A paranormal experience?

Question

Not sure if you'd call this paranormal, but here goes...About a month ago I dreamt that I was in a room full of mirrors and then I began to choke myself; like an external force was making me do it. I started to get angry and scared so I woke up. When I awoke, on the ceiling I saw the Hindu god Shiva circling above me - with lotuses in the corners opening and closing. The image covered the whole ceiling; it was in 2 dimensional form and aqua/blue in colour (with shimmering light aswell). It felt as though it was alive. I had to blink a few times to make sure I wasn't dreaming it. He stayed up there for awhile, but then disappeared when I started relating my choking dream to him.

*In Hindu religion it is said that Shiva is the auspicious one, god of luck and destruction. He is the strongest of the trinity of gods. (I'm not Hindu by the way - I'm Serbian Orthodox.)

Is there a meaning behind this (or am I just being very delusional)?

Answer 1

This is not paranormal, however it could be religious. I think one of two things may have happened. One you were still groggy from dreaming and sometimes that causes us to see things that are not there or two that god is calling you to be your patron Deity.

BB

Answer 2

I think you are misunderstanding the vision.

I remember one of my visions during a vision quest that I will share with you.

I was walking down a sidewalk just as the sun was rising. Since I was following the path of the Native Americans I needed to get a cigarette, a pipe and tobacco, or even a cigar so I could offer smoke in the six directions. I go into a store, and all they have is a short cigar. I go outside and light the cigar and every time I take a puff some of the tobacco comes out in my mouth, and here I am spitting the tobacco fragments out, and everywhere I look; I see people from different religions like Buddhists, Taoists, Sufi's, Muslims, Sikh, etc. and they are disgusted by my spitting tobacco fragments on the ground.

I took this vision to mean that EVERYONE is serving God the best way they know how, and God is too big for any one religion.

wushu boy; I think you mean hypnogogic.

I am very familiar with hypnogogic visions. they do not last as long as this vision lasted. the asker said that the vision was there for several seconds AFTER they were fully conscious

Answer 3

I guess I should ask, were you or had you been reading or studying anything about the Hindu religion? If you were, well you could have planted the idea deep within your brain before sleep therefore you may just have been having a vivid dream. I am not sure if I can give you a good answer since I don't know everything about the circumstances before you had your dream or vision. The answers I don't appreciate are the extreme ones that either say go ask a religious person science cant answer this one, or the other extreme, like maybe your being called to have your own Deity. In the end, it will come down to what you think happened or did not happen. As for myself, the only sleep experience I have had is sleep paralysis, and I know that there is a perfectly good explanation for this and maybe this is what you were experiencing.

Answer 4

I don't have any answers for you about this experience. All I want to say is that years ago I had an experience that seems similar. It had nothing to do with Hinduism etc. It was like a movie screen . I woke up (if I was ever asleep) and it appeared in front of me...actually to the side of the bed. I was wide awake. I wanted it to go away but a strong thought kept telling me to look. Finally I did.After that it went away. Really scared me. I KNOW it had nothing to do with sleep paralysis...and I had never..to my knowledge...seen that person before. About a year later ,I saw someone who looked like that. I don't want to get into what the vision was .

Answer 5

I've had unique experiences of my own, shunned by most orthodox religions as delusions or hallucinations, come to think of it most psychiatrists feel the same way about it but here goes nothing.

I am driving along after praise singing with a friend, as I look to the right briefly, "A spirit, a tall slim transclucent figure, sprinted through the meadow as though racing my vehicle."

More another time!  But I definitely do believe now.

Answer 6

Maybe you were a Hindu in a past life.  This is not a problem to a Hindu,  much the same as a vision of Mary to the papist church members.  I would put this in the religious side of life, not paranormal.  That is a interesting story.  I've have heard of this before from people that converted to Hindi religion.

Answer 7

From your description i would wonder if you experienced a lack of oxygen.  This can make you see things.  I think you imagined it because you see this and you tell it about your dream.  I think if you really saw it, the dream would be the last thing you would talk about.

