Hi Pulsar. I see u are meditating but as yet no absolute knowing has come. it will, but I cannot say where or when but it seems you have set in motion a preparation to get your own personal knowing by your participation and persistence to your original question.
and I'm glad you're still with us.

the reason I can say this is you have a desire and curiosity to have your knowing. I have learned that curiosity and desire are active forces although not causing instant knowings, they are like steps in the process to get there.

believing is not the same as knowing. even Einstein said "imagination is more important than knowledge." thats a side note but you understand the premise.
I think your question is at what point did I or anyone here cease to doubt in immortality?
I told this story many times because it was my own turning point.

I was 18, brash, angry, I had to know for sure or couldn't go on to build a philosophy of life. I was always a "talker to god." I brought in some spirit teachers into my room and then I knew beyond all doubt from the physical phenomenon in the room and the voices in my head, beyond all doubt, and they asked me to choose power of the ego or would I choose the way of love, as taught by the master teacher JC. not in a position to exactly argue the point, I conceded to the way of love and I've never been sorry!

you WILL know. practice how it will feel when you do get your knowing; if you can imagine that you have already attained your knowing, what it feels like to be relieved of the question, then that will produce it for you even quicker.
love, alysia

Hi Pulsar: you asked me if u could move ahead on your path if you accept love as a premise.

yes is my first response. then we get into the mental area to be asking what is love. or I should use this site's term PUL in order to be more clear.
yet we even question here what is PUL?

so it could be, you are on the heart intelligence path. some call a love path, but when I first saw this phrase I objected to it as seemed too new age for me. I too have problems with a few self professed new agers who seem artificial so I am like the reluctant new ager who hates all labels because they are limiting devices.

so not sure but that you are very introspective, eager, contemplative, mental, open, can pick up other's feelings well, just the sort of explorer should go far into your desired knowings to attain, as we discussed on another thread.
and some might object to my words for you, but I am able to pick up feelings of others sometimes and get rotes from that, but I am not a guru of course. so take what I say with your own natural ability to see if it is useful. if not, throw it away.

to clarify my personal experience with these initial nonphysical beings I encountered who set me aright, due to my asking for it I could offer what I think a love path is, while I think of one who had a perfect love for all, although I always insist, I am not a Christian but more just a mystic if I have to be forced to label myself.

its really hard to be free of labels though. we have been discussing here what the ego is, but more or less deciding the ego is selfish, has pride in it to get rid of perhaps, because pride goes before a fall.

what the beings told me is just because I had passion to get what I wanted, they said don't use your passion only for your own self. then this would be called going for the power, not necessarily going for the love.
we have many in the world go for the glitter, the power, the material attainments and we admire these.  At the same time we may admire these that they are getting their earthly experience that they wanted, if we are looking towards a perfect love path, we will see the participants on that path, are loved equally with the others in the sight of him who does not choose up sides. so a love path is impartial love with all having equal access to wisdom and knowings, but a power path can turn into a love path the same according to a person's ability to change their focus.

so for me, these beings were telling me to be careful. I had just called them forth. that is a power trip to them. I had called forth and out to any being. they said I was a smarty pants! lol! thats what I mean, too brash, too angry, acting like I had power, they wanted me to take the love path. at 18, no such thing as a love path, have to live a life before you can report on what happened in that life.
they were essentially trying to protect me from unscrupulous beings I also had the capacity to pull in because of strong will akin to anger. (all this I learned later by contemplating the experience)
it was heavy as the hippies used to say. though I didn't take drugs at that point, and very few drugs did I experiment with later, so anyone tempted to chalk this up to hallucination   of drugs can throw that idea away. I had a sound mind, just too much passion to know.
passion should be tempered with patience and study. what I didn't know then!

to further explain, if the readers will pardon my droning on about this, I had attained my knowing thru passion but not any wisdom yet or experiences in what love was exactly, or to choose love path. but I did have a focus point, in order to build my philosophy of life.

which is what you are looking for Pulsar, as you wrestle with feeling like you have no stability to stand on as you go after your greater self.
we all at one time stand exactly where you are standing. I offer my story but I know it's just a story to you.  I do get more clear in the telling. I went on and was this person who was naive and thought everyone was trustworthy; that is why I sound a call, not to god, as god was such a vague concept, I sounded to any passersby in the spirit world.

this is what they objected to essentially, that I had a naive approach in my passion. so I got called severely on it. yet, I was extremely happy! because I received lesson plan number one through it. like a breakthrough that we all want.
so personally speaking I went on to discover what is not love, this way I could compare it to JC's what is love.
so maybe you are observing the same. the dual aspects of our world.

I will keep you in my prayers for your knowing, but I know patience is a great thing to have in this world, like faith, we have to keep our minds out of the gutters of what love is not.  happy holidays everyone, its a good season to think what is peace.
Pulsar, the void is another great contemplation, another subject altogether; did u know the universe hates a void? 

