--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "shempmcgurk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > 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." >
I have this experience all the time; sometimes I cheat a little bit, by using a holosync cd, to go deeper into the delta state of deep sleep, and somehow managing to still have some awareness, even though you feel like just a floating soul of energy, having not much to do with the body... All of these experiences, having to do with increasing silence, and maintaining awareness during silence, lowering of breath, the state of no-breath.... Practice, practice, practice... In a way, just the contemplation of death during meditation, Is a good Buddhist way of experiencing your Buddhahood, Also, the first time I saw Maharishi, in NYC, Madison Square Garden...Manhatten, 1975; I had the feeling that there was a part of him, that was sort of dead; like there was a part of him that was eternal, beyond the body I saw...it was disturbing and interesting at the same time... What that feeling is, is the death of the ego, and the birth of awarenss of the soul, beyond the body, and all material things...
