Archives: Submitted Stories

Mystical Experiencer:  Female in late fifties
Current location:  U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  49

I just lost my Mother after a long and painful illness. It was springtime, her favorite time of year along with the Easter Season. The day was gorgeous, blue sky and a steady, constant breeze that caressed my face and skin. The sound of it rustling in the fresh greens of the trees was music to my ears. So, consoling in my sadness, I was planting the perennial flowers given to me by friends in honor of my Mother. I was just needing to feel the earth in my hands and partaking in something my Mother loved to do all the time. Gardening.

I remember standing in the yard, when suddenly there was an opening up of the world to universe, to timelessness, a sudden sense that all is one. I reveled in the glory of it, knowing or understanding, all at once, my mother was showing me a glimpse of heaven. The love was endless and eternal, I’ve never felt such love since my first similar experience when I was 17. I felt I was shown the miracle of life after death. That death could be the human death or the death of illusion, because what I was experiencing was the grandest reality, the honest true existence of all things.

I understood that we are energy, and all energy is connected and vital and never ending. Like we know God is in all things, my Mother went back to the Father, and like him, she too was as omnipotent and omnipresent and with me forever. He/She was in my breath, my voice, my sight, my allness, and therefore the all, the Oneness. It was comforting, and I felt immense joy at the glorious gift shared with me, and the energy of it seemed to cling to me as it faded. The intensity of it faded from my heightened awareness to my sudden self-consciousness, which had completely disappeared in the grandeur of the moment.

I guess after the experience, I stayed aware of the God Winks that might appear, the messages that say, I am here, I am with you, that are now symbols or Totems of my Mom when she was alive. An Iris, a hummingbird, an eagle, a song, there is timing to it, coinkydink if you will. The best of which occurs in the moments of the morning just before being fully awake. I feel my Mother so close, so alive, reminding me encouraging me, to be the light… keep the light… of the lord or something?

I have hidden from it all, tried to forget, and when I become a lost soul, that sorrow is great. I have to return to this knowing, and follow the path by following the signs, and try to stay conscious of God and Divinity. Like I really have to fight the nothingness of becoming absorbed into the walking dead… it’s everyday and I have to hold onto the Mystical experience that calls me back from that awful unconscious existence. I have to keep my heart and eyes open and be grateful. I think we have to be love, love is it. The Golden Rule.

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in late teens
Current location:  U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  19

As a student, I lead a fairly hectic daily life, so I had set aside a day on the weekend to be dedicated to meditation, contemplation, and LSD. I woke up at 8 AM, made a cup of green tea, and rolled two joints of marijuana. At roughly nine, I took the LSD (200 micrograms) and then sat down to meditate until I felt the effects begin to come on.

At this point, I went to the back porch and smoked the first joint, and already a sense of profundity and understanding had begun to permeate my mental activity. I returned to my room and sat down again, and after possibly another half-hour, I came to the realization that I was suspended outside of space and time looking in, with perfect understanding of the workings and purpose of it. I felt as though I had become eternal and infinite, much like the entire universe which I was gazing down on. [I realized that] love is an underlying current running through any situation, and we tap into it in varying degrees depending on our circumstances and personal disposition.

After what could only be described as a subjective eternity (about two hours) I returned to a more normal state of consciousness in that I was decidedly back to experiencing a localized body in space-time. However, the feelings of profundity and understanding have persisted since my first mystical experience and have been compounded by each of my successive mystical experiences.

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in early sixties
Current location:  England
Age at time of experience:  34

I had been a spiritual seeker from the age 6 when the question ‘Who am I?’ suddenly came upon me, and in an instant, I realized that existence was a great mystery. This started me on a spiritual quest that from the age of 15 became the main goal in my life. There was a gradual unfolding in my life that took me from Christianity to yoga, then a study and experience of most religions.

Finally, I found myself very attracted to Advaita Vedanta, particularly as personified by Sri Ramana Maharshi. This wasn’t a thing in itself, but more a way of understanding Christianity better. By this time, I was well aware of ideas such as Self-realization, and understood them academically, but had no real idea of what they meant in terms of direct experience.

Being on the spiritual quest whilst trying to live a normal life created great tensions in my life, and sometimes I could get into a depression/spiritual doldrum when I was making no obvious spiritual progress, and I was living on the margins of worldly life at that time. It can be difficult untying the Gordian knot.

On this particular occasion, I had gone to the seaside coast to enjoy the good weather. The train coming back was quite full and quite hot.  I began to get something like a panic attack, which I assumed was related to the heat and crowded train. I started to do some breathing exercises to calm my panic down. Unfortunately, the sensation got worse and I began to feel that I was going to die. This sensation intensified despite my efforts to calm down.

