Spiritual Paranoia – When meditation gets too deep
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I began meditating to quiet my mind — but as silence deepened, it opened doors I never knew existed. Dreams folded into dreams, and the question that haunted me wasn’t about God or demons, but about what was truly real. What began as meditation soon turned into a paranoid experience where even waking up felt like another illusion.
Themes – Spiritual, mystical, psychological, existential, lucid dreaming
It had been around 2 to 3 months since I started meditating for around half an hour every day. It surely helped me in calming my mind and just being without any thoughts, but at times it also challenged me as I progressed. By then, the time that I needed to calm my mind and find a pause from thoughts bombarding my brain was slowly decreasing. After around a month of practice, it became easier for me to focus as I sat to meditate. Though it seems like a very easy and small thing, I knew it wasn’t — and the experience was something that I never had in my entire life. Hence, more than being consistent, at some point, sitting to meditate turned into an obsession for me, bringing experiences that were tough to hold and understand. That’s when I realized I had to take a break from it. Though I was worried about losing the habit, perhaps that was the challenge I had to accept. And that’s when I went on a solo trip to the mountains.
For the last two years, Kasol had been a second home to me. Perhaps that’s why a homesick person like me — who looks for his room and bed even while staying at his best friend’s house which is just a kilometer away — never felt the need for his own space while staying for months in Kasol, even while solo traveling.
This time, it was my third visit to the same place, surrounded by serene mountains and the holy river Parvati. As usual, the manager of the hostel and the workers became my friends, with whom I would sit and talk until it was too late for sleep. And on one such night, when I went to bed around 2 a.m., I had little idea about the intense feeling and terror I was about to encounter in my sleep.
As I fell asleep, I woke up standing still, in a city and surrounded by traffic. I didn’t know about the how and why, but there was tension and an anxious feeling, running through me. And before I could figure it out, the reason revealed itself.
Something that was invisible to me, felt like seeping into a space within myself, that I never had seen. Neither that which entered into me, nor the space within me which it was taking over, were visible to me. But I was able to feel and sense it, taking over and expanding within me. The feeling was eerie, unnatural, and somehow I knew it was a bad spirit. I was shivering and helpless to move, even to take god’s name “Hanuman” or at least chant “AUM” to help me. But as the evil felt expanding in me, taking me over, I tried hard and spoke Hanuman’s name, and only that brought me relief. As I spoke of the holy name, the spirit was gone, and I found myself on my bed, just to realize that I was dreaming.
But it didn’t end there. Before anything else could happen, I was again in a crowd and this time, I was already alert with the same anxiety and fear, knowing that it’s always a crowd that brought the spirit to me. But before I could think of any escape, it came, seeping into my paralyzed body and took over me. The experience was as helpless as the last one, but all I had to do with shivering fear was to call out for Hanuman, to save me. And as I did, he came for it, waking me up, and making me realize that it was again a dream, and the last time when I woke from a similar instance, I woke up only to another dream.
But the only problem was, this time I woke up on my bed at home. I was paranoid about how I even reached home, when I was in Kasol and was travelling when I went to sleep last night. The questions came with confusions and fear, but before I could solve any, I had to face another encounter with the evil spirit.
This time it was some kind of reunion, where weirdly I knew no one. As I stood panicking to see myself again in a crowd having lunch, the fear lingered as the spirit chased me. Though I always had god’s name to rescue me, the fear and helplessness always felt equally triggering.
And as I stood helpless, the spirit took over the space within me, expanding, until I jolted it out with his name – Hanuman. But again, all the effort just to get more confused and terrified, as I woke up on my bed, again dreaming.
By this time, more than the spirit I was afraid of the things that were happening with me, as I lost track of what’s real and what’s not. I was questioning out of all these moments of dream and waking, which one of them was real and which one was a dream. As the questions and the fear start to pile up and crumble me, I started doubting, if I had really woke up, or still dreaming of dreams and waking, or had I just gone out of my mind entirely, with episodes where I perhaps had been behaving weirdly, thinking of it all to be a dream. All I could remember now, that I sat with the horrifying doubts about myself going mad, and having manic episodes about whom I was totally unaware while having them.
With this, I sat beside my mother and asked the same question that if I’m going through some trouble. And to that she replied that I’m having such manic episodes, after which they put me to sleep and though I wake up fresh every time, again and again I keep having those episodes. To add to my horror, she also revealed that I’m having such episodes, at least 20-25 times every day, and every time as I experienced them., they had to put me to sleep to bring me back to normalcy which only perhaps lasted for no time, in my personal experience.
This made it all even more terrifying as such episodes, 20-25 times a day, meant a life where I hardly knew if anything was real or just a dream. To me it all had started to appear the same, and panicked like hell, doubting if even while being awake, is a state when I’m just dreaming.
