Archives: Submitted Stories

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in mid-fifties
Current location:  United Kingdom
Age at time of experience:  41

I was on holiday with my wife and two children. We arrived at a particularly striking beach in north Cornwall UK, on the Atlantic coast. It was a lovely fresh day, the sun was shining in a blue sky dappled with high cloud. There was an energetic sea breeze keeping us cool. 
As we walked along carrying our clobber to the beach, I looked down over sand dunes at the people enjoying the beach: Children playing, dogs running around, folk sitting picnicking at the foot of the dunes. I looked up to the sky and saw a large blue eye, just there, blue iris with a black pupil. It seemed to somehow just radiate serenity, peace, a sense of total oneness and love. 

I thought my eyes must be tricking me, I tried blinking and turning my eyes away and back, but it stayed there. I then felt I knew just how everything worked. There are no words I know to describe this, but I had this overwhelming sense that I knew exactly how life functioned, all connected. I felt that I didn't need to be me as I had always felt it, I wanted to be this… everybody, everything seems just utterly marvellous, perfect, not a speck of dust out of place. Everything is connected, everything is alive, everything is one. 

You can give this any name you like, God, the Universe, but it should not be named it seems to me, it is everything and can't therefore be differentiated. In that moment, I had no worries, concerns anxieties. Time seemed almost not to exist. Love was everywhere, calm serene, perfect. What can I say? It’s very hard to describe, but it unlocked a view for me that has never left and which I experience almost on purpose now. 

I was absolutely struck by how utterly right under my nose this had all been all along. Life with its secrets, the true reality actually stands naked in the open, laughing and playing like a child. I find it by simply experiencing without naming or differentiating. I find our need to name and separate things a block. Immediately after this experience, I had the most wonderful day with my family. I felt calmly serenely happy and at one with everything and everybody.

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

My illumination was almost instantaneous, but that was only the beginning of a long series of enlightening experiences. Thirty eight of the most significant ones have been documented in poetry or verse. The illumination made me receptive to the thoughts and emotions of people around me.

Here is the poem that tells of the first experience.

It wasn't long
Just a second or two
that was enough
To  be created anew
A flash of light
a rush of wind
A flood of knowing
A loss of sin 
Gone was fear
Of both life and death
In  its place
A heavenly rest
Back into the world
To carry the word
Pushed on by desire
To share, be heard
But how? How?
My language fails
Alone I stand At infinity's rails

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in mid-twenties
Current location:  Italy
Age at time of experience:  24

In the months before my mystical experience I started to feel the need to penetrate in a deeper way into what was my understanding of the world. This feeling rose after a few months since my starting to practice Ju Jitsu and with it meditation.

I have to specify that in those days I hadn’t any knowledge about what could or couldn't be enlightenment. One day, while I was reading a book of the university talking about philosophy, I focused myself on a few parts talking about the ego and about what could be a greater ego, a universal mind. While I was reading that I felt like I could in some way “drop it”, and suddenly it happened.

I felt like time and space were gone, but I can't precisely describe what was the feeling because unfortunately words cannot describe everything about reality itself. Words are a translation of it and sometimes a translation can't describe exactly the original meaning.

After that I can remember that I had this feeling of unlimited freedom and joy, the feeling that the meaning of life is every second of life itself and that I hadn't to worry about anything except to enjoy it.

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

I had an awakening into God consciousness and an awareness of inner divinity.

It was an awakening within and a oneness with absolute reality.

There was an awareness that love is the cement that binds life together.

I am Divine, we all are Divine. Consciousness is all there really is.

Mystical Experiencer:  Female in late fifties
Current location:  Canada
Age at time of experience:  21

I was visiting my boyfriend’s mother in Montreal while he was away up north working. An old friend of the family was staying there for the weekend. He was a man in his seventies who had studied the bible for fifty years or so. I wanted to talk to him because I disagreed with some of the teaching of the Catholic faith I was brought up in. Well we talked about love instead.

I can't remember much of the conversation except that he said that love was often a selfish emotion. We love others because they please us. They please our senses, something on those lines. After we talked for a while I started feeling uncomfortable, actually sick to my stomach. I excused myself and left the apartment and went for a walk.

As I was walking late at night I realized that all my life, I never really loved anyone; not even the man I was living with. I am the youngest child of a large family and was raised wanting for nothing. I was loved by everybody around me. Perhaps I was a bit spoiled. Anyway I grew up to be a lovee never a lover.

When I left my parents’ home to live on my own, I sometimes became very frustrated because they were not there to cater to my every whim. So I would become angry and tell God I hated my life and did not want to live anymore. Within a few seconds of thinking these thoughts, I would tell him that I did not mean it. Who knows, He might have actually zapped me dead. So I believe.

As I reached a city park, I sat down. I had such bad cramps in my stomach I could barely walk anymore. As I sat there in the dark, I talked to the God of my understanding at the time and told Him that if I was to live a life without ever experiencing what love was really about, then I did not want to live anymore. So I calmly waited in total surrender for God to take my life. This time I was not afraid of death. There was no fear at all.

