Archives: Submitted Stories

Mystical Experiencer:  Man in his early forties
Submission date:  October 28, 2023
Current location:  United States
Age at time of experience:  42

[I had taken ayahuasca at a sacred place in Peru].  I experienced omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence.  I was extremely scared, but at the same time was in total bliss.  I believe I died also and visited a place that I believe is the place that we go when we die.  I also saw that there is no beginning and there is no end.  I can’t explain this, I just know.

After a month from this experience, I entered into a spiritual crisis, with panic attacks, insomnia, great, paranoia, and desperation.  I even considered killing myself… but now I’m a lot better—still struggling, but much better.  A few days ago, I had another mystical experience where I experienced God and confirmation that this has been a plan, a perfectly created master plan.

Mystical Experiencer:  Man in his mid-eighties
Submission date:  October 27, 2023
Current location:  United States
Age at time of experience:  85 

On three successive nights (not aware of the time), in the middle of the night, I awoke in a rapturous existence of immeasurable joy.  I cannot describe that joy other than “rapturous” or “ecstatic.”  Possibly, I had been in the midst of the experience before I awoke.  I would gladly have died just then, but for one exception—I want to be around to care for my wife until either of us dies.

Mystical Experiencer:  Woman in her mid-twenties
Submission date:  October 25, 2023
Current location:  Sweden
Age at time of experience:  19

My heart was breaking over the fact that a distant friend of mine’s sister’s child had died in the womb. I was extremely hungover and stressed out having just been to London for an interview at a prestigious art school and then having had too much to drink afterwards.  Was feeling very wired.

Talking to this distant friend of mine (the same one I mentioned earlier, the one with PTSD who used to talk about spirituality sometimes) on my way to the airport. Panicking on the airplane because I couldn’t distract myself from the horrible thought of having to give birth to your dead child.  Running off the airplane to the nearest toilet in the airport.  Crying.  My friend messaging me something like “I can’t even begin to understand what my sister is going through right now.”  Me saying, “You’ll never understand exactly what she’s going through.  But you can feel with her.  Feel the same feeling she’s feeling, and that’s enough.”

I realised in that moment that we would never be able to see inside someone else’s view completely, but that we can feel with people and that no conceptual understanding is necessary when we just feel into another’s experience.  This brought me to a state of unconditional love in which space, time, and distance didn’t exist.  I was myself, my friend, my friend’s sister, and the child too, and I was none of us.

I realised love is the “glue of the universe”, and that this is where everything comes from and what everything essentially is.  This is all there is to it.  A voice said to me, “Don’t worry, everything is going to be okay with the mother.  She’s going to grow through this.  Everything is okay.”

I really wasn’t convinced of this, but something within me trusted this “voice”, which wasn’t really a voice, but more like a quiet message.  I had this insight that nothing really dies because the love that we are is always here and it never changes.  When someone dies, they change form, but the essence is still there, and the love you once felt for another can always be felt and bring you into unity with that person (and everything else too).

I was experiencing deep grief, heartbreak, loss, and endless love at the same time over a situation that really didn’t have much to do with me.  I honestly didn’t know the person I was talking to too well and had never met his sister either.  It felt both personal and related to the context and very much not like I had to do with it at all.  It just felt like it was time to break open.  And besides, I’d never heard about stillbirth, so my mind had no framework for what it meant at all, and, when I understood what was happening, I had no prior experience of it, so I couldn’t compartmentalize it.

My hungover state also made me less resistant to my own emotions than usual.  I had also had an experience on acid 3 weeks prior in which I realised my self was completely superfluous and that I was really part of an infinite web in which all forms arise and disintegrate.  I realised my self was a recollection of emotional imprints from my past and that there wasn’t much more to this signature that I call myself than there is to a rock or a tree.  It’s just part of the environment.  It belongs to everything and is part of it too.

This also relates to an experience I had when my father died when I was 5 and the world was very large and very empty at the same time.  Everything was quiet sameness.

Mystical Experiencer:  Man in his late fifties
Submission date:  October 18, 2023
Current location:  United States
Age at time of experience:  23

I was attending the Holy Mass during a retreat and, after four days of intense prayer and meditation, I was going in the communion line to receive the holy communion and I listened to the song happening at that time. I receive the Lord and my heart is full of joy.

As soon as I received the holy communion, I felt a deep sense of ecstasy and joy welling up in my heart and spent the time in pure bliss. I did not feel like going for dinner that day along with my colleagues, but, instead, I went to my room and danced in great joy for an hour, singing songs and dancing around in the room in pure joy and ecstasy…

It was a unitive and sweet experience of being one with yourself and the entire universe.

