Hi.

I've had a lot of weird experiences, that have come from my meditation practise. For me concentration, Metta and insight meditation. blend and crossover a lot and there's not always a very clear distinction between them.

When I'm meditating I often get into states which I think might be the 4th screen? I wouldn't call it hyper realistic, but it's definitely 3D and I'm definitely 'in' it. I would say the best way to describe it would be like a dream.

There's often people I know in real life who are part of the experience, sometimes it's really light hearted fun and sometimes it's really violent and weirdly sexual, although it's not emotionally distressing.

One time I was meditating with a small group of friends and I was hanging out in this zone. My friend who I was meditating with was appearing in my experience; we were up floating around in the universe. A bunch of strange stuff happened then I got a knife and stabbed him in the back of the neck  and then stabbed him 4 -5 times more. Then I stuck the knife into the bottom of his throat cut all the way down the middle of his chest and pulled his ribs apart to expose his insides, at which point that part of the visualisation stopped. I wasn't really sure why I was doing it, I was just kind of going with the flow.

After that sit, we were all having dinner together. Normally we keep it light hearted but he suddenly stopped the conversation and asked if he could tell us something. He is an anesthetist and he told us the story of a guy who had been brought into A&E (ER). The guy had been stabbed multiple times and in order to try and stem the bleeding they had cut open his chest and pulled open his ribs to expose the heart, but it was too late and he died. My friend felt that the guy's 'soul' had leapt into my friend's body when the guy died.

I didn't say anything about my experience in the meditation until a few weeks later because I was so freaked out!!

Anyway, I guess my question is.... Has anyone else had experiences of meeting others in the 4th screen? Does this even sound like the 4th screen or is it something else?

It would be interesting to hear other experiences. Thanks.

Wow, that must have been scary!

I once had the experience of being joined in my altered state by a friend. She was in the same room but out of my line of sight even if I were to have my eyes open. This was before I had any kind of systematic practice. I didn’t think of it as meditation, and it may have been more of a trance state. I had no intention of being mindful. I just enjoyed the altered state. I was sort of surfing on the vibes of other people who were doing shibari together. My friend, in her turn, decided to surf on my vibes. I noticed her entering into my state. I did not have enough clarity to perceive us doing anything in a clear way (it was certainly not 4th screen), but I was under the impression that we were also floating around. We used to call it flying, because that was what it felt like. Anyway, I found that I could not stay in that state much longer, because I had already been there for a while. Thus I found myself drawn up to the surface. I wasn’t able to bring my friend with me, but felt that I had sort of left her behind in that altered state. It turned out that she had the same experience, and that was a minor trauma for her. She ran away to another room and lay down in a fetalposition, hyperventilating for a while. When she could talk again, she said that she had been surfing on my vibes and found herself left behind as I was drawn to the surface.

This was many years ago now.

Thanks for sharing, that's really interesting. I hope your friend was ok.

My friend didn't get any visuals or anything. Him and another person have reported having intense sensations in their energy body when it's happening and sometimes some emotional reactions, but no information that it's come from an interaction with me. When I told my friend what I had experienced he was shocked.

It does seem like it's something different to the 4th screen, although it's also often preceded by 'murk'. 

Would a gong bath be considered a kasina? Is that doing the same thing as a concentration meditation? I've heard people report similar experiences from gong baths that I sometimes get from concentration meditation.

Weird stuff....

4th screen in my experience is hyper-real and feels realer than real. I get a lot of vision-type stuff similar to what you've described (although usually there aren't other people in it) that's not 4th screen and at one point had a name for it, but can't recall what it was. There are various strata of mind is the gist of it. But I'm a poor phenomenologist and so someone else may be better able to answer this question.

A gong bath: first time I'm hearing of it. Sounds like fun! Kasinas are visual objects used for meditation so not the same thing, but there are many, many ways of accessing concentration states using any of the senses.

Cool, thanks, that's useful. It's definitely not that then.

I think the thing that threw me was the 3D feel of it. It doesn't really feel like just a visual thing. 

On a side note, I just tried to visualise some stuff in order to compare it and I can't visualise anything at the moment. I think I used to be able to produce an image of something in my mind's eye, like seeing a drawing or something. At the moment, if I try and imagine an image of a tree (or anything), I can't get a picture of one in my mind's eye, I can only get a sense of feeling like I'm near a tree and interacting with it. It feels like it's coming as much from my body as my mind. 

Yeh, I would recommend a gong bath! Very trippy and fun

Once when I was struggling to reach equanimity (oh, the irony!), I had a dreamlike vision and kinesthetic experience of struggling to jump up to and climb a glider plane that was gliding effortless above me. Let us just say that I got the message.

