The Mind-blowing Meditation Experience I Had in 2006 - What Happened?

In December 2006, I had a truly astonishing experience while I was meditating. Here I describe what happened, how I got there, and my experiences afterwards.

Disclaimer:

I take no responsibility for anything that happens to you after reading this. Proceed with caution.

A sneak peek of what was to come

I was first taught a form of meditation in a yoga class in 2006. It involved counting how long it took to breathe in and breathe out.

I had my first unusual experience a few months later while doing my own variation of this technique. This was a milder version of what was to come later.

I was in a field on a beautiful summer's day near to where I worked. As I sat there with my eyes closed, I started to feel like I was expanding, growing in size.

After a while, it got to the point where I felt like I was the size of the field! I'd never experienced anything quite like that before.

After a few minutes, I felt myself shrink back down. Then I opened my eyes, stood back up, and went back to the office.

The intense meditation technique I developed

Over the next few months, I developed a more intense version of this meditation technique.

I don't particularly recommend you do this, but if you're interested, it went like this:

1. With eyes closed, begin to breathe as deeply and slowly as you can.
2. While continuing to breathe like this, start to count very quickly from 1 up to 10 and back down to 1. Do this over and over again like this: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 2 1…
3. Over the course of several minutes, gradually let the counting slow down. At the same time, gradually allow the rate and depth of your breathing to become more normal.
4. After a while, get to the point where the counting and the breathing are in time with each other.

This technique can be extremely powerful. The slow, deep breathing can deeply relax the body, while the counting focuses the mind.

The day the big experience happened

It was one morning in December 2006.

I had already done this meditation technique twice that morning. Once at 6 am and then again at 7:30 am. Then I drank some herbal tea containing valerian, and at 9 am I did the third meditation session.

I did the technique as described above. But whenever I got to the end of it, I started the whole process again from the beginning. Each time I did this, I was starting from a deeper state of relaxation, and I went deeper again with each round.

Before too long, it started to happen - the expanding feeling. I grew to the size of a field, like that time back in August. Except, this time it kept growing, and kept growing, and kept growing, and kept growing!

Every time it grew, I kept thinking, "Surely I can't expand any bigger than this!" Yet I would continue to expand.

Eventually, I got to the point where I felt like I was the size of the WHOLE UNIVERSE!

I'll say that again in case you missed it. I FELT LIKE I WAS THE SIZE OF THE WHOLE UNIVERSE!

That sounds ludicrous when I write it, but that's exactly how it felt.

We usually feel like we are inside ourselves looking out at the world. But during this experience, I felt like I was the outside looking in.

I then sensed a tiny dot in the centre of the universe-sized space that I had expanded to. I understood the tiny dot to be me.

Then something shocking happened - the dot disappeared!

"I" was gone. There was now only empty space.

After a while, I began to shrink back down until eventually, I felt like I was back in my body.

Then I opened my eyes and was straight back in the room as if nothing had happened. The experience felt like it had lasted about 3 hours, but when I looked at my clock, only 20 minutes had passed.

The weeks that followed…

That meditation experience left a residue inside me that took a few weeks to fade.

Later that day, I had a photography job to do in the city for a magazine. As I walked through the city streets, I felt powerfully connected to everyone else. Although I could see they were physically separate from me, I felt like we were all one.

That feeling lasted for about 2 or 3 weeks as it gradually faded away.

For several years afterwards, I didn't have another experience quite as extreme as that. I had a fair number of milder versions, but nothing quite at the same level.

Until 5 years later in 2011.

The second mind-blowing experience

I was sitting in my room, doing an updated variation of that meditation technique.

After a while, I started to get that expanding feeling. Before too long, I ended up expanding to the size of the universe again.

But then something new and totally unexpected happened.

I went further. I struggle to describe it, but somehow I went beyond the expanded universe feeling. I slid through into something else, like another place, I don't know. I don't know what it was, I just know it was something (or somewhere) different.

It was amazing! Absolutely beautiful.

But then it started to turn bad. It transitioned into a scary, negative experience.

I started to feel like I was on some kind of roller-coaster, bobbing up and down. It got more and more extreme, going higher and lower, and faster and faster. It got so fast and violent that I started to feel like it was going to shake me apart.

Just at the point where I felt like it was going to destroy me, I suddenly opened my eyes and came out of it.

I've never experienced anything quite like that since. But even 10 years later, I still sometimes think about it.

These days, I don't do extreme meditation techniques like that. Now I prefer to do NSR. You can read more about that here.