The closer we get to silence during our meditation, the higher our energy level becomes. Energy is vibration, is light and sound, is life. Besides high feelings, strong feelings of happiness and deep calm, sooner or later we will also have spiritual experiences. These experiences are often described as experiences of sound and light. For most who get there at all, this is the endpoint on their path of meditation. But there is more, you still can go on. Deep into silence, to the source of all information, to the gate to a higher level of consciousness. No matter can pass through this gate. Eternity cannot be entered by the transitory, not even for a brief moment.
How can this transition be described? Let us (once again) come back to our consciousness process. Everything's IPO. We started with the input, with our concentration exercises. The more we concentrate, the more our mind focuses on fewer and fewer objects, the more we withdraw from our outside world, until we finally arrive at emptiness, the nothing, and our sense of space disappears. Our consciousness leaves the space and we feel infinity.
Through mindfulness, through processing the perceived information, we influence our sense of time. The more we simply accept information as it is and the less we process it, i.e. analyze and interpret it, the fewer facts are generated, the slower time passes until it finally stops completely. Our consciousness leaves time and we feel eternity.
During the meditation, we wait for the output. We go into silence and put our focus on infinity. We wait for the experience of spacelessness and timelessness, of infinity and eternity. We wait for the experience of potentiality, of pure consciousness.
As our IPO slows down, our mind slows down as well. When we are immersed in deep meditation and the consciousness finds nothing to hold on to, it ceases to be conscious of "something". This can be measured as a change in brain waves via an EEG (electroencephalography). We relax deeper and deeper and get further and further into our inner being. The condition resembles a deep sleep. It is difficult at first and requires a lot of training to stay in this area for a long time without falling asleep. Advanced meditators can put their body into a deep sleep state while their mind remains awake. Brain scans show that the brain processes energy with very high amplitudes. In these deep states of meditation, meditators often report spiritual experiences.
If we go even further with our meditation, the frequency of the brainwaves rises abruptly into the range of gamma waves. They are associated with mystical and transcendental experiences, experiences of fusion, the feeling of universal knowledge and loss of the sense of ego. A special feature is the synchronization of gamma waves over large areas of the brain. The large-scale synchronization of the EEG waves in the gamma range could be an indication that the outer and inner worlds merge with each other during this meditation phase. In a global synchronization of gamma waves, all perceptual contents would be merged into a unified whole. All separation is overcome. The perceiving and the perceived become one. In studies on meditators, it was found that the gamma activity in the EEG increases through long-term meditation and is particularly pronounced in long-term meditators with more than ten years of practice. It takes a lot of practice to keep your consciousness in a state to receive clear perceptions at this level. Usually, they only flash up briefly, like a shooting star, a tiny moment and yet so bright and clear, before you sink back into a kind of deep sleep. For yogis, this state is the fourth state of consciousness, Turiya or Samadhi, along with waking, dreaming and deep sleep. We experience pure consciousness and the perceiver becomes identical with the perceived. Breaking the connection between body and mind, pausing the IPO, experiencing oneness, potentiality, is the final goal of our meditation. It is the state of pure consciousness. It is the state of conscious death.
We change our state of consciousness. All life functions are maintained. However, the meditator can neither actively nor passively come into contact with his environment at these moments. His consciousness has left the dimensions of this environment, our space-time. In religious studies and psychology, this transition is often called "ecstasy". This term comes from the Greek and means "to come out of oneself" or "to be beside oneself". But we do not float away as a thin mist, as something subtle. We have not changed our position in space-time. But space and time no longer exist for us. Sensations in this state are very difficult to describe because we are separated from our physical perception apparatus in these moments. All perceptions such as colors, sounds, smells, space, time and feelings seem to merge into a single sensation, to become one, inseparable, timeless, boundless. We experience directly, without detours via sense organs. This also explains reports according to which blind people could "see" during such an experience. The visual experience cannot be explained by a restoration of eye function. Those affected describe their environment in great detail and precision. The blind can see and the deaf hears again, light and sound. This only remaining sensation is no longer a sensation, it is pure being, it is awareness. All thoughts have disappeared, all is knowledge, all is light. We learn what we really are. The truth lies outside our mind, we can only grasp it as pure consciousness.
In summary, this experience consists of the following sensations, each of which can be differently pronounced, and which are not experienced as individual, successive sensations, but as something unified:
- Light perception
- Perception of speed
- Timelessness
- Spacelessness
- Feeling of happiness
- Omniscience
The experiences are always subjective and individual. Such an experience is timeless, it always lasts only a moment in which everything happens at once, everything is experienced at once and still, every moment feels like an eternity. These experiences are not easily comparable with the experiences of our physical perceptual apparatus. It is the experience of potentiality, the source of our life. We can only experience it when we are separated from the limitations of our physical perceptual apparatus and the filters and interpretations of our intellect. When our IPO has come to rest. When the "in-form" has become formless again and we realize how and what it really is.
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