Eventually the train stopped in the station where I was to get off. Walking along the platform station I was absolutely certain I was about to die. The station had some meaning for me because it was somewhere that I had had to go to school for six years, and various other events had happened at that station.

Gradually I felt that I was going to lose consciousness and I was thinking’ after all that, “thus ends my life in such an ordinary place’.

As I began to faint and fall, instead of losing consciousness, my consciousness seemed to burst forth from my head, like you would see melt water rushing to fill mountain streams, except in this case the mountains were of the same substance as the water.

My consciousness burst out in all directions and I could feel it touching everything. I remember there was a small building in the distance, and yet I was aware of what it looked like on the side I couldn’t see.

After this initial burst, the sense of my consciousness touching the environment went, so that I was experiencing everything as ‘me’. As if the whole world/universe was ‘me’ (my head), and I was walking around inside my head.

At that point, I thought ‘oh yes this is what is meant by self-realization/self-recognition, and that you are already self-realized’. I couldn’t distinguish between myself and other, it was all me, all SELF, but not in a way that would be egotistic (au contraire it was a humbling experience).

I actually started to laugh to myself, because I thought how funny it was that I had been wrestling with the world all my life, and yet it was Me all along. Like in a dream, all the components come from the mind, but they all seem like separate events. Maybe something frightening happens in the dream which causes you to wake up, and then you are relieved – ‘ok, ok it was just a dream’. It was that sensation-like a great relief.

I had to cross a bridge and catch a link train to my home town, and this sensation of ‘all is self’ continued with me all the time, vaguely amusing me, and also making me contemplate various scriptures and sayings about self-realization.

When I got home, the first thing I did was read the ‘Sermon on the Mount’ because for me this represented the ultimate teaching in selflessness in the Christian tradition. From the stand point of the individual self the teachings seemed challenging, but for the self-realized saint, all is self, so helping the world is helping self only.

Gradually over the course of the evening the sensation of pure Self subsided, but I was left with the memory of it that has remained to this day, close to 30 years later.

Mystical Experiencer:  Female in mid-fifties
Current location:  U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  15

We were released from school early and I had just come home. I was thinking about how I was going to spend this extra time I had. I was in the dining room and leaned my right hip against the table. I was thinking about what to do and was looking into the kitchen. I stopped thinking and as soon as my mind went blank is when it happened.

I felt as though I had turned into a liquid. I felt myself flow into the table and the table and I flowed into the floor. I can’t remember what I saw but I remember thinking, “I can’t tell where one thing ends and another begins; there are no edges to anything.” Then I felt as though I had become one with everything that existed; “I am everything and everything is me.” Then I became aware of something else. I felt this feeling of love, but not only did I feel love, I loved; “I love everything and everything loves me. I am love itself.”

I remember thinking, “Even though I feel one with everything, I know that I’m me. But I’m like a thought suspended in space.” I felt confused, I tried to think what was happening to me. I felt a wall go up to my left and slam shut. “I have to just be.” I surrendered to the feeling of oneness, the feeling of love. “I’m so happy. I feel as if I’m one big smile. If I could just stay right here in this love for all eternity, I’d never want for anything else.”

I was back at the table and I began saying things, but I had to listen to what I was saying because they weren’t coming from thoughts in my head. “That was real and this isn’t. We think we’re separate from one another, but that’s just an illusion. There is nothing but God. There is no place you can go where God isn’t. There is nothing that you can do that is so terrible it’ll ever make God stop loving you.

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.

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in early eighties
Current location:  U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  31

[There were] two events prior [to my mystical experience], one when I was eight years old (a multi-colored sunset) and the second when thirty years old (the face of a young girl) – I called them both ‘experiences of beauty’. I believe they might now be called ‘Stendhal Syndrome’. They make me believe that true beauty is felt as an emotion rather than a judgement. It seems to grip the heart in an almost painful, breathless feeling in the depth of my being. The second one occurred shortly before what I call my ‘mystical experience’.

Also, I had been attending some AA meetings due to a problem with alcohol but was having some difficulty with the Higher Power thing due to being an atheist. At this time (1968) there was quite stir over the country about the statement “God is dead”. I found that interesting. Not having Google to help me, I had to resort to asking people that I thought might know, where that came from?  Finally, someone told me about Friedrich Nietzsche’s writings. I followed up on that and while trying to read some of his stuff and looking through the New Testament (King James Version), skipping back and forth between the two, I just got more tired and confused. Put them aside and tried think but it only seemed to be a jumble instead of a clear thought.

