Dileep's Meditation Experience

Dileep Vasist, modified 6 Years ago at 6/8/17 11:56 PM
Created 6 Years ago at 6/2/17 12:49 AM

Dileep's Meditation Experience

Posts: 20 Join Date: 5/13/17 Recent Posts
Hello All,

I just wanted to share few of my experiences with meditation.

Background:-
I come from a not so religious family from Karnataka, present in South India. From my child hood, I have been spiritually oriented. When I was a kid, I had felt that  life is meaningless.(Not the real sense of meaning less that I understand now). I always thought, there is no purpose to life. Everything was just birth, study, work, die. I wanted to commit suicide but did not have the guts to. Later I felt I need to think and act like normal kids and tried to distance my self from such thoughts. Everything went normal till I came to 10th Grade. I met my friend 'Goutham' in school and somehow or for some reason, we started discussing about spirituality, GOD and meaninglessness of life.etc. Everyday we used have hours of conversations and debates. This again provoked the spiritual quest inside me and we have been moving in that direction ever since. I

2years Later,
The purposelessness of this Life, failure to understand GOD, the sense of feeling trapped in my body disturbed me a lot. I had even cried a lot for this. I felt trapped and abandoned.

3 to 4 years later,
I came upon a definition of GOD for myself, found peace with me. According to me everything is GOD. Each and every part of this whole existence is GOD. There is no other thing other than GOD. And at last came to a conclusion, that I am living in Maya and since everything is GOD, even this illusion is GOD. And hence, I started to enjoy this Maya in a better way. I have been peaceful regarding spirituality ever since.

Over the years of my existence I have been both a theist and an atheist. I have been an egoistic atheist, humble atheist, devoted theist, egoistic theist.

My experience with meditation:
I have sometimes tried meditation now and then. The purpose has always been to calm my mind. But never understood exactly on how to do it. whatever was my focus of concentration, I used to be disturbed by my own breath. So, later I came upon an idea of using breath itself as an object of meditation. I have a job and with that I started doing meditation now and then. I later came upon an idea of imagining my self to be merged with this universe. For example, if I am travelling in a bus, I imagined my being merged with the seat of the bus, the bus as a whole.Feel for sometime the movement of the bus to be myself moving and I am part of the bus. Slowly increase my conciousness with the surrouding. And keep on extending my conciousness.

Reason for me to do so:- I felt every thing is GOD. So, I wanted to dissolve my self with everything.

One day while doing the above invented form of meditation, I had an experience where I actually experienced myself to be part of the whole universe, I felt as if I had actually dissolved into everything and believed that I had experienced GOD. It was extremely blisfull. I have been very much peaceful ever since with occasional ups and downs of the life. On a whole, I believed that I am the happiest person under the sun and moon with minor disturbances.

Few months back:-
I explained my experience to my friend Goutham.(The same old Goutham). He was quite interested with it as he had been exploring about meditation and had come accross Goenka's Vipassanna retreat. I had stopped my journey of spirituality and was just being worldly. He asked me to join him to one of the retreats happening in Chennai. As I had work commitments, I could not and neither had the interest to. So, he continued without me. He attended the retreat and found changes in him. He insisted me to attend a retreat so that we can discuss or share our progress on this journey. He was able to be more peaceful. But I was not yet that interested to attend a retreat and had work commitments.

Since then he has sent his parents on a retreat. With my suggestion and his explanations, a common friend of us 'Dilip Kumar' also attended the retreat. It made him so compassionate that, Dilip called me and asked me and my wife to attend the Goenka retreat. I was very much overwhelmed by Dilip's and Goutham's compassion towards me. Goutham explained me on how to observe the emotions and body sensations to come out of suffering. I decided to attend a retreat as soon ass possible but I never found time.

Goutham shared me few audios by Joseph Goldstein to listen to atleast even if I didnot attend a retreat. So much of love towards me. And thus I started my journey of Vipassana.
Since then I have been doing Breath meditation, Body Scanning and having general awareness of the whole body. I have also been doing some noting technique along with the above meditation and also in my everyday life.

Experiences in chronological order:-
1)Sensations on my face and legs even if I had not been observing.

