Archives: Submitted Stories

Mystical Experiencer:  Female in mid-forties
Current location:  Italy
Age at time of experience:  42

In Ubud, Bali – I had a rest sleeping in a yoga centre near the centre of Ubud.  The yoga centre was built around a temple.  After I woke I began meditating, just sitting quietly on my bed, in meditation… suddenly my breathing changed and became deeper and intense and very clean… and deep – and with it a vision of gold coins and the noise of coins dropping.  They fell and kept falling into my lap like a waterfall of gold coins. 

I felt fire, was warm, hot and full of light and couldn’t stop laughing (an inner laugh, a silent laugh full of love and devotion) – a sort of full body orgasmic experience of heart-opening love and light and relief, as though the meaning of the universe had fallen upon me… and there was nothing left to do… I don’t know how to describe it other than a spiritual jackpot… it went on for ages… it felt like an hour, but it was probably about half an hour.

I was elevated and felt light and yet very, very grounded…. it was a beautiful vision and audible sound of an inner waterfall of gold coins and laughter…

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in mid-fifties
Current location:  U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  55

Like many, I will say that words do it no justice, and never will there be words to describe it.

Immediately I felt I had a friend ask me to help him get sober.  I only had 3 months sober myself.  I was afraid I couldn't help him.  I was praying for assistance to help my friend and I felt a hand on my head then light was shooting out of my head.  The light was connected to something towards my right.

I could see particles of light all around me and something that looked like an orange Galaxy ahead of me like I was traveling through space.  Then I saw 3 angels and one of them blew 3 huge breaths into me.  It felt as though it was healing me.

After that I felt like I was wrapped in a blanket of love and my perception of everything changed.  I saw how love sees things and everywhere in my life where I had not been love.

After this happened I was very confused and I saw everything different.  I am no longer the same person.  I now ask God what his will is for me every day.  It's like I've been born again but this was a spiritual experience not a religious one.

Mystical Experiencer:  Female in early seventies
Current location:  U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  54

Started as a plea to God to come be with me due to a life circumstance that “broke my heart”. Over several days I began to develop an intense sense of joy that was more profound than any I could remember. I felt what could be described as ecstatic.

I was totally unprepared for this experience as I did not have a religious background that discussed this phenomenon. At first I felt overwhelmed and a little scared because I had no reference for the experience.

After a few days I accepted that I was having a true religious experience and was experiencing the presence of God. I have never been the same, my world view was transformed in a way I cannot put into words.

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in mid-sixties
Current location:  U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  58

This was a one-time thing that helped me a great deal. I had been contemplating suicide and this gave me the courage to seek out a hypnotist who specialized in life between lives. She set me up and I felt like I was in the life of a small brown man who had experienced the loss of his family. His grief was mine and I was there at his death. What I learned was how to cope with loss.

After the experience of being someone else, the hypnotist suggested that I meet my guide. What I experienced was a bright white light that surrounded me with love and compassion. I never in my life felt so accepted. The light gave me a message directly to my mind that I should enjoy what I can of my life and areas that would give me joy. Also I was needed by my family in ways I did not comprehend.

This helped me a great deal and I have been able to be the family leader I need to be. The light also revealed that my physical issues were in place to keep me where I am. Time has proved that I am a great help to my family that would have been lost if I had terminated my life. Since this experience I have pursued a spiritual practice, but this was a one-time experience.

Mystical Experiencer:  Female in early sixties
Current location:  Canada
Age at time of experience:  62

Early evening, one year ago today, I was sitting on the edge of my bed, contemplating that God's omnipotence and omniscience could only be possible with a perfectly pure and innocent mind; one that held no single negative thought.

I soon began meditating on a particular passage in A Course In Miracles text. The words were about the innocence of God being the true state of the mind of His Son – His Son meaning all of us as one or any one of the whole. The words resonated very deeply, and I closed my eyes to meditate on them.

I was suddenly in a radiant colorful place in heaven with a loving God, all at once knowing what my experience was, and feeling the deepest possible joy. God confirmed instantly and wordlessly that what I had been thinking and meditating upon was perfectly true.

He elaborated that each and every one of us are his creations, equally perfect and innocent for eternity – that that is our reality, and no other. Describing God in words is impossible, and I can only recall that centrally focused before me were arrays of light-filled movement in varied colors. God was not tall or vast; perhaps even child-like in stature, but that varied. Clearly a most apparent, indescribably beautiful, but paradoxically not-contained, abstract being.