Mystical Experiencer:  Woman in her mid-fifties
Submission date:  October 8, 2023
Current location:  United States
Age at time of experience:  53

Day 5 of 10 day silent Vipassana course.  This is when everything changes for me.  At the afternoon sitting, the drowsiness returns.  I had been able to manage it and slow it down but it was always hovering waiting to pounce on me. It suddenly hits me-drowsiness is a sensation.  Well, well poppies, how well do you surf? I let it wash over me and I feel like a mouse hanging in a tree in a hurricane. Wave after wave. Then I feel the tidal wave crest, break, and begin to slowly ebb out like a tide.  Everything goes still.  Something is strange.  Tranquil. calm. Something is very dramatically… completely…. different.  I have no thoughts.

The mind is still, empty, calm…. like glass… there is an ease in my consciousness that is beyond peace.  I sit with this the remainder of the session observing it because it is so foreign, so interesting, so beautiful and there is something so strange about it, I feel I am looking right at something but I can’t see it-then it hits me.  No earworm.  The mind is silent, completely silent and absolutely still.  These observations are not thoughts, just awareness.  I felt so complete.  I felt like the central nervous system reset.  I spent the afternoon study hall just sitting with this, integrating it.  Time has become strange like I am in an infinite moment.  I went outside and walked in the garden. I could still think thoughts, but I had to decide to generate a thought, and like push it… there was no flow of thought.  This was so fascinating, so curious…

I am walking through the garden in a state of perfect present total awareness. I am aware I feel connected to nature in a very different way.  There is no sense of relationship in the connectedness, more like unified awareness maybe?  Since returning. I have such difficulty describing this experience (which lasted FIVE days) because I have no accompanying narrative of thoughts or emotions to draw from.  I just felt not separate, blank, empty, but full and complete at the same time.  I was aware that I was not the body, not these sensations, not the thoughts, not the feelings, not the breath…and everything was perfectly self so, mutually arising.  The bees, the flowers, trees, grass, rocks and everything together with this person walking, were all being.

Day 9:  At the evening session, I suddenly feel a sense of this is amazing that I have done this {Vipassana course} and it is a great gift I have given myself and I say to myself “I am so proud of you” and I am flooded with an emotion of intense warm love and I begin to weep.  I recognize the Bhakti feeling I get sometimes but it is a double overhead wave equal to the drowsiness but gentler.  Ah Ha, it dawns on me that there is a sensation here and I go looking for it and I feel subtle vibrations of nurturing warmth flowing over me from head to toe and I feel I cannot contain it. Tears are streaming down my face. The sensation is emanating from the center of the chest and there is a feeling of undefined expansion.

Day 10:  We learn Metta meditation, which I can see I did the night before.  It is not depleted as I expected and flows out again, just bigger so I expanded it to the whole room every single session.  Noble silence ended after the 8am session. I walk out of the session and I feel Sacred.  Everything and everyone feels sacred to me.  I am not ready to talk to anyone so I go to my room and sit with this sacredness. Everything feels so perfect, so beautiful, so complete, so sacred.  I am not in a hurry to talk to anyone, but I stand in the garden contentedly with the bees and flowers under a crabapple tree.  In my awareness I am part of the garden and it is part of me.  Two women come out talking to one another, they are servers, they look at me and come straight over to me and say “you look absolutely radiant, you are glowing all over”.

When I returned home, I felt completely unattached to my life.  I felt a little disoriented because the experience was so indescribable and I had no context to put it in but at the same time I felt this great sense of fulfillment, peace and bliss as well as an immense awareness of the unity and perfection of all things.

Mystical Experiencer:  Woman in her early thirties
Submission date:  September 20, 2023
Current location:  United States
Age at time of experience:  26

From my (slightly edited) notes immediately taken after my most significant mystical experience: (07/15/2016)

The night prior I had taken a hot yoga class. I went to bed late and woke up before my 6:30 am alarm. I began my day with coffee. During the early part of the day, I attended ‘Voice of Hope’, an Aphasia support group that meets at the University of South Florida (USF) St. Pete campus. Upon arriving home, I laid on the couch and watched ‘Marco Polo’ on Netflix. Starting to doze off, I moved to my bed.

Slowly moving around, I felt my muscles deeply sore from yoga while comfortably laying in my bed. The good kind of sore, that can only be felt when stretching again, similar to a deep tissue massage. As I lay in bed, I continued some slow movement. As I lay on my right side, I started to move energy around my body with my breath. Letting my mind settle, my body inches with extreme ease and intention to a central supine position (savasana). Continuing to move my energy with my breath, my awareness started to focus on my hips, moving up around, caressing my organs. As the energy built, tense areas I carried in my neck, chest, ribs, dominantly on my right side began to intensify with energy. Not resisting this feeling, it transformed into even more focused areas, feeling now mainly in my neck and chest.