2)Severe head ache and sensations on my face and immediated concentration on my nose when I sat for Breath meditation. Severe jaw pain and feeling of my jaws getting dissolved. I had a peaceful mind.

3)One day suddenly I was completely distracted a lot and did not even have the head ache. Felt huge suffering because of that as I could not meditate. Later, I had a realization that I had been addicted to the feeling of peace. Once, I relaised that I again became peaceful. The same day, I was observing my body sensations and found that sensations near my inner thighs are pleasant. As I kept observing the whole body sensations, I got an Orgasm.

4)Nothing happened for few days. I had just been meditating. My sleep has reduced in the night. But I feel energetic the whole day. I mainly do Breath meditation. I believe it was because of that.

5)One night, I had a very bad dream. I still can remember the dream vividly. With that dream I woke up with anxiety and suddenly without my thinking, I started observing the whole body sensation. It was pulsating fast. Suddenly, my mind started explaining me that every thing is impermanent. Every thing happened on its own.

6)One evening when I was travelling in a metro train, something flashed upon me. I felt as if I could not differentiate between myself and other things other than my body. I was illusioned to such an extent that what ever I looked at, I felt it to be me. Example:- If I looked at at tree, instead of thinking it to be a tree, I felt as if it was I. Everything echoed 'I' in my mind. Felt as if I understood what egoless ness is. Also undersatood that every thing is a sensation. But I had not experienced egoless ness yet. It was just an understanding.

7) The very next day I was observing my sensations, visual, auditory, bodily sensations. I learnt that just because some sensation is happening on my body it doesn't mean it is happening on me. It is same as any other activity elsewhere. Our body is not excluded part of this universe. This type of observation is similar to BigMind meditation. Observe everything. By doing this I became egoless for 3 to 4 seconds. My awareness had left my body and everything was just being perceived. I did not exist. Everything was just sensation.

8)Now I have understood that, everything is nothing but sensation. Our thoughts, mixing up of sensations gives rise to 'Ego'. Working on being aware of that all the time. From this I also learnt that there is nothing called FreeWill. Everything is just a ripple of Cause and Effect.

My journey to understand reality has started again. Will post any updates on my progress. May everyting be peaceful.

Also, please do provide me suggestions on this regard if any.
Dileep Vasist, modified 6 Years ago at 6/5/17 3:51 AM
Created 6 Years ago at 6/5/17 3:49 AM

Is it Mind and Body?

Posts: 20 Join Date: 5/13/17 Recent Posts
6)One evening when I was travelling in a metro train, something flashed upon me. I felt as if I could not differentiate between myself and other things other than my body. I was illusioned to such an extent that what ever I looked at, I felt it to be me. Example:- If I looked at at tree, instead of thinking it to be a tree, I felt as if it was I. Everything echoed 'I' in my mind. Felt as if I understood what egoless ness is. Also undersatood that every thing is a sensation. But I had not experienced egoless ness yet. It was just an understanding.

7) The very next day I was observing my sensations, visual, auditory, bodily sensations. I learnt that just because some sensation is happening on my body it doesn't mean it is happening on me. It is same as any other activity elsewhere. Our body is not excluded part of this universe. This type of observation is similar to BigMind meditation. Observe everything. By doing this I became egoless for 3 to 4 seconds. My awareness had left my body and everything was just being perceived. I did not exist. Everything was just sensation.

8)Now I have understood that, everything is nothing but sensation. Our thoughts, mixing up of sensations gives rise to 'Ego'. Working on being aware of that all the time. From this I also learnt that there is nothing called FreeWill. Everything is just a ripple of Cause and Effect.


I came across the stages in MCTB which explains various stages in meditation. As per the above experiences that I have had, I felt that the experience I had is similar to 'Mind and Body' stage. And as mentioned in 'Mind and Body', I also had jaw pain few days before the experience because of meditation. However, I did not have it during the experience. When I saw jaw pain and egoless experience in 'Mind and Body' I became curious.

1)Can someone please help me to identify if I am in 'Mind and Body' stage?
2) If so, how do I proceed further? I have been doing breath mediation, noting technique and sometimes occasional body scan.

