Archives: Submitted Stories

Mystical Experiencer:  Female in early seventies
Current location:  Canada
Age at time of experience:  29

I had purchased a book about Swami Muktananda's visit to Australia.  There was a black and white photo of him on the flyleaf.  I was about to start reading the book and had it opened to the first page.  I was chatting with my husband and happened to glance down at the photo.  The eyes in the photo had come to life and were looking straight into mine.   I heard the words, "I love you" 3 times.  I was filled with feelings of love and bliss and told my husband what was happening.  Later I went to bed and woke up during the night aware that Muktananda's presence was in the room.  He talked with me all night and told me how my life would unfold.  He then said I would forget it all and remember it as needed.   

For the next 3 days I felt at one with everyone and everything around me.  I felt absolute equality with every other human and great love for all.  I had visions, especially when I was in the shower.  It all felt most delightful, and I shared the details with my husband.  On the morning of the 4th day I awoke to find that my normal state of consciousness had returned but I have felt driven to recapture those 3 days of oneness.

Later I visited the ashram of Swami Muktananda and learned that there was a name for my experience called Shaktipat.  I attended an Intensive and had an even more profound experience of kundalini awakening.  I am now 71 and teach courses on mysticism and meditation.  I have small mystical experiences almost daily.  I have become a Roman Catholic and feel very supported by the church.

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in early sixties
Current location:  U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  42

One of the most precious mystical experiences is when I experienced what some people call an over shadowing of grace.  During this experience I ate no food for 40 days and 40 nights and seven hours.  An old fellow had prayed for me in his home and the next morning when I woke up I immediately KNEW I was being empowered to fast and pray for 40 days and nights.  This fasting experience was NOT my choosing or plan.  I knew the spirit was "fasting me”.  It is known as a "chosen fast", and the rarest of all, lasting forty days.  This happened when I was 42 years old.  I had been seeking "the mind of Christ" for 20 years by then.  In the years following this "over shadowing" I have experienced continuous expansions of consciousness.

Even greater than being "set apart for the fast" is a mystical experience I had on December 18th in the year 2013.  For five years I had been impassioned (energized) and totally focused (directed) to meditate on the Humility and Meekness found in the mind and heart of the Mysterious Jesus Christ.  For hours every day for a period of five years I was totally aware of the breath coming in and going out of my body.  And with every breath I would say in my mind’s voice, "I eat the bread of humility".  When the breath entered my body I would say, "I eat the bread", and when the breath left the body I would say, of humility.  The other "Breath Prayer" was just simply one word, "Meekness".  I said these breath mantra "prayers" approximately 3,000,000 times each during the five year period.  I have been a "conscious breather" since the age of 21.

On December 18, 2013 I was sitting outside in the back yard and "all of a sudden" my natural mind vanished…absolutely no thoughts were in my mind.  Only "the great silence within" which I had read about off and on for decades.  It was revealed to me that the Humility in the mind of Christ is incorruptible (as human humility is) and the humility in the "mind of Christ" brings the natural mind to total silence.  Every thought is held captive by the power of Christ Consciousness.  Within this Great Silence within is a wondrous joy, happiness and actual pleasure. 

In this same moment my emotional body was brought to total Stillness (be still and know that I am God).  It was revealed to me that the power of "meekness in Christ" brings the emotions to TOTAL STILLNESS WITHIN which also had a wondrous pleasure in the soul.  And now I can enter this state of "silence and stillness within" at will.  It is wonderful and beyond description.  And many "Supernatural Experiences" have followed this Silence and Stillness within.  Experience began 2 years and four months ago.  I am aware that I am now totally detached to all things and experiences.  I am experiencing what is known as "Observing all things and being totally detached to all things".

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in early forties
Current location:  Croatia
Age at time of experience:  36

Very hard to put it into words…deep understanding of reality, people, all living beings…seeing it all from a broader, greater perspective…understanding deep, deep beauty of all beings and great love for all no matter how they are good or bad, realising that our problems, worries, fightings, careers, backstabbings are sooo…insignificant.  We all are beautiful in the eyes of him, God…even the most bad and dishonest among us (this realization surprises me most in some way).  Deep pleasure, beautiful feeling.  Sounds like a very lacking description now when I read it :-).  Of physical sensations, I was feeling some kind of pressure (not a bad kind) in my lungs.  And in some moments I realized flowing tears…

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in early fifties
Current location:  U.S.A
Age at time of experience:  47

While in a hypnotic mind state, the lessons from "A Course in Miracles” were being said using a CD recording.  I was sitting in a meditation chair and the walls of reality fell down so I could experience the reality behind reality.  While I was in the trance and the CD was playing in the background, my mind let go of who I was, and an opening happened "above" me but I really couldn't tell which way was up and which way was down.  I viewed the world from 360 degrees as if my consciousness was spread out all over at once.  Time and space dissolved and I realized that I was nothing but pure joy, peace.  I could not tell what was going on in the room where my body was and wasn't interested anymore.  The feeling was like the top of my head from my eyebrows to the top of my neck was gone and I was pouring out into eternity… impossible to put into words.  I had been meditating like this for years but the use of "A Course in Miracles" seemed to make a difference. 

My body was sitting in the room but I could not know it, and didn't want to come back to it.  I was no longer I but more like everything all at the same time.  After that experience I noticed how people "think" is based on a false sense of self that is created by memories, and that memories are the greatest limitation of humanity.  It is all a notion of thought itself and the world is bent in the direction of perspective to such a degree that what each individual experiences is an illusion of mind bending events according to past experience. 

