Your most profound supernatural experience

[wolram]

From the panoply of metaphysical beings, places and perceptions, what personal event has brought you to an understanding outside the world of conventional reality?

If only i could find those spark plugs,

 

[Happeh]

I was sitting in training today and the instructor was talking when suddenly I realized I had already sat through this moment on three previous occasions. I sat there for a moment saying everything she was about to say to myself and was just amazed that I also clearly remembered the 2 other times I sat through it. I even remembered how surprised I felt the last time it happened. I thought to myself "wow, this is happening again, just like last time".

So, it wasn't just a feeling of familiarity with a place or situation, I have prior memories of having the prior memories.

You ought to watch the movie "Dark City" if you have not already done so.

 

[Happeh]

My wife's mother was old. She committed suicide by having a heart operation. She was like 80 and no one needed her anymore. The doctor wanted her to have the operation because it is big money for the hospital. I told my wife "Don't let her have that operation. They are going to crack open her chest like she is a can of tuna. She is 80 years old. There is no way she is going to survive a heart operation".

The mother had the operation and sure enough, she died in the hospital a day or so later. I am not sure she ever even woke back up.

My wife comes home. We are in the living room. We are going to the back of the house for something. I turned around to look at my wife and her mother was standing there. Not like an extra person, like she was superimposed over my wife's body. I flipped out and turned around. When I looked again, everything was normal.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

One correction to my story. I stated that we each "felt something sit on the bed". That was very sloppy of me since I don't know what it was. I should have said that it felt as if someone [or something] had sat on the bed.

 

[pattylou]

One correction to my story. I stated that we each "felt something sit on the bed". That was very sloppy of me since I don't know what it was. I should have said that it felt as if someone [or something] had sat on the bed.

You were awake - but were you on the way to falling asleep (hypnogogic) or in the process of waking up (hypnopompic)?

I have a fun one I'll post next.

 

[pattylou]

Well, after our daughter died, I had a series of weird events; the most interesting to me were the out of body experiences (but there were others too).

These were all drug - free, fwiw.

I spent considerable time trying to learn to induce OBE (with some small success), and my husband tolerated all that with patient skepticism. Often, I would wake in the middle of the night and try to induce an OBE. I would feel wide and completely awake (thus my question to Ivan above) , as though there had been no break in consciousness. One night (this is funny) I am lying there at two in the morning, trying very hard to get the pre-exit vibrations going, and DH gets up to use the bathroom. The bed jostles and the sheets shift over me (lying still), and that perturbed me - because when he does this it breaks my trance. He gets up, walks to the bathroom, I hear him and see him and all, I hear the door squeak on the hinges and so on, and I lay there awake trying to get deeper to trance again. As I am doing this I think "Knowing my luck, I've been laying here trying to induce an OBE for the last hour, while DH simply gets up and has one."

(in other words, I thought maybe his bathroom trip was an OBE.)

So I push myself up and look over - and sure enough he hadn't gotten out of bed at all! He was fast asleep the whole time.

That wasn't the most profound event, but it always struck me funny, that he needed to go potty out-of-body (heheheh), and that here I was investing all this time and ended up on this particular event as a spectator to *his* "OBE."

 

[Ivan Seeking]

There is absolutely no doubt that I was wide awake. This happened just after I had turned off the light.

 

[*Kia*]

Well, myself and wolram both saw a "ufo" at the same time.
UFO as in we don't really know what it was - it could have been ball lightning maybe.
At the time wolram (then a pilot!) thought maybe it was a plane in flames but the airlines confirmed that nothing was in the direct area at that time...

my second "supernatural" happening was fairly recent and was a very unusual "electrical charge".
If I laid hands on Steve (t'other half) there was a strange but mild electrical charge - you could feel it humming like a touch dimmer switch. However if I then held both hands it would stop. Oddly enough it didn't go away immediately and we were still able to cause this mysterious happening the next morning, but after having been out and about and gone to work it was sadly gone.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

If I laid hands on Steve (t'other half) there was a strange but mild electrical charge - you could feel it humming like a touch dimmer switch. However if I then held both hands it would stop. Oddly enough it didn't go away immediately and we were still able to cause this mysterious happening the next morning, but after having been out and about and gone to work it was sadly gone.