I would be happy if Daniel Ingram himself would find this post and helps me with the above questions.
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Daniel M Ingram, modified 6 Years ago at 6/5/17 4:21 AM
Created 6 Years ago at 6/5/17 4:21 AM

RE: Is it Mind and Body?

Posts: 3268 Join Date: 4/20/09 Recent Posts
Reading your descriptions, I was reminded of a number of stages, from Dark Night stages when you were a kid, to Mind and Body, the Arising and Passing Away, as well as Equanimity and others.

Sorting out which is which and "where you are" is sometimes tricky over forum posts and when terminology and conceptual frameworks are different, particularly as you are coming from a pretty heavily vedanta-esque point of view, which is a good point of view, just different.

Anyway, perhaps we might chat sometime, or you could chat with some of the many other talented practitioners here who are also quite qualified to help sort this territory out and help put things in a context that leads to continued good practice.

Daniel
Dileep Vasist, modified 6 Years ago at 6/5/17 4:26 AM
Created 6 Years ago at 6/5/17 4:26 AM

RE: Is it Mind and Body?

Posts: 20 Join Date: 5/13/17 Recent Posts
Thanks a lot for your response Daniel. Does that mean that all these stages may happen in random order and not one after other?
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Daniel M Ingram, modified 6 Years ago at 6/5/17 4:36 AM
Created 6 Years ago at 6/5/17 4:36 AM

RE: Is it Mind and Body?

Posts: 3268 Join Date: 4/20/09 Recent Posts
They occur in order, but they are cyclical also, so, we rise up, we fall back, we rise up again, perhaps a bit higher, perhaps not, and around and around and around it goes, so mapping this takes a lot of time and careful conversations, particularly when the conceptual frameworks and terminology may differ.
Dileep Vasist, modified 6 Years ago at 6/9/17 12:49 AM
Created 6 Years ago at 6/9/17 12:28 AM

Experiences Continued

Posts: 20 Join Date: 5/13/17 Recent Posts
6th June 2017:
As usual I started with Breath meditation in the morning, and had full body awareness through out the day. For some reason, I had full body awareness as default with out me even thinking about it. My mind was very peaceful and was very calm. In the evening, I got memories of my childhood, where similar thing used to happen.

" I had a memory where I used to travel in bus with my grandmother holding her hand. And I was having full body awareness(Peripheral awareness)". As a kid I had gone through that experience but not had not understood it.

Later in the night when I was speaking to my spiritual buddy "Goutham", I had yet another memory of my childhood which I recognise to be Dark Night. Till now I remembered that I was depressed about the meaninglessness of Life and had wanted to die. But this evening I got clear scenic memory of the time I was feeling depressed. I could remember each thing perfectly. I felt as if I was reliving that experience.

"The memory of me sitting on a Blue colored Sofa, a hole was there on one side of the Sofa. The CRT TV that I was watching and the set topbox kind of thing that showed channel numbers in RED Digital display. The depressed feeling I was going through." Everything flashed back. I felt as if I was reliving it and felt depressed.

But amazing thing to note is that, once I came to present and out of the memory, I felt very Calm and Peaceful. I was already feeling peaceful but after this I felt more peaceful. Very Calm.

Late in the night , I felt lot of compassion for myself when I was a child. It wasn't like I was feeling compassion for myself. I was feeling compassion for the child in my memories. I wanted to hug him and tell him that everything's going to be alright.

I also felt like , I had to do something for all the kids that are going through this suffering and help them out somehow.

7th June 2017:
In the morning, I was feeling the same calmness and still had the feeling that I had to do something for all the kids suffering out there in the world. Like the previous day, full body awareness was the default option. All the sensations and visual and auditory, I could catch them perfectly.

In the evening while I was riding a MotorCycle, I got a sudden experience where there was silence with seeing yet my ears could hear the sounds. It's too hard to expain this mad experience. Later I could completely split my sensations of vision and hearing. Everything was like a beautiful moving picture. Mixing of different sensations gives rise to the feeling of Ego and we also feel the Ego of the subjects we are looking at. If seeing a person or an object, our mind combines the different sensations we get from it like visual and auditory and provides an Ego to that Object or a Person. This finding was truly great.

