I woke this morning before it was light to the sound of a vibration – from the fridge downstairs, perhaps, or maybe it was the bakery at the rear of the building starting up its ovens. Whatever it was, I noticed in my half-awake state a clear but subtle response from my mind to this vibration. It was as if the mind was echoing its pitch, harmonising to it by producing a mental image.
It’s often faint, but noticeable that when confronted with any type of significant vibration – environmental, musical, perhaps even the recognition of any temporal pattern, such as cars passing at intervals by a window – the mind responds in the same way. Or, at least, something responds, which is positioned very close to the boundary between what we usually mean by ‘mind’ and the body.
Now, someone may suggest I imagined this, or tricked myself into perceiving it. That’s fine. I’d agree, it was an imaginary response; something not quite physical, but which appeared to the mind as if it were a sound or a sensation. To call it imaginary is a good description, but this doesn’t mean it isn’t there or that it isn’t the mind responding with harmony to what it perceives.
At the same time as I caught my mind in the act of harmonising, I noticed a sensation in my lower belly that (from experience) I associate with activation of the stomach chakra (manipura). In my experiments with the chakras, this has been the latest one I’ve managed to ‘open’ and is by far the scariest.
It’s the most ‘existential’ of the chakras that I’ve experienced. When it’s active, my entire mind and body is felt winking rapidly in and out of existence. It gives the queasy impression of a power-source which, if it were switched off, would cause the physical body to vanish. (I really must work out a way to turn it off and check that out…)
The stomach chakra, too, seems another aspect of the body exquisitely attuned to vibrations. If you’re not buying the ‘chakra’ thing, just think of how it feels to stand near speakers blasting out music. And in my mind, at least, this chakra is connected with the sense of embodiment itself, as if being here in the physical were simply the maintenance of some kind of a particular frequency, which could change or be switched off.
People who talk about ‘vibrations’ in a New Age sense, or talk about spiritual people being on a ‘higher frequency’ irritate the tits off me. Because all this stuff about ‘vibrations’ has to be a metaphor. Yet I’m starting to come around to the view that it might at least be an unusually well-chosen one.
This morning I had an experience that suggested how vibrations play a part in shifting awareness from a physical to an imaginary level: a physical vibration elicited a response on the boundary of mind and body. It was an image: a tactile and auditory sensation translated from the physical onto the mental plane.
Think of the effects of chanting, of drumming, of flashing light into the eyes. These are ancient techniques for inducing trance; frequency and vibration are used to shift awareness from external perception to an internal, imaginal state.
Yet I think this principle probably applies to higher levels too. That strange but intense sensation of vibration which signals the onset of an out-of-body experience (OOBE) is very distinct, but has puzzled me for a long time. A few days ago, I found myself on the border of an OOBE and sensed my ‘astral body’ straining to get out. I felt wracked by muscular spasms, but was unable to achieve lift-off from the physical and move on. It was clear what was missing: the intense buzzing sensation that commences an OOBE. This was not a pleasant experience, but it seemed a salient lesson that no one gets to leave their body without the tooth-rattling waves of vibration that precede a successful OOBE.
But the experience of vibration before an OOBE isn’t physical. It can’t be. Believe me, if it were it’d throw your partner out of bed, shake the windows out their frames and knock all the pictures off the walls. No, it’s an imaginary sensation. It’s something that originates internally, but presents as if it were a physical sensation of vibration.
And so, we’re left with the intriguing idea that, experientially at least, it’s vibration which enables the shift from physical to imaginary, but also – in the case of an OOBE – between the levels above this, from imaginary to astral, because without that distinct imaginary sensation of vibration at the start of an OOBE it seems the astral body stays just right where it is.
The obvious question to ask next is whether there levels above the astral, and does ‘vibration’ enable us to access those as well. I’d hazard a guess that the same principle does indeed apply, but ‘vibration’ is unlikely to be as easily recognisable as such at levels above the imaginary.
When I experienced enlightenment I was asleep at first, and also – on waking, and for a long period afterwards – my stomach chakra became activated for the very first time. I’m wondering if this reveals anything concerning transitions to levels above the astral. Unfortunately I’ve not yet met anyone who has had a similar enlightenment experience to mine.
It’d probably be wise not to generalise too much from it. Yet.
This is fascinating. I have been seriously freaked out on three occasions now with something that sounds remarkably similar to what you describe here as the preceding stages of an OOBE (not realizing that that was a possible explanation).
The first two times I was trying to sleep, the third time meditating. Every time it all started with whirlwind-like noise that seemed to originate from inside my head, an intense dread of what was going on and an inability to move. The first time started with an actual experience of my awareness being that whirlwind – a jumbled moving mess that gave way to a more normal experience of myself eventually. I spent about 10 minutes trying to get my body to move, to scream for help, alternating with trying to ease into whatever was happening (unsuccessfully). The scary thing was that I was completely and utterly conscious, there was no dream like quality to it at all.
The second time I was resolved not to freak out (and managed to stay with it for a while), but then used all my willpower to force myself out of it and in a couple of minutes managed to ‘wake’ myself up.
The third time was slightly less menacing but a lot more startling – I was lying on the floor and using all my willpower to attempt to raise myself off the floor, only to feel my upper body or limbs move (with a lot of effort and strain) but not be able to see them. This kept on going for a while until I ‘woke up’ all of a sudden, only to find out (with much joy) that I could move and that I could actually see the parts of my body that were moving move.
Would you be able to offer any advice on working with these states, or at least an explanation of what is going on, a reassurance that I am not in danger of going completely mad?
Hi Pavel -
What I say is only based on my experience, of course, but the experiences you mention sound familiar to me.
The first two sound very much like you were on the boundary of an OOBE, but didn’t quite make it (due to the fear affecting your concentration), and that you fell back into the sleep paralysis state.
The third experience sounds to me like a lucid dream. I say this because you don’t mention passing through the ‘whirlwind’ or ‘buzzing’ phase. (For me, this ‘buzzing’ sensation is the sine qua non of an OOBE.) I also say this because it sounds as if you were instinctively practising some of the techniques known to help induce lucid dreams, which I’ve discussed elsewhere on this site.
You might also find interesting another article I’ve written previously which attempts to provide some sort of map for recognising these states and understanding the routes between them. Like I said, this is all based on personal experience, so if you can replicate or contradict any of this, I’d be very interested to hear!
Best wishes!
Thats really helpful. Comparing this to shamatha makes a lot of sense – the first couple of times I hit nimitta and had the feeling of the light coming towards me, widening and the first jhana enveloping me, I freaked out and it all dropped like a deck of cards, then the same happened when I got excited about it, it only stayed constant and solid when I did not react to it and kept the concentration going. Will try the same approach with this, at least I have an idea now what it could possibly be.