I have a question regarding loosing consciousness in meditation. I know this is a common question, and it’s an experience I have had many times before. I have already read all the information regarding this on the AYP material. But when I have had periods of time where I blackout in meditation, it usually only happens for a few sessions a row, or for a week maximum.
Recently I have been blacking out about 4 out of 5 sessions, and this has been going on since mid October.
My question is if that amount of blacking out is normal, and if it is conducive towards purification of the nervous system?
A friend had recommended sitting without a back rest for extra clarity. On reflection I personally feel like that would improve ‘concentration’, and not necessarily be improving the meditation aspect.
Also I have experimented with using a mantra (I usually use passive awareness technique), and both techniques had the same result. I feel very clear for about ten minutes, then completely loose consciousness.
Would be grateful for any input, Thanks in advance.
I do try to meditate before a meal, but it can be difficult as I like to eat early as I struggle to sleep if I eat too late.
Do you think that could be the reason? Is nodding out actually a problem?
The thing that confuses me really is that there seems to be a feeling amongst some practitioners that blackout should, if possible be avoided.
However the advice seems to conflict with this, a search on the AYP ai gives this advice-
“ Losing consciousness or “blacking out” during meditation is typically categorized as a state of deep meditative absorption (samadhi) or a manifestation of profound neurobiological purification ,. This experience is characterized by a complete absence of sensory input, thoughts, or the mantra , yet the practitioner remains fundamentally “conscious inside” . These episodes are generally regarded as a positive sign of progress , indicating that the mind is settling down enough to release deep-rooted karmic obstructions that ordinary sleep cannot reach,.
Physiologically, this state is distinct from ordinary sleep; the metabolism drops much lower , and heart rate and breathing can become nearly imperceptible,. A practitioner might find themselves “gone” for thirty minutes or more, only to realize their head is on their chest when they regain outward awareness,. While it may feel like a sleep-like stupor, it is part of a natural cycle of cleansing that will eventually give way to more clarity during practice.”
Thankyou! I will meditate before mealtimes this week and see how it goes. I guess I could also opt for a lighter evening meal to help avoid sleep problems due to being too full.
There are basically a few different kinds of “nodding out”. There is falling asleep and there is entering samadhi. Neither of these two are necessarily a problem. And falling asleep can happen in different ways. There can be a phase during which the body starts to fall asleep during meditation due to inner purification. This can happen even if we have just got up, not eaten a meal, feel fresh and awake and then sit down to meditate. In severe cases we can fall asleep within seconds. In very severe cases, we may not even make it across the room to the meditation cushion! But, it is happening due to the meditation process and the process of inner purification, rather than due to tiredness. If this is happening, then a lot of purification is going on and it is good to simply go with it. It can feel frustrating, because we feel that not much progress is being made, but in fact, it is. Eventually we come out the other side and this does not happen any more. Then when we sit for meditation, we find that the mind is still and calm, but the body does not fall asleep.
Then there is falling asleep due to tiredness. This is not necessarily very purifying, or helpful. This is why the advice is to meditate before eating, as eating brings on tiredness.
And then there is samadhi, which is different from falling asleep. In nirvikalpa samadhi awareness of the physical world disappears as well as mental objects such as thoughts and memories. However, we remain “awake” inside. If this is happening, then it is a good sign. It is not possible to come back to the mantra as there is no awareness that we are off the mantra. If the thought arises “I am off the mantra” then we can easily pick up the mantra again. If we are so deep in stillness that it would feel difficult to pick up the mantra, then we can simply remain aware of what is happening, without interfering with anything (the Passive Awareness Technique) until it feels that it would be easy to pick up the mantra again.
If you are wondering if you are falling asleep, or entering samadhi, then there are a couple of ways to tell. One is that people usually lose consciousness when they fall asleep. So, they are not aware that they are asleep. In samadhi awareness remains. Also, when coming out of sleep, people often feel “groggy” for a while. When coming out of samadhi there is no grogginess. We come out of samadhi in the same awake and alert state that we were in during samadhi. Also, if we notice that the heart rate has become very low, this is samadhi. The heart rate only usually drops around 10% to 20% during sleep, but can fall to between 30 and 40 beats per minute during samadhi states.
