Altered States of Conciousness
 

Last night I had the most amazing experience I have ever had. I finished talking with a friend about different views on philosophy, and I saw the world in a completely different light.

After that conversation, I tried meditation for the first time. At first nothing was happening, until I decided to see myself in a third person perspective, instead of seeing the world through a normal first person perspective. It was all imagination, but I was able to fine-tune it to the point where I truly did see above myself. Then I closed my eyes, and felt a strange pulling force, which felt alot like a rollercoaster. I felt as though I was above my body, somehow. It was exhilerating, especially since I had just had a very deep conversation about the power of the human mind.

Anyhow, I was full conscious, and I decided to play with this altered state. I couldn't control the out of body experience, and couldn't maintain it for very long. I tried again, starrting with seperate parts of my body. I succeeded in making my right arm "dissapear". It was as if it never existed.

I got out of my bed, walked around, and maintained the blocking of my arm in my head.

I am an actor, so I decided to use this in an acting sence. I convinced myself that I was on mushrooms, and immediately my perceptions were changing. I saw things shifting around, and I felt extremely light. I looked at myself in the mirror, and it looked as though I was made of rubber.

Then I consciously decided to stop. It was freaking me out alot.

I tried to sleep, but the possibilities of this enhancing my acting excited me too much.

Sadly, I have not been able to enter this state again. I have no idea how to re-enter it, and every attempt I have made has been worthless. I'm desperate to do it again.

I want to know if anyone else has had an experience like this, and if they were able to bring it back. I would also like some tips on how to do it again, mostly because I want to use it on stage.

I've think the strangest thing I ever did like that was entering a state of meditation while I was running. When I finished, I shit you not, I was surrounded by what felt like a static bubble or something. I knew it was there because I could feel the wind pushing against it, and it startedto have a hard time breathing. I haven't been able to recreate the experience, I rolled my ankle last time I tried :D, and it could just be that my clothes created the field by rubbing against each other. Who knows. My brother can make one arm hot and the other very cold. I've been concentrating lately on energy transfer in movements and strikes, which is more physical than mental.
Your probably trying too hard. Most of the time, when you're playing around with mind/body control and perception its already there and you have to just do it. Trying to do it inevitably makes it harder to do it again. Case and point: flexing a muscle during a strike instead of staying relaxed.

Bravo for you, dear Dungeon Shade...you have seen the other "side of the veil". Multiple realities, which will only enhanch your skills with acting & enjoying this trip around the cosmos. Once this happens - it means that you are evolving into a more aware & evolved human being. There are so very many ways to return to this state of consciousness. Meditation, Art, running, religions, Books, ...whatever. I am so excited for you because reaching this state of awareness means that you have no more limitations while you cruise through this time pocket of life on earth. Do some Googeling, reading and searching. Reach out. Share this vibe with others. Your life is just ready to blossom into a thousand shining petals of white light and awareness. Carry on!!! Enjoy the journey. Peace & Joy to You!

Thank you for sharing your experience!

I can do this too. But I need help. :)

The mind is an amazing thing.

Something else you may want to try is using a pendelum. You can make your own, but it needs to be balanced.

Start out by sitting down and holding it out with your arm. Or you can place your elbow on your knee and hold it with your arm at a 90 degree angle. Without moving your hand- Concentrate on having go back and forth, side to side, circle bothways, and stop. These movements can be done in any order. Do this exercise for a few weeks. (Its actully micromovements of your hand that you are unaware of)

After you have that mastered sit at a table and use both hands to hold it from your forehead looking down. This gives you more stability, which means not as much movement from the hands. Do this for a few weeks.

Either make or find a stand that you can be in the same position with, but having your head and hands supported, which takes away even more unconscious movement. Continue this until you have it down.

Using the same stand suspend the pendelum from the stand, place your hand at the point where the pendelum hangs from the stand and mentally do the movements. Dont rush this last stage make sure you do it long enough you can move it.

Now have the pendelum hang on the stand it front of you. Make sure the AC isnt on, and there is no draft in the room, and do what you have been practicing without touching the stand.

Whether medetating, or goofing around, I always empty my mind first.
There are a few excercises, I guess you could call them, I do. Here's some examples.
I invision a grey dot. I start spinning the dot until it becomes a ring. After it becomes a ring I start to add emotion to it (hard to explain). I start spinning the ring around until it makes a sphere. I then try to move the sphere down my right arm to my hand, and then through my left arm to my other hand, ect. Sometimes I expand it so that I'm inside of it and mess around with that, or try to feel it outside my body.

I preform some visual spacialization routines. Simple stuff; I just create the image of a geometric shape and then start playing around with it. I'll split it into two then change their color or rotate my view, or make them into new shapes. Lots of that kind of thing.

