November 1, 2018
Many years ago a client told me she had an NDE (Near Death Experience). But since her life was not in danger at the time, it seemed to me like a simple OBE which she had while taking a nap. But now I understand why she called it an NDE – it’s the experience that defines it really, not the circumstances.
This morning I woke up twice before 6:30 and each time I began relaxing the body and doing self inquiry and fell asleep. The second time I had a dream of seeing myself in a lighted room doing self-inquiry. I was looking at something in my hands and suddenly there was nothing else but the experience. My ego had disappeared and there was no “I” and I said to myself “this is it!” Instantly everything disappeared and I was floating in a void. Then the void became a cloud of pink light. Something opened up and it felt like I was experiencing almost my entire existence. I was immersed in my own Being. There was nothing really specific beyond a few recognized sounds, but I sensed that all around me was everything I had experienced in my entire life and they were whole experiences. I heard voices and felt the energy and motion of things happening. I heard someone speak my mother’s name and all these experiences were very vivid and clear. I was totally lucid – 100% conscious. I thought about Ana (a deceased soul-partner) and about trying to control this experience and maybe contacting her but that felt like a contraction of my awareness so I let the idea go.
During the whole thing, I was recognizing that there was only “that” (the experience) and no “I”. Still there was the sense of the hub of this experience (a larger me) floating and turning, like the center of a galaxy, while the experiences of my existence were rotating around me like stars. These experiences felt like portals I could go through and be in another time and place reliving a past experience. I had a similar occurrence many years ago when I was 29. At that time I was doing daily deep relaxation exercises and memory work. I lay down for a nap one day and suddenly re-experienced several memories so vividly I was astonished. There was a dual consciousness where I experienced those memories as if I was both watching myself from the outside and simultaneously feeling them happening TO me. Today’s experience was different because the experiences were not happening to anyone – the internal and external viewpoints had merged.
I thought at the time that this was like being dead because it was so profound, and because I felt no sense that I had a body anywhere to go back to as I do when having an OBE. There was also a hugeness to it all – I wasn’t a measly little human being – there was a god-like quality to it as if what I was experiencing was a bubble in infinite space, and I was totally happy and at peace.
Eventually I came out of it, opened my eyes, and found myself in bed. I feel now, as I record this, that am losing parts of the memory of it. The “this is it” moment was egoless – there was no self. I can’t really describe it. Walls and barriers seemed to just fall away. It was something like my expanded awareness experience at age 21 but it was of a different caliber – this wasn’t just perfection, this was opening to all of my past experience – but it wasn’t MY past experience, it was just experience, because there wasn’t an “I”. Also there was a sense of joy and love at the same time – of bliss – but then some feeling of worry came up because I was disoriented and something felt stuck. I also felt I was having this experience alone because there was only one reality and an emerging sense of oneness with all beings.
The experience never fully opened up – or maybe it did and I don’t remember it – it just happened. In the end I was left with a deeper sense of the totality of my existence being present now, in each moment, and even less of a concern about death.