Suddenly, the pain in my stomach vanished. Simultaneously my whole being was infused with love. It's like every cell in my body was filled with love. It was “mind blowing”. This incredible blessing was not only physical but also emotional, intellectual and spiritual.

It is very hard to write about because words seem to diminish somewhat the experience. The best way I can explain it, is by writing what it wasn't. It was not like the warmth in my heart that I experienced watching my infant son sleeping after I became a mother. Or the feeling of euphoria one can get after taking certain drugs. Or the feeling of peace and comfort I felt a few times sitting, reflecting in a beautiful church somewhere. Perhaps it was a close encounter with the Divine. I know it was!

I believe I was not “randomly chosen” to experience the event I just described (if that is actually possible), but that I was listened to and answered by “God” in the most unexpected and loving way possible. I have been and still am truly blessed. I have no recollection of what happened after the event. I don't remember leaving the park and going back to the apartment.

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in early fifties
Current location:  U.K.
Age at time of experience:  32

Deeply traumatised by a relationship ending, I had moved back to my parents' house to stay with them while I sorted out a place for myself. I went out for a walk to get away from their intrusive concern. I walked out of town, wanting solitude, along the cliffs. It was a fine sunny day, I was extremely engrossed by my problems and pain, only mechanically aware of my environment.

With no warning, my sense of self shifted from the isolated, disconnected, self-obsessed awareness that was then normal, to a rapidly increasing, hugely expanding inclusive consciousness. The most fitting description is enlightenment. A flood of light welled up from within, illuminating and expanding every particle of self. At the same time and as an obvious consequence, everything around me lit up too. The world shone. Living things most brightly, inorganic objects more muted, but all lit from within. And the light in me was the light in them.

Boundaries disappeared. All was one. And the one was so overwhelmingly beautiful and correct and true and perfect and inclusive and intimate that no part of it could possibly be seen as bad or wrong. All the pain, loneliness, depression was there, but accepted as a necessary and beautiful part of the necessary and beautiful whole.

The integration was total and obvious and right and good. The only verbal response I could muster was “Oh! I see!”, repeated over and over and over. How long the state lasted I can't say. Minutes only I imagine. It stopped as it started, a swift but smooth dimming of the light.

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in early sixties
Current location:  U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  61

My mother passed away on July 22nd.  I used to buy her a hanging flower basket every year for Mother’s Day and hang it on a hook near her entry door.  She lived by herself since my father passed away 11 years earlier and missed him dearly.

The last year or so she had started to get quite forgetful so when I would stop by her house I would reach up and touch the soil in the hanging basket to feel for moisture to check if she had remembered to water it.  Sometimes it would be dry so I would ask her if she remembered to water it and her answer would always be the same, “Oh yeah my mind isn’t that far gone yet” and I would say to her “well try to put twice as much water in it because it’s hot out and it’s awful thirsty.”  Then I would get some water and pour on it.

One of the last times I spoke with her before she passed, kind of out of the blue she asked me if I thought dad was still up there waiting for her.  I was kind of taken aback for a second then replied, “Of course he is, why do you say that?”  She replied “well it’s been a long time you know.”  I said “I don`t think time has anything to do with it.  He`s probably up there making a spot for all of us to be together again.”  She replied “I guess you’re right” and that was the end of that conversation.  She passed 2 days later.

I brought the plant home with me and hung it on an old wooden swing set frame I have out in my front yard about 75 feet out from the house. Also at her wake someone had sent a very nice set of chimes that sound like church bells and I hung them next to the flowers.  I would take an empty gallon milk jug out to water it most of the time, but one day in late August after a dry spell of several days, I decided to take my garden hose and pull it around my yard to water all my plants plus some new small evergreens I had planted in the spring.

Now this is where I had my religious experience.  As I was approaching the hanging planter, I noticed approximately 25 feet in front of me where there is a small opening in the tree line across the front of my yard where I drive my lawn tractor through to access another part of my property came a slight breeze.  I was thinking this was a bit strange for the wind to be coming from that direction and as I got closer to the planter the wind slowly got stronger and stronger at the same time the chimes started out slowly and got faster and faster and louder and louder. 

As I lifted the hose to the planter, I found myself gazing into a large portal of light with some rays emanating from around the edges of it. As I stood there gazing into this light, which I believe lasted about 15 seconds, I was basically taken over by the feeling of pure love, pure happiness, pure contentment and tranquility.  I was staring into a light that was pure white, more pure white than words can describe. I saw no figures, I heard no voices or music, just pure love. The only thought in me at the time was I knew mom was alright.

As the portal went away and I started realizing my surroundings again, the wind still blowing and chimes still ring loudly both started fading away and stopped.  I was still feeling very happy and the “mom’s alright” thought stayed with me for several more minutes.

At this point I wanted to run and tell everyone I saw what had just happened to me but then I realized people would not believe me, they would just think I was crazy or on drugs or just went bonkers or something.  I know what I experienced was real, in fact it was more than real. By that I mean no one could ever imagine what happened.  I don’t believe there are any words to describe it.