So you were in your home when this happened? Do you have any large power lines next the building?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

So I push myself up and look over - and sure enough he hadn't gotten out of bed at all! He was fast asleep the whole time.

My first thought was that he had already returned, but that you were so deep into the trance that you didn't notice.

Btw, I did the meditation for an OBE quite a bit - almost every day for two or three years I think... I never experienced a so called out of body experience, but one night I think I came very close. It was such a shock to the system that I recoiled and bolted out of the bed. I have learned since that this is a normal reaction the first time, but it bothered me so much that I never seriously pursued it again.

 

[*Kia*]

So you were in your home when this happened? Do you have any large power lines next the building?

No, we were in the car at the time, and no, no large power lines.
Although the house is under a major airline - which is why wolram called to see if there had been any planes in trouble.

 

[pattylou]

My first thought was that he had already returned, but that you were so deep into the trance that you didn't notice.

I never reentered deep trance (as far as I know), there was no break in consciousness through the episode (of him going to the bathroom) which lasted only about a half minute.

There's a state of consciousness where you see things that aren't physically there, although you feel completely alert. SOme of my morning attempts would result in periods where I could see and feel and manipulate an extra set of arms - I would think I was using my real arms, raising them, grabbing my hands together, and so forth, and the sensations were indistinguishable from the mundane possibility that I was simply moving my arms around. However, when I would turn my head I would realize my arms were laying still on the sheets.

I think once I may have seen both sets, there were certainly times when I sensed two sets of everything. Like once, I remember saying (not thinking, but saying) "this is so cool" and I could feel my tongue moving to say the words, but I could simultaneously feel my tongue laying still.

The times I saw my extra sets of arms were routinely conscious and directed, so tey were not dreams, (possibly WILDs but really, they were distinct from WILDs) and I am sure that when I saw DH go to the bathroom, I was in that same state of consciousness.

I don't conclude "soul" from this. Rather, I conclude "Wow, the human brain is one strange cookie."

Btw, I did the meditation for an OBE quite a bit - almost every day for two or three years I think... I never experienced a so called out of body experience, but one night I think I came very close. It was such a shock to the system that I recoiled and bolted out of the bed. I have learned since that this is a normal reaction the first time, but it bothered me so much that I never seriously pursued it again.

I was terrified to pursue it (the whole emotional and mental state was a result of our child's death, not anything I would have pursued on my own), and I had pre-exit symptoms coming over me spontaneously, and struggled against it. Finally (after three years) decided "may as well" and the fear went away after a few outings. Unfortunately, after that I decided it was fun and couldn't get enough! Now I can't seem to find the time to even make an attempt.

 

[Evo]

My mother described what sounds like an OBE when she was around 8 years old. I've never had one and I'd be afraid to even try.

Patty, what you experienced sounds cool. The "out of body potty experience" is too funny. Sounds like the type of experience I would have.

 

[singleton]

I would just like to say that I hate you all

I'm reading this at 2AM, while alone in a house where family members have died.

I couldn't NOT read it, though. Kept egging myself on out of curiosity.

Hypatia's story was especially creepy.

Someone hold me?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

No, we were in the car at the time, and no, no large power lines.
Although the house is under a major airline - which is why wolram called to see if there had been any planes in trouble.

This is in regards to the electric feeling with your other half; this happened in the car?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Pattylou, I am curious about your experience with the meditation, and your technique.

First of all, as I learned to meditate, I found that the hardest part was to not try. As soon as I thought about what was happening or what I was concentrating on, wham, back to square one. Was it like this for you? Its like you have to learn to stop what we consider conscious thought and allow a lower level of consciousness take over; more or a simpe awareness.

