Peace and love. I was wondering if you may be of help with what I’m experiencing. Recently I’ve been chanting Om every day and meditating a lot. But I have found myself witnessing life in a more HD reality with lots of Deja Vu daily. I even had a weird moment where my heart began beating fast even though I am blissfully calm. I would appreciate any guidance or help with this experience. Thank you.
—Artavis, United States
Dear Artavis,
When I think of HD (high definition) I think of images with more detail, so I interpret what you experience in daily life since going deeper into chanting and meditation as brighter and clearer details and the recognition of a current experience as one you have experienced before.
Without a spiritual practice most people experience daily life through filters. There are filters of likes and dislikes, past experience with similar circumstances, our current priorities, old habits and so on. The filters color our experiences and distort reality. This is why several people experiencing the same event will report it very differently. These filters are not present when we enter higher states of consciousness where we receive experience without impediments. Another way to understand consciousness is as a mirror. This mirror reflects God’s presence. When the mirror is dirty the image is clouded by the ego’s preconceptions. When the mirror oscillates restlessly the image is distorted. This is our mind when distracted and unfocused. When the mirror is clean and still which is our consciousness in deep meditation, the reflection is clear and pure. The clarity you experience in daily life since deepening your spiritual practice may indeed be due to less interfering filters and your increased connection with higher consciousness (called superconsciousness), where the mirror of your perception is more receptive.
Yogananda wrote a beautiful poem called “Samadhi”, which describes the experience of oneness with God. This is the soul’s awareness when free of limitation. You can read this poem here. These are the opening lines:
Vanished the veils of light and shade,
Lifted every vapor of sorrow,
Sailed away all dawns of fleeting joy,
Gone the dim sensory mirage.
Love, hate, health, disease, life, death,
Perished these false shadows on the screen of duality.
Waves of laughter, scyllas of sarcasm, melancholic whirlpools,
Melting in the vast sea of bliss.
The storm of maya stilled
By magic wand of intuition deep.
The universe, forgotten dream, subconsciously lurks,
Ready to invade my newly wakened memory divine.
I live without the cosmic shadow,
But it is not, bereft of me;
As the sea exists without the waves,
But they breathe not without the sea.
Dreams, wakings, states of deep turiya, sleep;
Present, past, future, no more for me,
But ever‐present, all-flowing I, I, everywhere.
Déjà vu is experiencing something as familiar even though it has not been a part of current experience. The highest form of déjà vu is smritti, divine memory. Smritti is remembering God, and remembering who we are, made in God’s image. This divine awareness and recognition is the goal of all of our spiritual practice. The Samadhi poem I quoted helps us understand smritti.
Sometimes when our perception is clearer we may also experience a less exalted form of déjà vu, recognizing experiences from past lives. Usually, people do not have any awareness of past life experiences because it can be confusing, disturbing or add to an already overburdened sense of identification with the past. If something seems familiar even though not experienced in our current life we may find it interesting but the most important thing is to not take on any of it as who we are in Truth. We are children of God and seek to let go of all limiting definitions. Offer up all such remembrances to the Divine at the point between the eyebrows, the spiritual eye. We grow in spiritual awareness by living in the present moment.
The blissful calmness you describe is an aspect of God’s presence. There are eight aspects of God we can experience when our consciousness is uplifted: Peace, Calmness, Love, Joy, Power, Wisdom, Light and Sound. When you experience one of these aspects dive deep into it and feel that quality permeates your being. Expand beyond your limited self-awareness into this Presence. I am not sure why you experienced an increased heartbeat but I would not worry about it.
You do not say that any of your spiritual experience thus far has been disturbing. If it was, I would suggest you decrease the intensity and length of your meditation and chanting for a bit. If your meditation and chanting continue to bring a positive shift in your awareness in daily life, I encourage you to continue your practice but never expect your meditation experience to be the same each time. At times we may experience dramatic shifts and at times all may seem quiet. Our goal of union with God remains ever the same and we continue to make progress regardless of outward experiences.
Many Blessings,
Nayaswami Mukti