Hi Pulsar-
I think that "non-guru" Alysia has said about all that needs to be said in a practical sense.

From a more academic perspective, what you are doing is entering a very high level of meditation, verging into the contemplative. (The sequence is concentration, meditation, contemplation - where contemplation ultimately loses all of the ego-self.) Your experience was evidently the first taste of nirvastarka samadhi, and is normal. To make sense of it, allow your imagination to place you in the position of God-as-God, rather than God-as-person. Then as God, all the person stuff vanishes - it's not part of the essential reality. However, notice that awareness does not vanish. The aware part of you, what the Tibetans call the Knower, remains alert and interested.

There are three basic yoga approaches to contemplation - through love (bhakta yoga), through awareness and understanding (jnana yoga), and through joyful action (karma yoga), all of which eventually merge at the end of the process into "raja yoga", which is just the collection of the other three. Whichever of those you tend toward is OK, we're all different, and only rarely is a single path adopted by any person - although Ramakrishna was about as pure a bhakti as could be. So, from an abstract perspective, you're doing the right thing in the right way at the riight time, and getting the right results. - As a reminder, my favorite fact from Shri Sivananda, it only takes six months or so for a dedicated student to go from ignorance to enlightenment. You're right on schedual ! 

dave

Hi Pulsar,
I`m tapping into the Quote"Not to become stuck with too long approaches, my question refers to initial states. What was the moment for you to say to yourself "Death is not all there is"?

The moment for me had been this:
At the age of  4 I began to get goosebumps everytime I walked thru a certain part of our old farm house. I always felt someone/thing reaching to touch my right shoulder. Soon I began to run thru that part of the house and took the spanking my mother gave me for running "gracefully". 20 years later I had been told by the Landowner that the man whom owned the house prior to my father, had shot his "4 year old daughter" and his wife between the kitchen and Livingroom. Thats exactly where I would slam dunk run thru! No wonder I had made first place in Track n Field in school, I had years of practice prior, running from something I didnt understand.

You`ve read some of the other stuff which has happened to me I believe.
Those are not "normal everyday things", or at 9 having my accident and the strange thing, whereever I was, whatever left my physical body - me beaming away somewhere and back thru blueish dust. So if theres no afterlife, who the heck or what the heck is it thats ringing my doorbell, flickering my lights every now and then (like right as I am asking the question outloud "dad are you here, can you hear me", in tears)... By the way ever since the beam away thing happened to me at 9, I can look at "signs on a road or words in a book from a far" and literally zoom the words closer to my eyes, to be able to read them. Freaks my fiancè out everytime now..lol..

and theres another reason too... maybe later.

Now I am beginning to search in "science" - Quantum Physics actually and finially theres really good info on "reality concepts" out there now.

When I get brave I`ll join you in meditation, but truthfully speaking I am affraid of it.

I just wanted to share with you "why I believe in the afterlife"..

Sending a soft smile,
Nanner

Hi Pulsar, I'm late to the thread so if you sent me a pm, I was thinking u might have, I'm sorry, I'm not able to get it today from that other profile. tech prob.

I think you're doing all right. its good for me to hear the things you say and I didn't want you to take me wrong, I meant about the part where I said "it's just my story and what I meant is nobody will believe another's story just in the telling, unless they themselves have had the similar experience.
so u must not take what I say as a personal statement about yourself. I am very pleased with your presence here, the way you do seem passionate and courageous to jump into PE. I'm not sure you read about PE, maybe you just picked it up somehow, I was very happy to see you there.

and what you got, was a lot more than some other people would get, but don't compare yourself to others, its totally going to be unique journey, all about you, so if u don't feel love and joy, don't worry about it, took me about 50 years to feel it, so shucks, if you do sooner, I'd be ok with that!
I don't feel much pul during a PE btw, if I get lucky maybe, sometimes its just a fun thing, some friendliness going around. a few hits. we try.

a little hint maybe about PE. if u get a little curious feeling, or a little surprise feeling, it's subtle, follow that and report it what u see. but if u feel nothing, thats ok. well, thanks for the boost.  it seems you might be the emotional type..as u can tell, i am too. keep developing yourself the way you are going, into the mental area, because I think you do have the passion to learn and now it's just the mental that you work on more, and the passion will take care of itself.
thats my little spiel today, I'll try to be kind to myself and you should recognize yourself through my eyes..ok? lol. I don't make sense I think!!

I enjoyed Nanner's story, but I felt sorry for the little girl got a spanking, but then you knew of this other world, I suppose it was meant to be, and in a way, knowing makes you one step ahead in being able to share this news. thanks. many do not know.  love, alysia

I like to discuss enlightenment too Justin, yet its another one of those words has started to get some distortions around it in the new age, just like all religions do..they start out with high ideals and end up being just another religion. so I take the word enlightenment and say, I will change what it means to suit how I see it, as just a lightening up. so I lighten my load and I don't worry either about whether I am or I am not because its one day at a time, so to speak, if I drank beer, the commercial says go for all the gusto in life, thats all we can do, as I believe this here person won't be repeated exactly so, so we must appreciate our own self, seems to be my motto these days. will come back to this thought later.

