For the third time in the last five years, I had an experience yesterday during meditation that I can only describe as the experience of death. The previous two times I had the experience during dreaming while sleeping (as opposed to dreaming while asleep during program, which was the case here).
I felt, first of all, a separation of my mind from my body. Indeed, my mind became an observer of my body which felt like a piece of meat that one would see in the butcher shop: mass of flesh, sinews, blood, and bone. Just a lump. Then a cessation of activity of that body. Indeed, this last time I even experienced a last exhale of breath leaving the body in a final, long "Haaah" of exhalation. During waking state, I never experience my body like that; it feels "normal". Anyone identify with this? Ever had an experience similar to it? One other point: I mention that I was dreaming when I had these experiences. I will venture to say that I was perhaps in the state of "tandra" (not to be confused with "tantra") which Muktananda defines as "a state of higher consciousness, beyond sleep, which is experienced during meditation". He calls it "yogic sleep" where "sometimes one has visions of the past or the future, visions of different lokas such as heaven and hell and other things. Yogic sleep leads to all realisations."
