The Wild Side of Meditation: Shared Consciousness
I'd like to tell you a story. A really interesting story. A story about Meditation's
Wild Side, which allows us to have meditative experiences with others not physically, but in the esoteric realm of shared consciousness.
It was Thursday, October 12, 2006 and I was at the end of a weeklong group workshop called Lifeline at The Monroe Institute in Faber, Virginia. As a meditative exercise, I was learning to access a specific state of consciousness known as Focus Level 27. My previous attempts at accessing this state had been intriguing, entertaining but not all that successful. For instance, I was having trouble accessing a spot in Focus Level 27 called the Healing Center. I could get into the focus level, I could find the Healing Center and I could touch the "doors", but try as I might, they would not open for me. I found this both amusing and annoying. But on this morning, during this specific exercise, I was finally able to open the doors and enter the Healing Center.
When I walked through the front entrance, the space looked exactly like a hospital, but was a study in complete whiteness. The walls were white. The floors were white. The ceilings were white. And the people in the center, who looked like doctors and nurses, all wore white, and wrote on white charts with white implements, some of them sitting at white tables or leaning on white counters. It was not stark - it was bright and peaceful and incredibly friendly. As I walked through the entrance and down the first main hallway, various people glanced up and smiled - with their mouths and with their eyes. Genuine, lovely and warm, those quiet smiles made me feel completely at ease and totally welcome.
As I reached the end of the hallway, I saw Reggie, a member of my workshop group, who was at the time doing the same meditation I was, though he was in a different part of the building. I wasn't surprised to see him; I often "encounter" people I know during meditations. Over six feet tall and stocky, Reggie reminded me of a football player. He was gentle and several times during the weeklong workshop we'd had many long conversations about everything from politics to the strength and frailty of the human heart. In this meditation, Reggie was standing at the end of the hallway. I asked him what he was doing and he said he was about to go into a room and nodded to his right, indicating a large, white hospital room, complete with a bed, table, lamp... I commented that I thought the room was pretty stark and he said, "So change it." And I realized I could - I could make the room or anywhere else here look exactly as I wished - afterall, it was my meditation - and with that I resolved to create exciting forms with a little less white.
Before I left him though, I spontaneously took my right index finger and touched between the brows on his forehead, at what's known as the area of the Third Eye, and said "Remember." I then went off on my meditation, to a healing pool in the middle of which was a giant crystal and floated for a time, gazing through the glass domed ceiling of the watery oasis.
At the end of the meditation I returned to normal waking consciousness and, so as not to forget, furiously scribbled down my experience, including my conversation with Reggie in the hallway of the healing center. Just as I'd finished getting it all on paper, Reggie walked in, pointed directly at me and said: "I remember." He then told me of the white healing center and the conversation we'd had in the hallway. He also said he later saw me in the pool and described it to a tee. Incredible. And exciting. And what the heck are the potential implications of this amazing experience?
This was the first time I'd consciously had a corroborated shared meditative experience. It was not my last. And when they occur, I wonder what kind of reality allows for this type of experience? Certainly not the reality I live most of my waking conscious life in. In this reality, the one of alarm clocks, deadlines and traffic jams, I am separate from everyone else. But these glimpses of something... more... something... deeper lead me to think that perhaps reality is grander, broader, much more multifaceted and dimensional then I realize, and it is through meditation and other non-usual channels that I and all of us, can experience the greater reality where we share experiences not just when in physical proximity, but through thought and energy too. When we are paying attention to these oft ignored channels of existence and communication, we learn that separation may actually be false. Perhaps we are all connected, sharing a nonduality which simply allows for us to merely think we are actually very separate individuals on very personal quests, when we are actually not. And if this is so, it is this kind of construct which would explain and allow for things like shared - and corroborated - meditative experiences. And perhaps a lot of other rather esoteric experiences as well.
Hmmm. I think I'll meditate on it.
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About The Author CJ Kenna is a Founding Director at the nonprofit Rock The Path, a Hemi-Sync Meditation & Retreat Center in Camden, Maine. She co-facilitates meditative retreats, including the popular Excursion Retreat, where participants have also had shared meditative experiences.