My Out-Of-Body Experience
Accessing the higher planes after 70 hours of meditation.
Hey friends, welcome to The Inner Journey newsletter. Here, I share learnings and experiences from my own 20+ year, meditation and spiritual journey. I unravel things I have been thinking about and try to explain topics that I believe would benefit you on your own personal inner journey.
On Wednesday the 8th of March I started a 10 day Vipassana meditation course taught by the late S N Goenka. I felt that I wanted to disconnect from ‘life’ in order to immerse myself into my spiritual practices without any distractions. Being self-employed makes it difficult to truly just stop, but this course would leave no room for anything other than deep inner exploration.
The course was full on - for 10 days we had to abide by ‘Nobel silence’, this meant for the entirety of the course nobody could talk or interact with anyone, in anyway; not even a glance. There was a strict ‘no phones or electronics’ rule, so my phone was handed in on day 0, and I didn’t see it again until day 11 (bliss!). We were woken up by a gong each morning at 4am from our deep, meditation induced sleep. The first 2 hour meditation of the day kicked off at 4:30am. We were fed 2 vegan meals per day, the last one being at 11am. Other than fruit at 5pm, we would fast all the way through until the following day. Each day was virtually identical, and was filled with around 10 hours per day of meditation, all of which were done either cross legged on the floor or using a kneeling stool. For 3, 1 hour sessions per day, we had to adhere to ‘adhittana’ (strong determination), which meant for the full 1 hour meditation we weren’t allowed to move or open our eyes at any time.
I have been suffering with hip pain for several years and was conveniently diagnosed as having a ‘hip impingement’ and suspected cartilage tear the day before the course started. Hilariously, my doctor advised me to avoid certain activities/positions, one of them being sitting cross legged on the floor! By this point I was committed, and just figured I’d ‘work it out’ if the pain became too much. We also weren’t allowed to exercise in anyway other than a walk around the course gardens. When I say gardens, it was quite literally a bare field with some freshly planted trees. As I write this, it’s no surprise that my girlfriend, who isn’t the least bit interested in meditation, was calling it the ‘prisoner of war camp’.
In all seriousness though, these rules were in place for good reason; we are all so busy with life, and even if we aren’t busy, we distract ourselves by reading, scrolling, exercising, eating, watching tv etc. We never actually spend time and be present, truly with ourselves. In fact, most of us don’t know who is the ‘Self’ is to be present with. We think we are the personality, but we are not. I now know from experience.
I am fortunate to have a meditation teacher whose guidance I have followed for over 20 years, so I wasn’t on the course to learn a different approach to meditation. In fact, I actually went against the advice given, and for the majority of the time practiced my own meditation techniques and other spiritual practices. I wouldn’t advise someone to do this unless they are under the guidance of an advanced teacher. This isn’t also to say that I didn’t learn things, or that I think I’m too good to listen to other teachers, quite the opposite - every day proved to be a great learning experience, but I had a goal and I had the tools to get me there, I just need to get my head down and do the work, which I did.
I thrived off the silence and total lack of distractions, leaning into my natural introverted nature. Throughout the day, when we weren’t meditating, I was in a constant communion with my ‘inner-tutor’ or what I call, God. Offering prayers to anyone I knew who needed them, including the other students on the course. Asking for help and guidance with my own development and finally, asking for direct experience of expanded consciousness. I had had many experiences over the years within meditation, but I knew there was much more to come, and rightly or wrongly, I felt ready to work for them. The key to my repetitive asking, wasn’t because I believe God wants us to beg for things before we’ll be granted any experiences, it is to gradually develop enough aspiration for the experience to come and in equal measure, strengthen my concentration and will power so that, if and when an experience arrives, I have the capacity to bare it. I have also found that developing a communion with God takes time, like any relationship. The nearer you are to God, the nearer they are to you. It’s a bit like nurturing a seed, you wouldn’t place a seed in soil, add some water and instantly expect a plant to appear. Instead you’d nurture it daily and little by little it will spontaneously grow. Although the Divine is our very nature, it is obscured my our false sense of ‘I’ and our obsession with life. Therefore, to remove the veils a regular communion is necessary.
I cruised through the first 7 days, gaining in strength and depth with each passing day. On day 4, I found that I could move Qi (pronounced Chee) around the body at will, and direct it to any area in the body, similar to how shoalin monks do when they perform the seemingly super human physical feats. That’s not to say I could perform those same feats by the way, but just that I had learnt the basic process that they have mastered.