My resting heart rate is usually around 40bpm to be honest
As I said before I am using the passive awareness technique at the moment, and have been doing since last summer.
In the context of meditation, my normal experience matches the description of ‘savikalpa samadhi’ as described by the AYP ai here- Savikalpa Samadhi: This is “samadhi with fluctuations”. In this stage, aspects of the mind such as thoughts, memories, feelings, or sensory perceptions (sights and sounds) may still be present while the practitioner is absorbed in stillness”
I feel in meditation that I am just ‘being’, just ready to observe thought forms, then they pop up and I return to just ‘being’.
So ‘Passive awareness’ is essentially savikalpa samadhi isn’t it?
Passive Awareness is not exactly the same as savikapla samadhi. In savikalpa samadhi pure awareness comes to the foreground and everything else goes to the background. So, pure awareness becomes dominant. With the Passive Awareness Technique, that may, or may not be the case. Someone could have thoughts, memories, sensations in their knees, and sounds in the garden all being dominant in their conscious awareness, but still be performing the Passive Awareness Technique. In the same way, someone performing the Passive Awareness Technique could enter nirvikalpa samadhi.
The only pre-requisite for the Passive Awareness Technique is to have the witness present, which means to be able to not get caught up with anything that is arising in the mind, or the objects of the senses.
Ok, so I feel that pure awareness is my ‘home base’ so to speak, and everything comes second to that/out of it, then I turn back to pure awareness.
So nirvikalpa is a deeper version of this where there are no thought forms coming and going? I get this pretty often in short bursts, and there is often ecstasy involved, and lots of light and bliss.
It looks likely that I have just been sleeping on the job
Well, technically, if there is ecstasy, light and bliss still present then that is savikalpa samadhi. Those things are all experiences. Nirvikapla samadhi is samadhi with no experience - no objects at all. Only pure awareness.
So then presumably it’s a descending scale where savikalpa deepens gradually to nirvikalpa? And the way to really experience nirvikalpa is to notice the ecstasy etc… and return to pure awareness, until experience is just void of anything at all. Of course, the bliss, ecstasy et all can be labelled in retrospect rather than through attachment?
Are we experiencing moments of nirvikalpa samadhi during savikalpa samadhi, technically? During the gaps between noticing phenomena, or is it the continuous absence of identification with thought forms which make it nirvikalpa samadhi?
I’m quite sure I have experienced this, it’s just ‘pinning a name’ to it. I apologise as I have probably had this conversation with you many times it’s just that there is always this self doubt, which I feel I am using to avoid pitfalls- so is not necessarily a bad thing.
It’s difficult to know whether these labels are helpful or not to be honest! what a rabbit hole!!
I’m sorry I’m a little slow to catch on!
Thanks so much for trying though Tristan , I appreciate your patience and support
It’s quite natural to think of samadhi as being a descending scale. However, in practice nirvikalpa samadhi may be the first experience someone has of samadhi. It is also possible to move between states of samadhi in one meditation session, and to do this many times. So yes, if savikalpa samadhi is present, it can deepen to nirvikalpa, and then come back to savikapla. Someone could even get lost in thoughts again (no samadhi) before entering samadhi again. And then the bell could go signifying the end of the meditation session…
In terms of “what to do” there is really nothing to do. If someone is practicing the Passive Awareness Technique then they would simply be away of what is arising and passing away in each moment without any interference. It does not matter what arises, or passes away.
As for how useful these terms are, maybe not so much, especailly as they do not affect practice at all. You will notice that Yogani rarely uses them. I only use them because they are found in yogic texts, and I believe that it is useful to know what is being referred to. However, if everyone in the world agreed to stop using them, I would be quite happy to.
I was the one suggesting to Tom to sit without back support. My “theory” was that if the nodding out is a form of sleep, it would be unlikely that sitting upright is maintained by the body after it has fallen asleep (I say it’s unlikely, because with enough training of sitting without back support in meditation, the body might learn to remain upright and sleep without back support). If on the other hand the nodding out is a form of samadhi, the body very likely will remain frozen in place in an upright position without back support. So sitting for a while without back support in meditation could give more clarity on whether the nodding out is sleep or a form of samadhi.
