Personal spiritual experiences - Integral Post-Metaphysical Spirituality2024-03-29T08:33:21Zhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/personal-spiritual-experiences?commentId=5301756%3AComment%3A56660&feed=yes&xn_auth=noYour nirvikalpa experience re…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-06-08:5301756:Comment:566602014-06-08T06:47:48.338ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>Your nirvikalpa experience reminded me of a series of posts in the old Gaia forum in <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3ket5n91z-5ODc3MmI3NDAtZmRjNy00YmNmLTlkZmYtMjZhNjM3ZGQ0NDIw/edit?hl=en&pli=1" target="_blank">this</a> archived 2008 thread (pp. 15-21). I was discussing tarot pathworking with the Fool card, responding to e's questions. I was calling it an 'emptiness' meditation, meaning nirvikalpa and not the other meanings of Buddhist emptiness on which I've written elsewhere.…</p>
<p>Your nirvikalpa experience reminded me of a series of posts in the old Gaia forum in <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3ket5n91z-5ODc3MmI3NDAtZmRjNy00YmNmLTlkZmYtMjZhNjM3ZGQ0NDIw/edit?hl=en&pli=1" target="_blank">this</a> archived 2008 thread (pp. 15-21). I was discussing tarot pathworking with the Fool card, responding to e's questions. I was calling it an 'emptiness' meditation, meaning nirvikalpa and not the other meanings of Buddhist emptiness on which I've written elsewhere. Keeping that in mind I've copied below some excerpts:</p>
<p>The purpose of The Fool imagery and symbolism is to lead one to drop all imagery and symbolism and to enter the Sanctum Sanctorum behind the Three Veils of Negative Existence. So much jargon that means to enter a meditative state that appears to have stopped thought, imagery and a separate sense of self. It even goes so far as, like many Buddhist explanations we've read here, to the very origin of existence, the empty vessel out of which the universe springs.</p>
<p>When I was studying with that Tradition, I did it by being inculcated over years in the meanings of hermetic qabalah and tarot imagery. So when I then did the Fool meditations I experienced an imaginal (astral) “journey” of the character in the card, walking off the cliff and falling into the void, which was free of all thought, form, etc. It was an experience of, in a word, emptiness. Now one might say that if I experienced a sensation of falling then I was still in a relative ego. But the sensation of falling is only an initial sensation, for when one falls long enough into a void without end one soon no longer falls but is within the void, since it, or I, aren't going anywhere, i.e., there is no perceived relative motion when there are no objects to reference.</p>
<p>You start by looking at the card, in this case The Fool. Then you step inside the card and put yourself inside the Fool, play his role. You imagine you see what you've memorized about the card. But like a dream it comes alive, everything around you is in motion, including yourself. In the card the fool is walking toward a cliff, so when I'm inside the fool I'm walking toward a cliff and then over the cliff.</p>
<p>In my meditations the further I drop into the void the less light there is until I am in total darkness devoid of light, sound, object, etc. But in some of those meditations, after a while in the darkness, a most subtle and far distant point of light emerges. And it grows and grows as I either travel to it or vice versa. And finally all is brilliant light. But instead of being void it is full of light, sound (angelic choirs or the music of the spheres, so to speak) and it is the essense of every object.</p> I have recounted my experienc…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-06-07:5301756:Comment:567192014-06-07T18:27:47.105ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p>I have recounted my experiences many times, in many places, so there is a reticence to putting any new effort into describing them -- they are not "top of mind". Yet I approve of this thread and can probably muster a few short-hand descriptions of various kinds of events. </p>
<blockquote><p>So I'm sitting in the bathtub. A fine place for meditation. I have been pondering the delicate shift between (a) outgoing, relational, engagement with creative communication and (b) the habit of…</p>
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<p>I have recounted my experiences many times, in many places, so there is a reticence to putting any new effort into describing them -- they are not "top of mind". Yet I approve of this thread and can probably muster a few short-hand descriptions of various kinds of events. </p>
<blockquote><p>So I'm sitting in the bathtub. A fine place for meditation. I have been pondering the delicate shift between (a) outgoing, relational, engagement with creative communication and (b) the habit of being isolated, withdrawn, habit-bound. I observed at that time my thoughts tended to gravitate automatically toward unresolved concerns but I had no objective standard by which to judge resolution. It became clear that the standard I was actually using was closer to "did I or did I not fully try to communicate or make creative contact". Thus I confronted each arising area of subjective interest. Everyone and everything I thought about spontaneously was a situation in which I asked myself how and if I could communicate myself more thoroughly or be more engaged into responsible exchange. This tended to release each area of concern and over perhaps a half hour there was a distinct trend moving from physical-emotional to intellectual-cultural to subtle-spiritual concerns. </p>
<p>I then found a recurrence of a fairly common (i.e. it shows up during various types of methodologies) event that I call "beholding bhagwan". A more-than-imaginary eye confronts me on the projection screen of the back of my eyelids. It then typically shows itself to be a fluid sets of icons. Variations on Kings, sages, Empty thrones, goddesses, interlocking organic machine parts, toruses trying to touch themselves, etc. </p>
<p>This, as I mentioned, is a very ubiquitous experience but on that day I immediately tried to imagine establishing a more outreaching communication with it (as I had been doing with everything else). And a certain momentum had built up. </p>
<p>The next instant I was "smudged" out of existence. There was a brief of faint golden or beige color and very familiar pressure. I trailed into nothing of myself though I definitely was in some utterly abstracted sense. There was no capacity there to estimate duration and I shuddered back into my bathtub body after an unknown length of time. My memory stores no content for this phase and instead seems to extend the "introductory smudge" over the entire event. </p>
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<p>I am roughly willingly to call this Nirvikalpa Samadhi. There was "bodiless ecstasy with disconnect from sensory reality".</p>
<p>I did not repeat the method since I have learned, over long periods of attempting to regenerate my epiphanies, that this is not usually appropriate. It is more like being the 1 millionth customer -- what you did that day is not really the cause of the celebration effect. </p>
<p>Now that I have written this out I begin to suspect that "subtle realm" experience are probably more what people would like to hear about. So I will try to relate one of those next time...</p> Yes, on previous colonoscopie…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-06-07:5301756:Comment:565672014-06-07T17:23:46.556ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>Yes, on previous colonoscopies with sedation I had no such experience.</p>
<p>Yes, on previous colonoscopies with sedation I had no such experience.</p> Fascinating. I assume that if…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-06-07:5301756:Comment:567162014-06-07T17:18:50.249ZDavidM58http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/DavidM58
<p>Fascinating. I assume that if you had taken the sedation your post-op experience would have been merely grogginess with much suppressed awareness?</p>
<p>Fascinating. I assume that if you had taken the sedation your post-op experience would have been merely grogginess with much suppressed awareness?</p> A good description of Wilber'…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-06-07:5301756:Comment:567132014-06-07T17:08:43.138Zandrewhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/andrew
<p>A good description of Wilber's gross and subtle! Back in the day when I was doing food experiments I once had my body so pure that my crap smelled like roses! No shit! Sattva type thing. Many spiritual type experiences in those days. Anyway, it sounds like your okay, so take care!</p>
<p>A good description of Wilber's gross and subtle! Back in the day when I was doing food experiments I once had my body so pure that my crap smelled like roses! No shit! Sattva type thing. Many spiritual type experiences in those days. Anyway, it sounds like your okay, so take care!</p>