I’m generally more kinesthetic than visual.

I love gong baths! I think they give a taste of concentration because the sound and the vibrations tend to capture one’s awareness single-pointedly.

EDIT: Oh, and yes, my friend was and is okay! Thanks for caring! She is a very sensitive person but she welcomes her strong reactions and embrace them. She is very very happy.

I don't know what 4th screen is, never heard, but your experience sounds like a telepathic experience. I've had lots of those ever since I meditate. But mostly telepathic dreams (I've reported some elsewhere on this site). 

Once I was meditating with a few friends. One of them was a woman from India sitting behind me. During meditation I saw an image of her talking to her relatives in India trying to solve some problem. After meditating I asked her if during her meditation, she had wandering thoughts about talking to relatives in India trying to solve some problems. She looked freaked out and told me it was so. 

But when I've reported these experiences to one of my teachers, he said not to try to make sense of such experiences, and that they are stage-specific. Trying to make sense of them can detract from the path.

That's cool. It's so interesting all this stuff.

I don't think mine was direct telepathy as my friend said that he wasn't thinking about his experience during the meditation. Maybe some kind of coadventuring into the sub-concious?

Yeh, thanks for the reminder about not worrying too much about what it all means. This is my general attitude but I find it can be tricky to find the middle way with the most weird and wonderful experiences.

It's helped sharing it though. It's making it easier to allow it, without repressing it from shame or embarassment or indulging it because I think it's somehow special. Thanks all for reading it and replying in a non-judgemental way  

This! That’s what I need too.

By the way, I have also had dreams that seemed to have telepathic features (f.i. dreaming the continuation of the very dream that my husband at the time was dreaming the first half of right next to me) and dreams that turned out to come true. I guess if everything is connected, that’s not so strange. It’s nothing to cling to, though. I can’t recall it ever changing anything.

Not to be clung to for sure, but I think at some levels the ability to use such experiences may be useful once one is a teacher: one may be able to attune to the student's mind and intervene in ways that can be helpful. There are exemples of that, from the Buddha's life but also from modern day teachers.

I think I see your point, and I do believe in planting seeds in a compassionate way. Sometimes intuition can be helpful with that, but I think it’s important to be very cautious of using intuitive knowledge about somebody without their knowledge, even with what one believes is pure intent and even if one intends to tell them when the timing is right.

I think in one sense I do it sometimes with people who are very close to me, but I’m not convinced that one should do it with someone who is in a onesidedly dependent position towards oneself. There are great risks involved. I’m not sure one should do it at all. I’m always very careful to watch out for my own potential subconscious motives, and most of the time I refrain from any action because I cannot be sure of the consequences and wouldn’t want any self interest to distort my action. Sometimes I choose to nurture a seed that I know is already there, because I think the timing is right for that insight to thrive, for the benefit of all involved, but then I carefully check with the person to make sure that I didn’t lead them astray. I’m too good at this to do it without a lot of caution, and that’s without any magick involved.

Thanks for sharing these important reflections. In most of my intuitive experiences, it happened as a therapist, a position in which we are, as you mentioned, with "someone who is in a onesidedly dependent position towards oneself". 

To me the question is not whether one should do something with it or not: even deciding not to do something is doing something, it's deciding to leave out or deny intuition from the relational field. Intuition is just part of all relational situations whether we like it or not. The question to me is whether we are using it ethically in a given situation. In object relations therapy we were trained to use the spontaneous images and feelings that come up in our minds during therapy sessions as potential source of information to be used during the session.This is not easy and we definitely will sometimes fail or make mistakes, but in my experience, if one follows ethical guidelines, these mistakes are usually benign and quite reparable. To be fair, in therapy we communicate honestly with our patients so it's not like we do some "magik trick2 without them knowing. 

Imagine the following relational scenario. One walks down a street and suddenly feels creeped out with violent imagery in the mind, and then see someone down the street that seem to resonate with those feelings. It is probably the safe thing to do to act on the intuition and change path. 

In therapy, an intuition could be that the client, while speaking in a neutral tone, seemingly alright, is actually suicidal. One cannot ignore such intuition.

But I do get from your post the importance to consider ethical implications, and appreciate such important reminder.

I remember reading Dipa Ma and how she was taught the powers (iddhis, magik) after attaining 2nd path. One criteria that her teachers used in choosing her was that she had very strong sila (ethics). And she used her intuitive powers with lots of metta to help her students. at one point a student in distress went to her interview with her. she did not even say one word and Dipa Ma said she should stop Vipassana for some time, and only do metta. This turned out to be helpful for that student and I'm sure she appreciated Dipa Ma's intiutive intervention.

