Experience description   
Experience description 2   

Experience description:   

I was sitting on my bed meditating for about 15 minutes or so. I'd only been meditating for perhaps a year, and just kind of made it up as I went along. As it turns out I intuitively knew what to do. Anyway, all of a sudden my skin felt as though it turned into crinkly, brittle dried brown rice paper, as though if you hit it with a stick it would disintegrate. And it was hollow inside. A shell. It felt absolutely real. Scary. Then I somehow went inside that hollow shell of dried paper and inside was the entire universe. All the stars and planets and galaxies -- everything.  I looked around and could see the earth. Later, judging from the size of the earth I figured I was about 40,000 miles away from it. I wasn't really scared at this point but just astounded. It all felt absolutely real. I was there. I was in a completely different location, far far away from my bed.  As I floated in space inside my body looking at the earth, all of sudden I knew something. And that was "Nothing we do is wrong. It is simply impossible to do anything wrong." 

Then just as suddenly I was back in my bed. I was totally freaked out. I thought I was going insane. I had never experienced anything like this before. (I had two spontaneous OBEs before (which scared me) but they were at night and I was just floating around my bedroom watching myself sleep. I felt electric and I felt I was my true self, and I knew this wasn't the time for me to be doing this.) Anyway, so I'm back in my bed, freaked out. I decided to go to sleep, and realized I was asleep. I decided to wake up and realized I was awake. I decided to meditate and realized I was meditating. I was all these things at the same time.  It took me days to get over it and years to understand it.  That what is around us is a perfect real time reflection of our inner state of being. What we perceive to be external is actually internal. A waking dream where the external environment and events mirror perfectly our inner state of being.  Just like a dream that we have at night is really happening inside us, but during the dream it feels like it is outside our center of awareness. If you dream that a wolf is chasing you through the forest, when you wake up you realize that you were yourself, you were the wolf and you were the forest. It all seems to be dreams within dreams within dreams.

At some point I read a book on Buddhism and was completely surprised. It was how I had perceived the world and how I thought about the world since I was a child. (I had no religious upbringing at all. My dad didn't "believe in God".)  I have had quite a few lucid dreams where I spent time in a place I called "the void".  All black but not scary. Cracks would appear in it and light would shine through them.  I could fly down through the crack into a completely real world. It seemed as though the void was the space in between dimensions. Sort of a hallway in a hotel with door leading to different dimensions. The driving force in my life has been to try to understand the true nature of our existence.

Any associated medications or substances with the potential to affect the experience?     No      

Was the kind of experience difficult to express in words? No      

At the time of this experience, was there an associated life threatening event?          No      

What was your level of consciousness and alertness during the experience?           Absolutely awake and alert and completely conscious.

            Was the experience dream like in any way?   No.

Did you experience a separation of your consciousness from your body?     Yes    

What emotions did you feel during the experience?            Astonishment and quite a bit of fear -- like I was going crazy.

Did you hear any unusual sounds or noises?           Not really a voice, but sudden knowledge that it is impossible for us to do anything wrong.

LOCATION DESCRIPTION:  Did you recognize any familiar locations or any locations from familiar religious teachings or encounter any locations inhabited by incredible or amazing creatures?            Yes     Well, I recognized the earth. No weird creatures or anything like that. I was floating in space.

Did you see a light?           No      

Did you meet or see any other beings?           No      

Did you experiment while out of the body or in another, altered state? No      

Did you observe or hear anything regarding people or events during your experience that could be verified later?          No      

Did you notice how your 5 senses were working, and if so, how were they different?          No       I never even checked to see if I had a body -- I was just there observing, floating in space.

Did you have any sense of altered space or time?   Yes     Altered space -- I was somewhere else.

Did you have a sense of knowing, special knowledge, universal order and/or purpose?    Yes     It is impossible for us to do anything wrong. What we do is what we have to do to learn. It's never "wrong" it's what we are right now.

Did you reach a boundary or limiting physical structure?             No      

Did you become aware of future events?       No      

Were you involved in or aware of a decision regarding your return to the body?       No       Did you have any psychic, paranormal or other special gifts following the experience that you did not have prior to the experience?   Uncertain      I've always been incredibly intuitive. When I close my eyes I see things. I have asked to see significant events from people's childhoods and I later find out I was correct in what I saw. I don't really like to do it and I don't ever ask to see creepy stuff, like those guys who solve murders. I also did lucid dreaming for quite a while but gave it up. Why learn in a dream when we have this world to learn in. We don't need to spend time in Disneyland (lucid dreams) we need to focus on our life here and learn from it.

Did you have any changes of attitudes or beliefs following the experience?   Yes     A different view of the true nature of our existence. Of what we really are.

How has the experience affected your relationships? Daily life? Religious practices? Career choices?       Yes. I am incredibly empathetic towards other people. If they hurt, I hurt.

Has your life changed specifically as a result of your experience?         Yes     See #21

Have you shared this experience with others?         Yes     A few people. About all they can say is "weird". I did tell another person who had done TM for many years and she said "I think you experienced Christ Consciousness". I was happy that at least there was a name for it.

