Dangers of an out-of-body experience
Is an Out-of-Body Experience Dangerous?
The experience itself was a gift. What went wrong afterward was the search for it. I tried to force something I was not yet ready for, and I paid for it over years.
The ambition that drove me
After my first experience, I wanted one thing only: to go back there. I found no instructions at the time; the internet was not yet within reach. But a certain kind of meditation seemed to me the right way. The recommended practice was twenty minutes twice a day, with an explicit warning not to exceed it. Over years, something would slowly unfold.
Years were too long for me. Twenty minutes became hours. I was proud of my discipline and did not notice that this very ambition was the problem. I did not have the inner maturity for this path. I had not worked on myself, had not looked at my fears, had not seen my own arrogance.
What forcing it set loose
Seven weeks into my meditation practice, it broke over me for the first time, in the middle of the night. Something overpowering took control. I was thrown out of the body by force, and there was no light and no bliss in it. There was raw fear and real physical pain.
In the years that followed it kept returning. Every six to eight weeks a wave of pressure pushed me out of the body, uncalled and against my will. This is where the real danger lies, and it does not lie in the out-of-body experience itself. It lies in forcing it. Intense spiritual practice without the matching emotional and mental maturity can do serious harm to your health. I was very lucky. It could have ended differently.
What actually matters
Perhaps you too have lived through something so extraordinary that you want to repeat it at any cost. Then this text is for you. And you will find no how here, no method, no exercise. The absence of a technique is the heart of what I want to say.
Leaving the body is not a goal in itself. It is no guarantee of light, of peace, of anything beautiful. I had believed it was about crossing a threshold, and only later understood that the threshold was not outside me. It was within. Whoever has not yet worked on themselves, does not know their fears, has not seen their pride, will not find the light beyond that threshold. They will find their own shadow, unprotected.
The question is therefore never how to get there faster. The question is whether you are ready.
Are you ready to see your shadow?
Before reaching for such an experience, it is worth pausing, to look honestly.
Do I know my deepest fears, or have I been avoiding them?
Am I ready to meet what I have always pushed away within me?
Why do I want this? Am I seeking an experience, or fleeing from something?
What do I hope to find on the other side, and what if it is not there, but here?
There is no quick answer to these questions. It is worth truly taking the time to let them sink in. If you are unprepared in this regard, your experience may turn out to be deeply unsettling and frightening. A certain amount of inner work helps you stay steady within your experience and keeps you from being overwhelmed by fear.
What the hard years gave me
On that first night I called out for help from the depths of my soul. Naked fear made me believe in something divine, directly, apart from any religion. In moments of true fear of death, no one doubts. You call out by instinct. In that panic I was closer to an inner God than ever before.
My pride burned in the fire of that fear. What stayed behind was something I had not known before: humility and gratitude. The hard years did not destroy me. They shaped me and led me through the narrow door of self-knowledge I had kept colliding with.
Perhaps you too have crossed this threshold unprepared and now have to face the consequences. Then let me tell you this: there is a solution, there is a way, and it always leads back to yourself.
Read on
How perception changes after such an experience is described in Inner Experience and Perception.
What a tunnel experience is, and how it differs from a near-death experience, is on its own page.
Shorter reflections appear on Substack. Read on Substack.
A personal account of this experience and its long-term integration can be found in my book