What was that?

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The Xzanth, modified 11 Years ago at 12/29/12 11:46 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/29/12 11:46 AM

What was that?

Posts: 71 Join Date: 12/28/12 Recent Posts
Ok this occured about 15 years ago after a month of intensive Hatha Yoga (a Sivananda Teacher Training Course). It was my first intense mystical experience (after a few 'floating out of my body' type of experiences at the retreat).

Sitting on my bed with my girlfriend. My lower back (right on the tailbone) has been hurting on and off for most of the month of training. At the moment the pain is more intense. My girlfriend puts her hand over the area. Just as she says that the area is becoming very hot I feel myself shoot out of the top of my head. I am floating through my room which is filling with swirling psychadelic colors and what sounds like a dozen monks chanting in overtones. About 5 seconds of this and I am back in my body.

I kept a 'scar' from the event. A dime sized discolored area where the heat had manifest. The discoloration (looked like a burn) remains for about a year and then fades away.
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The Xzanth, modified 11 Years ago at 12/30/12 3:15 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 12/30/12 3:15 PM

RE: What was that?

Posts: 71 Join Date: 12/28/12 Recent Posts
Here's another one. Again quite a few years ago (about 12-14 I guess... my journals from that time are mess... no my journals in general are a mess :-D) At the time my practice was mostly Hatha Yoga Asana, Pranayama, Mantra Meditation, Low Magick (sorcery?) and psychadelic drugs (though I was sober at the time of the experience).

I spent a whole afternoon where I had the experience of everybody looking, sounding and acting like me. It was like I noticed how usually I focused on the differences but that process was temporarily suspended. I was now focusing on the similarities with myself as a baseline (because I did not notice a change how I observed myself). The experience was accompanied by a deep sense of compassion and understanding. It's like I could for the first time witness and appreciate the human-ness in all people.

A little hard to describe but I believe the experience helped to 'cure' me of what prejudice (racial and other) that remained in me.
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The Xzanth, modified 11 Years ago at 1/2/13 11:25 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/2/13 11:19 AM

RE: What was that?

Posts: 71 Join Date: 12/28/12 Recent Posts
This experience is probably the most powerful that I have gone through. (in terms of sheer intensity)

It is strange that I never recorded when it happened because it was so powerful. It is also strange that for a long time I seemed to forget about it ever having had happened. So, I don't know when it happened. I only know that it happened more than once. I also assume that some kind of psychoactive substance (LSD, psylocibin, or cannabis) must be related to this event because if it ever happened sober I would most likely have checked myself into the psyche ward.

I'm not sure what leads up to it (it is thought process) but all a sudden there is a shift. The outside world comes to a stop and I am alone. In this state I feel incredible fear, a sense that things will never again be the same. There might be a sense of wetness but I cannot say where. In this state I do not seem to have a body. Inevitably I reason my way back first by accepting that if I am thinking and hearing myself think then I am not alone, there is the I and the one witnessing the I. At the same time I am usually sorting through powerful and difficult emotions. (guilt, shame, fear) It is hard to say when it ends but everything, body, identity, etc all come back seamlessly one by one.

Writing it down it really doesn't seem like much. But even today when I think about it I can get a sense that I am going to fall back into that 'alone' state again, and it both fills me with awe and frightens the hell out of me. It seems like a classic psychosis.

I suspect that it was some sort of 'gate' and had I been able to maintain my equanimity I might have been able to pass through. If it was as I suspect the very drugs that came with me to the gate prevented me from going through it. Perhaps it is just I but I think I will need to cross that gate without any latent anxiety (by feeling 'above all reproach; unimpeachable).
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Daniel M Ingram, modified 11 Years ago at 1/3/13 2:27 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/3/13 2:27 AM

RE: What was that?

Posts: 3268 Join Date: 4/20/09 Recent Posts
Daniel Gravel:
My lower back (right on the tailbone) has been hurting on and off for most of the month of training. At the moment the pain is more intense. My girlfriend puts her hand over the area. Just as she says that the area is becoming very hot I feel myself shoot out of the top of my head. I am floating through my room which is filling with swirling psychadelic colors and what sounds like a dozen monks chanting in overtones. About 5 seconds of this and I am back in my body.


This one is easy: Three Characteristics (3rd insight stage) to A&P Event.
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Daniel M Ingram, modified 11 Years ago at 1/3/13 2:28 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/3/13 2:28 AM

RE: What was that?

Posts: 3268 Join Date: 4/20/09 Recent Posts
Second one is very likely Equanimity, which can involve some very strange unifying and transpersonal, universal, etc. feeling of the whole field of experience and everyone on it.
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Daniel M Ingram, modified 11 Years ago at 1/3/13 2:30 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/3/13 2:30 AM

RE: What was that?

Posts: 3268 Join Date: 4/20/09 Recent Posts
While it would be easy to knee jerk and say that the 3rd one was 6. Fear, there are clearly some more complex elements that are going on, and it would probably require some more detailed information about the context, set, setting, substances, what came before it, what came after it, and more details to make sense of it, and some things just aren't going to easily fit into any box.
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The Xzanth, modified 11 Years ago at 1/3/13 7:22 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 1/3/13 7:22 AM

RE: What was that?

Posts: 71 Join Date: 12/28/12 Recent Posts
Thank-you Mr. Ingram

It is satisfying to have these experiences validated as authentic sign posts along the path especially after so long and so much silence from my previous teachers.