It came to me to try to clear my mind and make a fresh start. (For some reason the thought of St. Paul’s admonition to the Philippians to ‘think on these things’ whatsoever things are true, honest, just, lovely, of good report), came to mind and I thought immediately of the emotion I had felt only recently on seeing the girl’s face. I could still recall a bit of that feeling and remembered reading somewhere that to close off the thinking process a person could imagine standing in front of and very near a huge billboard that was painted white with nothing on it, the whole field of vision filled with only whiteness and blankness everywhere, concentrating on the whiteness and blankness. I did exactly that while still feeling some of the emotion of beauty in my heart. I had no thought or image of any sort in mind, just blank white awareness.

I will try to relate what I can recall of what came next.

Suddenly, the whiteness gave way to a surrounding darkness and a feeling of coolness and quiet.

In the distance a light appeared. A sort of soft white light. The light seemed to have a compelling force, in that I seemed to be drawn to it and seemed to be moving toward it without any effort. When I approached near enough to determine its source, it seemed to be coming from what appeared to be a Dutch door, the upper half of which, was open. A beam of light shining through the upper half of the door, from some place above and behind the door. The light beam illuminated a small area of something like a floor or patio in front of the door. I could feel a strong urge to enter into the light and started to do so. When I neared the light, I could feel some sort of resistance or barrier and had to exert quite a bit of force to get beyond the point of resistance. I seemed to roll over some obstacle and into the light.

I will make an attempt to describe what came next (it is true that words cannot truly describe it).

I seemed melt into and become one with the light. A complete union. (here the word light is the only one that comes close) There is no self. There is no time. There is no place. No before, no after. All that was, all that is, all that will be are one. There is absolute perfection. There is absolute beauty. There is absolute truth. There is absolute knowledge. There is absolute peace. This ‘unity’ had no ‘sense’ of all these things, it was all these things and infinitely more.

This description does not even begin to tell what the experience is like. That all these words have been used over and over is a matter of history and they still fall short. Words have been used many times by many people in many languages and still cannot tell what it is really like.

I cannot say how long in our time the union lasted. Perhaps seconds or minutes. It ended when a clear thought entered my mind. The thought was ‘ I have to get back’ and instantly it was over.

On coming out of the union my first thought was, where was I? What was that? I could feel a great awe or feeling of reverence. I now had no fear of death. I could see how someone might equate this with some divine source. How it may be used to found a religion.

After the experience was over, I felt compelled to go out in the yard. The weather was warm and summery. I was barefoot and as I walked on the grass with the sun shining warmly, a soft breeze blowing. I could feel life stirring in the grass and soil and sun and in the very air that I breathed.  I could feel myself reconnecting with the physical world. The air seemed to sparkle and to have a sweet taste and smell of life. A true feeling of reunion with nature. (I have never read or heard of others having this same feeling after a mystical experience.)

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in early fifties
Current location:  U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  24

Though I was raised very happily as a Catholic and believed in God, I never believed the basic Christian cosmology or the concept of a personified God.  I was going through a deep spiritual searching in my life, and read many, many books on New Age philosophy, Eastern religious concepts and practices, quantum physics and the nature of consciousness, and meditating was daily.  I was very spiritually “hungry” at the time. 

I was sitting in my bath tub meditating and contemplating, and concentrating on the concentric circles caused by water droplets on the surface of the bath water.  I was tired of getting mere descriptions or hints of the transcendent.  I prayed, and asked – nearly demanded of God – “I want to know the truth,” and abandoned myself to the universe.  I offered no resistance, no intellectual effort. 

It was as if suddenly the greatest peace and love poured into me like an enormous waterfall.  I had come into contact with an eternal Consciousness, not a personified God, but something far more immense, infinite.  I felt like a small wire taking in too much energy, so I consciously breathed and relaxed my body to take it all in and, as I further surrendered, indeed more of this endless Love and Peace flowed into me, and was overflowing into the universe from me.  “I” seemed to disappear.  “I” was merely this wonderful, complex creature created by the Creator, this very Love that was pouring into me.  It was information, eternal Truth, that I was receiving.  I literally writhed in spiritual ecstasy and cried tears of joy.  I felt given a Love which could never possibly be earned that was something at the very core of the Universe.  While this was not the Biblical God I had been raised to believe, it was a Consciousness, with an intention and intimate knowledge of me.  I felt connected to every living being.  I felt lighter than air.  I was energy.  Literally, if at that moment someone had entered trying to harm me, I would have felt love for that person. 

The actual experience lasted for hours.  I exited the bath and did yoga on the floor of my bedroom and just felt these constant waves of energy and contact with the Holy coursing through me, and me coursing through everything.  I recognized at that moment the meaning of Blake’s poem about “seeing the world in a grain of sand.”  Everything was Perfect.  Everything integral to the whole, and held together in its infinite complexity by this infinitely loving Energy.

