Gone Fishin': A Transcendental Meditation Experience

I do not regularly do transcendental meditation, but my love for David Lynch has me giving it a try from time to time. I ended up triggering a trance-like state while doing so and had a pretty interesting experience. I like to project a view of myself as Mr. Future Analytic Philosopher, so I get a bit nervous sharing the woo, but that nervousness is a great signal that I need to step out of my comfort zone.

The Session

As I began my meditation session I broke from my usual pattern of emptying my mind, outside of my mantra, and instead looked inward while I still repeated my mantra constantly. I saw myself on a sailboat. I was wearing scuba gear. It was clear that I was preparing for a dive to go catch some fish in the wide, open, waters below. I continued running my mantra through my mind as I dove.

At first, as I tried to get deeper into the water, I found myself sinking as I breathed out but floating up as I breathed in. This is to say: my real life breathing pattern was influencing my imaginative space. My Ni space was not being consciously controlled at a full level, but instead at least in part being witnessed and interacted with. My breathing was synced with my mantra. I applied some mental exertion, it felt like I was doing mental "work," and pushed past the upward force by swimming down with all my might. I continued downward.

However, once I got down lower I found myself blocked by some sort of invisible field; I couldn't swim down any further.

I pushed down against it with all my strength. No give. I sat upon the force field in a meditative position to see if I could sink past it. I went no lower. I swam around the area and looked for an edge or hole to this strange obstacle. It seemed to go forever. I applied as much mental exertion as I could muster.

I found myself confused. I was totally awake, totally conscious, maintaining my mantra, and having an Ni experience. I have normally conceptualized introspection as being something that I have control over, at least when I choose to take control, but why was this not the case? What was blocking me?

I thought of giving up. Blanking out my mind like I normally would do in a meditation. However, my curiosity pulled at me. What was down there and why couldn't I get there?

I decided to do the only logical thing: I swam up. When I got to the surface I kept going up, in flight. Would there be a ceiling of force like the floor below?

I enjoyed the open sky and got up to the clouds. At this point I was seeing myself in scuba gear from the side, in a frame, from third person. I felt, physically in my actual body, the texture and feeling of the clouds around me. I flew up above the stratosphere to the highest layer of cloud cover, but when I tried to reach beyond and above I felt as if something was pushing me down.

I experienced some frustration as I applied mental exertion, unable to force my introspective self to make me rise up higher. How was this even possible?

I decided to try a different tactic. Since I was seeing myself in frame instead of in first person, what if I tried to move the frame instead of moving my body? I repeated my mantra and shifted my vision upwards, and with much more ease I was able to fly up. Soon, I lifted up past the atmosphere.

I found myself in space, in orbit, around the Earth. I flew past a satellite. I noticed that my scuba gear had, at some point, transitioned into a space suit. In my actual physical body, not my "Ni self" I felt a feeling of total weightlessness and a strange physical sensation that went from head to toe, as if electricity were running through my body. I realized something slightly terrifying: I suddenly had no control over my body. I was stuck in orbit until it expired, at which time I would either fall to the planet below or be shot into space.

I continued my mantra and took on a Stoic acceptance of my fate.

I floated for a while until I realized my orbit was spiraling inward. I would eventually fall out of orbit. I realized, as I was getting closer and close to the atmosphere, that I could manipulate my body so that I could reach downward towards the air, put my arm into the atmosphere, and use it as a rudder to manipulate my fall so that I could aim myself to where I needed to go. I trusted fate, and knew that sometimes Logos gives you an opportunity.

I repeated my mantra and enacted my plan; I quickly arced towards the Earth. I had aimed myself towards the ocean, where my boat had been. My curiosity still pushed me: could I dive deeper now?

Still in my space suit and accelerated towards the water face first as I took on a diving position; the position, alongside some conscious pushing, aided my increase of speed. My body, of which I was still fully conscious, still lied on my bed, though I noticed that both my breathing and my mantra were going faster as I cascaded towards the surface.

I hit the water, right near my boat. I dove down towards the invisible below, allowing my momentum to carry me, until I hit the level where I had been previously stopped. I felt like I was rapidly slowing down, both from the water itself and from the barrier. I exerted mentally both to swim down faster and to move my frame of vision. The shifting in frame was similar in terms of mental process as it had been before, in the sky, but this time I was experiencing things from first person. This meant that "shifting my frame" felt like pulling my sight downwards, as if I was shifting my entire consciousness.

I broke the barrier and continued downward.

I hit the sea floor gently, continued my mantra, and looked around me. I saw all sorts of fantastic creatures. There was a giant blue frog which had itself puffed up and rocking back and forth through the water, it was lit up bioluminescently. There was a pink coral-animal hybrid with eyes and a subtle smile. There was a shark, but instead of a head it had a gaping hole from which a dozen tendrils reached out to grab food. There was a school of fish that could fused themselves into one larger fish. There was a little fish with a flower for a head and with the psychic energy of a dog. I held it for a moment, pet it, and connected with it (her?) through my mantra, realizing my mantra helped me connect both to my unconscious mind and to life itself.

