A Universal Consciousness

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in early fifties
Current location:  Australia
Age at time of experience:  25

After sitting silently in meditation after a particularly spirited session of mantra-chanting (I’d been in the company of five other meditators, but they had left the building and I’d continued to ‘sit’ alone), there was a sudden separation from ordinary experience, as though the ground had opened up beneath me and I’d fallen in. Then, any sense of myself as an entity separate from everything else utterly disappeared. All that was left was a kind of primary or universal consciousness with no ‘me’ in it whatsoever. Time and space seemed not to apply: ‘Eternity’. A pure and profound bliss and love permeated this limitless expanse.

I must stress very strongly that words in no way do this justice. It was truly ineffable. After what seemed like a few seconds, there was a return to the ordinary state. I felt utterly humiliated and embarrassed by my belief in ego which had been so violently destroyed by this event, and I wept profusely for several minutes. This gave way to exhilaration and joy.

Everything I’d been learning about spiritual things made 100% sense. I knew I’d ‘experienced for myself’, albeit very briefly, the Enlightenment I’d been studying and contemplating. I must add that the experience had an uncanny familiarity. It was obvious to me that this is what happens to us when we die.

Though agnostic with regard to reincarnation, I regard it as a definite possibility – and this uncanny familiarity of the ‘after-death-state’ is consistent with it. I was so inspired by this event to continue Buddhist practice that I traveled to the U.K. to join a residential community of Buddhists and remained with them for four years.

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