If the body is falling asleep and no back support is used, then the practitioner can fall over. Or, more likely, they would wake up as they start to fall over, and jolt upright again. So, yes, this can be a way to know if the body is falling asleep, or if it is entering samadhi. However (as you noted) this is not a 100% accurate method as the body can actually fall asleep whilst sitting with no back support and simply remain in place. Often the head will drop down onto the chest, but even that may not happen. This is because prana rising up through the central channel can keep the body upright.
So, yes, it could be helpful, but is not a guaranteed method.
I gave the no back support a try for a little while. I’m not sure I totally understood the reason for suggesting removing the back support when we spoke, but I understand now.
The problem is that because of my job (where I regularly pass around 5-6 tonnes of stone through my hands per day, on top of all the other manual work that goes with the job) my back is always pretty tired. I also feel that my back, although tired a lot of the time, is as strong as it will ever get on account of doing this work for 15 years. I’ve also been lucky and escaped injury! so far….
Oh, there’s also the fact that I’m crazy tall and lanky which doesn’t help matters!
My use of back support is actually what I feel to be a happy medium, as only the lower back is supported, which encourages an upright seated position, the cushions encouraging the lower spine forward whilst tilting the pelvis forward too. The use of two cushions means that my shoulders are far enough away from the wall that it doesn’t interfere with chin pump either. It m also able to sit comfortably like this in sidhasana.
However it’s cool that I’ve been made aware of two methods of getting to the bottom of this issue. And I think they could both be useful.
It’s only been a couple of days of trying to practice earlier, and before food, but so far I have had improvements, yesterdays meditation was much more clear. I still nodded this afternoon, but Im pretty sure I didnt loose consciousness for a change! I also feel brighter after those meditations. So that’s an improvement I guess? Time will tell.
The sitting without back support could be just an experiment for you to try out a few times, to gather some more insight into the nodding out phenomenon, rather than a new default. I remember that you told me about your heavy duty work, and why you prefer sitting with back support.
So, we have you describing your experience, and an expert like Christi interpreting it. And we also have that expert describing the differences between different samadhis and sleep, so that you can see which of these templates matches your experience best. Then there is my suggestion, where your body’s reaction could tell you what’s going on. In all these cases there as a possibility for confusion, but taken together they might point in the same direction and you get more clarity, or if they don’t point in the same direction you might get even more baffled
I understand that obsessing about which samadhis are encountered during meditation could interfere with an innocent attitude towards one’s meditation practice and produce some striving that will be counterproductive. On the other hand, if one were to sleep through most of one’s meditation sessions, then likely this would lead to stagnation in one’s progress of cultivating abiding stillness. So maybe yet another thing you could do is to just forget about this question for a few months, and check after that set period if stillness has continued to rise in daily life. The worst case scenario then is that you got some extra power naps for a few months.
I thought I told you my forum pseudonym back at the retreat! That was when the forum still was completely pseudonym. After the forum had moved, suddenly a lot of “clear” names appeared next to the pseudonyms (including yours, that’s why I knew who you were ).
Hi Christi,
Thanks for commenting on my “theory”. And yes, good warning that if sleep sets in for someone meditating without back support that falling over could be a hazard.
I’ve been diligently practicing before meals as advised for a month and I thought I’d share some insights.
Firstly, I have been nodding out less
Secondly, my practice has produced more clarity in meditation. I have started to nod a few times, but have been clear enough to catch it before I disappear completely.
Another thing I have noticed is that the nodding out seems to happen when I become overwhelmed by currents of ecstasy in the body. During some practices I notice the ecstasy build and then notice how I start to lose consciousness. During one practice this happened three times in a row.
This made me wonder if the nodding out was the bodies way of saying ‘ok, that’s enough practice now!’ .
In fact the meditation seems to have become so ecstatic that It led to overload and I had to self pace by dropping samyama out of my routine in order to get rid of the dreaded ‘inner sunburn’ symptom, which thankfully went after a few days.
So all in all, I’m very pleased with the results of the experiment and am feeling really really good in daily life, having stillness on tap. So thankyou all for your support.
it’s just that there is always this self doubt, which I feel I am using to avoid pitfalls- so is not necessarily a bad thing.
so far….
).