About the topic head, Pulsar seems to wonder about this thing called a void. so I thought I'd jot down some thoughts for whatever they're worth about the void, the nothingness, the black hole in the sky, also the surrender of self into trust, into the unknown god.
I'll re-read you Pulsar so I get it right. the first thing you said "it was revealed to you during your meditation that u ceased to exist, and that you were side-tracked into seeing this, so you seem to say because u were side tracked, it must be valid news.

What I think you did in this particular meditation is view your own deeper level of mind where you came upon your own belief and it expressed itself to you in this manner for your viewing. To go into where it appears to be a void, or emptiness is not a bad thing. Here, you saw your emptiness where the ego, frequently enough, we can call this a personality, rather than ego, yet ego becomes immersed with personality. so what I think you did is see the fallacy of personality as your mind touched the hem of god so to speak, the little self will feel voided out, not substantial, the yearning is in all of us to be more than we are, to reach fullfillment of our intentions. you noticed, in your meditation that you are not where you want to be, because simply put, we humans are indeed on a journey here, you may at times feel quite at home, then other times you may sense the void, that this is not your permanent home, and this may set up a type of nostalgia.

remember, I am rambling. I speak of my own journey, and also, you did inspire me to mention void, and I've known you to mention it more than once so it's one of your triggers I think. Never flee from the void state as it will not do harm to you, its the other end of somethingness is nothingness and the universe will rush into fill a void, in other words you attract to you what you need, when you do mediation, but often it is leading to another more significant meditation down the road as it's a continuing sequel of You.
the small ego or mind does seem to crash itself into the void without even trying, the amazing thing about it is the resiliency of the human passing here; we bounce back from the emptiness renewed with more choices than before as to what we will create in our lives. Have you seen the movie The Secret? I think you would like it as a jumping off thing into meditation.
entering the void is like suddenly being this humble thing. not exactly feel good time, but  it's necessary to empty out before something else can fill up the void and it can seem like a death. but its just death of a thought, a thought which wants to survive, but a thought can be annoying, so you can let it go into the void. I like Justin's new tag: "shadow, I love you! but not right now! something like that. lol.

one more thing about enlighten or to lighten up. what that means to me. theres another word some use, new age I suppose, the ascension. I think JC did ascend, to make the body cells energy to increase vibration point of lift off. amazing to think on the possibility, unless he just got up and walked away into the countryside and lived out his life peaceably and undisturbed amongst some friends. I really don't know, all I can see he disappeared from public view in some way.

I do know the physical body cells change during meditation, during the process of sloughing off out dated thought programs which ran our show. the body becomes healthier, heals quicker, increased immune system, it's easier to run, to dance, lighter on one's toes, laugh more, cry more, etc. something happens for the good to all levels of the being. the reason I believe this, is I discovered thought, negative thought can settle into the body cells, in certain locations of the body. the body seems to be a storage tank of our various problems to work out.
is why I like the concept of hemi sync, to balance the two hemispheres of brain, is helpful to get in tune with the subconscious side, become aware of what is in your house of consciousness, which you may or may not want to ask to leave now. I like to say, thank you for your service to me, I need to lighten up now as I am going on a trip, and where I am going, they will not allow me to bring too much luggage, just carry on's I guess!

love, alysia

Boy, you gotta love Alysia/LaffingRain.

She is a Doll/Babe/Sweetheart! She also knows full well I say that in the Grandest of meanings and not in a Vulgar way.
For I am Dood and Dood can do no wrong.
OK..OK..I can do a lot of wrong. HeHe!
However, my point is LaffingRain/Alysia is one of the Best here.  I am NOT saying she is 'better' than anyone else either.
I glad to see that she is a Moderator. Is that new? I don't remember her as a Mod all that long ago.
If it is new then GOOD! This place needed some Mods and she is very fair in that regard.

I do not know much about The Void.  (outside other then reading about it)
My few so-called 'travels' that I can remember anyways have been dark though.
They have been during the nightime so I do not know if that has any bearing or not.

I try to ask for LIGHT but, to no avail ....yet! For I am still a n00b.<sigh>
I also try to not 'fear' or 'freak out'. Easier said then done.
Once I finally 'get out' I am shocked and damn(<--Quit changing my REAL term I used...it is not THAT bad) it I forget what I had planned to do.
So I end up 'winging it' on the fly....literally too...I FLY! hehe! To try to 'remember' what I wanted to do.
While cruising around anyways....

However, I have no memory of any black/dark/empty VOID of anykind.