Dark Retreat Experience Documented

This is the experience of a Czech television reporter doing a Dark Retreat similar to that practiced in Tibetan Tantric Buddhism. She starts having hallucinations after 4 days.

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Interesting, something to consider carefully …

Thanks, friend!

She’s not Polish. Czech probably, that’s what google seems to suggest, and the language also sounds like it.

Oops, wrong Slavic country, I’ll update the post. Thanks. :smiley:

Similar to the phenomenas of Closed-eye hallucination, phosphene and Ganzfeld effect.

It is not rare for me to wake up in the middle of the night (to use toilet) and experience mechanical phosphene as depicted in the Wiki article above! :sweat_smile:

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Sense isolation is really crazy. Brings to mind isolation tanks, but the duration can in no way come even close to this. I assume that the water would eventually have bad effects on the body. Also there is the sound isolation room; I think it is in Minnesota, no one has been able to stay in that room for more then like 17 minutes.

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Āloka-saññā?!

https://www.orfieldlabs.com/pdfarticles.html

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WOW, it’s up to 45 minutes? Anyone here think they can beat that?

Maybe it’s all about fear, so it’s unsure what is possible, but a nice preparation might be some serious asubha and maranusati - practice, before one tries to beat the records

How bout looking straight into the big battery in the sky? How long does anybody dare to do that?

It certainly has to do with fear or feeling physically ill. I wish there was more information on the explanations people gave for why they got out of the room when they did.

I agree without being sure … When i listened to the reporter in vdo, I got a feeling that she liked it “a bit to much”, and that feeling drove her away from diggin deeper into the unknown

Well, I would imagine you start to hear all the internal workings of the body, heartbeat, digestion, creaking of the joints. Just like in meditation, but probably even more sounds and amplified.

And then this question arises here: What is “meditation actually” ?!?

To me it’s more, much more than concentrating on breath/body awareness, or I like to believe it …

Had a nice experience with fasting a few months ago, and did it in a normal job setting where I informed my team mates what I was about to do (told them to give feedback if they experienced something weird in my performance) - and I had no problem with letting go of the habit of feeding MY body, but I had to break the training because my mates started to freak out when this had been going on for up to nine days whiteout any negative effects - To me it was actually difficult to break the training because the body and mind where completely at peace, and the energy was rocketing sky high …

Job setting is based on a team working and living together for up to 10 days.

Certainly. It seems that there is a fair amount of willpower involved, but also a sort of actual present danger.

I think the most interesting possibility would be an isolation tank that incorporates all these and also removes the issues surrounding the amount of time one can spend in the water.

Right now the sun sets here, so I stood up, took three deep breaths before staring straight into the sun for about 25-30 sec - got a mental object (green) - walked it into the shrine room, refined the glow of the object with metta, and placed it on the face of somebody I love dearly and miss so much

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I think some arahanths can be in cessation of perception (nirodhasamapatti) for 7 days at a stretch but have to break for food.

I’ve done two dark retreats, 16 days and 10 days. Its really nothing to get all worked up about. Best restful sleep I ever had in there, and I could sit for what felt like hours as pain was lessened to a large extent. Hallucinations would come and go when they felt like it, but it was all black and white weird geometrical forms with no meaning whatsoever. I would chase them but that just led to frustration. But occasionally light would start pulsating around my third eye and in body contemplation I could see/imagine the ghostly outline of my internal organs. Boredom was a bigger problem than fear or any worry about going crazy. Colours of ordinary objects were very beautiful for about a few hours after I got out. Definitely a positive experience for me and I would do it again for sure. Probably not for most people though I imagine.

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How do you think your visions relate to the “perception of light”?