Transferring Consciousness to the Mental Body (Lower Mental Plane)
AC 235: June 8, 2004 (Boston)I worked on the stubborn last chapter of Music and the Soul for a least ten hours yesterday. As a consequence, when I went to bed, I was unable to fall asleep for a couple of hours. I found myself in an odd state of consciousness. My mind observed while my body would arrange itself with great purpose in all sorts of uncomfortable positions on the bed. In each of these positions, I would remain as various physical releases of tension would occur, sometimes as small twitches, sometimes as huge thrashings.
My body was throwing off the tension I’ve been building up for weeks while working on the book. I was reminded of things that I’ve read in the yoga literature about kriyas, a Sanskrit term for involuntary physical releases of tension. The founder of Kripalu yoga made a practice of allowing the body to release tension on its own in just this way. I’ve also read about similar effects that arise when the kundalini energy has been raised. [Such releases become possible through transferring consciousness to the etheric body, so the physical body is free of constraints placed on it by the ego.]
Toward the end of this period, which reminded me of things I’ve experienced spontaneously in afternoon naps, and sometimes at night, I began to feel quite relaxed. I had a sense of my spiritual self as huge, something I also noticed during a visit to the steam room at the YMCA a few days ago. [My consciousness was no longer focused in the physical body, but the mental body.]
Besides feeling huge, I felt quite centered and calm. My head seemed to be unusually clear [sign of being in the mental body, beyond the emotional ups and downs of the astral body]. I began to wonder whether I would have one of those rare experiences of inner light, as in AC 230. Something else occurred, though it may be related to that earlier adventure.
I felt an egg-shaped space clear or open up in the center of my head. As if I were looking through a keyhole, I could look into this space and see a landscape. [Transferring consciousness to the sixth chakra of the mental body, with an inward focus, then an outward focus, onto the lower mental plane.]
At first, I saw a clear blue light, like the sky. Then I saw the colorful domes and towers (minarets) of a city that seemed Moslem in design and made me think of Istanbul (although I’ve never been there). Then I was inside this scene, moving through the city, which was full of sunlight beneath a deep blue sky, but seemed empty of people. [Becoming mobile on the mental plane; the city was a portrayal of my belief structure, which is why there were no people.]
I was fully conscious. I’d gone directly into a lucid dream, without having fallen asleep. I’ve had this experience before, but not for many years--a wake-induced lucid dream (WILD).
When I came out of this experience, I got up to use the bathroom and returned to bed. Soon I’d fallen asleep in the usual way. I had one other normal (non-lucid) dream that I remembered upon waking up to begin my day.