I am also curious about the details and how your process compares with mine. How did you proceed? My focus was to first become aware of my body. Then, it was like my body slowly fused with the bed. The best description that I've ever managed is to say that it was as if my mind was separate from the body - not gone, but separate, and entombed in a rock - with my body feeling like a big slab of concrete that was disconnected from "me". The last stage was to induce an upward sense of acceleration; as if I was laying on my back on the floor of an elevator that continually accelerates.

From there, in my minds eye, a kind of darkness set in that grew more and more intense at the peak of some efforts over the next few months. On the night mentioned earlier, this darkness suddenly became pure black and I was overwhelmed with a sense of being consumed...or a loss of control...a loss of self...? It's hard to explain... Does this all sound typical of your experiences?

 

[pattylou]

Well, my biggest problem with meditating is falling asleep. My biggest problem with succeeding to exit, is loss of determination as I get sleepy.

Then, it was like my body slowly fused with the bed. The best description that I've ever managed is to say that it was as if my mind was separate from the body - not gone, but separate, and entombed in a rock - with my body feeling like a big slab of concrete that was disconnected from "me". The last stage was to induce an upward sense of acceleration; as if I was laying on my back on the floor of an elevator that continually accelerates.

If I didn't fall asleep, then I actually enjoyed a lot of the sensations that came with the endeavors (which sound like they were kind of the same variety you describe but I would describe them differently.) My arms would tingle and I wouldn't want to move anything, there was a delicious heaviness in my body and my mind felt light and free. If I concentrated on moving upward as you described, nothing would happen. BUT! If I tried another approach like climbing a rope out from my chest, all sorts of weird sensations would ensue. I could be stuck in that state without really "separating" for an hour or more, and eventually get exasperated with it. So I never had a profound OBE directly from a waking meditation. I would have weird partial stuff like what I've described in posts above, or I would enter a WILD (wake-induced lucid dream.)

My focus was typically to relax progressively more and more while not allowing any reduction in mental alertness. This would be coupled with keeping my mind still. That was pretty much it. I went with the idea that you hear, that everyone has separations every night when they sleep - and I became determined to remain alert for my own.

What happened, was I would start to drift off, and jerk back awake. Then I'd try again to relax my body and keep alert without thinking about anything. And the cycle would repeat again and again. This had the effect that once I was really truly physically asleep, my brain would jerk back to alertness and my body would be completely out and I could just sort of get up and walk away. (So no darkness or loss of self there.) These few instances of walking away from my sleeping body, fully alert, were the most profound OBE occurences. Of course this is such a bizarre state of affairs to be in, that none of these excursions really lasted more than 10 - 30 seconds, as I was so jazzed from what was going on, that my body would wake up and I'd snap back to it.

Another consequence I found from my approach, was frequent lucid dreaming, and these would last a nice long time, and were intereesting in and of themselves.

From there, in my minds eye, a kind of darkness set in that grew more and more intense at the peak of some efforts over the next few months. On the night mentioned earlier, this darkness suddenly became pure black and I was overwhelmed with a sense of being consumed...or a loss of control...a loss of self...? It's hard to explain... Does this all sound typical of your experiences?

I wouldn't say exactly typical of my own experiences, but I did experience the occasional abyss - usually in lucid dreaming more so than in the meditations per se. It's worth mentioning that the idea of surrender was very important - surrendering attachment, to everyting, including self, and so on. Surrendering your "self" is a scary prospect, but if you can really do that during a meditation, most people (me included) have found that the effects are mindblowing. I think the idea of surrender is a big one in most religious experience, and although I am not religious, I think I can relate when people describe a profound experience in religious terms.

I feel like despite the length here, that I didn't really answer your questions.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Well, my biggest problem with meditating is falling asleep. My biggest problem with succeeding to exit, is loss of determination as I get sleepy.

I never had a problem falling asleep until I was ready, but often I would get sleepy and just give up and roll over. If nothing else it helped with my lifelong problem with insomnia. In fact, because of this conversation I have decided to start practicing this again. Due to the many years spent highly focused on goals, and really, working even in my sleep at times, the stillness of mind induced in this mediation now eludes me. This would probably be a good way to re-capture it.

