It happened to me naturally, even when I was very young.
When sleep was about to come, that very moment, there was something like a click inside. The body would become immobile, but I would be fully there, not able to move the body, but awake. In that state, as I was a child, all kind of images – facelike appearances – came. Their energy was not friendly at all. I experienced the feeling of being chased, trying to escape, but I was helpless because the body couldnt move. Whenever that was sort of over, I would naturally glide into sleep, and – unfortunately – in the morning the whole memory would be gone, lost to my waking consciousness. But as the next evening came, sleep came, the click happened, and I would again be in that state and remember: Oh no – not again. I knew what was going to come, what was to follow. That continued for many years.
This moment – the gap beween waking and sleep – that time I had no idea it can be used as a meditation technique. For me it was like an unfortunate accident that would happen regularly each time I fell asleep. Later I came to know it is even described in the 112 techniques of the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra – the book of the secrets – that Osho talked about. After I came into contact with Osho, it would happen in different circumstances and the whole experience would change.
The shift came after my taking sannyas and returning to the west. There was a specific day: I remember falling asleep with my mala on. Again the click came, body would be in that immobile state, I would be fully aware, and then these old images -faces -came again which I knew from the past. I knew they were there to harm me, but something was different in me now. As I was fully present, I sort of told those images: Now I am not afraid, now you can kill me, because now I am a Sannyasin.. And then there was something like a recognition on their side, as if they said “Ah” – an audible sound – and that was the moment they went. They disappeared forever, not to come back ever. Whatever unfinished business these appearances had with me – now it was over.
Not very long after this, as I went to sleep, in that same moment when the gap happened, when the click came, now I was feeling I could sort of slide out of my body, be floating gently in space. Space had a different feeling, there was a sensual feeling to the space. There were planets and stars, clouds and colours, but very different from astronomical pictures. As I was sliding I even felt like I could direct where I was to go and what direction to look for. And there was a sound, a music, a beautiful music, with a very deep, melodious, harmonious, humming sound. The closest I ever remember coming to that sound was in the music of Chaitanya Hari.
As I was in that state, floating in space, hearing that sound, I was thinking that this sound must be coming from outside, downstairs. Because I was living in a Osho Commune that time, my room was directly above the meditation room. I decided to inquire the next morning what beautiful music that was, and who put it on so late in the night. Then, I drifted off again from this beautiful experience. It may have lasted 20 minutes – difficult to say, because time was not there – and I fell asleep. Next morning I remembered to ask”Who put on that beautiful music late at night in the meditation room?”. Nobody did. The recognition came: that music had been only inside of me.
Later, more experiences of that type came, but they had a different flavour. I remember a time – In Oregon, Rajneeshpuram, in 1982 – in a state of deep relaxation – as the click came – I decided to experiment and try to consciously move out of the body. There felt to be a second body inside this first body and I wanted to use it to get out of the body. As I tried to do it consciously, push out with that second body, I felt I could move it one or 2 mm out of the body and then there was a sharp pain in all of my nerves. All body cells protested. I couldnt slide out any further, the pain was too much. I had to stop that experiment.
These experiences continued even later. Usually they came, when my body was in a deep state of relaxation, when I did meditation before going to sleep. And then I could feel the click, followed by a sensation like a whirlpool sucking me in. The whirpool would suck me in and then catapult me out – a sensuous feeling of gliding through unknown cloudlike substance. Physical body immobile, awareness fully on, I could go out and even direct where to go. When I experimented, directing my form to certain places that I knew, like the roof top of the opera house nearby, the roof would look very different from how I could see it with my physical eyes open. It would feel and look different, more vague, not sharp, I was not in the body, and the reality I was in was not the same objective reality that can be seen with those physical eyes. And yet, something was there.
Whenever that happened, I enjoyed to glide out of my body, allowing this whirpool to take me. It would have caleidoscopic colours, pull me out, through the cloudlike substance and beyond – out. In that state, sometimes, coming back to my room, lying there conscious but immobile, eyes still closed, I would see the room in a strange new way. It looked and felt very different, as if I couldnt remember the actual room, with a new quality, a different spaciousness. No furniture in it, a strange, soft, diffuse light. A second layer of reality. but it would be only accessible in the state of let-go, deep relaxation.
Much later, as I was joining the akashic buddhafields with Devageet and getting trained in his work, I came to understand a deeper layer of these experiences:
The appearances were linked with a past life, the energy there was a “karmic spill-over” into this life. It was only when Osho had entered my life that these energies could get dissolved. The appearances understood perfectly well that now I was a Sannyasin, and once the light of Osho was inside me their business was over.