Shall we say, then: "with power comes great responsibility?" A responsibility to be ethical.

Yeh, this is all stuff I've wrestled with, too. Good to hear both your thoughts.

I think what this experience highlighted to me was that:

1. it does have an impact on other people (before it was easy to hide in, 'it's probably all in my head') 
2. I actually don't have that much control over it. I guess it sort of felt like I was deciding to stab my friend (EDIT: within the visualisation, just to be clear, lol), but after that it became clear that that decision didn't come from me at all. There's some element of control in whether I decide to engage with this stuff or not and where I put my attention but otherwise I think it's not really coming from me, or certainly not the ego.

The way I see it is a bit like body language. It's all going on anyway and learning a bit about body language is helpful if you want to engage with other people better. A little knowledge and attention helps you understand what's happening and make some adjustments, but you are still not fully in control of your body language and certainly not the other person's. And if you try and grasp at understanding it too much and controlling the outcome, you will lose all the joy in your interactions. 

There are some people who try and control their body language with questionable ethics, for example, to intimidate people in business deals or manipulate women into having sex with them. But we all know that that is not where the end of suffering lies, and it is better to let go and allow things as they are.

Agree that a little bit or a lot of metta helps keep focused on the good intentions and ethics

What you say makes sense, Ben. And Rosa, your analogy with body language is very illustrative. Yes, with power comes great responsibility.

Fun discussion. This here is a good and quite relevant link to an essay by Daniel on Magick and the Brahma Viharas.

Not to put the fear in anyone or anything, but IMO even something as benign-seeming as metta can go wrong, especially if we aren't mindful. Everything we do can have downstream effects that we cannot see and metta can function as tribal glue, for example. Tribalism can be a good thing or a bad thing. We really do have to continually clarify and refine our intentions, especially in any kind of relationship where there is a large power differential. How much are our own biases and cultural conditioning influencing how we in turn influence others? How much are we aware of them at all? 

Ben: love the Spiderman quote

Yeh, I totally agree on the metta. I've had to go and have a lie down after receiving some strong metta meditation that I think was well-intentioned, but it was still really full on.

I did a therapy weekend course and we talked about attachment theory in the context of the brahma viharas. We did an exercise where we sat in small circles and sent loving kindness and offered eye contact to each person in turn for about 10 minutes per person. And each had a go at receiving it. Afterwards we talked about how it felt... I realised I had been totally overdoing it up to that point!! My parents were a narcissist and an autistic alcoholic, so I'd learnt that I had to give out lots of love first and foremost. I was kicking out metta and the other heart practises like an F1 engine. Being in the small circle let me see that I could ease it up a bit and offer it out rather than force it down people's throats. It was also nice to receive without the pressure of having to give back in that moment.  Other people talked about how they were so used to finding receiving love overwhelming (from overbearing parents) that they had never let themselves be seen or receive love as fully as they did in that moment. It was really beautiful and eye-opening.

I think it's important to recognise that we also need to be kind to ourselves and accept that our intentions will never be perfect. It's a grey scale, right? As long as we are aiming for something we believe is loving and are open to feedback, then it's the best we can do.

I find it interesting that you mention power, I haven't come across a lot of talk or content about power in the Dharma. Does anyone know why this is or have any theories? 

My feeling is that promoting being loving is essentially the same as discouraging being oppressive, especially if one agrees with the idea that love and power are opposite ends of the same scale. And that the 'rules' in each tradition take care of some of the most tempting power traps. Still, it seems like an under-discussed topic given how important it is. Thoughts welcomed!!

I do not at all agree that love and power are on opposite ends of the same scale. Which is a good thing because I am often in leadership positions where my intention is to use power for the good in ways that are loving. 

Ken McLeod is one of the few Buddhist teachers who talks about power--check this out: http://unfetteredmind.org/the-warriors-solution-passivity-and-freedom/

Yeh, I was thinking of Jung's quote:

'Where love rules, there is no will to power; where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.'

but I'm not sure where I fall on it, it doesn't fully rub with my experience and I can understand why you disagree. In my experience, there's definitely a tension between loving something as it is and wanting to take action to change it though.

Thanks for the link, I just read the intro and it sounds fascinating. I'm really interested to listen!

I think Jung may be talking about something different here--difficult to know what he means without context. Will be curious to hear what you think of that link on power.

I haven't listened to them all yet but so far it's fucking brilliant. Exactly what I was looking for. Thank you for sharing