I was wondering whether any of you fellow meditators have ever experienced what I'm calling intuitive knowledge?
Knowledge that seemed to 'come' to you either during meditation or after it during everyday life in response to conscious or subconscious questions that you may have asked?
Yes. Sort of.
Briefly engaged in some very mild meditational exercises once. This was followed shortly afterwards by -- initially -- a series of jumbled images in black and white, best described as pieces of jig-saw puzzle. Rather than having rounded indentations and protrusions as in ordinary jig-saw puzzles however, the bits and pieces I saw were straight-edged sections and they did not --initially -- 'fit into' each other the way ordinary jig-saw pieces do.
Day after day, I received further jig-saw images. For several days, they made no sense.
I received the images each day while I was vacuuming the floor, odd though it sounds. Over the years, I've experienced quite a bit of paranormal phenomena while vacuuming. Only after realizing this was the case did it occur to me that vacuuming is a form of meditation or altered-state. The mind is stilled, yet focussed. And the repetitive movement, combined with the monotonous drone of the vacuum cleaner, is obviously able to induce a meditative state: in me, at least. (All in all, a practical and physical form of meditation).
These days though, after experiencing several disturbing phenomena whilst vacuuming staircases, I try to remember to sing or talk(to someone else) loudly so as not to fall into a out-of-it frame of mind. There seems to be something a bit disconcerting about staircases ... maybe Lethbridge was right when he speculated that 'heaven' is approximately the height of the average ceiling and slightly to the left?)
Anyway, to return to the jig-saw images. As the days passed, the fragments of images began to join together to form full-picture images, similar to black and white photos. Further along, these became sepia coloured. For example, there was one of a section of a room (I hadn't seen the room before in reality). Although like static photos in style, the images contained movement. So the room I saw contained a section of a kitchen, yet the light curtain at the window fluttered inwards, as if by a breeze.
Some days later on, the images became coloured: life-like. By this stage, the sound of voices (a man and a woman) accompanied the images. I was not able to hear full conversations, although the snippets I did hear included what sounded like ordinary conversation: occasionally they argued, although not violently.
Should add that the above did not occur during the entire time I vacuumed the house each day. In fact, I couldn't tell you for how long I received the images and other stuff. It might have been a few minutes, or even a few seconds. I didn't enjoy it. It felt as if I were a fly on a wall in people's lives: an unintended invasion of their privacy. And I never seemed to remember (before I began vacuuming) that it would happen. Then it would happen again. By the time it had been going on for a couple of weeks, I'd privately begun to worry that I was for some reason, going mad. I finally confided the situation to one friend.
Finally, the images revealed the identity of the man and woman. I knew both of them well. The images -- though brief --- showed them living together, sleeping together, arguing, laughing, sharing a house.
In reality however, the man and woman in question had always despised each other and had made this known to others over a period of over twenty years. In addition, the man and woman in the images actually lived in two separate countries and were -- supposedly -- in love with other people. Their lives had absolutely nothing in common and as far as I'm aware, they had not been in contact for considerable time, at the point I saw the images of them.
In order to establish a record of what the images had shown, I confided what I'd seen to people who knew the man and woman (seen in the images). Like me, those I told found it preposterous that the man and woman would ever become friends, let alone live intimately together. The people I told also pointed out that the man and woman loathed each other and did not even live in the same country. They dismissed what I said I'd seen. Most people do not like being associated with the pararnormal, no matter how innocently or spontaneously received, and they tend to treat you rather coldly, which is the way they dismissed me. I took it on the chin, but asked them to please remember and note what I'd said. They reluctantly agreed, if only to end the conversation.
As it turned out, the man and woman I'd seen in the series of images did in fact both return to the same country, not long afterwards. And against everyone's expectations, they did end up living together in the same house for several months.
Elements of the experience lead me to feel that it was not 'intuitive knowledge' that provided me information ahead of time. I suspect an intelligence quite separate to my own 'sent' the information to me and was able to do so because I had (possibly) opened my mind and/or inadvertently invited contact, via the mild meditative exercises in which I'd engaged.
It was an interesting experience. I keep meaning to see if it would be repeated if I tried meditation again, but like so many other things, I forget about it and things like it until I visit these threads.
Those who (unlike me) take the time and effort to meditate properly, possibly have experiences similar to mine, quite often.
