Thai Buddhists exercise meditation as a pathway to enlightenment and nirvana, but also aim to develop tranquility, insight, and mindfulness. There are many, many different ways of meditating this way. Lying down, sitting, standing, walking, and eating meditation are a handful that we focused on. While studying these techniques, it quickly came to my understanding that non-Buddhists could also benefit from these practices. Meditation in Buddhism is not a prayer. It is finding serenity to suppress outer hindrances such as pain, anxiety, stress, fear, and contempt through which one will gain wisdom and a pure awareness of self. Once the mindfulness is achieved, one can think clearly and gain insight about the hindrances without egoism or bad intentions. I have found this to be the case in my own experiences with meditation, but I have also discovered that what meditation can offer is more extensive than what I have outlined here.
While in Thailand, my group and I participated in a 24 hour meditation retreat. We didn't speak to each other and ate, walked, and slept mindfully for the duration of the retreat. This was the first time I had practiced traditional Thai meditation for longer than 30 minutes. Our experiences there were quite interesting.
Many of us recounted that after meditating for a few hours, we entered a strange state that can be described as on the fence of dreaming and being awake. For me, this experience was entirely different from "dozing off" because while in this state, I was still consciously listening to the sounds around me and could focus on the sensations of my body without being snapped out of it. It is difficult to recount the things I observed while approaching this state because I believe my mind went entirely blank before I became aware again in this bizarre condition. While sitting in the half lotus, I started focusing on the soft colors I could see behind my eye-lids. The discomfort I felt in my legs from sitting so long started to dissipate. I saw fuzzy shades of purple and turquoise start to move and dance and then shape themselves until I could see imagery. What I observed was predominantly bursting mandalas and geometry, but I also saw colorful silhouettes of people, faces, and random objects such as leaves and flowers. I found these visions to be extremely beautiful. I then felt a soft wave-like sensation wash over me from my legs to head. When the wave reached the top of my head, my eyes started twitching and jutting around very quickly. Perhaps this was because I had fixated too hard on the imagery and I had strained my eyes, however I felt no discomfort and I believe I had somehow induced rapid eye movement similar to what you would observe in the REM sleep cycle. While my eyes were racing around, a large eye appeared that took up the entire span of my sight. Its colors were still cool shades of green, purple, and blue against the black background of my eyelids. It started blinking slowly, and with each blink I felt a pulse that started between my eyes and radiated through my body and even through my fingertips. My sensations started to distort, and I felt as though I was floating inside the walls of my body. It was at this point that I felt entranced and extremely blissful. I felt that I had entered something other-worldly. I was snapped out of the state by the voice of our monk instructor. I believe the whole experience lasted about 8 minutes and I was utterly perplexed by it. This was an experience I believed could only be achieved in sleep or in a substance assisted high.
I found it hard to meditate after this point because I was severely distracted by the strange episode I just had. "How could my eyes have been in REM? Was I really just asleep? No, couldn't be. You can't sense your eyes moving when your asleep. Maybe I was just focusing too hard?" Although this part of the episode is still a mystery to me, it engaged the idea that perhaps I had slipped into a level of consciousness related to lucid dreaming. What I envisioned during the experience was nothing like I have seen in my waking life. And while this was happening, I was still observing the environment around me. It was if I had just muted it.For this essay, I would like to explore different views on the dream-like state in meditation.
The research I have done suggests that I entered hypnagogic state, which is the stage between being awake and being asleep. I was led to something called transcendent meditation. The TM technique is designed to explore the reservoir of energy, creativity, and intelligence of the brain and induces a state of restful alertness. Dr. Steven Rector describes the TM experience, "scientists call what happens during TM practice a fourth state of consciousness, a state of restful alertness, unlike waking, sleeping or dreaming. This fourth state, called Transcendental Consciousness, has it's own physiological style of functioning-slower breath rate, reduced stress hormones, more orderly brainwaves." Advocates of TM say that during this fourth state of consciousness that you are not in a hypnotic state, you are in a heightened state of awareness.
Harry T. Hunt of Brock University, Canada, describes the relationship between lucid dreams and meditation. "Lucid dreams share...especially with meditation, a special sense of clarity, exhilaration, and freedom that comes with emergence of a detached receptive attitude in the midst of our more narrow everyday involvements—whether dreamt or real. Lucid dreams are a spontaneous form of the state of mind sought within the so called "insight" or "mindful-ness" meditative traditions. They transform dreams in the same way that meditation transforms wakefulness." Tibetan Buddhism have recognized lucid dreaming as a form of meditation available in sleep, and have developed its practice. They believe that studying the content in dreams leads to direct insight of the ongoings in waking life.
Hunt and his colleagues at Brock have found correlations between experienced lucid dreamers and the intensity of response in meditative practices. They also found that experienced waking meditators often experience major alterations of consciousness such as out-of-body experiences. They also found significant correlations between experienced meditators and the degree of lucidity in dreams and the content of psychedelic nature rarely seen in normal dreamers, such as geometric and mandala patterns. They believe that dream lucidity and control develop automatically with practicing long term meditation.
Based on the studies of hunt and his colleagues, I believe that I achieved a heightened sense of awareness in my experience with dreaming because I have practiced lucid dreaming in the past. Figuring out the direct relationship between the two is something I would like to research further.
"Now there is no getting around the fact that lucidity has to be defined as knowing you dream, but I would still suggest that this is not why we study lucid dreams. We study them be-cause of the valued subjective effects usually (but not always) released by lucidity control. A common underlying cognition between lucid dreams and meditation is implied by the way that meditation gradually extends itself into dreaming as lucidity and by the way that developed lucid dreams become more and more visionary and oriented toward a spiritual interpretation of life." -Harry T. Hunt
Image from Google
Image from Google
Sources:
http://doctorsontm.org/questions-and-answers-on-tm
http://www.sawka.com/spiritwatch/lucidmed.htm
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