> However, if 20 minutes of mindfulness a day sets you off into strange psychological territory, then u have a hard time believing that meditation was at fault

About ten years ago, I experimented doing 20 minutes in the morning and an additional 20 minutes in the early evening. I did this for about six months, and I may have overdid it, because some very, very strange things began to happen. I stopped meditating after a particularly weird and frightening experience which I will now describe:

I was entirely stone cold sober, driving my car on the highway talking to a friend in the passenger seat, when suddenly I found myself looking down at the planet, from what I can only describe as an orbital altitude of somewhere around 400 km or so, while at the same time, I continued to drive the car and have a discussion!

Part of my consciousness (or perception) seemed to momentarily bifurcate and be somewhere else, in this case, floating high above the Earth. That was the day I stopped meditating. Apparently this is a known attainment in certain circles that believe in this kind of thing (I'm still a skeptic at heart) but being in two places at once wasn't my cup of tea. I have a hard enough time as it is focusing on the road in front of me!

I wouldn't say this is the only strange thing I experienced; there's a lot of them to speak of, but that was certainly the strangest of them all. I've taken much more pleasure and satisfaction from lucid dreaming instead, which is something I still do to this day.

> Apparently this is a known attainment

It's certainly a common enough experience, albeit rare in the middle of daily life on that amount of practice. What it means, benefits, etc. are what's up for question.

I guess by "strange psychological territory" I was more thinking of destabilizing and harmful things that don't stop even after you stop meditating.

Edit: also, thanks for sharing.

That's a fascinating experience, but also scary, thanks for sharing. It's interesting how meditation can lead you to altered states of consciousness that are in some manners extremely similar to psychedelics.

> I've taken much more pleasure and satisfaction from lucid dreaming instead, which is something I still do to this day.

I feel like the potential therapeutic benefits of lucid dreaming are incredibly unexplored. Maybe partially because it can be difficult and inconsistent to induce them, especially depending on the person. I don't know if there's any one technique that works well for everyone.

My father reported a similar story induced by LSD. He had an out of body experience where he was up in the air watching himself have a conversation with a friend walking down the beach.

The WBTB (wake back to bed) method works for about 90% of people.

> Everyone who claims all meditation is great and nothing bad can happen is ignorant.

Or lying. I doubt the meditation center in the article updated the claims on their site after these events.

The Goenka schools provide a questionnaire to determine mental health and any medications the student will need. Each teacher is different in who they will let in, and all those schools are volunteer run. I can see that some teachers could be reckless with course admissions, but all teachers would have managed multiple courses before, and would know the difficulties for everyone if they let someone in who has a history of mental illness. It's not great situation for anyone if any student enters psychosis on a silent retreat, not the teacher/manager/other volunteers/other students.

Edit: Also it's tricky if your students are motivated enough to get in that they'll lie.

https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards...

The Goenka centers do have a filtering questionnaire, but I think they tend to just get so incredibly much wrong on their handling of psychological problems. It's infuriating.

I will recommend that a friend does one, after giving some warnings, and making sure to talk with them afterwards, but I wouldn't blindly recommend anybody do one.

I imagine mental health issues are handled differently between schools and within them by the different teachers, but it's probably something that could be improved upon. There's probably also some merit to 'riding out the storm' for some people, but anyone with a family history of psychosis, or unmanageable psychiatric illness might want to think twice about attending, or at least be prepared to leave the course at first signs of trouble.