Setting my intentions to love; love of self and the entire universe. Breathing and increasing love, releasing fear and doubt. Breathe love, release fear. Release from my body, mind, and soul. The energy intensified more, creating a buzzing and tingling sensation. My head cranks back slightly to open and release further. I begin to cry. Not over any particular event or person, but simply to release a feeling in my body, my soul. As I cry, a huge, wide smile comes across my face. Laughter interrupts the crying and then the two emotions fuse momentarily. I sense love, bring in love and gratitude into my being.

My eyes squint hard as my body opens from the center of my spine to my limbs. I release into darkness with my body extending out even greater. A sense that I am expanding infinitely towards a light, transcending space and time. The laughter and crying continued as my entire body pulses, almost shaking. I slowly move to a calmer state. A relaxed smile greets me. I have a physical sense that I have extended infinitely backwards and forwards. I begin to melt in all directions. Flowing. Absorbing love. Peace. Knowledge that I am enough. Allowance to speak my mind without fear of being wrong. That love is what transforms all. If I accept love, I can do anything, we can do anything, together. Moving together in words, intentions, and thoughts to find harmony.

My body is weightless, floating, with the energy equally dispersed over every inch of my body. Peace. My wrists begin to feel perfect circular movements, gently massaging as the sensations move into the perfect places from my arms at the perfect time. I allow the energy to travel without directing it with my mind, but rather my body follows it. It smoothly stretches me from head to toe, pulling the arm, the leg, the spine, leg to head. A self-massage occurs simply through the sensations of energy circulating in my body. Feeling that the tension, the fear, has been removed. Total bliss.

As my mind wanders, I breathe in love. Sensations switch to a state of everyday, waking consciousness, preparing me to come back to my mind and to be less in my body. I embrace the slow awakening and only open my eyes when my body feels ready with desire. I roll over onto my side, starting at my fleshy hand. Visually detecting the remains of this intense energy, seeming to come into a state of stillness. Visually, I perceive a subtle, glistening light wash over my hand and arm. Peace. Om Shanti Om.

Mystical Experiencer: Man in his mid-sixties
Submission date: September 15, 2023
Current location: Spain
Age at time of experience: 24

Many years ago, after some years of being deeply involved in Siddha Yoga, a traditional Indian spiritual system that included, meditation, chanting, “self-less service” and a study of classic spiritual texts, I saved up enough money and spent almost 3 months in an ashram near Mumbai in India. When I arrived, there was about 30 people staying there, but after a few weeks the guru returned and that number increased to 350.

I was a serious Siddha yoga practitioner and had previously experienced a number of kundalini experiences (blisses, states of expansion, visions) and surrendered joyfully to the non-stop 24/7 demand to practice chanting, meditation, work, and study. I was rising at 4.30 in the morning and meditating a number of times a day, chanting for five hours a day, working as demanded and studying Indian spiritual literature.

My meditation practiced spontaneously changed from internally repeating a mantra, to noticing my breathing, to simply allowing all movements in awareness and external phenomena to be exactly as they were.

After a few months, one beautiful evening while looking at the pink-tinged skies, in an instant it was obvious that there was only the evening. I had completely lost a sense of duality; no myself and a separate environment. Only one event.

There was a sense of great relief, great expansion and a subtle bliss to this “experience of non-separation” between myself and the environment.

After a few days, I still couldn’t find a “myself” or conventional mind. I also knew I had to shortly return to the UK and function in the world.

This sense of non-separate headlessness continued. I would wake with “no head” and spend the day “headless”.

A state of subtle unease arose, how could I function in a Western environment in such an unusual state? I felt powerfully drawn to go to the samadhi (burial) shrine of the guru’s guru in the nearby tiny village.

I went there one afternoon. There was no-one in the temple and trusting completely, I threw my body in full prostration on the floor and surrendered.

In an instant, the full, deep and overwhelming force of eternal divine love-bliss swept me away completely.

It was obvious that this love-bliss is the real nature of every moment of existence. The ever-present undercurrent of all experience.

No time. No space. No form. It is eternal, because all sense of time had disappeared and formless because no sense of a boundary occurs..

When I left the temple, a young Indian boy ran up to me and gave me a small photo of this guru with his hands raised in front of his face. I went to give the boy a few coins, but he said, “No! Bhagavan wants you to have this”. It felt like external confirmation that what had just occurred was not simply an just an internal experience.