I know what I saw, I saw the entrance to eternity.  It’s the light we are told to go toward when we die.  It did not draw me toward it because it was not my turn to die, but when I do die, I know I will run toward it and summersault into it yelling “eee haa” all the way.

I don’t know why I was the one shone this, but I believe it had to do with my mother letting me know she was alright.  I like to feel as if I won the religious lottery.  It has changed my entire view on religion, life and death, why we are here, and many other things.  It has put many of the pieces of life’s puzzle together for me, making me one of the spiritually luckiest people alive.

I know I will never do anything the rest of my life to hamper, hinder or in any way prevent me from getting back to that light.  When I was first trying to figure out what happened, I googled asking if there were any support groups who had supernatural religious experiences and I found that they are called mystical religious experiences and that’s when I found Imere.

I can relate to some of the experiences written about on your website, so I know other people are telling their stories. I have told no one about mine but it would be wrong if I took it to my grave without it being told.  Here it is.  Do with it what you think would do the most good, but I would like to remain anonymous.

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

I had a series of episodes as a young child, two that I still remember distinctly, maybe perhaps pre-school through third or fourth grade; I would be lying in the summer grass, daydreaming, and would be suddenly "pulled out of myself". Not a classic out-of-body experience looking down on myself. Rather a feeling of being one and the same with everything. No difference between myself, the grass, the trees, the clouds and the sky, no sense of "I" or "self", accompanied by an ecstatic feeling of joy. The episodes lasted only a couple or a few seconds, and then I would be pulled back in and be me again.

Then I stopped having the episodes, until at age nineteen or twenty, I was on my ship in the navy on the weather deck looking out at the night sky over the Pacific Ocean. We were running "darken ship" which meant that all our exterior and running lights were off. The sky was full of the stars and the Milky Way. There were no other ships on the horizon, so there was no ambient light to spoil the show. Most brilliant night sky I have ever seen. I had just finished a long philosophical bull session with a couple of shipmates and I suddenly had the "everything is one" experience just as when I was a child. That was the last time.

Mystical Experiencer:  Female in late thirties
Current location:  U.S.A
Age at time of experience:  34

I was at the end of a five mile run, when I looked up at the trees. The wind started to blow the leaves. I thought they were fascinating, the way they blew in unison. I started to feel myself move with the trees. It felt as though I was becoming the leaves. I then started to feel as though I was becoming a part of everything. This feeling was very overwhelming and I had to stop running.

I walked towards my driveway slowly in amazement. I felt as though I was as large as the Universe yet I could still feel myself contained in my body. I could feel myself as a molecule. As bizarre as it was it also was strangely normal. I wasn't frightened at all. I remember tears streaming down my face as I looked around me. The colors were more vivid. Everything seemed brighter.

This whole experience didn't last longer than a minute but it felt much longer. It stopped suddenly, and everything dimmed a little. The colors became much duller. I walked into my home and made dinner like nothing happened. I had no idea what had happened or that this was considered a mystical experience. I had no prior research on the subject and knew no-one that had experienced anything similar.

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in mid-forties
Current location:  Australia
Age at time of experience:  44

While driving around 8:00am on a Winter Saturday I thought of the words “facsimile lives”.

I was cynically judging the owner of a 4wd vehicle towing a boat at a set of traffic lights on the cross street. I thought this might be a good theme for some cynically judgmental song lyrics.

This led me to realise I had been living my life according to some blueprint of what was a correct life, experiencing more or less but nevertheless ubiquitous disappointment as actual events or behaviour departed from this self-developed expectation.

I perceived this life blueprint was created from a collage of influence of others. The life I lived was only a disappointing facsimile of this expectation.

It occurred to me that logically the probability of moment to moment existence conforming to any future expectation was infinitesimal. Life was not inherently dissatisfying. Expectation created dissatisfaction. I felt as if a momentous event was imminent.

I then considered other lyrics I had written and how they were directed at the “outside” world. I realised that these lyrics had always been an attempt by a deeper consciousness to communicate with my ego self, about my ego self.

I then lost all thought and heartily laughed for about 10 minutes (still driving great but I wasn't doing the driving or anything else). The unnamed consciousness had been kindly amused by my ego all along! My entire body felt vital and “electric”, centred around the top of my head.

Everything I perceived was vastly and indescribably vibrant and dynamic. It was as if I was awake for the first time as a new born child. While I continued down the highway I was completely within the present but also had the experience of timelessness.

I experienced no separation between myself and the “outside” world and was at one with all.

The purity of this Paradise state lasted for around a week. Many people I passed by noticed me by smiling spontaneously or reacted in some positive way. By my observation people I had known were perplexed by my joyous equanimity.

In time I felt I needed to withdraw from this state to fulfil “earthly” commitments to my children. It was an effort. In the process I re-attached to my thought and emotions and re-entered what I might describe “time-stream”.

This was not a drug induced experience. I had never heard of DMT or Ayahuasca at that time and I have never taken either.

Over the next few months I experienced a bodily health “supercharge”. Now I rarely experience illness despite suffering through several cold like illnesses each year prior.

I have no fear of death while at the same time I value life like never before.