I felt greatly loved, felt interconnected love as our only reality, and found myself directly united with God. We celebrated together deeply in the knowledge shared. I then followed him briefly around a centrally featured, round crystalline wall I deduced was God's place of operations; perhaps his office? This was like nowhere on Earth. It appeared as though positioned in the mid-heavens, with stars all about, yet set within the darkness of space.

I stood beside a formation of unfixed, beautiful poly-chrome crystalline sheets, different sizes and shapes–all brilliant, transparent, and arranged in abstract architectural configurations. Some sheets were arranged mostly vertically, varying heights and clearest colors. God withdrew to his private space at this point, though I could still see his being as he circled behind the wall of light.

It was then that I put my extended hand straight through the crystalline substances. They were comprised entirely of light, yet had a curious solidity like glass. I glanced out into the darkness, focusing upon a nearby stage setting with an illuminated palm tree, and in front of it were rows of audience seats. I can only guess at the significance of the theater-like setting.

It was at this point that I found myself again sitting on the edge of the bed, my eyes opening to the evening backyard trees and sky. I knew I had been in an alternate reality, intensely vivid and more alive and meaningful than anything on Earth. I felt amazed, of course, though not altogether shocked. My studies in A Course In Miracles had prepared me for a different way of looking at things, and even a miracle or two. Though one might hope for a direct revelation from God, the most I ever anticipated was perhaps a definite knowing of the existence of God.

Prior to that experience, I was content with only faith. Now I knew by direct and most gracious experience that God is our reality, and very much a part of our true selves. Life has certainly changed for the better – but not in that overwhelming sense of having learned something I hadn’t ever considered. The Course covers a great deal of practical material, and I credit it with having brought me to a mindset in sync with God’s thoughts and reality.

I do not know whether that would be the cause of my visit to heaven – revelations being solely at the discretion of the Creator – but the timing seemed to indicate that my thoughts had finally made me receptive to such an event.

My life changed for the better ever since first reading A.C.I.M., and then by practicing its teachings. I turned away from superficial pursuits towards more meaningful and universally beneficial engagements. I still make mistakes, lots of them, but I worry less about things.

I have accomplished far more in this year, and have felt a far deeper connection to my fellow humans than ever before. I felt today the right occasion to share this with anyone who may find it credible. Though intensely personal, I'm certain that God would want me to share these thoughts with anyone who would consider them.

My hope is that we endeavor to honor all life – while learning how not to be God. Perhaps by reminding ourselves more often that we are still in God’s mind.

Mystical Experiencer:  Female in early fifties
Current location:  U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  21

I was reading a book by Bagwhan Shree Rajneesh lying on my couch in my apartment on a weekend morning. I read a particular phrase (can't remember which one), and then it felt like the top of my head disappeared.

Everything was perfectly normal and my usual awareness remained, but it felt as though I UNDERSTOOD EVERYTHING. I felt like I could have answered any question I put to myself. I have come to understand this as the noetic quality [William] James identified. It was a beautiful feeling. It was qualitatively different than anything I had ever felt, and I had never heard of anyone having a similar experience either.

There was also a sense of detachment – not like dissociation, but more like indifference to ordinary reality. There was nothing to identify it as a “spiritual” experience, as I understood spiritual experiences at the time. There was no particular religious imagery or sense of presence or beings of any kind, just a deeply felt sense of security based in understanding.

I don't think I can be more descriptive than that. In an attempt to make the feeling stay, I drove to the beach so I could focus on it more, but the more I tried to make it stay, the more it disappeared. I have chased that feeling ever since. I now meditate regularly and teach a college level course on consciousness because I believe that experience was the most significant one of my life. Nothing prepared me for it and there was no help available for making sense of it.

Mystical Experiencer:  Male early twenties
Current location:  U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  16

Like many, I will say that words do it no justice, and never will there be words to describe it. Immediately I felt timeless, a sense of union with the universe (no sense of "Self" or "Other" to contrast each other).

At the time I was a misanthrope, under extreme self-hatred and general nihilistic discontent with the world and everybody within it. I was genuinely bitter to the core. My general desire was to become immortal. I knew there probably no way to do this.