A newer one I've been trying is a kind of lucid dream medetation. I really like the idea of lucid dreams, and have been studying how to do this. I currently suck at it, but hopefully I'll start to get the hang of it.

I meditate daily. Did you know that Jet Li once meditated for 14 hours stait? Must have been on to something :thumbsup:

Edit: You'll have to forgive any incoherence with my posts today; I'm low on sleep :eek:

I think I'm spelling this right... mushin

it is supposedly a meditative state that is difficult to reach where there are absolutley no thoughts in your mind.

Yeah, its what you should do when you fight/spar.

I think I was close to reaching that state once Sun Tzu. It started by considering how the Big Bang bubble formed. I was trying to understand what it would mean if nothing existed. Nothing. I was thinking about how not even nothingness could exist because there would be nothing, not even the subjection of nothing. No absence of things; no white, or black, infinity; nothing. It felt strange. I know of mushin (mushin no shin; "mind of no mind"; its half of my signature :thumbsup:); I attempt to do it everytime I spar. But this was alot deeper than I've ever experienced. I felt empty, maybe not entirely, but close. I've tried using the same strategy, but it wasn't as effective. Maybe it's difficult because it must be gained through a new line of thought/discovery each time. I like this kind of medetation the most; big fan of the Zen :D

i find sitting meditations more difficult than more active kinds.
for me, playing piano is a meditative exercize.
but i dont think of it as meditation--it is more a type of activity. the activity is about reaching the zero from the viewpoint of consciousness that is tied to language, but it is not at all about suspending thinking more generally.
it is simply about a different way of thinking.

if you have had the experience of catching a glass as it falls off a table before you register that anything has happened consciously, then you know that there is a segment of mental operation (at least) that precedes and to some extent conditions how your mind interacts with the world.

music can be a device that enables you to extend this kind of interaction.
language as it turns out is slow: your conscious experience--which is mostly a function of memory, which is organized through linguistic structures-is slow. you map affect (feel emotion) across this same organization.

my experience with the zero is one of feeling nothing, loosing time: it is not a space of particular perceptual distortions with reference to my own body simply because it is tied to an activity (playing) and is shaped through that activity.
when i was younger i would have explicit experiences tied to transitions--but as i got older, that stopped. now i dont feel anything.

it is strange...the space playing opens onto is fascinating, but i dont have a meta-level going on within it and so am not checking in with myself to see how i am registering (or having the experience of...) that space. it seems to me that the sense of having an experience gets in the way of the space, that you need to let that go or it will continue to get in the way.

for myself, i learn the outlines of the space opened through the zero from recordings. they are like maps. i listen to them first as a map, then as a guide for refocussing how i am thinking about what i am doing. i think about what i am doing when i am not playing. the trick is to open up ways to shift adjustments that you are thinking about into adjustments in the process. the reason i say trick is only that you cant do it directly.
at least i dont imagine that you can.
in the end, the mechanism of transfer is not important.

experience with the zero is part of a process---where you can get to changes over time--there is no state--you can't reproduce a state, you can't go back, only forward--trying for reproduction will not help you.

this is some of how i think about this kind of space.
i don't find the languages of religion or mysticism aesthetically compelling so i do not think of what i am doing in those terms---the space i am talking about is very abstract, lots of lines and colors and sound--tempermentally, the changing of it all is one of its most lovely features--so it make little sense to me to go the route of more fully articulated traditions, which use set images to focus the attention and set rituals to get to that focus.

all this kind of activity is more ordinary and more bendable than you think.
the reason it seems strange is simply that we operate within a cultural context that does not privilege this kind of activity. so it gets routed through the language of mysticism. and if that language appeals to you, then that's what it is. if it doesn't, then it is something else.

I had no idea you played the piano roachboy. :thumbsup:
I agree that playing it definately changes the way you think. There have been studies that suggest music (mainly classical) can create a stronger communication between the two hemispheres of the brain. After I practice a piece for awhile I've noticed that I don't think about the specific keys I'm striking, but my hands move almost by themselves with me observing the entirety of my actions. Its seems natural to simply "do", but can be somewhat strange when being considered.

What you said about the glass falling, roachboy, is exactly the reason why a learned martial artist keeps (tries to; which is almost a contradiction) his mind empty during a fight. When an opening presents itself it is not you who strikes, but your body acting out of instinctual awareness and reflex.

i work from the perspective you describe as the result of practicing a piece, but in more open contexts. it is less playing a piano than it is using a piano to make sculptures in time (a nice phrase that i stole from a collection of tarkovsky's writings on cinema). patterns compose themselves into structures and these structures are the bases for variation----new structures emerge from the activities around previous ones---it is like following a path through a huge garden that you bring into being as you walk through it.

