OUT OF THE BODY
It is a very usual experience. It means that for a moment you were no longer
in your body, but somehow either
above or somehow outside the body-consciousness. This sometimes happens by the vital being rising up above the
head or, more rarely, by its projecting itself into its own sheath (part of the subtle body) out of the physical
attachment. But it also comes by a sudden even if momentary liberation from the identification with the body-consciousness,
and this liberation may become frequent and prolonged or permanent. The body is felt as something separate or some
small circumstance in the consciousness or as something one carries about with one etc. etc. the exact experience
varies. Many sadhaks here have had it. When one is accustomed, the strangeness of it (dreamland etc.) disappears.
There are various states of experience in which the expression 'taken up out of the body' would be applicable.
There is one in which one goes up from the centres in the body to a centre of consciousness extending above the
physical head and takes up a position there in which one is liberated from subjection to the body sense and its
heavy hold and this is certainly accompanied by a general sense of lightening. One can then be in direct connection
with the higher consciousness and its power and action.
A large deliverance came, a vast calm space.
Awhile she moved through a blank tranquillity
Of naked Light from an invisible sun,
A void that was a bodiless happiness,
A blissful vacuum of nameless peace.