THE ASTRAL EXPRESS
The time meditation opened a
wormhole in my living room
The last thing I expected when I started meditating was that I would be shot out the top of my head like a cannon and into another world—but I'm afraid to say that's exactly what happened.
THE PREAMBLE
Part of me expected meditation to do nothing. How the act of sitting still could cause anything except a relaxed state of mind, I just couldn't understand. And for the first 50 days, nothing unusual happened.
During that time I experienced only the "usual" effects: A dramatic increase in energy level, a major reduction in stress, a spontaneous, stoned-like euphoria, and a razor-sharp clarify of thought were all regular features of my sits.
It came a cost, however. Everything I did, from my diet to my social life, had to revolve around my 6pm sit. Any deviation and I paid the price with a lackluster sit.
Then things took a turn for the weird.
TERRA INCOGNITA
It began with the sensation of air blowing against my forehead. Suddenly, a tactile, flame-like substance leapt out, flickering and bobbing like a candle. It grew larger, eventually branching into other areas of my body.
"Those are your chakras, you dummy!" I can hear some of you saying, and that's great—I just didn't believe in those kinds of things.
Like Dr. Strange, I'd seen them in airport gift shops and the windows of psychics, but never emerging from my own skin, pulsing and flickering like liquid flames, 24 hours a day.
When I began to feel a telltale pressure at the base of my spine, it was almost comforting—at least it was a landmark I recognized. It pushed upward like a thermometer, sit after sit, reacting directly to my breathing, flaring up like a hot coal after every exhalation.
Fig.1 - A Tibetan Buddhist mural from the 16th century shows a meditator travelling to another world via explosion from the top of his head.
"I'd dismissed the "chakras" as completely made-up."
Weeks later, my entire body began to vibrate as though I'd stuck my finger into an electrical socket. It came in waves and was so intense that it would often wake me up at night. It all seemed to be building up to something, but I didn't know what.
THE ASTRAL EXPRESS
The morning of October 11th I awoke to the usual vibrations, but this time they ramped up so quickly that I could only hold on for dear life as a spinning sensation gripped me, and with explosive force, I felt my awareness shoot violently out of the top of my head.
When I came to, I was fully lucid in a cloudy, nondescript space. A circular, brightly-colored object appeared in front of me, opening radially. It was garishly hued and lined with symbols I didn't recognize. It seemed to be awaiting my input, but I hesitated, worried that if I hit the wrong button I might wind up in an ethereal paper shredder.
"This is not a very high yogic plane."
Amidst all this, it occurred to me that I didn't feel terribly enlightened. As if in response, a voice said:
"This is not a very high yogic plane."
This dry remark made me laugh, which caused me to involuntarily snap back into my body where I opened my eyes and found myself laying on the couch.
"What was this experience? And how could meditation
have caused it?"
If it all seems too absurd to be real, imagine how I feel. I'd like to explain it away as some kind of DMT flood, but that's like saying to an astronaut who's just been to the moon that their experience in outer space was a hallucination brought on by rocket engines. Was I really somewhere else? How could I be sure I wasn't?
ASTRAL MOON ROCK
The next logical step in figuring this out would be to attempt to bring back an astral "moon rock"—some type of evidence either physical or logical, to show that the experience was objectively real.
In Contact, Dr. Arroway is ridiculed for having an unexplainable experience.
For the next few months I tried to re-trigger it without much success. I could often get to the vibrational stage and sometimes trigger the spinning, but it always flamed out just shy of the final explosion. The engines seemed to need more fuel, and with the demands of my day job I wasn't able to accrue enough of it.
I was disappointed, but ultimately I would experience what I set out to—a state of higher consciousness.
