A. Hiro

Background I was born in 1970 in Japan. From about the age of twenty, I practiced qigong on my own, using books on Xiandao (the Taoist "way of the immortals"). My main practice was the Small Heavenly Circuit: guiding qi from the tailbone up the spine to the crown, then down the front of the body to the lower abdomen. Over twenty years of daily practice, I came to feel qi circulating through my whole body, and my health was good. In March 2012, I decided to practice much more seriously. Every day I meditated for about four hours: two hours from 5:00 to 7:00 in the morning and two hours from 10:00 p.m. to midnight. My method was to concentrate my awareness at the base of the spine, around the tailbone, and condense qi there until it felt hot and molten like lava, then guide that heat slowly up the spine. After several months, my intuition became sharper, and I began to feel as if my old self was being replaced by an unfamiliar one. Then, during deep meditation, I started to see tiny bursts of light like sparklers behind my eyelids, and after a while they made crackling sounds like firecrackers. This continued for about a week. The onset (August 24, 2012) At about 5:00 a.m. on Friday, August 24, in a half awake, half asleep state, I heard a loud bang inside my head, like an explosion, and saw a flash of pure white light. I went to work, but my body felt sluggish and heavy. During the day, an intense heat spread through my body, especially my chest, abdomen, and lower back, followed by strong anxiety. A few days earlier, I had learned that a former subordinate of mine had died suddenly, and I was already emotionally shaken. I considered going to a hospital, but I was afraid that if this was a mental problem, I would lose my job and my family, so I could not bring myself to go. Later blood tests showed no abnormalities. In the days that followed, I was overwhelmed by memories of past mistakes and by a strong urge to end my life. I concluded that my only option was to ask God for help, and I telephoned a shrine that a friend's book had described. I left work early for the first time in more than twenty years. That night I could not eat or sleep at all. Saturday, August 25 I traveled by bullet train from Nagoya to Tokyo to visit the shrine. On the way, I was exhausted and dehydrated. When I stepped out of the station into the summer sun, intense heat radiated from five points in my body: the tailbone, the lower abdomen, the navel, the chest, and the throat. It felt as if each one was bursting with fire, and my body was being incinerated. I went into a nearby clinic. The doctor said I was severely dehydrated and should be hospitalized, but the clinic had no beds, so I received an intravenous drip for about two hours. Against the doctor's advice, I took a taxi to the shrine, convinced that if I did not reach it, I would die within days. At the shrine, two shrine maidens guided me through prayer, and I poured out my whole life story to the spiritual teacher there. He listened silently, then said, "Thank you for sharing all of that." I burst into tears and could not stop. He told me, "You will be okay. You will get better," and "Your heart is not as impure as you think." I held onto those words for the next three days. On the way home, I collapsed near Nagoya Station and asked a police officer to call an ambulance. In the ambulance, my blood pressure was over 180. At the hospital, blood tests were again normal; I was given another drip and discharged. That night, the heat from my lower abdomen rose to my chest and head. My heart pounded so violently that I feared it would burst. Ice packs melted almost instantly on my skin. It felt as if my cells were being scorched from the inside. Eventually the fever subsided, but for several days I could not sleep at all and could take only water. Sunday, August 26 Alone at home, I was engulfed by anxiety and fear. Heat built around my heart and moved toward my head. I could feel exactly where it came from: the tailbone, the lower abdomen, the heart, and the throat. By the afternoon, I had lost control of my body, and my consciousness was fading. The impulse to jump from the balcony crossed my mind several times, but I kept telling myself, "I can't die now," thinking of my family and of the teacher's words. To release the pressure, I channeled the energy through my chest and shoulders into my arms and out through my hands. My hands swelled painfully, but when I imagined the energy leaving into the air, they became lighter. I filled the bath with cold water and sat in it. When the water reached my abdomen, a sphere of qi about one centimeter wide shot up from the base of my spine along my back, passed over the crown of my head, descended through my forehead, tongue, and throat, and stopped in my lower abdomen with a