading MCTB, so I had no framework to guide me. 
thumbnail
J W, modified 2 Years ago at 3/24/21 6:36 PM
Created 2 Years ago at 3/24/21 6:34 PM

RE: Something happened while asleep

Posts: 671 Join Date: 2/11/20 Recent Posts
Well, I did go out of my way not to mention Stream Entry in this post, nor to make any claims to attainment (I never have).  But since you brought it up, Stream Entry, like you say, is a collection of insights (practically speaking, a permanent shift in baseline experience) as defined within a certain model, the fetter model.  Stream Entry is not equivalent to cessation, but presumably, a stream enterer has had a least one, probably many, cessations (this I am not 100% clear on, though).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sot%C4%81panna
George S, modified 2 Years ago at 3/25/21 12:42 PM
Created 2 Years ago at 3/25/21 12:42 PM

RE: Something happened while asleep

Posts: 2722 Join Date: 2/26/19 Recent Posts
Stream-entry shouldn't be anything to sweat about ... it's loss of self-identity view emoticon​​​​​​​
Ben Sulsky, modified 2 Years ago at 3/26/21 11:35 AM
Created 2 Years ago at 3/26/21 11:29 AM

RE: Something happened while asleep

Posts: 169 Join Date: 11/5/19 Recent Posts
Hi J W,

Congrats on what sounds like a very interesting experience.

I've had some very interesting dream experiences but nothing which matches what you describe particularly well.  I've had various A&P experiences while dreaming and to me this sounds different.  

I'm not talking from my own experience here, but the Tibetan stuff I've read sometimes talks about states which seem to me to have similarities with what you describe.  Specifically, some of the completion stage tantric stuff I've read (like Lama Yeshe) talks about various experiences where consciousness becomes more refined.  

Best,

​​​​​​​Ben
thumbnail
J W, modified 2 Years ago at 3/26/21 12:58 PM
Created 2 Years ago at 3/26/21 12:58 PM

RE: Something happened while asleep

Posts: 671 Join Date: 2/11/20 Recent Posts
Hey Ben,
Thanks for the recommendation, I will look into Lama Yeshe, that sounds relevant.

If I had to guess what it was, after re-reading Daniel's chapter on the Formless Realms, the closest match would be 7th or 8th Jhana, especially 7th Jhana, though I don't know how accurate that self-diagnosis would be.

Yes, A&P experiences in dreams are not uncommon, I think.  Even with this particular event, the stuff leading up to and afterward had classic A&P qualities. It's just this bit in the middle that I couldn't really match with anything else I've experienced, not even 5th or 6th jhanas which I am not unfamiliar with.

Warm regards,
JW
Dani Mon, modified 2 Years ago at 4/28/21 11:48 PM
Created 2 Years ago at 4/28/21 11:48 PM

RE: Something happened while asleep

Posts: 33 Join Date: 6/16/16 Recent Posts
Hi there I did have a quite similar experience during retreat, in which I kind of stopped having sensorial inputs (except for the mind) and I simply felt "space" (didn't "see" it though, just felt space). After reading a lot, I think that I might have had a glimpse of the 5th concentration jana "infinite space". Have you considered it? Samadhi janas 5-8 are "out of body" in a way, or that is my understanding anyway, not that I ever had the same experience again.

Cheers, Dani
thumbnail
J W, modified 2 Years ago at 4/30/21 2:16 PM
Created 2 Years ago at 4/30/21 2:16 PM

RE: Something happened while asleep

Posts: 671 Join Date: 2/11/20 Recent Posts
Hey Dani, thanks for your input.
Perhaps my understanding is off... but I sometimes experience what I think of as 5th jhana as having an expansive quality to it with a definite sense of relative space. In a 'softer' j5, it can feel as if the body/space occupied by the body is growing really large or small, almost like you're flying or levitating.
In a more hard j5 I've had experiences where it is more of an OOBE type thing, like the 4th Jhana VR screen becomes an image my body, that I am viewing from the outside, kind of a thing.

One of the reasons I think of this as 5th jhana is that it usually comes after the 4th Jhana "VR screen", and the expansive quality i mentioned seems to match with the concept of 'boundless space'.

Feel free to correct if this doesn't seem accurate, for all I know maybe that's all just variants of 2nd jhana.
But in any case, the experience i mentioned here, from what I remember, there was no locality at all, no perception of space.

regards,
​​​​​​​JW
Dani Mon, modified 2 Years ago at 4/30/21 4:13 PM
Created 2 Years ago at 4/30/21 4:12 PM

RE: Something happened while asleep

Posts: 33 Join Date: 6/16/16 Recent Posts
Hey JW, if no predominant perception of space then it's different from what I experienced, whatever that was.

Others with more experience will be better suited than me to guide you on this, then.

Very interesting stuff anyway, thanks for sharing.

Cheers, Dani.