What emotions did you experience following your experience?  Fear that I was going nuts. Curiosity and a huge desire to understand what had happened. I have found that I only need to have one out of body experience to know that they're real and to learn from it, and one experience like the one I described, one precognitive event to know they're real. To me the information that I get is insignificant -- it trying to understand the underlying systems that allows these things to work.  Again, it's not for entertainment, it's so we can learn.

What was the best and worst part of your experience?      All of it.

Is there anything else you would like to add concerning the experience?        No.

Following the experience, have you had any other events in your life, medications or substances which reproduced any part of the experience?         No       Not even close.

Did the questions asked and information you provided accurately and comprehensively describe your experience?               Yes    

Please offer any suggestions you may have to improve this questionnaire.    Nothing I would add.
 

EXPERIENCE DESCRIPTION 2

This experience taught me to accept every event that life sends your way. That there is a reason for everything even if we don't understand it or like it at the time. 

I was meditating at home when I suddenly heard a voice. I am a very visual person and when I close my eyes I always see things -- scenes, people etc. I'm used to that but I never had heard a voice before. It was very clear and may have been my own. Hard to tell. The voice said "Mitch Rider and the Detroit Wheels". I figured it must have some symbolic meaning and spent the next day at work with a friend trying to remember all their songs (if you don't know, they were a popular band in the 60s and 70s.  Think "Mustang Sally".) and see if any were symbolic of something happening in my life. Nothing came up.   

At this time I was getting calls from a very obnoxious person who wanted to do some freelance work for my department (art dept in an ad agency). He seemed so arrogant that I told a co-worker -- I'll never work with that guy in a million years. I just told him we didn't really need anything done at this time. A week or so later we got a big job doing some marketing stuff for an airport (big remodel).  They called and told us who they were using to do the architectural renderings (this was before computers when people actually did drawings on paper!). It was the guy I said I would never work with. I thought "Oh crap. I have to work with this jerk."  I called another graphic designer that I knew in town and asked him if he'd heard of this guy. He said "Oh sure, he did some work for us. At first he seems really arrogant, but he's really a pretty nice guy. And he's an incredible musician. He was the bass player for Mitch Rider and the Detroit Wheels for 15 years."  My hair just stood on end. I couldn't wait to meet him.  

He came to the agency and I told him I'd sort of been expecting him. Told him the story. He apologized for seeming so arrogant. He said that after he left rock and roll he'd learned all the art stuff on his own. He hadn't gone to school for it and was very insecure about his skills in that area and made up for it by seeming overconfident. He said he'd studied music in India over the last couple of years and gave me a tape of sitar music that he had. About a month later he called me at home and asked if I belonged to any church. He said he had a "hole in his soul that needed patching up". I told him no, but I would be happy to talk to him about anything he wanted. He said that sounded great and he would contact me later. I never heard from him again. I heard later that he had gotten a divorce and left the state. So, the moral of the story is that there are underlying strings in all the events that occur in our lives. Things happen for a reason, and if we say "no" there's usually a workaround that causes the event to happen anyway. I learned so much from this event. And the other guy could have too, but he chose not to at this point in time. We are provided opportunities to learn and we have the choice of saying yes or no. I never say no anymore. We can learn the easy way or the hard way.

Any associated medications or substances with the potential to affect the experience?     No      

Was the kind of experience difficult to express in words? No      

At the time of this experience, was there an associated life threatening event?          No      

What was your level of consciousness and alertness during the experience?           Completely conscious and alert -- I was meditating

            Was the experience dream like in any way?   No.

Did you experience a separation of your consciousness from your body?     No      

What emotions did you feel during the experience?            Curiosity -- what did the message mean?

Did you hear any unusual sounds or noises?           A voice saying "Mitch Rider and the Detroit Wheels"

LOCATION DESCRIPTION:  Did you recognize any familiar locations or any locations from familiar religious teachings or encounter any locations inhabited by incredible or amazing creatures?    No           

Did you see a light?           No      

Did you meet or see any other beings?           No      

Did you experiment while out of the body or in another, altered state? No      

Did you observe or hear anything regarding people or events during your experience that could be verified later?          Yes -- I soon met the bass player for Mitch Rider and the Detroit Wheels

Did you notice how your 5 senses were working, and if so, how were they different?          No       Did you have any sense of altered space or time?          No      

Did you have a sense of knowing, special knowledge, universal order and/or purpose?    Uncertain           

Did you reach a boundary or limiting physical structure?             No      

Did you become aware of future events?       Yes    

Did you have any psychic, paranormal or other special gifts following the experience that you did not have prior to the experience?      No       I've had a lot of psychic experiences before and after this event.

Did you have any changes of attitudes or beliefs following the experience?   Yes     All the events that happen in life happen for a reason -- we are sent opportunities to learn

Has your life changed specifically as a result of your experience?         Yes    

Have you shared this experience with others?         Yes     Most people think it's really cool, some think it's really weird.

What emotions did you experience following your experience?  Amazement.

What was the best and worst part of your experience?      All good.

Is there anything else you would like to add concerning the experience?        No.

Following the experience, have you had any other events in your life, medications or substances which reproduced any part of the experience?         No      

Did the questions asked and information you provided accurately and comprehensively describe your experience?               Yes    

Please offer any suggestions you may have to improve this questionnaire.    No suggestions.