Some time ago, I entered in sleep meditation without knowing about it, just went to take a nap in the afternoon and decided to concentrate to ease the mind and sleep faster, but this resulted in sleep meditation, first I thought I didn't had slept because I was aware the whole time, I only understood the experience after hearing Mingyur Rimpoche talking about it.
Today after lunch I had the idea of repeating the experience,since I was very drowsy and sleepy because I slept around 5:30 hours last night. I sitted in my home's main room, it was very sunny, I crossed my legs and reclined my back on the sofa and began to look to a blue wall, breaking conceptual thinking, there was no word or image thought and my gaze "felt" really compenetrated, then I looked at an artificial flower on the table for a minute, then I closed my eyes in this "non-thinking" state. After some seconds I began to fully relax the body and my head was tilting down. Then I just decided to go lay in bed, and assumed a "whatever posture", if I meditated while sleeping, good! If not, good too!
Here things got weird... First I had a normal dream that there's nothing extraordinary about, then I went to sleep INSIDE this dream, and this one was semi-lucid, I knew it was a dream of the previous dream, but I didn't know the previous dream was a dream. I was walking in a local mall with a retinue of Theravada monks, I was one of them. I remember we were walking in pairs in a line. We walked to the second floor where are all the food restaurants (I don't know how english speakers call this section of a shopping, lol) Then a kind of ceremony began, me and the monk that walked in pair with me were standing one in front the other, while all the retinue was sitting looking at us. The senior monk began making questions to us in Pali, after some questions everyone began chanting and me and the other monk began making a kind of ritual bowing toward one another, when he inclined forward I would bend backwards, and when I bowed forward He would do the opposite. The ritual was also a test of some kind, we were being tested to prove that we were worthy of becoming founders of a new local temple. It is interesting to note that he had a very long braided lock in the back of the head, the same haircut as the bodybuilder Kai greene. The fabric of reality of this dream constantly became more dense, to a point where everything was seeming a little stretched, as if they were being pulled inwards towards a very dense gravity that was not below us, but all around, and the voices were being multiplied, like a chorus effect. After the ceremony we were invited to do some kind of ritualistic meditation, I was very worried, because I already noticed that I was inside a very deep layer of consciousness, Ifeared that if I meditated, I would go even deeper and would never awake again, but I was curious (at this point, I already knew that the first dream was a dream and that I went to sleep in my bed after lunch hoping to meditate while I slept, this means that the Theravada monks dream was in a second dream layers, but it sunk down to a thir or fourth).
Indeed, when I meditated I sank even further, but here I was seeing me sleeping in my actual bed, then Buddha began talking to me, he told me that I had received a seed/initiation of the Dharma, and now I was empowered and eventually I would awaken to buddhahood. And I was visually experiencing this out of the body in the bed, but I was hearing and feeling everything inside the body in the bed. After this speech of the Buddha, I heard and felt an innumerable amount of "Om's" from all the voices in all of the universes, they were fluid and simultaneously they were causal and non-causal at the same time. After some seconds, the formless Buddha spoke again, it seemed that he spoke with all voices of the universe, it was male and female at the same time, but it didn’t sound like a robotic droning machine, nor an androginous being. It was smooth and velvety and said that this is what (pari)nirvana looks like, and I could enjoy it as much as I wanted. I just stood there, at the same time watching me in the bed with eyes closed and experiencing ultimate bliss and wholeness. I began to cry, it was extremely transcendental. I stood in this state for a while, crying because I never felt so much joy and happiness in my life (I truly felt this, even in the reality layer, it was very potent, my brain was even trembling)... Then I heard my mother talking with someone about me, she was worried and very afraid of me. Then I "woke up" from this state. I thought I had awakened in the real world. My mother wouldn't let me approach her. She was very afraid because of what she heard. This began to destabilize me as well, because I thought it was real. But at some point I began to perceive that different atmospheric veil of reality again. And I thought "Damn! I'm still sleeping..." I made some "effort" to wake up. Since now I knew I was still inside some layer of inner conscience, I stopped worrying about my mother emotional state. But through her voice, I could guess that I was inside 4 dream layers. Because she had simultaneously 4 voices and the reality indeed seemed to have 4 subjacent layers". I couldn't wake up, but I wasn't very worried because this happened before I knew how to do the "right effort" to wake up.
Here things became very terrible, when I tried the "waking effort", my body seemed to be extremely rooted and tied inside that dimension (I had difficult awakenings before, but never something so deep), I tried some more times, then I decided to take a break, spontaneously one veil broke down, now things were less stretched by their own inner gravity and voices had only 3 layers. This calmed me a little, I returned to my room, I searched for something different in the ambient, some kind of symbol. it took some time, then I eventually gave up, I was trapped very deep within and was afraid of never waking up. I had the idea of invoking some divine being to help me. So I called upon the first entity that came to mind. It was Avalokiteshvara. I begged him/her to help me because I was so afraid like a child and didn't know what to do on my own. I pledged with all my heart, humbly and honestly. It worked without any effort! I woke instantly without any difficulty.
It's interesting to note that when this happened in other lucid dreams that I were not very deep, I learned to wake up from the paralyze, but I had to make some effort and before waking up, usually the veil of the dream reality would break first leaving me with only black emptiness and I would regain body control rather slowly, beginning with the extremity of my limbs and going towards my spine, then I would open my eyes. This time it was totally different! There was no "progressive" wakening, I woke up instantaneously, I went straight from the dream reality to open eyes, there was no black emptiness in the middle, neither there was progressive control recovery, it was all sudden. I also woke fully energetic and charged, there was no sleepy dullness as usual.
I looked at the time, I slept for 1:40 hours, this means I went through a whole REM cycle, even though it felt like days.
So... what I really experienced was just a mix of normal dream and lucid dream? Maybe there was something mystic and I really received a blessing? I tend to be a very skeptical person, but I don't disregard supernatural experiences at all. In fact, I truly wish to have been blessed by my inner Buddha (who doesn't?)
I wish to hear everyone's opinion on this experience. What really was it? Is there any classification for this kind of experience?
Note: After reading my post, I realized that I made a very poor description of “nirvana” . It was equanimity, but through a filter of bliss (very confusing, I know). I was experiencing “into” nirvana from the outside, I wasn’t nirvana as an awakened one is.