If I didn't fall asleep, then I actually enjoyed a lot of the sensations that came with the endeavors (which sound like they were kind of the same variety you describe but I would describe them differently.) My arms would tingle and I wouldn't want to move anything, there was a delicious heaviness in my body and my mind felt light and free.

I can also agree with that as a description of the intial stages.

If I tried another approach like climbing a rope out from my chest, all sorts of weird sensations would ensue. I could be stuck in that state without really "separating" for an hour or more, and eventually get exasperated with it. So I never had a profound OBE directly from a waking meditation.

This all sounds very much like my experiences, but I've never heard of that particular approach.

I would have weird partial stuff like what I've described in posts above, or I would enter a WILD (wake-induced lucid dream.)

Could you elaborate on Wilds; never heard of it; not by that name at least.

My focus was typically to relax progressively more and more while not allowing any reduction in mental alertness. This would be coupled with keeping my mind still. That was pretty much it. I went with the idea that you hear, that everyone has separations every night when they sleep - and I became determined to remain alert for my own.

What happened, was I would start to drift off, and jerk back awake. Then I'd try again to relax my body and keep alert without thinking about anything. And the cycle would repeat again and again. This had the effect that once I was really truly physically asleep, my brain would jerk back to alertness and my body would be completely out and I could just sort of get up and walk away. (So no darkness or loss of self there.) These few instances of walking away from my sleeping body, fully alert, were the most profound OBE occurences. Of course this is such a bizarre state of affairs to be in, that none of these excursions really lasted more than 10 - 30 seconds, as I was so jazzed from what was going on, that my body would wake up and I'd snap back to it.

Yep, see, I could never get that far.

Another consequence I found from my approach, was frequent lucid dreaming, and these would last a nice long time, and were intereesting in and of themselves.

I have managed a few lucid dreamis This was done by priming myself to recognize a dream as such, each night before falling asleep.

I wouldn't say exactly typical of my own experiences, but I did experience the occasional abyss - usually in lucid dreaming more so than in the meditations per se.

Interesting - the abyss...no, perfect! But it never happened with lucid dreams.

It's worth mentioning that the idea of surrender was very important - surrendering attachment, to everyting, including self, and so on. Surrendering your "self" is a scary prospect, but if you can really do that during a meditation, most people (me included) have found that the effects are mindblowing. I think the idea of surrender is a big one in most religious experience, and although I am not religious, I think I can relate when people describe a profound experience in religious terms.

It may be that my Catholicism was haunting me. Also, I once met a research psychiatrist in LA [from UCLA and the wife of an engineer from work]. One night we discussed this stuff and she knew quite a bit about it. She told of about a person who, while being studied, got into trouble and could not force himself to come out of it. Allegedly he remained in a trance for days. True or not; who knows? It was a story told at a company Christmas party. But I'm sure it left an impression. Oh yes, and she explicity warned me to be careful; that this could be dangerous.

Edit: I got my sequence messed up here. This discussion took place after my momentary voyage into the abyss. So this may have helped to persuade me to abandon the practice all together.

 

[motai]

Something strange happened two years ago during Cross Country season, a vision of the past. A rather haunting vision for that matter.

I just got done running a 5k race at the Dade Battlefield park in Central Florida. I was cooling off with the rest of the team (I was behind them when we were walking toward the visitors center to get some water) and when I was looking off to my left, I saw a small swampy area, with lots of high grasses and a few trees. Immediately, before my eyes, I 'saw' a group of U.S. Army soldiers in blue uniforms walking through the area, and a Native American rising up in front of them around 10 meters away with a rifle, and fired. The soldier in the front fell, and the vision faded.

I can remember both the Native American who fired the shot and the soldier who fell vividly, the Native American was of muscular stature, a little taller than me, and didn't have much clothes on. The soldier had a large brown beard, a blue flat-top hat, and was shot in the chest area and fell backwards to his right.

