Childhood Experiences 2

When I was about seven or eight my parents invited a student from Columbia University, who was from India to share our Thanksgiving meal. After dinner he demonstrated some hatha yoga postures on our living room rug. In the fifties, unlike today, hatha yoga was not well known or practiced in the US. I got down on the floor and started copying him claiming these poses were “easy.” In the evenings following that visit, when I lay in bed waiting to fall asleep (my mother always put me to bed too early) I began floating out of my body up to the ceiling. This went on for weeks and I loved flying around the room. I felt so light and free. I later learned that this phenomenon is the astral body leaving the physical body and people can actually train themselves to do this at will and can travel to any destination they wish in their astral body. There is even an institute that specializes in training people to have out of body experiences:   https://www.monroeinstitute.org/ . Eventually, leaving my body stopped happening spontaneously and I tried very hard to make it happen myself. The most I ever got was an inch or two above my body and it cost me so much effort eventually I gave up.

At this point I received a thought to pray. This was something foreign to me as my parents did not speak to me about spirituality or give me any instruction in prayer. The only prayer I knew was “Now I lay me down to sleep . . .” but I didn’t like it. I never considered there might be non-formulaic prayer. After a few nights of saying my formulaic prayer I gave it up and began to explore infinity with the presence that had asked me to pray. Infinity was a word I had heard the kids at school say when they boasted of having a lot of something. For myself I was actually intrigued by the concept. I started mentally exploring the outer reaches of the universe. At these far flung places there was just emptiness. I would get as far as I could and then remember to be infinite it must never have a boundary. I would go further and so on until I had absolutely convinced myself of the infinity of space. Imagine my amazement to find out a few years ago that this very contemplation is recorded in the Buddhist Pali Cannon as the means to reach the meditative state known as the sphere of infinite space

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After that as I waited to fall asleep I began seeing beautiful rings of colored light. The colors were bright and fluctuated creating an amazing and delightful show. I called it the colored radio. As I grew accustomed after months of this, it too gradually faded away. I learned later in life that these colored lights are called nimmitas (signs). They often appear just before a meditator enters higher states of concentration. I believe that these two events were related to the visit of that young Indian man. He most likely had a guru back in India who was able to assist me in having these spiritual experiences. As an adult I came to consciously experience remote communications from gurus so I know that it is possible.