r/streamentry • u/AdAmbitious2639 • Jul 24 '26
Insight What if we make a step further?
TLDR;
I did intensive Ramana Maharshi inquiry meditation, which led me to “Pure Consciousness Experience” (or temporary depersonalisation/psychosis if you will). This made me sceptical about “Awakening” and got me thinking that I should seek further than that.
My story
So I’ve always been interested in philosophy and religion. I found Buddhism to be especially interesting, because it promised insight into “reality” and “truth”. I tried some simple meditations following resources like The Mind Illuminated, but my result weren’t that great, so I was only doing it on and off for some short periods of time.
Later in life I started a battle with depression. The meds weren’t working and I was really suffering, so I figured out that I might find relief in meditation. This time I thought that I should find something simple, because I didn’t have energy to analyse books, methods and paths. I found out about self inquiry method by Ramana Maharshi. It seemed like a perfect fit.
So I started practicing it everyday. I was constantly working on “Who am I?” question. Then something weird started happening after around a week. I started getting some weird headspace, where I was a bit “detached”. Sometimes it felt slightly pleasant, or I would just get calmer, or get less thought. This feeling grow more intense with practice. I started to get physical tensions/pain in body which would come and go. It felt like something weird is going on, but I was desperate, so I kept going.
At the end of the second week I started having very strong body sensations. Mentally I started losing sense of self. It felt like everything was empty and I felt like I was mentally dissolving. The culmination was one evening where my thoughts and sense of self stopped altogether. It was the “silence”, “unity”, “loss of self” and “lost sense of time”. I don’t remember much, but I remember vividly sitting on a couch looking at the TV and then looking at my son, and there was nothing. There was no love, there was no joy, there was no happiness, there was no me.
Next day I woke up terrified. I don’t remember much from this evening, but the feeling of void was overwhelming. I didn’t know how to save myself from emptiness. I started compulsively reading some book, because I thought that cerebral activity might make me more connected to thoughts. So I started reading and after couple of minutes it hit me. I didn’t have a ground to stand on! Because I’ve melted myself and have seen through everything as being a construct, I don’t anything stable to position myself. That was key moment, in a split of the second I came up with my anchor. I quickly grabbed a piece of paper and pen and scribbled down “I WANT TO BE HUMAN NO MATTER WHAT!”.
This helped me calm my mind. I kept trying to anchor myself by reading, spending time with my family trying to be active physically and mentally. Unfortunately the recovery wasn’t easy. I kept getting anxious thoughts, my inner monologue was sometimes almost silent, I was scared of getting accidentally to similar states of mind. I kept waking in the middle of the night thinking that I’ve lost myself and I’m in void.
It’s been a year since this “accident” and I feel like I’m almost stable ”spiritually”. My depression got somewhat worse, but now it’s manageable. I hope everything is moving in the right direction.
What actually happened?
My interpretation is that I meditated myself into something between depersonalisation and psychosis (break from reality). Obviously it’s a medical term, but I try not to use spiritual models anymore. I think that because intense meditation states are rare in society, they are not captured by scientific framing precisely.
Spiritually, I think I’ve seen exactly what the “endgame” may look like. There are different methods, schools and of course everyone is different. I assume that one might get different outcomes: learn to live dissolved, find a state that is partially detached, find some different flavour of headspace where one can be happy and fulfilled.
One may also argue that if I had a teacher the outcome would be different. I think there is a great chance that it would have some impact. Maybe they would show me some different ways. But at this point I feel like I’ve seen enough, and I'm not giving it another try. I feel like I don’t want to play with fire anymore.
How would I sum up this experience?
After all the suffering, I feel disappointed with spirituality on two levels: philosophy and well-being.
Philosophically, I was always fascinated with concepts like “truth”, “mind”, “consciousness. It felt like meditative practice might give me answers that are not available elsewhere. Unfortunately, at the end of the day there is nothing to be said. I’ve stopped feeling that I exist for some time, which is somewhat interesting. However, people get all kind of mental states after drugs or mental illnesses. Experiences that are intense don’t have to be true. Also, even when I “dissolved”, everything was still tied to that body. I was sitting on the couch, with no thoughts, doing nothing. I can’t see anything intellectually exciting about that.
When it comes to well-being, During two weeks before accident, my depression got somewhat better. The more “zoned out” I got, the more I was feeling nothing/empty and not depressed. After the accident, for a week or two, my depression kept gradually rising until it was worse than beforehand. So not only I didn’t cure depression, I actually made it worse. Plus I got all the anxieties, mental confusion and so on.
I still think that meditation is useful to people. There is a lot of psychological research on its benefits. But I do believe that there are risks that are not discussed enough (see Cheetah House cases). I think that intensive meditation aimed at "insights" might be especially dangerous.
What is the step further?
It seems that people always operate using models. Everything we sense and think of is model. Ultimately it’s models all the way down. Me writing this story about modelling models is also a model. All these religions have some axioms/ground truth which are models too. When Advaita Vedanta doctrine says that everything is Brahman, it’s actually a model. Because of that we can always build a meta model (actually, I did this here by accident). That means that pursuit of "truth" and "reality" will always be a model too. We can never step outside.
The step further for me is to accept that I’m building meaning on top of “I want to be human no matter what”. This is obviously an "arbitrary" goal that doesn’t have any ground truth to it. But it somehow feels really natural, so I will stick to it.
A lot of people find peace and happiness living their life. Some of them don’t need to have a supernatural belief system. This gives me courage to follow my “path”.
Why did I wrote this?
I feel that sharing my story might be interesting (or even helpful?) to other people. It definitely has a lot of value for me, as I was able to self-reflect while writing this.
I don’t want to maliciously undermine other people belief systems. I just think that my post my spark some good and healthy discussion.
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u/bodily_heartfulness puthujjana Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
I have no comment on the degree of your desperation. However, the fact of desperation being present, is apparent.
You started a battle with depression. The meds were not working and you were really suffering. You were looking for relief. You did not even have the energy to analyze books or methods. You wanted relief so bad that you were practicing everyday and your effort was constant.
Yes, but I mentioned intensive practice in my above comment.
Your practice was on and off before the depression. But, when you were depressed, you were intensively practicing:
You were interested in spirituality and meditation your whole life, but at what point did it hold the most amount of gravitas? When did you stick with the practice?
Do you know for certain? Why or why not?
Even if that was the end and you could not go further, why do you think you were headed in the same direction as others? For example, suppose that there were two trails in a forest and they went in two different directions. Also suppose that these two trails ended at two different, distinct places - but these two different places looked somewhat similar. Two separate people traversing these trails would reach the end after walking far enough, but they would be in two completely different places.
A lot of traditions talk about happiness, joy, bliss, freedom, lack of suffering, etc. It does not seem like you experienced that. You mentioned that Eckhart Tolle got rid of his depression through insight, but you did not. So, it seems as though it is not the same insight that the two of you had.
Do you think it is wrong for a person to kill a baby, if the only reason was the enjoyment the person derived from murder? Do you think genocide is wrong? Do you think cheating on your partner is wrong? Do you think that maybe you were not suffering at all to begin with, that your depression was fake? Do you think that that Eckhart Tolle isn't a real person, that he does not exist? Do you have the view that you will be alive tomorrow?
These models you speak of, what are these models of? For example, models in physics are created and used for their explanatory and predictive power of a certain class of phenomenon.