With less detail, I also remember a few other Native American warriors in the trees and in the surrounding grassland, and there were around 5 or so U.S. soldiers, all in blue, sifting through the area. Obviously what I saw was an ambush of some sort. The "vision" lasted less than 3 seconds. It came and left with the wind.

What was most interesting was that, upon entering the visitors center, I learned that the site of the battle was indeed right where I saw it, right in front of the visitors center. It was during the Second Seminole War, and the U.S. soldiers at that time did have blue uniforms.

To this day I still do not know whether my other teammates had the same experience, or why I saw it in the first place. I cannot rationally fit it to any logical explanation. It just happened. And even now, I can replay the entire thing in my head as if it were real.

 

[Evo]

Something strange happened two years ago during Cross Country season, a vision of the past. A rather haunting vision for that matter.

<snip>To this day I still do not know whether my other teammates had the same experience, or why I saw it in the first place. I cannot rationally fit it to any logical explanation. It just happened. And even now, I can replay the entire thing in my head as if it were real.

Wow motai, that is the best I've heard!

 

[motai]

Wow motai, that is the best I've heard!

Others would probably say it was a hallucination, and they would probably be right... but it doesn't fit the... spirit of the vision. Obviously my biochemistry was a little different than normal, after all I did just get done running a strenuous race (and I got a personal record that time as well), but the thought of it just being a random hallucination doesn't seem to fit what I saw. It seemed to have much deeper meaning than that.

On the trip back to the school, I remember being a little shaken. After all, in whatever vision I did see, I saw the first shot of a raging battle, and 'saw' a man dying. It made me think long and hard about the nature of humanity, and of life in general.

Again, I have no idea why it happened to me, but it did make its subtle implant on me. I can remember the experience better than I can of my own experiences.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Wow, Motai, that story is a keeper.

AC Clarke's Mysterious World explored a number of similar accounts. Have you ever researched this any further to see if the exact details known about the battle could be compared to what you saw?

 

[*Kia*]

This is in regards to the electric feeling with your other half; this happened in the car?

Ah, sorry I guess I misunderstood the first question.
Yes, the odd "electrical feeling" happened at home. A ground flor flat, no large powerlines near by. We've been in the flat for almost 18 months and it has only happened the once.

 

[Smurf]

I'm from Mars

 

[Daminc]

I have a little story to tell but it may help to have a little background first.

I left the Army in '91 and I found 'civvie' steet a very weird place to live. To compound this problem I was suffering from what I could only describe as a lack of ability to feel emotion. That's not as bad as it seems, it did have an advantage of being able to see through problems very easily (in '95/'96 a Dr Alun Jones stated that he believed that I was suffering from a form of Gulf War Syndrome but it was never offically diagnosed).

One of the side effects was that I couldn't understand why people reacted in certain ways (emotional responses) and I made a serious effort to research this phenomina in the hope of understanding why I didn't feel anything.

Apart from lots of reading and socialising I also experimented with LSD, cannabis and Amphetimins. Most of the time it was calculated amounts and the morning after there were no side effects for me (no emotion remember).

The varying amounts gave me an 'insight' on feelings which led me to research more about the brain more specifically if I had any damage to the Limbic System.

Thats a bit of background to explain why I was taking LSD :) (and I'm sticking to it )

That said, I think it was the summer of '91 or '92 when my friend and I took a small amount of LSD and went for a 'walkabout'. The stuff we took was very pure (more visual than body buzz if you can understand that). We made a couple of stops at some friends houses before deciding that outside would be best which turned out to be very weird.

We went to a small park within a park, it was lovely. A bench, mostly surrounded by trees, a small pond leading onto a mini-waterfall and a clear starry night.

The colour changes were beautiful and I can remember looking up to the sky thinking how incredible life was when I found myself focusing on one particular star. All of a sudden I felt this 'wooshing' inside my head combined with a lot of pressure which made me a little alarmed (this was the equivalent of a strong emotional responce from me) and I turned to my friend and said "I think my head is collapsing" which promptly started him of laughing (almost causing him to fall into the pond) so I thought nothing of it.

