Question asked by Roberto
Hi, sorry if my English is not perfect but i am an Italian man, aged 53, and i am a believer but i am not part of a Religion by now, and i have a question to ask you concerning a spiritual transcendental experience that I got at the age of 16, in Italy, after 3 years of practice of the Trascendental Yoga of the Empthiness of Mind (totally cancellation of any kind of though: colours, forms and sounds).
My name is Roberto, and this is the experience that o got to live at 16: a summer evening I was in a park with some friends and I smoked too much marijuana, and trying to sleep on the grass, after 10 minutes I found myself in a state of mental confusion containing noises, lights and colors of any kind, but chaotic, and to go out of it I got to pray the Lord to help me on it (it has been terrible and terrifying). Praying, I tried to practice the mental vempthiness, and after a few minutes i found myself out of it, in an empty and dark space, where a cyclopic Sphere of White Light came slowly towards me and so i found myself to enter into Her, to pass through Her and to go out of Her from the other side of Her.
After that, an empthy and dark Sky was all around me, and a cyclopic Sound OM was present everywhere in that sky. and after few minutes a cyclopic Red Opaque Sphere came in my direction slowly and accompanied by the noise of thunders, saying, "All is one and one is all," and i found myself to get into her (as before with the Sphere of Light), discovering inside of Her million of opaques spheres, each one having a color, tonality and size different from the other ones, that emitted words in the Hindu language, but also perhaps in ancient Egyptian language and in Chinese, and only a smaller number of them also in other languages of our planet and not. I've got to go through them at an incredible velocity (perhaps of the light) and after a while for me was only possible to see lights, colors and hear their voices without seeing them clearly anymore (for my velocity of navigation).
Then i found myself out of it, in an empty sky, dark and infinite, where only a cyclopic Multicolor Egg appeared in front of me (i got to get out of it but looking in his direction). This egg, in front of me, moved away from me very slowly, until it was almost disappearing in the Empty Sky in which the silence was at 100% (impossible in our Universe due to external and internal or mental noises).
At that point, a friend of mine woke me up doing lips to lips breathing and pressures on the stomach: he and my other friends were strongly in paranoia, due to the fact that before that moment my heart was not working anymore (they sayd), and so i was dead.
End of story.
I am interested to know what kind of experience it has been in Buddhist words, and also what are the Spheres that I got to passthrough, and the Egg, and so at which spiritual experience it corresponds.
I do not care to receive a response from you immediately, the important thing is that i will have the possibility to understand the Spiritual-Esoteric significance of it. From your answer will depend the possibility that i may become Buddhist. I've already read books of all religions of the world but I have not yet understood what i lived at 16 with that experience.
Thank you in advance for your help.
Gently, Roberto.
Dear Roberto,
Sorry we took so long to reply to you. It seems, from your description that you could have had an out-of-body experience or near-death experience. It is possible that you were going through the dying process which explains the white light and the red light which appear at the 5th stage and the 6th stage of the dying process respectively. Normally the lights are not seen as spheres but the fact that you had taken marijuana could have affected your “vision”. The multi-coloured egg is a mystery though. It could be due to psychedelic hallucination as a result of the marijuana. Our guess is that you were at the final stage of the dying process. It was at this moment that you were revived by your friends who were performing CPR on you. At this point, the clear light of death ceased and your consciousness passed back through the stages of dissolution in reverse order. When this reverse order begins, two things can happen. The person is either reborn in the bardo with a subtle body that tries to find a place of rebirth or the person revives into the old body, and this is what we call a “near-death experience”. In your case, you had a near-death experience. I’m afraid we cannot find a satisfactory explanation for the multi-coloured egg. I hope one day, you will be able to meet a qualified spiritual guide who can explain the truth to you.
The dying process, from the Buddhist point of view, consists of eight stages. The first four stages are the dissolution process during which the 4 elements dissolve. These are: earth (our flesh), wind (our breath), water (our blood) and fire (the heat that keeps us alive). The fifth stage is when the aggregate of consciousness absorbs and the internal sign is a clear vacuous white light. The sixth stage is when the mind of white appearance dissolves and the internal sign is a clear vacuous red light. At the seventh stage, the mind of red increase dissolves and the internal sign is a vacuity filled with thick darkness. At the eighth stage, the mind of black near attainment dissolves and the internal sign is a clear vacuous light, the mind of clear light of death.
We hope that the above explanation, although very brief, may have answered some of your questions regarding your experience at the age of 16. There is a teaching on this blog called “The Dying Process” by H.E. Tsem Rinpoche. Do listen to it.