8th June 2017:
From morning till evening, full body awareness was not the default. I was very distracted and peace and Calm that I had been having vanished. I felt as if I was back to normal after losing all my superpowers of being calm and peaceful. I got irritated at many things as usual but observed the sensations of me getting irritated. I tried to be aware but kept getting distracted. So I spent the whole day in watching videos Culadasa(John Yates) and by studying MCTB.

9th June 2017:
This morning too I had been feeling as the previous day before. Easily getting distracted and not having full body awareness. I was listening to Joseph Goldstein's audio on hinderances where he explains that his expecting mind was the major hinderance he was having. After listening to this, it flashed to me that, Reality is as it is. From 2 days I had been expecting to have full body awareness and just because of my expectation, reality doesn't change. I accepted the reality. When introspected, I could observe that Expecting mind comes when Ego is strong. From 2 days, the illusion of Ego had become strong in me. Currently, I am working on coming out of the illusion of Ego and have been feeling a lot better.


Any suggestions and comments will be helpful for me. If any of you feel that I am going wrong some where, please do correct me, so that I can proceed in this path.
Mettafore, modified 6 Years ago at 6/9/17 1:43 AM
Created 6 Years ago at 6/9/17 1:40 AM

RE: Dileep's Meditation Experience

Posts: 171 Join Date: 3/24/14 Recent Posts
Hi Dileep,

Wonderful to see a fellow desi on the board. We have a rich spritual heritage. And, the best way to maintain it is by practicing. I can relate with pretty much everything on the first post (Meaninglessness, atheism, depression, God-is-everything, full body automatic sensations, at the time of noting not able to differentiate between self and others). Even, the feelings of compassion from your third post is very relatable. In, my case it was for fellow Indians.

From your third  post: Full body awareness reminds me of Equanimity (I can remember from retreat the mind and body was collected and things were silent)

All I would say for now is: Keep practicing, keep posting your log, keep reading MCTB (you'll get a good idea of the terminology used here and the path). Also, feel free to PM and connect in meatspace.
Dileep Vasist, modified 6 Years ago at 6/14/17 9:01 AM
Created 6 Years ago at 6/14/17 9:01 AM

RE: Dileep's Meditation Experience

Posts: 20 Join Date: 5/13/17 Recent Posts
13-06-2017:
In the morning, breath meditation went exceptionally well.

I had been reading MCTB. After reading through various stages of insight, I felt as if none of those things mattered.(No offence Daniel). I didn't even want to know about any stages or states or any Jhanas or any maps of meditation. I just scrolled through all the stuff and wanted to read something that mattered. I had a feeling of emptiness. Complete emptiness.

I did not feel demotivated to do meditation as well. I just didn't feel anything inside. When I asked myself whether I still had the goal of finding reality, even that did not matter anymore. But I wanted to meditate. I had only that in my mind. I wanted to just go home, sit and meditate.

I have faced this phase of emptiness even before in my life. Not happy, not sad, nothing. Just emptiness.

My question is, Was this feeling of emptiness because of meditation or because of some reason which has been happening since childhood?

14-06-2017:-
In the morning, when I woke up I was not feeling empty anymore. Just any other normal day. My goal is back again. Still not interested in maps of meditation to measure progress. (By the phrase 'Not interested' , I do not mean that it is not good or useful. I imply that I just don't want to progress based on the maps. I just want to keep meditating. If I can see progress by looking at the maps, it is fine. But maps or no maps, I just want to proceed.).
Dileep Vasist, modified 6 Years ago at 6/22/17 3:33 AM
Created 6 Years ago at 6/22/17 3:33 AM

RE: Dileep's Meditation Experience

Posts: 20 Join Date: 5/13/17 Recent Posts
18th June 2017 to 20th June 2017:

I did meditation and tried to be aware as usual. On 19th, I did an extra hour of meditation. For some unknown reason, I was feeling depressed for the 3 days. I just kept noting it and observed the sensations.

21st June 2017 and 22nd June 2017:

No signs of feeling depressed. I couldn't meditate in the morning as I was feeling too sleepy.
Dileep Vasist, modified 6 Years ago at 6/27/17 4:31 AM
Created 6 Years ago at 6/27/17 4:31 AM

RE: Dileep's Meditation Experience

Posts: 20 Join Date: 5/13/17 Recent Posts
27 June 2017:
Completed 40 minutes of meditation in the morning.