This event was life changing.  I knew at that moment what it meant in the Christian tradition to be “born again,” though this experience had no Christian trappings at all.  It transcended all religious or man-made interpretations and was truly ineffable.  For many days afterwards, while the intensity diminished (I wouldn’t have been able to function day to day if it hadn’t), I could tap into this reservoir of peace and love and stillness at will and could feel immense love and empathy with other people, including strangers.  I felt like my energy field extended far beyond me during those days, and I remained joyous beyond description for a long period of time. 

I count this moment the most important event of my life.

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in late forties
Current location:  England
Age at time of experience:  47

I had been reading a book by Emilie Cady, doing my usual meditation before going to bed, and questioning who I really was, and I asked God to reveal the truth to me. As I had fallen asleep, I presume I was dreaming.  During this sleep period, I was initially dreaming of being in the back of a taxi travelling with some friends, which felt like we had been out on the town.

A radiant blue being in the front seat turned around and asked me in a pale voice ‘Why did you not forgive?’, I was startled and began to push myself away from him. As I did so, his hand reached over and he placed it on my heart, and, at that moment, we both merged into one being, becoming radiant brilliant light oneness itself. I no longer had a physical body or eyes to see with, and there was not anything to see but the light that I was emitting. Radiating, I became pure consciousness, pure awareness with no thoughts.  As a pure mind, a thought would have contaminated my mind, being a formless presence.

I use the language I have to explain, but really no words I have can. I and my mind were boundless, limitless. I was timeless, fearless and free. I was desireless, complete, and whole, not seeking anything or wanting anything. I was in perfect peace and harmonious, radiating eternal life itself from the centre of my being. This felt like it was for eternity and had always been and always will be, as I had absolutely no concept of time or space, and I was completely still.

A few days after this, I did the same thing after reading and meditating, and what I thought was a dream happened again. I suddenly found myself in a dark place, completely surrounded and engulfed in this thick dense blackness, which was formless. There was no physical body or eyes though, and there wasn’t anything or anyone to see, just this darkness which went on for eternity. There was no other being present. I was completely alone, absolute aloneness. I had only my thoughts and my emotions and was completely motionless with this sense of self presence only. The longer I stayed in that place, the more I became fearful. I thought, “What is this? I really don’t like it. I don’t want to be here.” And then, becoming filled with terror at the thought of remaining in that place for eternity alone, I woke up and found myself back in bed filled with absolute relief.

What I experienced was more real than anything I have experienced in this physical life, making my life feel as though it is just a play or stage show which we act out. I don’t have any answers to what I experienced and it fills me with mixed emotions. There was oneness, a perfect experience and it’s wonderful thinking I may experience it again. There is also the absolute opposite, aloneness, and fearing I may return to that place of darkness again.

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in mid-eighties
Current location:  U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  9

[I was] standing in a stream, ankle deep in mud.  I stopped playing and looked up at the sun.  The world seemed to stop, I lost awareness of everything.  There was total silence.  I was totally at peace.  Then it was over and I resumed my play.  I never gave it a thought until years later.

Mystical Experiencer:  Female in early fifties
Current location:  U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  46

Prior to the experience: Deep contemplation of a catch 22 in “my life story” and a seeming decision to surrender all control of the situation to God.  The thought of surrender was the last normal thought.  What comes next is the experience itself:

There seemed to be a huge column of gold light rising up through me and out of my chest upwards.  I seemed to rise up with it and as I did, the body seemed to dissolve into the column of light rising upwards, but also my arms seemed to stretch outwards at the same time – first as high as the ceiling, then above the house, which dissolved into the light then above the earth, which also dissolved into the light. Then it was as far up and out as the previous sense of mind could imagine.  “I” seemed to be this light which was everything, but at the same “time” something was aware of this and was watching it unfold.

This light which seemed to come with the subjective sense of I seemed like love beyond anything I could imagine, power beyond imagining, and the sense of knowing everything but nothing in particular. I felt like I had merged with/was the greatest love imaginable. Then I, as this light, seemed to be back in my house and I seemed to be everything, but as particles of light – even the walls. Everything seemed to be “I”, but this was “seen” as if an awareness was aware of the “I” that was everything.  Then, “I” heard very clearly the words “NOW WHAT?” and immediately I was back in the body sitting at the kitchen table.

After the experience:  The mind came back and I thought, “Holy crap – we are ALL GOD!!!  I told my husband and son that I had experienced being one with God, and that we are all God, and they told me that I am full of crap and a nut.  Since then I laugh and tell them I am ALL THE NUTS and that there really are no nuts at all since there are no separate entities, only God and that they are God.