Mystical Experiencer: Male in mid-sixties
Current location: U.S.A.
Age at time of experience: 26
I was a resident at Shankaracharya Nagar in Livingston Manor, New York for a two-week intensive training in an advanced program of transcendental meditation focusing on Patanjali’s yoga sutures. During yoga flying my body lifted up in the air and bounced around like a basketball. I felt completely boundless and had the most intense feeling of bliss I have ever experienced.
I did not know what human beings could experience – energy shot up my spine and popped into my head and out. Everything became golden, thoughts flowed effortlessly, and the body moved as if it was on ball bearings gliding around. I felt unfathomable peace, serenity, and bliss, Love. This experience was fairly continuous even throughout sleep for five months. And then it abruptly stopped and I became depressed.
It reoccurred many times over the next two decades and constantly changed and transformed. Now it is an experience of profound unity. It is difficult to describe these experiences because they wax and wane and have occurred over a 45-year period. They alternated with periods of hopelessness, depression, anxiety, and despair and then reoccurred spontaneously out of nowhere. All this time I was faithfully meditating for 3 to 4 hours per day and studying the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, The Upanishads, Vasistha’s yoga., the Bhagavad-Gita, and other sacred books of Advaita Vedanta.