heavy thud. The energy gathered there into a fluid mass. Lying in bed afterward, I saw vivid scenes behind my eyelids: my childhood, places I had never visited, oceans. None were frightening. About a meter in front of me, a faint pale green orb of light appeared, and it stayed with me for days. It filled me with a sense that I would survive. I also began to smell a heavy floral fragrance that no one else in my family could smell, and to see two small points of light in my chest and throat, one blue and one red. I found that if I held my mouth full of water and pushed the heat and qi into it, the water vibrated and spun, and when I spat it out, the heat was gone. I repeated this every few minutes for hours. By morning, the muscles of my neck felt torn. At one point I sensed an elderly man standing behind me, with his hands extended toward me from about thirty centimeters away. When I turned around, there was no one. That night, with my eyes closed, I saw myself lying on a metallic bed in a white space, connected to machines, with upright beings around me that did not seem human. They seemed to be observing and healing me. Monday, August 27 I called my office and asked for time off, saying I had collapsed from heatstroke. Blue orbs of light floated between the tip of my nose and the center of my brow. I found I could raise and lower my heart rate at will by moving qi in and out of my chest. When I drained too much, my heartbeat stopped, and I stopped in terror. Around noon, my condition reached its worst. I tested whether the energy was real by holding my fingers over a basin of water in the kitchen; the surface rippled and the waves grew when I moved my hand. That convinced me that the cause of my suffering was a violent generation of qi inside my body. My weight had dropped from 55 to 53 kilograms. That night I decided to say goodbye to my wife and child. I drew the energy out of my heart, and it stopped for more than ten seconds, but I did not die. I tried a standing meditation, drawing energy up from the earth and down from the sky, and the force was so strong that I felt I might float. When I lay down, energy left through my ears, the sphere of qi rose from my abdomen to my chest, a sticky liquid like mucus appeared on the skin of my abdomen, and the sphere vanished. Tuesday, August 28: I died, and the near death experience By morning, my brain felt numb and cold, as if no blood was flowing through it, and I watched my own thoughts as if through a filter from outside. I feared I had already died and was trapped in a repeating dimension. I believed I was going insane. I told my wife in tears that I could not live like this. She and our child were going out and would return around 3:00 p.m. I decided to end my life before they came back. First, I called the shrine from the bathroom, crying, and begged for help. The shrine maiden told me that when you ask God for help, you must say what you yourself will do in return. I screamed, "My chakras have opened. I'm dying. I offer everything to God, just save me!" The line went dead. It is strange, but when I truly accepted death, all fear disappeared and I felt relief. When my family left, I lay down on the bed. Heat rose in my body as if it had been waiting. I said, "God, I'm sorry. Father, Mother, forgive me. Goodbye." I was ready. A massive surge of qi filled my entire body within seconds, from head to toe, and my body swelled with pressure. Two bursts of red flame erupted from my heart and my throat, with smoke rising around them. Then the back of my head opened, not physically but spiritually, and with a whoosh, a torrent of energy burst out of me. I felt a presence descending. A voice said, "You have endured well. The spirit of [a deity's name] has come to save you." A shimmering band of light about a meter wide twisted down from above and became the transparent upper body of a human figure. I did not see it with my eyes, but with an inner vision. The voice was male and strangely amused, yet without emotion. Gray smoke rose from my heart, carrying memories from my childhood, mostly about money. Coins clinked loudly as they poured out of my chest. I understood that I was being purified. Then I died. My consciousness shot forward at unimaginable speed, far faster than light. I had no hands, no body, no fingerprints; I was only awareness. Light passed me in streams, and I moved so fast that galaxies could not hold their form and became mere sparkles. Eventually I floated in total darkness. A light appeared in the distance and grew. Floating orbs like soap bubbles approached, nine of them, I think. I understood each as a separate universe with its own laws. Beyond them, I saw countless more clusters, and I sensed that all of them existed only within the consciousness of God. The scale I was shown was like this: