Mystical Experiencer: Male in mid-twenties
Current location: United Kingdom
Age at time of experience: 21
Having ingested 10-15 grams of psilocybin truffles some half an hour earlier, I lay on a bed in a hotel room in Amsterdam with my brother in another bed nearby. Quite suddenly, I felt an urge – more like hunger or thirst than a conceptually framed imperative – to be alone. I left the room and went into the en suite bathroom. My stomach felt unsettled, and I was slightly nauseous, so I lay down on the floor with a sheet to cover me. In this period I found it more comfortable to have my eyes closed. Relatively quickly, and with relatively sudden intensity, I began to have 'closed eye visuals' of various objects….
As they appeared to me, I found my thoughts drawn unaccountably in certain directions, usually towards introspective thoughts; particularly thoughts having to with the nature and stability of reality and of my identity. These thoughts and visuals grew in intensity over a period of about 1 hour. Eventually I found my fear and astonishment giving way to exhaustion and confusion. As this occurred, I noted at the time that the visuals seemed to respond to my mood.
When I became exhausted, and attempted to ignore the visuals/ thoughts that accompanied them, the visuals themselves seemed to respond threateningly. Teeth were bared; insectoid legs skittered menacingly. This part of the experience culminated in the growing feeling of a threatening outer presence, seeming – without saying anything – to demand my submission. I remember thinking that I could not submit without a reason. It would go against all my principles to submit to anything without a reason. How, I thought, could anything benevolent demand submission without a reason? I remember that I failed to resolve this problem, but submitted anyway.
Following this, there is a brief blank. The next thing I recall is a consciousness of deep calm and rejuvenation. This calm transmuted quickly into an intense feeling of bliss, love, and beauty. I felt at the time, immediately and without question, that what I was feeling was 'religious' or had to do with 'religion'. I felt, without ever having been religious before, that I was in contact with what people have described as God. I remember feeling that death was not what I had thought it was, and that it was nothing to fear. I remember thinking about evil and suffering, and feeling, in the glow of that experience, that it could be redeemed, or that it already been. I remember having profound feelings about the ontological significance of what we call 'love'. I remember thinking that love was something like a substance, out of which everything is made.
I remember not seeing, or seeing very differently, the supposed distinctions and boundaries between myself and the world, between different parts of the world, and even between certain concepts. It did not seem clear to me that love and beauty and truth and universe and man were really distinct in the way I had believed. Everything melded into one holy reality. And it seemed clear at the time, that only like this, only as ONE reality, could this thing be understood. I remember that when I rejoined my brother, I kept telling him i) that i was sorry, and ii) that i could not speak of what i was experiencing. The details of this second part of the experience are difficult to express.