Intervention Away From The Divine

On being open minded.

My days by this point tended to consist of carrying out my job then completing my tasks and getting something to eat before spending most of the rest of the evening exploring these waking dreams. I also spent a good deal of time exploring various psychological and Buddhist literature to try to find clues to the phenomena I was experiencing - hoping for at least a similar account to what I had experienced. Up to that point I considered myself a person purely of science and strongly dismissed any notion of the prospect of higher beings or magical thinking for lack of any evidence - despite experiments even having been done to verify claims of such. Unfortunately, I slowly became drawn towards the Buddhist descriptions of strange attainments achieved through meditation. The descriptions of the abilities are steeped within mysticism and I foolishly became sympathetic to the prospect of treating their possibility from an agnostic standpoint.

Something that stood out for me as a fit my experience in the Buddhist literature is called divyacakṣus (The Divine Eye). This is is described as an "extrasensory power by which one can see beings from other planes." and adds that various entities are "capable of constructing illusory forms by which they can manifest themselves to the beings of lower worlds."

I'm not the only one to have a similar experience of meditating with the eyes open and seeing my imagination come to life in a stable way over the texture of a carpet. In doing researching on the above topic for writing this post I find a similar description here:

 "I had been sitting about 10 minutes, and was in and out of a strong Jhana 3-4… when the eyes opened and on the rug I saw some fluttering of movement. There was no physical movement of the fibers of the rug, and yet, they moved… they fluttered, and became blurry and turned into numerous patterns." 

    - "My Divine Eye Experience" 

On the other hand, there is also scientific literature on the topic that describes the formation of hallucinations which were similar to what I observed Visual Release Hallucinations to which I might offer tend to cross over with the notion that the practice of meditating strongly with the eyes open may provide for a kind of dissociation from the senses allowing for a kind of voluntary expression of this syndrome stemming from a similar cause (such as partial blindness).

Probably the best characterisation of my precarious situation is best given by the wise philosopher quoted thusly:

    "If you open your mind too much - your brain will fall out." 

     -- Tim Minchin. (Religion)

This flies in the face of another great musician's philosophy quoted now as adhering to a very much opposed view:

    “I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths,         dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and         nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?”
    ― John Lennon

If you are to do well in pursuing these kind of explorations I can attest through thorough experience that you would do well take take in Tim's sentiment on the matter to remain grounded. I have read far too many accounts of Kasina meditators getting carried away by what they perceive in so-called "visions". Don't become another casualty - believing what you are dreaming to be some mystical method of divining truth about the world of consensus norms.

The next post will be a discussion around the rules of the game when conducting journeys into exploring these depths.