Mystical Experiencer: Man in his late thirties
Submission date: July 3, 2023
Current location: Canada
Age at time of experience: 37

I tried psilocybin mushrooms for the first time after reading research papers suggesting they could help with depression and anxiety. Since I had read that high doses were more effective, I took a so-called “heroic dose”, then just relaxed in bed with my eyes closed and waited.

What followed is very hard to describe in words. At first I only felt a physical sensation of acceleration, like I was being launched up into space. Then my sense of self somehow dissolved, and there was sudden awareness of a pure, clear, all-encompassing consciousness. There was no “me” or “I” anymore. There was just awareness of all of space and time. And in that awareness, something was felt that words cannot describe. The closest word might be love, but it falls short and doesn’t come close to truly naming it.

After an unknown time (because time didn’t exist in that experience) my usual sense of self gradually reemerged and I opened my eyes as if waking from a dream, but I was changed. I knew that what I had experienced was the true nature of reality, and that mundane human life is a transient dream-like experience coalesced from that infinite loving consciousness. Ever since, I feel like a huge burden has been lifted from my shoulders. My anxiety and recurrent symptoms of depression have vanished.

Mystical Experiencer: Male in his early seventies
Submission date: June 19, 2023
Current location: United States
Age at time of experience: 25

So, I had been practicing TM without much commitment. I had also received Shaktipat from Muktananda, which was an amazing thing. My wife and I planned a big trip to the beach to see if we could buy a house. We took the subway. While packing my backpack I found half a joint in the little pocket and decided to smoke it.

I hadn’t smoked pot in maybe a year. I believe I lost interest because of meditation. The more I meditated, the more I became paranoid, so I didn’t enjoy it. I was mildly stoned, but was quite used to it, having done so thousands of times. I got mildly paranoid, thinking the other riders were noticing I was stoned and I sat down.

My backpack gave me a good posture which seemed to cause an energy in my spine. I started to get nervous and kept my eyes closed and just had inner vision. The golden energy became very strong, shooting up my spine and out the top of my head. It had the force of a firehouse on full blast. It was ripping me against my will, out of my body. I was certain I would either die or be insane forever. I now feel my small self was being annihilated, and self-annihilation is the root of all fear. That was what was on me. I fought it with all I had, but the golden light firehose was unstoppable, and I succumbed.

Everything changed. I opened my eyes and all the people were orbs of golden light. I was feeling very good like I had overcome my death fear. I had the overwhelming certain knowledge that this was the true knowledge that completed me and all others. It was certain as a sledgehammer over the head. Absolutely. I felt I could know anything, but actually got lost on the subway and ended up at the Statue of Liberty.

When I had to focus I could see the entire subway system in my mind’s eye. I had knowledge of many things. I felt time and space were erased. When we got back on the street I realized my physical self had also been transformed. I was in a state of physical Grace.

My skeleton and tendons and muscles were released from neurosis, which inhibits them. Everything I saw it was with new eyes and full of light. I was in a state of grace in every way. I knew with absolute certainty that this was the correct way of life and that every person has this at their core.

My wife was asking me “‘what’s up with you?’. All I could say was ‘’you know’’ I felt all people have this because it is the basic reality. I could not speak about it, beyond saying ‘’You Know’’.

Mystical Experiencer: Woman in her early forties
Submission date: June 2, 2023
Current location: United States
Age at time of experience: 39

Initially I saw what I describe as an apocalyptic forest, a small grouping of trees and plants which moved through a cycle of birth and death. Death from becoming violently extent due to human action.

As I walked on from plants to rock, I turned my thoughts to intentionally processing the grief of being unable to become pregnant after years of trying. This became an overwhelming physical sensation of waves of grief, sadness, anger. Lots of yelling.
Walking on again, I came to a short rock wall ledge where I lay down in the sun.

As I looked up into the sky I had geometric visuals and felt pure love. It was a presence of acceptance, kindness…and all-encompassing love. It felt very strongly of some other presence. There wasn’t a face necessarily but it was so similar to an Alex Grey piece of art with forms made of color, shapes made of pulsing energy, moving and seemingly made of light. I felt I was being shown a glimpse into what another reality was or this reality could be or most importantly what is possible. I’ve not been able to describe the goodness, the lightness, the surety of that love and that potential.

My boyfriend came to find me and help me walk back to camp. As we walked I felt physical waves of sickness, difficulty catching my breath, interspersed with more geometric glimpses and the pure love presence. Every time I hugged and kissed my boyfriend, I saw in my mind’s eye that we were both this same pulsing light energy bodies as in the previous vision. It felt fated, beautiful, pure, and genuine.

From there I experienced a lengthy and gentle come down which was more logical and I was able to sit with what I’d just experienced.