A few months after my near death experience on Amanita, my temple Wat Phra Dhammakaya, opened a 90-day meditation coach training program in Thailand. I had just turned 19 and still in community college though not taking it very seriously. The training was set to begin after the new year. Temple members asked me if I’d be willing to do it. I’d only done a 10-day Vipassana retreat and a 3-day retreat in Dhammakaya meditation by that point in my training. After the NDE I really had zero interest in using psychedelics or plant medicines from that point onward. I’d felt I’d taken them as far as they could go, at least in regards to mystical states of consciousness and samadhi. The temple members in Azusa sponsored my course fee and my flight. I was the only person from our center willing or able to do it, since most people with full-time jobs wouldn’t be able to take such a large span of time away from work. I’d read Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha by Dan Ingram, practicing the Jhanas by Tina Rasmussen and the fantastic Mindfulness, Bliss and Beyond by Ajahn Brahm. With my dharma books and big ego I was convinced within 90 days I could enter the first jhana. I was in for a world of disappointment. I land in Bangkok and take a taxi and hour to outskirts of the city to Wat Phra Dhammakaya in Pathumthani, Thailand. I’d seen videos and pictures of all the ceremonies held there with my mom on Thai TV, but being there in person was different. The temple is huge and the area around the golden pagdoa of hundreds of thousands of buddhas is itself the size of multiple football fields. The temple was and is still so space age futuristic. I’ve never been big on ceremonies, but was very interested in the meditation technique itself. It’s been my home tradition and temple ever since.
Our 90-day retreat began a couple days later after taking a bus to a retreat center a few hours away. Using a mantra and a visual image of crystal sphere, we were instructed to place this image inside the body and relax our minds there. I had so many ideas in my head about jhana (meditative absorption/samadhi) and visions and the stages of insight that I wasn’t able to get still at all. One day within the first 2 weeks I had very very intense bliss and happiness arise. It lasted for several hours. I proceeded to attempt to reproduce this for the next several weeks to not avail.
Every week I would switch meditation techniques, which is exactly the opposite of what we were being instructed to do. I thought I knew better. The guy who sat next to me the whole retreat became a close friend of mine. I’d never met a meditator like this before. He could sit for 6 or 8 hours without moving. His meditation was so deep he was going through the inner bodies, which are equated with the levels of samadhi in Dhammakaya meditation, even while he was sleeping and snoring! I was immensely jealous of him and wished more than anything I could sit like that. It’s been 12 years since then and I still can’t sit like that. One week I’d try breathing. Another week the skeleton meditation. Another week the visual image. Another week I’d try body scanning, spinning in circles and circles even though the entire time the monks were saying “be still, do nothing.” I was convinced I had to push as hard as I did on the Vipassana retreat to get to stillness, but no matter how hard I tried to couldn’t make it happen. We were sitting 6-8 hours a day everyday, but without a silent vow so lunch time and free time was generally filled with chatter and conversation. The 2nd month set in and by this point I knew there was no chance I’d get into any jhana. I was a complete mess, suffering and a sense of deep failure began to set in. Irritation and inescapable disappointment characterized the final 30 days of the retreat and even after.
The retreat ended I attained nothing and felt drastically worse after the fact than beforehand. I remember one night after the retreat while staying with a family friend in Khon Khaen, the suffering was so intense I prayed to be relieved of it. I woke up after a few hours of sleep, tried meditating, couldn’t calm my mind at all and just laid down with that wish and desire for deliverance from pain. The entire room began vibrating and shaking, my body exploded with energy, the ceiling above me disappeared and I said the OBE command I’d learned from William Buhlman. I shouted “take me to my higher self!” I was catapulted at light speed into space. I began ascending through clouds and before me was this immense wall of cosmic light and intelligence. Light, colors and energy vortex patterns that don’t exist in our world comprised this vast wall. Floating before it I was still suffering. It said “everything will be ok” and I died in bliss. Every cell collapsed into fractals of orgasmic bliss, ten thousand times stronger than any orgasm in every cell.
I floated back down descending backwards through the clouds and back into my body where I could still feel the powerful pulsating bliss everywhere. There were other parts of this experience that constituted an early version of knowledge and conversation, but I’m not able to share what I was told and who/what told it to me. I woke up and my intense suffering was gone even though I was still bummed about not getting into the first jhana. I decided because of such abject failure that it be best I try other meditation techniques and systems within Theravada Buddhism. So ahead I went changing meditation techniques week after week, getting absolutely nowhere for the next several months.