Symbols - What does heaven look like
Whirlpool
A whirlpool is essentially a tunnel symbolically. Generally speaking however it is very specifically related to chakras.
Our spiritual body, along with numerous other energy bodies, has a large number of chakras, which are the receivers and also it appears the emitters of energy. The chakras seen in many hallucinations [hallucinations because the image is superimposed on the physical body] are whirlpool or whirlwind like spinning whirling energy.
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When we go out of body it is usually through these chakras and as a consequence we appear to be going through a whirlpool or whirlwind or other similarly moving energy vortex. As you can see from the diagram above we can go ‘down’ figuratively speaking and ‘up’.
If you encounter a whirlpool you are generally taken out of your body and ‘down’ – though down here does not mean physically down .

Observations
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- A P Elkin - Aboriginal men of high degree - Dieri initiation
- Accidental leak in starter fluid causes near death
- Beowulf - The Fight with the Underground Monster
- Blithe spirit - Purple ink and whirlpool
- Blithe spirit - Thought palaces in pink and gold
- Braveheart - Meets a dreadful demon
- Braveheart - Rivers, locks and nymphs with demons
- Carbogen out of body
- Cirlot on spirals
- Cirlot on the swastika
- Clement of Alexandria - Protrepticus - Describes the Dionysian mysteries
- Constance Newland - Myself and I
- Empedocles - On Nature - 233-364
- Escher - whirlpools
- Existential horror of hell - 5-MeO-DMT
- Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland - The changeling and the bagpipes
- Hadewijch - I saw standing before me a cross like crystal
- Hafez of Shiraz - Thirty Poems - In the snare of your locks
- He lost his mind on gasoline
- Heine, Heinrich - In the wild whirl of the dancers
- Hiroshige - Awa Naruto no fuukei
- Hiroshige - Rough sea at the whirlpools of Awa
- Knauer and Maloney and the tunnel
- Knut Ekwall - The Fisherman and the Siren
- Koestler, Arthur - Janus - Wormholes
- Led Zeppelin - Down By the Seaside
- Lyall Watson - Diviners and initiation by water beings
- Marcia Moore and ketamine
- Maxwell, James Clerk - My soul is an entangled knot
- Me, My Brain, Ketamine, and a Miracle Ketamine (withdrawal from Kratom/Opioids) by K-ally
- Musty smell of decay
- Olivier Messiaen - Inspired by celestial music
- Plato - Republic X - 02 Tale of Er
- Plutarch – The Vision of Aridæus 05
- Plutarch – The Vision of Aridæus 06
- Poetic Edda - Sayings of the High One [extract]
- Scilla and Charybides
- Svetasvatara Upanishad
- Tolle, Eckhart
- Zen priest - The Hellraiser leaf 2