I pulled out the only piece of bait I had brought and held it out in my left hand. The shark latched onto my entire arm as I raised my right hand. A lifeline from my boat had been dropped. I took hold of it and tugged; the shark, it (him?) trying to wrestle the bait from me, and myself were raised up through the water, easily past the barrier, and back to the surface.

I lifted the shark onto the deck and climbed aboard. I knew what I had to do: I had brought inadequate bait with me. If I could use the shark's flesh as bait, I would be able to catch many more fish that were even more wondrous. I held an instinctive sense that other fish would be especially attracted to the nutritious meat of this powerful predator.

I connected to the shark with my mantra, knowing that he and I were tied through the experience of life. It was still latched onto my arm and my hand was pretty far inside of its body. I honored the shark emotionally and then seized his heart, squeezed, and ended his life.

I took him deeper into the ship and placed him on a large table in the kitchen. I pulled out a fillet knife and prepared his body by cutting him into small pieces for bait. I now had an abundance that I could use to catch many more fish.

I stepped onto the deck, satisfied with my work. I, still in the space suit, took off my helmet, felt the cool ocean breeze, stood grateful for my fate, and my alarm went off. The meditation session was over.

Analysis

1) As I pointed out in my description of my experience: I was not in full conscious control over what was happening to me. I could influence what was happening, but it felt like a negotiation. A negotiation with what? The more I've explored my spiritual side the more I've been impressed with the power of my unconscious mind.

Similarly, those fish were not created by my active consciousness. It felt like the simply swam up to me. Where, then, in my brain did they come from? A more spiritual person might associate it with something coming from the "outside" of my psyche, something supernatural, but my framework says that they came from the unconscious mind, a part of my mind that my consciousness inherently doesn't have access to in the day-to-day.

2) The imagery and theme of the experience strongly reflected David Lynch's book Catching the Big Fish. I recently read it and highly recommend it, especially if you're a follower of his work. The question becomes: did my experience reflect his book or did his book unlock some sort of aspect of the collective unconscious for me? 

The collective unconscious is a Jungian concept which holds that humanity shares a genetic brain structure and therefor share a similar set of experiences. Something like thirst is a near universal, is derived from our brain structure, and is therefor connected to the collective unconscious. Jungians believe that there are aspects of the CU which are best understood metaphorically or symbolically and most Jungians would interpret my experience as being an experience of one of those aspects.

This, then, holds the possibility that Lynch's book did not give me visual language, but instead gave me access to a method with which to gather Ni experiences around the topic of "fish" being a CU symbol for creativity. Is this possibility the case?

3) It's cool that all this fit into fifteen minutes. One of the important aspects of introspection, though, is that even more fit into those fifteen minutes. There are aspects of my conscious experience which I did not share because no matter how many details I express I could never fully communicate my entire subjective mental experience. However, I did my best to capture the experience with the words so others could understand it and maybe catch a glimpse of it.

4) The experience held significance to me and was interestingly meta. While I've had and have been recovering from Coronavirus over the last two and a half weeks I've fallen from my meditation habit. This session was one of the first I've done since I came down with symptoms.

The message, to me, was deeply affirming of my meditative practice. This is both because of the experience itself being a deeply interesting thing to have, because that experience could only have been had through meditation, and because I took the experience itself as being symbolically an affirmation that meditation is intrinsically and extrinsically valuable. This reading is easily understood if you read Lynch's book but here's a quick interpretation:

The barriers in the water and in the sky spoke to the smallness and weakness of consciousness, and how consciousness can be expanded and strengthened (as I broke past both barriers) through willpower (somewhat, such as when I used my will to drive myself downward when my breathing had me floating), meditation, and shifts in perspective (my shift in perspective as in the shift in frame in the sky and the shift in consciousness when I dove the second time). This expansion process leads to the gathering of fish (creative and insightful ideas). These fish are caught through bait (which Lynch characterizes as attention and desire) and having this enriching experience led me to get more bait (I'm going to pay more attention to my edge-of-consciousness-experiences and my desire for more insight has increased).

I am, metaphorically, standing on deck right now and feeling that ocean breeze. Having this experience was cool as hell and even if there was no meaning or value I'm so glad I had it. At worst, if every point of significance I'm drawing is false, it was like a dope ass movie got created by my mind and that's worth it on its own.

While most of my meditation experiences are a normal, generally nice and relaxing, experience from time to time I get gold like this fish experience. I feel encouraged to continue meditating regularly and I hope to report more interesting experiences in the future. I'm also hopeful that the insights here are real and that through attention and desire my creativity and insight will increase. 

At some point I'm going to write a post about the practice of transcendental meditation. I've got a method to provide mantras for people who are interested. If I know there's a demand I'll write the instructions up straight away so folks can take this journey with me. Message me on this blog, on Twitter, or wherever else and let me know.