On day 7 I had a life changing experience. It was the final but one meditation of the day, I decided to simply follow my breath and ease myself into the 1 hour ‘adhittana’ meditation. Within a few seconds my breath became incredibly shallow without any conscious effort, to the point where I wondered if I was breathing enough to actually sustain myself. Although it was shallow, I felt incredibly comfortable and my mind was eerily quiet. My awareness narrowed so much so that the only thing that existed in my experience was this subtle inhalation and exhalation of my breath. In all my years of meditation I have never experienced such a sense of quiet. After a minute or so, I noticed that I could no longer feel my legs; concerned that I had sat funny and restricted the blood flow so early on in this meditation, I wiggled my feet and found that I could in fact still feel them perfectly. However, when I tuned into the breath again they seemingly ‘disappeared’. Another minute passed with my now laser focus firmly fixed on the breath, throughout this minute, more and more of my body began to feel invisible - fingers, hands, arms, legs and eventually torso. And not just slightly numb, but quite literally totally invisible - as if I had been given a general anaesthetic, but I could come in and out of it when I wanted. All throughout I was totally aware. Then, an energy began to develop within me. My fingers and eye lids began to flicker involuntarily and suddenly an enormous surge of energy was released and proceeded to pour around my body. It was beyond anything I had ever felt in my life, a mixture of ‘energy’ and ‘electricity’ circulated through me with such velocity. As this happened my consciousness suddenly expanded, the rest of my body became ‘invisible’ and I lost all body awareness. The consciousness I was experiencing continued to expand and expand, the closest comparison I can make was that it was as if I was travelling through space, but my awareness was broadening. It was more real than our physical reality, and I remember being struck at the shear magnitude of everything in this new plane of existence (new to me at least). I could return to my body as and when I wanted within an instant, which I did on and off, mostly to make sure I was still upright and not choking on my own saliva. If I came into my body too suddenly, I would jolt, so it took a bit of practice to make it a smoother transition. For the duration of this meditation I continued to experience this new realm, awe struck at the shear realness and size of it all. It was nothing like a dream. At one point I tried to look at myself, to see if I had a form - I didn’t, I was clear colourless light.
When the meditation was over, I was buzzing In every sense of the word. I walked the 300m from the meditation block to the toilets and back again. My hands and arms felt invisible and energy was still pouring off of me. I cannot express strongly enough how much energy was coming off me. We had a 1 hour discourse to listen to and then our final 45 minute meditation of the day. I wondered whether the experience was a one-off or whether I’d be able to leave my body again. When the meditation came around, I was able to immediately leave again, this time without the initial surge of energy, but still with the energy from before blasting through and around me. Time as we know it in this physical plane didn’t exist when I was in the higher planes. I would come down from what felt like a few minutes and sometimes 40 minutes had passed. That night I found myself struggling to sleep and instead of falling into a sleep state, I fell in and out of this transcended state, still, with energy racing through me.
At some stage I fell asleep, but was rudely awoken by the 4am gong which came around far too quickly. To my surprise, the energy was still flowing through me at a similar intensity. It wasn’t the nice, blissful feelings I had previously experienced with meditation, I felt jittery and almost hungover. Within my chest I had the feeling of heartbreak, although I had no reason to feel such a way. Within me I had a knowing that something had been removed from me, more than likely part of my ego or a deep held emotion of some kind, at least I hoped this had been the case.
I now know the true seriousness of releasing spiritual energy, mark my words that it is absolutely not to played with. There are an abundance of people in psychiatric hospitals who played around with spiritual techniques beyond their capacity. Triggering certain experiences before you are ready is like putting 1000 volts through a 30 watt lightbulb - the lightbulb will pop. I now have a simple approach, when asking for any level of growth or experiences, I ask that I’m only given what I am able to manage and nothing more. This way I know that whatever comes, be it heaven or hell, I know I'll be able to bare it.
From then on and for the rest of the course, I was able to repeat this process of losing all body awareness and moving into higher planes, albeit, never quite as high as that first experience - partly because I was too scared to push it without speaking to my teacher first. The energy took around 4-5 days to fully dissipate from my system, by which time I was starting to feel ‘myself’ again. Although I knew deep down that I wouldn’t quite be the same again. The impact of the experience cemented everything I already believed. A few of those certainties were that we are not the body, but infinite Divine spirit. There are other planes of existence happening here and now. All is God manifested as different frequencies of energy and we are God at the very deepest level, but we are living and experiencing life at a very low level of consciousness. Our job is to journey back to this source, our home - God, but instead we are trapped in a never ending cycle of chasing the petty and temporary pleasures of the world. There is much more I could talk about, but I will save it for another time.
If you have read this far, I hope my experience inspires you to start/work along your own journey. There is so much more to know beyond this temporary physical reality and all the answers are within you. Just be prepared to work for them - nothing is given to you for free.
Blessings,
Ben