The darkness of the world is one consciousness that moves perspective according to the latent fears of the individual.  Guilt mostly, but fear causes the mind to create walls of reality, like a tunnel that mind moves through.  Beyond that my own experience of reality changed for a while, but it was as if the darkness knew that I had breached its walls and used the blind to "chase me down" and keep me from going back to that mind state.  Humankind is being led to think in a way that causes suffering for some unknown reason.  I think the darkness feeds off of negative emotions and requires humans to feel fear based emotional responses in order to stay alive.  I can no longer sit in meditation without being interrupted by outside forces.

Mystical Experiencer:  Female in mid-thirties
Current location:  Ireland
Age at time of experience:  29

My experience was the most formative of my life.  During a meditation class we were asked to set an intention.  Mine was to find peace of mind.  At this time in my life, I was working a hectic PR job, consumed with the material.  I had no idea I was miserable or unhappy.  Within two weeks, I had a very bad fall off my bike.  Right outside my house I fell.  I required emergency surgery, plates and pins to fix a smashed elbow.  I was instructed to take at least two months off work. 

During this time I self-reflected, read spiritual literature and continued to meditate.  I also visited family in France.  One afternoon on that holiday, just having read another chapter of Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth under the sun, I felt as though I was swept up into the eternity of everything.  It was as if I had downloaded all of the secrets of the universe.  I was the universe and everything including my individual self was formless, timeless, eternal.  It was pure light.  Everything was love.  I have no idea how long I was in this state for.  But it was as if I had downloaded all of the secrets of the whole world since before time began, and totally forgotten them when I became conscious of my individual self again. 

Very shortly after I came to, three eagles a few meters up circled around my head for a few moments.  Then, the sky swirled (it had been bright blue with the afternoon's summer sun) black.  There was just this powerful swirling.  I was in awe.  Not afraid as such, but overwhelmed.  Then some sort of light appeared within that.  I just had this sense of magnitude.  Of total awesomeness.  Of clarity in a sense, even though I had no idea what was happening.

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in early sixties
Current location:  U.S.A.  
Age at time of experience:  63

It was for me, mind-blowing as they say.  My view of reality expanded to a whole new reality.  I came to some conclusions that I could not argue with:  1:  What I was experiencing could NOT have been just coming out of my own brain.  It could NOT have *just* been neurons firing because of the plant medicine I consumed.  2:  This alternate reality exists all the time everywhere.  It's tuned out when I'm in a "normal" waking state.  3: There are non-physical beings in that space.  4: My own consciousness experiences "normal" reality through my senses and brain, but it doesn't exist there. 

In another experience, at a different time, I felt, through my whole being, love and compassion from and within the people in the room.  I also felt darkness, sorrow, pain from them at times.  What was really significant was that my recollection of being in that space did not just fade away like a dream when the medicine softened.  I came away with a clear, positive recollection of the experience.  It has changed my view of just about everything.  The day-to-day world is much the same, but my understanding of what it means, and what it’s about has changed.  Now I have to integrate my awakening into my daily life.

Mystical experiencer: Female in mid-fifties
Current Location: Canada
Age at time of experience: 25

There was a quantum shift in where I was centered. "I am the I that everyone else's 'I' is." I was the eagle flying down the valley; I was the tree, the mountains, the river. I didn't know why I was in this body rather than any other that I also was. I had read scriptures and heard gurus speak. I realized that, oh, this is what they're talking about. It felt very natural.

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in mid-eighties
Current Location:  U.S.A.  
Age at time of experience:  76

My friend and I were enjoying a beautiful walk in familiar woods with perfect weather: sunny and warm. I am bisexual (or osmotic!) He is straight. We love each other very much, even with no sexual content. I stopped us for a moment to concentrate more on what he was saying. While looking at him I became overwhelmed by how powerful my love felt for him and then it became not that I felt love, but that I was love and a part of the divine mystery – which to me is love. It felt like the ultimate truth and oneness of existence. Transcendent. Overpoweringly beautiful. The answer to the nature of life after our incarnate lives.

My greatest understanding/knowledge from the experience is that all is one. We are each part of the divine mystery. We shall achieve unity with the one in the afterlife. The one/divine mystery is LOVE.

Mystical Experiencer:  Female in mid-fifties
Current Location:  U.S.A.  
Age at time of experience:  41

I had been doing Vipassana meditation for 3 days. I experienced myself as light and one with everything and everybody. What was especially significant to me was the overwhelming power of the energy of the light and the fact that it would be hard to sustain such energy in human form. My greatest understanding from the experience is “All is One.”

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in mid-sixties
Current Location:  Canada
Age at time of experience:  61

The first sensation I remember is a feeling that the top of my head had opened up somehow and my mind had quite suddenly become as big as the entire sky. While feeling this sensation, I was looking at distant houses but I knew that I was actually seeing myself.

There were no voices, just a knowing-ness. If I were to put this knowing-ness into words, it would sound something like this: "I am having a very local look at myself through these two eyes." What I realized afterward was that I knew I was looking at myself not just when I saw the houses, but also when I saw the pavement, the telephone poles, the cars, and everything else. But during the experience, these separate items did not have the characteristic of being separate.

I would compare it to looking at yourself in the mirror. When you look at your own face, you don't take notice of the fact that it is made up of eyes, nose, mouth, eyebrows, etc., unless you have a reason to pay attention to particular details. Normally, you just see one whole which you recognize as your face. Similarly, during my experience, all the houses, pavement, cars, etc. lost their differentiation and simply made up a whole which I knew was myself. There was an accompanying feeling of exhilaration, but I would not call it ecstatic. It would be better to call it a profound love.