Answer 8

You are not delusional, but also this was not really a religious experience.

You experienced what is known as a hypnopompic hallucination (look that up on the internet).

These hallucinations are usually colored by our beliefs.

Let me explain it to you this way. When you fall asleep and wake up there are chemical signals in the brain which trigger certain things to happen.

One to paralyze you, one to start your dreams etc. Under stress, sleep disorders, change of location or sleep patterns, these chemicals can misfire.

From time to time they just do.

I believe this is what happened to you. You woke up fully, but for a moment, your dream mechanism was still running.

This is what a hypnopompic hallucination is.

Answer 9

It sounds like you are very sensitive to the spiritual elements that are all around us.  Have you ever undergone past life regression?  It might help you to better understand why you keep having these visions.  Perhaps you are meant to be a spiritual guide in this life, or you are supposed to be a messenger of some sort of things to come.  Try writing down the events that happen to you, and see if there is a pattern present.

Answer 10

1.) Do you think you would you have seen Shiva if you didn't already know what Shiva looked like?

2.) I don't think you woke up fully.  I think this was part of the dream as well.

Answer 11

It's too bad the human brain is not better understood.  Hallucinations and dreaming are almost interchangeable when waking or drifting off (which explains why your vision disappeared when you began to speak - you woke up more), but that's no reason to discount your experience.  I have had what seemed to be hallucinations during wakeful periods, that were a lot like what you described.  I treasure these moments as indications that there is more to the Universe than normally meets the eye.  Whether they are hallucinations, manifestations of spirit, or momentary glimpses of a weirder universe, I try to take them with a grain of salt.  I've seen too many crazy people to allow myself to go too far from the universe I live in.  I believe that it's possible to drift into realms that are divorced from ordinary human experience.  I usually just take them as signs that my mind is particularly receptive that day.  There is a theory in physics which states that there is no such thing as time, but that the continuity we experience is just a mesh of universes that fit so well together that they look like one universe that possesses time.  This theory allows for the idea that many more bizarre universes than we normally experience, exist.  Sometimes, for a few seconds, we may actually exist in universes where the 'laws' of our continuity do not apply.  We may see a bird fly by, while existing in thousands of freeze-frame universes stacked upon one another, and perhaps for a hundred frames we may see universes where the bird is a dragon instead.  We'll always wonder, "Was I hallucinating?  Was there spiritual signifigance?  Was it a ghost?  What the h**l happened?"  Many scientists do not believe in cause and effect at all, which makes a vision like that even more confusing.  What is the point of a vision, if it doesn't 'mean' anything?  How do you talk to your friends about it if they didn't see it?  They'll think you're crazy if you see them too often.  And that's where consensual reality comes in.  If you believe in the 'idea' of the human will, or that humans have some kind of spirit, you have no trouble believing that human will has an effect on the environment it sees.  Quantum physics says that an observed particle changes by being observed, and this phenomenon has been witnessed to be true in social life.  It turns out that ANY object observed by a group of people will actually be defined closely by an average of opinions about the object.  This means that the myriad universes we travel through are chosen by a poll of all the minds involved.  When you see something different than what other people see, it is because your mind has voted differently than the majority this time.  The problem with this is that if you too consistently vote against the greater opinion, you will find yourself in universes where there are less people like the ones you are accustomed to, and more like dragons and Shivas.  While you live in a universe that is separate from everyone else's, the people you love will still see you there in front of them - only, to them, you'll look crazy.  Even when you vote differently and see what you want to see, you remain a part of the greater Consensual Reality because everyone remembers you, and keeps voting you into thier universe.

It means whatever you want it to mean - LITERALLY.  Delusional?  Not at all.  But in our Consensual Reality, hardly anyone believes in or sees the same true visions, which means that if you have too many of them, society will begin to reject you.  What happens when nobody believes in you?  I sure don't want to find out.