I followed a train of thought that took my mind to where I thought, “even if I was immortal, eventually the universe would end one way or another, and me with it”, and at that exact moment I accepted my eventual death. It made me feel then, a complete calmness, and timelessness, and union with the whole universe. At that point, I completely changed.

My personality underwent a complete transformation in about 30 minutes, and my entire mind and body became a sort of large erogenous zone from which love for everything in the universe poured. I felt a genuine deep love for the world, I had no ill will or bitterness remaining in me, and I felt genuine compassion for the whole world. It made me giggle. It made me laugh, and I laughed myself silly, on and off for almost an hour, and then I was left with the giggles for a full year.

For almost exactly a full year, from the January 7^th when it happened to January 7th the following year, I was in complete ecstasy. I was incapable of being irritable. There was nothing anybody could do to make me angry. All my melancholy washed away, I was unable to be angered.

People wondered if I had started doing drugs or something, and I kept being questioned at school about my sudden shift in behavior. I was not religious at the time, nor interested in any religions. But as I had this experience, I immediately KNEW “This is enlightenment”, and I began delving deep into Buddhist scriptures.

As I mentioned before, my ecstasy lasted one year exactly, then faded. I thought I had lost it. But I read the Lotus Sutra, where Buddha says that the road to Buddhahood is very long, and halfway along the journey he conjures a phantom city of Nirvana for practitioners to rest in before continuing the journey. That was what I felt that year was like.

I always felt like in a way, the world attained everything for you, and that there was nothing that needed to be done. I felt then like that year was a way for me to get acquainted with everything about the final state and goal to be like, and get to. And now I have to get back there on my own merit.

I felt like I was shown the end goal for free, and then put back where I was and had to work my way to it to earn it. It completely changed me and changed my world, identity, and sense of self, what it means to be, and my conceptions of limitations on anything and everything, forever.

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in late sixties
Current location:  U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  41

Well, I went to talk to god on a full moon night, with the moon rising over the forest.  A light haze had ascended over and throughout the forest.  I could hear the moon as it rose and had a feeling of the holy spirit in and throughout everything.

The crickets and coyotes, and night birds, had all become quiet.  I experienced the sound of the ever movement of space in the moment, and belonging to the consciousness of a holy place.  A unity and fearless, lovely moment.  No judgment, no fear, no time limit, and no restrictions on walking in a spiritual realm.

I had gone to an AA meeting just before and have always been drawn to this place in passing by, on the way home. And I wrote about it and envisioned the peaceful walk with the many [people who went there] before me…

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in early thirties
Current location:  United Kingdom
Age at time of experience:  18

It came at a time of great spiritual upheaval.  I had begun to explore new religions and was thinking deeply about the future.  I remember lying flat on my back in bed.  It was late at night, maybe midnight or one in the morning, and I had a CD Walkman playing music in my ears quietly (I remember that the music was called Drifting Away by The Prodigy).

I was praying and asking God for a connection to It.  In my mind’s eye the image of a triangle of light appeared and then I felt just a total apprehension of God, as though something that I normally cannot gain access to allowed me in.  It lasted for a few minutes and then started to fade away.  At the moment I absolutely knew that God was there and at times of great difficulty I've remembered that experience. 

Immediately afterwards I drifted off to sleep and woke the next day with a strong sense of well-being. While the experience was, in the proper sense, awesome, it also had a tinge of fear to it.  I felt myself resisting quite a little as if I “went into it” I wouldn't return.

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in early seventies
Current location:  U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  29

My initial experience at the age of 29 (41 years ago) was driving from Los Angeles to San Diego.  I was listening to an old Elvis Presley song, “He Touched Me”, and the outer environment began to change.  I became disoriented and the lights and traffic blurred.  I had to pull over and could not resume driving for over an hour. 

[I had] the realization of being at One with all creation and that I could now see God expressing Itself as God in Man. God was indeed Omnipresent, Omnipotent and Omniscience and every individual being was an expression of God (despite the relative level of awareness).  My conscious Union with God represented my conscious Oneness with all men and ideas.

It had been a period of extreme financial and family stress prior to this experience, but peace and tranquility prevailed for several hours after that.  This one event sent me on an intense search for understanding God and spiritual principles that continues through today.  It has been a wonderful journey.