I am being aware of my senses whenever I'm not doing any work related to my Job. I am able to perceive visual, auditory and bodily senses as they are(Seperately). As a result of this, I am having very reduced Ego(Sense of Self) or sometimes it appears egoless.

I'm also having severe tension in my fore head which when observed upon is wavering like the flame of a lamp. My hearing has become extemely sensitive. When I'm in a crowd, the chaotic noise is becoming too intense and I feel as if I'm out of breath. When the environment is silent, I am hearing sound of the AC duct. I am having aversion to these sensations and Ego is becoming prominent again.

I also felt few tremor like sensations in my leg and felt as if I'm in a minor earth quake.
Dileep Vasist, modified 6 Years ago at 7/31/17 11:52 PM
Created 6 Years ago at 7/31/17 11:41 PM

Help needed with motivation

Posts: 20 Join Date: 5/13/17 Recent Posts
I have not posted my experience since past few days.

I have had many experiences since my last post. My whole perspective at looking at things has changed.(Meaning I see the meaninglessness of everthing and more or less percieve everything as just sensations. I have completely understood the illusion of Ego. So even if the Ego is there, I know for sure that it is for sure an illusion because I have experienced how it arises when any sensation occurs.)

While I have been trying to be completely aware of all the sensations happening, I have experienced fruition kind of event. While I was trying to be aware of all the sensations I could experience egolessness easily. All the colors and sounds felt more beautiful than ever and suddenly there was a blip in my awareness. It felt like switching off and again switching on the awareness. This has happened twice.

1)Is this fruition?
2)If so have I attained the first path?


Few days after this ,I experienced a marvellous no self experience for a very long time. And minor instabilities after that. I had been practicing for a while even after all this. But from two or three weeks I have not been able to mediatate like I used to before. I am able to see clearly how I am being driven by craving for sensual pleasures. Even though I note it, I just go and yield for it. This is bringing a feeling of guilt in me. Even the guilt is not too hard because if it had been I might not have followed my cravings. I am not able to meditate like I used to but I want to.

3)My question is I've had a lot of wonderful experiences from meditation. It has made me more peaceful. But why am I not addicted to it and why have I lost the motivation to do it?

I would be happy if some could answer my questions. Also, please give me suggestions on motivating myself.
A Dietrich Ringle, modified 5 Years ago at 7/21/18 10:23 AM
Created 5 Years ago at 7/21/18 10:23 AM

RE: Dileep's Meditation Experience

Posts: 881 Join Date: 12/4/11 Recent Posts
The mind/body paradigm is for me a reflection of the physical elements that make up our world. The left hand side of the periodic table includes some elements that react explosively with water. Since we are primarily water, this takes a toll on us, and we see reality reflected as a circle.

"May the circle be unbroken, in the sky lord in the sky"

Also, the currents that guide us become less enamored with themselves because they are becoming more radioactive and cumbersome unto themselves. I still have hills and valleys to climb, except that it is all downhill.

One day I will stop eating doughnuts. Or at least I will eat them differentlly.

I hope to see you all in a friendly match of bumper cars some day.

Please don't tie this to any of Daniel's teaching. I don't know where he stands and I don't have any interest in debating him. I am a advocate of disabilty rights and do not share the concerns of medical doctors or their worries.

My audience would be retired dentists. What I would tell them is that it is possible that they disscover a different mind/body self for each tooth of a patient that they treat.

They can treat me to an ice cream
A Dietrich Ringle, modified 5 Years ago at 7/21/18 2:29 PM
Created 5 Years ago at 7/21/18 2:25 PM

RE: Dileep's Meditation Experience

Posts: 881 Join Date: 12/4/11 Recent Posts
Another thing that comes out in this description is that I believe it is a healthy practice to create our own archetypes when dealing with buddhist teachings. I can't help from a distance though when we do this. emoticon ->->->Lord take me somewhere where the mind and body runs deep where I can heal and find release. We have the complete picture but it has to fit in our narrative. When the narrative doesn't yield then we run into a mental complex, by far the worst thing that you might encounter. RUn likE HELl/