I’ve had many funky out-of-body experiences.
The first was during those foundation 16 years. As usual, thoughts pulled me away but instead of returning to the black screen, I found myself up in space. It was the deepest black imaginable, with little stars everywhere. If I could reach out with my hand, I’m sure I could have touched a star. It was like being in the sky on a midsummer night! Excited, my first thought was
“Is this my consciousness? “.
The next moment fear set in,
“Where’s my body, my breath? Am I dying?”
That fear jolted me right back into the body. What had just happened! I was blown away. How could I exist outside of my body and survive with no breath? I couldn’t find any answers in books and there was no one to ask. There were no Facebook Dhamma groups back then!
Practicing alone is tough.
Trying to understand experiences like this without Dhamma, is like trying to figure out the universe without the knowledge of physics.
Being out of your body and enter the immaterial realm is differs from the immaterial experience as a jhana state. In OBE the “you” is strong and there is no bliss. But in the formless state, the consciousness expands indefinitely and as it expands, the bliss is phenomenal. For me, that experience of being in space was a one-off and it was an OBE.
In my second OBE I rolled out of bed in my mind and found myself ‘out of body’. I tried to walk to the bedroom door, but nothing happened. Experimenting, I tried to just “think” myself to the other side of the door. And it worked! My body wasn’t made out of light as some books suggested. Instead, I perceived myself as tiny vibrating particles gliding along. I found myself in the living room, watching my then – husband, feet up on the table, snoring in front of the TV. I circled back and tried to go out the front yard by the window. The glass behaved like a rubber band, and flicked me back into my body.
It’s ok to go exploring now and again for some fun. However, the danger in this is that it’s a waste of time and can distract us from reality because the two can merge. The second risk is that we can become mesmerized by entities we meet and taking on their teachings while abandoning our common sense and discernment.
Use the 5 volumes of Nikaya in the Pali canon as a frame of references, as a guide and tread lightly when it’s come to the teachings from others.