Well described.

Hmmm. That piano description sums up what I feel when I am having a good acting session. The only problem is that some days are better than others, and that is why I am studying meditation, hypnosis, etc.

Doesn't Dungeon's experience beg the questions, first, of whether it was only a subjectively generated one, existing only in his mind and, second, whether or not the answer to the first question makes any difference? I've had visions while meditating, and although I find them enjoyable in their own right, it seems to me that the experience is coming solely from me, as opposed to my interacting with any energy/reality independent from me.

I prefer not to invelop myself in visions, or out of body expressions. The point of medetation, for me, is to cut through illusion.

No dispute here with that. It is said that in response to a student's comment about visions, the master simply responded that they would eventually go away, if the student ignored them.

Yeah, I played in drumline and played oboe for many years... you lose the thought step inbetween seeing the notes on a page and playing them. It's kind of cool in a way.

Just like martial arts.

I was just in a discussion last night with someone asking me how to have good time when playing in a band. I also try and exit my own head and try to watch myself playing. This puts me in the head of a listener listening to the whole band at the same time.

Of course if I don't know a song/piece/tune well enough this is harder to do. "What does the music need now?" I ask myself. Imagine watching a live performance but you can will one of the musicians to do whatever you want. That's where I try to get to.

Willing an arm away might not be such a good idea for me, though.

I'd like to point out the differences between a trance and a meditative state. Maybe this will help you understand how to reach these other states you've described.

A trance is a mode of detaching yourself from your physical being through a semi-hypnotic, or daydream-like, state. You can bring the mind to a level that is closer to the realm of dreams by actively lowering your brainwaves. This is done through the "meditation" you've described. It's kind of like having a nap while constantly waking up and falling asleep again and seeing those images or believing a thought is real when instead you've just pulled it out of your mind. That is what a trance is like.

Meditation, on the other hand, is a bit different. When experienced properly (at least in the Buddhist tradition), you become aware in a universal sense. This means you become detached from your self. The idea of self falls away and you reach the realization that there is no such thing as self because everything is oneness. Meditation is a way of seeing through illusions and thereby eliminating dukkha, or "suffering," by realizing that our day-to-day experiences are merely a collection of concepts, as opposed to what we can learn as Truth. This means that the body, in its impermanence, is also a concept and is not an object of meditation--it is an obstacle. You cannot see your self during an enlightened meditation because your body is illusory as it is always in flux. The presense of the truly enlightened mind exists in the now (and is the only "thing" that truly can) and is untouched by both birth and death.

An out-of-body experience is a result of being in a trance and is related to lucid dreaming. I hope this helps in your quest to re-experience what you've discovered.

Ah! This helps alot. Now that I have experienced a trance, I would like to try a meditative state, which sounds much, much harder. Perhaps I should try to become better at the trance thing before I try meditating.

The term "try to meditate" is an oxymoron. When you start meditation don't try, do. Just meditate. Stay relaxed. Its important to acknowledge thoughts instead of blocking them. Istead of forcing yourself to focus, set any thoughts that enter your mind off to the side for a later time.

The easy way out is to actually eat some psyloclibin mushrooms. They are...well, far out man! Seriously, they are something else. The only downside is you can't just snap out of a trip like you could daydreaming or meditating.

Magic mushrooms are just about the best thing since sliced bread. I have had a bad trip on them once, but I still learned about myself with the experience. As for the good trips... Hallelujiah!

The term is correct, however to say there are no thoughts might be a little misleading. There is awarenes, and a focus, however thoughts do not intrude upon them. One could argue that focus is thought, however no mind means literally no mind, atleast not the physical one, which is the false mind.

Mushin is a Japanese term, a practice employed by warriors in combat to make them far more deadly. When you can attain mushin you act with the one true mind, not the physical mind, but the mind which is inherant and exists before birth, the spirit. It is the intrusion of the false mind that causes one to falter and fail in arts martial. This is also true in life.

Truth be told, mushin can be as easy or as hard to attain as you make it. Usually it takes many years of training, basically to attain what is really a natural state for us. Your really learning to unlearn all the obstacles of your psyche that have been created throughout an entire lifetime. Basically it ain't easy, simple, but not easy.

You err in assuming that you are independent of the energy and reality around you ;) It is only your belief that you are that creates that particular reality, which is subjective indeed.

Much like astral projection... practice makes perfect...
No one gets everything right the first few(dozen) tries. :)

Yes, but one can learn as much, or more even, from the close minded person as the open minded. Everything has a duality, and it can be very helpfull indeed to juxtapose your own thoughts and beliefs with their opposite.

I would say that using the ignorance of others to learn can be a good thing. I mean really, how else do we understand darkness unless we are in it. ;)