As the crisis came crumbling upon me, I was thrown into another episode, where I encountered the demon, and by the holy name of God, I escaped it and found myself on my bed, again dreaming.
Perhaps after another such encounter, I was somehow aware that I was getting psychiatric treatments and therapies, and to know about it, I asked my mother if there had been any change or improvement by that time. But her reply broke me, as she said that the treatments aren’t helping me and I’m still having such episodes 20-25 times a day.
By that time, I had lost all hope, and the only time I was at peace was perhaps when I was asleep, as waking up brought the doubt if anything was real, or all the time I had been paralyzed by my dreams.
But finally, it came to an end, as lastly after escaping the spirit I woke up, but to my surprise, this time on the banks of river Ganga, in Varanasi. I saw my parents, facing the river and sitting at some distance, while I already had guessed that perhaps neither psychiatric treatments nor any tantric practices helped me. And asked my mother, she validated my doubts. She added that as nothing helped to cure my mental health condition, they broke and lost all their hope, because of which they sold the house and came to Varanasi to leave it all behind.
Somehow I knew this, the moment I saw us on the banks of river Ganga where everyone comes in the end, perhaps as a sign of surrender as they accept their helplessness. But maybe I was expecting this and by that time, there was no depth left in being helpless to feel for me.
I came back and sat down, and that’s when I saw a Baba (saint), and before I could question myself about my innate trust in him that I felt naturally, he said something, that only broke the last thing I had, that is all of my reality and the last thing on to which I could have leaned on to.
He revealed that the couple with whom I had been all the time, thinking them to be my parents and which was the only reality I had – weren’t my parents in real. Instead they were someone who had killed my real parents and had taken over their property and now they have come to just leave me.
I don’t know, but somehow the Baba’s words felt true to me, without any question. As if my scattered soul could sense some truth in him, to believe him. But the revelation took the only piece left living in me, all my hope and my reality felt like falling and breaking within me.
I started to break, scratching the skin under my hair as I went paranoid with the question of which one of all the things that had been going on were true and which one had been a dream. With the doubts filled from the recurrent dreams and waking up only into another dream every time, I had nothing except a feeling into which I felt like sinking. All I could explain is that though I was breathing, I was breathing the suffocation of breathlessness, seeing the walls of light closing and squeezing me into the darkness and my entirety experiencing what perhaps feels like death. It didn’t feel powerful to be able to see a death of that kind, but only helpless, as it literally felt like death, and the end of myself, where the toughest part was to witness it.
As I kept falling into the paranoiac experience, I shouted AUM with the last ounce of hope left in to bring me back to life again. And this time, with some struggle to break my paralyzed body, I did mumble the sound “AUM”, and that’s when I woke up in my bed, just to sum it up that it all had been a dream of dreams within the dreams, where I dreamt of dreaming and waking up.
But this time, the only difference was, I woke up in my bed in Kasol, and I saw two of my fellow traveler friends sleeping beside me. I took a long breath as if I was checking with all the doubts and paranoid experiences, but waking up this time, seeing myself exactly where I slept last time, did bring some relief, and a strong feeling that now it was finally real and not a dream.
Yet the fear lingered for a while, still with faint doubts if I had woken up or was still dreaming. But as the time passed and I remained in the same space and time without jumping into unknown scenes, the clarity, faith and relief revived with life within me.
Yet, the entire journey of those dreams within the dreams, that brought panic, disorientation of reality, absurdity of how dreams could feel so real, and also how they could merge into each other – this terrifying loop of dreams that perhaps only lasted for 2 hours in sleep, felt like an eternity of struggle, existential crisis, fear and Paranoia.
As time passed, the doubts got washed away, but the sayings that I have always heard in our holy scriptures, like –
“Our life is like a dream, and it feels as real as we feel everything in our dreams, but in the end, it’s only a dream from which we need to wake up, and that’s called liberation or moksha”
-this philosophy came striking to me, finding a forever place in my mind. And even though it has been more than a year since I had this intense dream, sometimes its thoughts just pop out of nowhere, making me question if all that I see and feel to be real is also a dream – where I wake up and go back to sleep again only within the dreams.
And with those doubts, I question, if it’s true, doesn’t it make everything worthless? And if it’s all a dream, then what’s reality?
Even now, when I’m somewhat stable in my reality, sometimes the question terrifies me, with the feelings it brings, and sometimes it makes me calm and to let go believing in that which has given me this reality or perhaps a dream to live, as there’s perhaps no control, except to surrender to that which has given me it all.
If you liked this article, you’ll surely find the article mentioned below interesting, that talks about the real meaning behind the Buddha’s saying – You become what you think, unlike the traditional and superficial motivational meaning we have always attached to it.