A moment or two later I heard something strange coming from the nearby trees, a kind of heavy, deep 'breathing' which I though was an interesting turn in this 'trip'. I focused on it and it seemed to be moving through the trees and I could see anything. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I turned to me friend, who had sat back down, and said "Do you hear that?". When he replied "What, the breathing?" was the moment we decided to leave the park. It is hard to describe the incident in detail but the sensation felt like a very large predetor was watching us, stalking us. If it was me alone I would dismiss it as a mere halucination but my friend experienced exactly the same phenomina which raises a lot of questions.

After leaving the park we decided we could do with a coffee (it was about 2.30 in the morning) and heading out to find a 24hr service station. On that journey was a broken telegraph pole which, for the life of us, we couldn't fathom how it had been broken and more profoundly an incident with the dawn mist. Imagine it. Looking down on a large green field and in the distance a hedge with a small gate in it. Through the gate came the dawn mist, flowing like water in slow motion towards us standing there with our mouths wide open. It took a minute or two for the field to fill half way and still we stood there until the mist stopped and retreated back through the gate at a slightly faster rate. We stood there for a little longer but nothing else happened so we continued to walk (we had been walking since leaving the park for about 2.5 hours) and we came to a t-junction. We looked left and right trying to discern how close we were to the service station only to find we were only 100m from where we started to journey from.

That was a very odd 8 hours :)

 

[Daminc]

Some research that might interest a few of you:

http://www.neuroscienceindustries.com/mod_memory2.htm

http://www.melvinmorse.com/e-tlp.htm

I remember watching an experiment by I think a Dr named Michael Persinger with regards to artificially stimulating the brain using electromagnetic resonence to the brain but I cannot find details on the exact experiment (the 'patient' felt "a person present in the room" or visual halucinations depending on different frequencies.)

 

[pattylou]

Hey Ivan, I expect to get back to you later. Maybe through pm, maybe here, but I don't have time at the moment for more than quick postings.

 

[motai]

Wow, Motai, that story is a keeper.

AC Clarke's Mysterious World explored a number of similar accounts. Have you ever researched this any further to see if the exact details known about the battle could be compared to what you saw?

I haven't explored it because I wasn't sure what I was witnessing myself, or how others would label me if I kept seeing strange visions. Here is a quote from a site on the battlefield:

The battle that started the Second Seminole War is commemorated in January each year under the oaks of Dade Battlefield. On December 28, 1835, Seminole Indian warriors ambushed 108 soldiers at this site-only three soldiers survived. The park protects not only a historic battlefield, but also the natural communities as they existed when the soldiers and Seminoles battled over 180 years ago.

http://www.floridastateparks.org/dadebattlefield/default.cfm

Halpatter Tustenuggee (Alligator, as the white man called him): "We had been preparing for this more than a year... Just as the day was breaking, we moved out of the swamp into the pine-barren. I counted, by direction of Jumper, one hundred and eighty warriors. Upon approaching the road, each man chose his position on the west side... About nine o'clock in the morning the command approached... So soon as all the soldiers were opposite... Jumper gave the whoop, Micanopy fired the first rifle, the signal agreed upon, when every indian arose and fired, which laid upon the ground, dead, more than half the white men.

http://dadebattlefield.com/

Incredibly eerie. The historical details seem to fit in with what I saw. I'll have to pursue this with more detail in the future.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Some research that might interest a few of you:

http://www.neuroscienceindustries.com/mod_memory2.htm

http://www.melvinmorse.com/e-tlp.htm

I remember watching an experiment by I think a Dr named Michael Persinger with regards to artificially stimulating the brain using electromagnetic resonence to the brain but I cannot find details on the exact experiment (the 'patient' felt "a person present in the room" or visual halucinations depending on different frequencies.)

We have some links to Persinger's stuff in the S&D debunking Napster...I think. Also, Zoobyshoe should have plenty of links. He follows this pretty closely.

 

[Loren Booda]

Hey, man, can you front me your trans-cranial magnetic stimulator for a good buzz?