Mystical Experiencer: Male in mid-seventies
Current location: U.S.A.
Age at time of experience: 33
I awake to nothing. No body. No senses: no sight, no hearing, no touch, no taste, no smell, no thought. No perception of time or space: no near, no far, no light or dark. No heat, no cold. No emotion: no joy, no fear. Just calm awareness in a gray void.
A moment / eternity passes.
Light! A brilliant sun! And with it, darkness: the fullness of empty space. A small human figure stands in silhouette. My awareness shifts. I become the figure; a human body standing in space before a radiant globe.
I feel! I am bathed in intense light and heat; light and heat so intense that if I were in a physical form I would be vaporized. I am engulfed by boundless, infinite energy; overwhelming energy. Another shift in perception: energy becomes love. Energy and love are the same. Energy is love. I am embraced and cradled: enfolded by a boundless field of energy/love, love which is personal yet vast beyond comprehension.
I am seen; seen through. The barriers and masks that we construct to present an idealized persona to the world are blown away. Though the experience is veiled to me, I perceive that my life in its naked reality is being lived and fully comprehended by a conscious presence. There is no judgment. My being with all its shortcomings, failures, and rough edges is unconditionally accepted, loved, and cherished.
I become aware that what had first appeared like a sun is un-like anything from ordinary reality. I am in the presence of a radiant, fluid luminosity. An amalgam of water and light is the best approximation I can think of. The sense of being before a conscious presence intensifies.
My mind buzzes with the desire to hold It, to explain and contain It with my thought. The more I grasp, however, the more It slips away. It cannot be grasped or named. I give up, let go, and allow myself to simply rest with It.
With this shift from desire/grasping to acceptance I am permeated by light. In a blaze, the dark husk of my body flakes away. I become light. I am one with the light. I am the light, a fluid, radiant luminosity. I have no body. No senses: no sight, no hearing, no touch, no taste, no smell, no thought. No perception of time or space. I am calm awareness in a radiantly luminous field of joyfully dancing light.
A moment / eternity passes.
I find myself with a luminous body. A thought is expressed without words: approach your live with joy and gratitude; compassion and acceptance. A cosmic chuckle: clear-eyed and hard-nosed. I am laughed at/with. “Don’t take your Self so seriously” rings in my mind.
As I turn from the light a frigorific presence rushes from behind and past my left ear. It is a transparent nothingness consuming all energy in its path. It radiates a cold animus and an implacable will to be separate; to differentiate. As it rushes past an iron darkness warps around me. It fuses to me and I become dark and solid.
I awake to an ordinary day, my ordinary self and life and a huge why?