one universe is like a single atom inside a single cell of a human body. Then I saw my own body being transported on something like a metal platform with a seat. A young woman with long black hair tied back sat in the seat; I could not see her face. The vehicle ascended toward a cluster of shimmering points, and as we passed through, I saw golden threads, spirals like DNA. A man was repairing them. He said, "I created humans. I am restoring your DNA." A woman stood nearby, watching in silence. Then the man said, "You will return now." I was drawn back into my body piece by piece, and I heard, "Your crystal body is now complete." I saw two forms: one old and dull with yellow in the chest, and one new, glowing and transparent, outlined in blue. Then, "You will return to your body now." I woke up. I was alive. Tears streamed down my face. What followed that afternoon Lying awake, I sensed a being hovering about a meter above me with arms spread wide. An image came directly into my mind: a wrinkled, hairless old face with very large eyes, long arms, and no lower body, translucent and without emotion, yet not frightening. I was somehow certain it was hundreds of millions of years old. Its handlike appendage pushed my heart inward again and again with great force, and I screamed each time. Something like a board passed through me from head to toe like an electric current. My arms, shoulders, and waist contorted as if my skeleton was moving on its own; my body seemed to float above the bed and twist; and this went on for nearly an hour while the being told me telepathically, "Don't worry." It spoke of my childhood, and at one point cried out in my head, "There are still so many poor souls in this world. We must save them quickly." Golden threads about five millimeters long entered my body and moved through my head, eyes, nose, teeth, throat, shoulders, arms, and legs, tingling as they moved. I understood that they were connecting my spirit body and my physical body. My facial bones shifted and my jaw clenched repeatedly. Near the ceiling I saw dozens of transparent tubelike devices, which I felt were recording the changes in my body. Finally, I spread my arms, my chest swelled, I screamed, "I'm so sorry for everything," coughed, and vomited a clear, odorless substance. Then the heat in my body disappeared. For a while afterward, I felt as if my brain had been divided: the left side was me, and the right side was the being, and we spoke through my mouth. I asked who it was, and it answered, "I am God." It told me I would not die, that it was healing me, and that my nerves would settle in a few days. It had me place my hands on the glass door to the veranda and receive power from the sun; heat rose from my lower abdomen and strength returned to my whole body. Then it repeated, "I'm disappearing," many times, and as it did, I felt my brain return to normal. It was gone, and I felt a strange loneliness. I do not know whether that being was truly God or something from my own subconscious. That evening I could eat some fruit for the first time in days. The return, August 30 onward Two days later, I went back to work. Stepping outside, I was struck by how dazzling the sun was. Had it always been this bright? Everything I saw through the taxi window looked new and beautiful, and a joy welled up from inside me. At the office, my brain felt as if countless dormant nerve endings were waking at once, like electricity running through empty circuits and blood rushing into empty capillaries. I sweated uncontrollably and had to eat constantly; I carried dried beans and chocolate everywhere. Once, after falling asleep in the company guest room, I woke icy cold and realized I had stopped breathing for a time. For several nights the healing continued: a jolt of electricity, then blood flowing into an area, then a sense of the left and right hemispheres integrating. Sunlight became a source of comfort, and I have bathed in the sun as often as I can ever since. On September 1, I returned to the shrine to give thanks. Afterward I recovered fully, returned to my job and my family, and have lived with prayer and gratitude since. My understanding of what happened is this: I forced heat into the base of my spine, four hours a day, for months, and something opened that I was not ready for. What saved me was not more effort but surrender, and the kindness of people who listened. I would tell anyone in a similar state: do not concentrate heat at the tailbone for long periods; if the heat rises into the chest or head, move your attention to the soles of your feet and stop; and if you cannot sleep for days, cannot eat, or have thoughts of dying, go to a doctor and tell your family. That is not failure. I could not do it, and I nearly died. I wrote the full account, day by day, as a book.