Archives: Submitted Stories

Mystical Experiencer:  Female in early sixties
Current Location:  Canada
Age at time of experience:  38

I heard an inner voice asking me to sit up and meditate which I did. I found myself standing before an infinite presence. Please note that I was not experiencing myself as infinite (although I have had glimpses of this)…quite the contrary. Relative to this presence, I experienced myself as infinitely small. Prior to this, I had had ongoing experiences of inner voice speaking to me but it had always been like the whisper of my own thoughts…a simple distinction between thinking a thought and receiving a thought. Of course, such subtlety was a good basis for me to doubt much of what I heard…at the very best I didn't reject or accept anything I heard…just allowed it to be until time could verify the information one way or another.

This time (and only this time) it was very different. The presence spoke to me in a deep, very loud, booming voice (all within me…I did not perceive the experience as outside of myself). I understood that this was so that there could be no doubt in my mind that I was being spoken to and who it was that was speaking. I understood that I was standing before God. When I say presence, there was no shape or form to this presence…just something that I felt. I don't remember everything that was said. I was told how much I am loved and the expressed joy that I had returned to (Him)*.

The words were not what was important…I was being told that which I needed to hear at that point in my personal spiritual journey. What was important, was what I was learning from the contrast between my experience of the infinite and unconditional love that I was receiving from the presence and my own limited ability as a human being to emulate that love…i.e., the boundaries within my heart due to the painful experiences I had had throughout my life. This was the initiation of a very long inner journey that didn't have a clear ending (in some ways I am still living out/incorporating/transforming according to the changes that were initiated during that time 22 years later) but it seems I was in a very unusual altered state of consciousness for a three-year period before I started the slow progressive journey back to 'normal'.

*Although I experienced this presence as male, I hesitate to use male pronouns because I know that my experience was that which I needed at that time of my life. God, as I understand it, is not just masculine but encompasses the feminine as well.

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in mid-fifties
Current Location:  Australia
Age at time of experience:  40

Before my mystical experience (ME) I had been socially isolated and psychologically dependent on alcohol for a long time. Late at night after a long Saturday of lone chronic drinking in bars I was walking unsteadily home and suddenly became aware that I did not have my keys with me anymore – lost through a hole in my pocket, which meant I was locked out of my flat until Monday morning. This significant problem on top of pre-existing chronic psychological fragility dropped me into a state of extreme acute despair, and I didn't care whether I continued to live any more.

I lied down on the ground and became serene in correspondence with this detachment from the will to live. As I settled towards sleep I consciously recognized that it genuinely meant nothing to me if someone kicked me to death for my wallet. This is where things became wonderfully strange. I was re-stimulated to wakefulness by a rising sensation of internal power which reached a level of almost overwhelming joy, peace and positive psychic energy. With it came an unambiguous sense that everything in reality is absolute perfection.

After some time (moments?) I consciously framed the question "What's going on?" This moment corresponded to a retrospective recognition that my ego boundary had temporarily dissolved (a reaction to acute despair?). As the experience attenuated back down to "normal" reality, a voice spoke: "Try your pocket again". I did so and immediately found the keys that I was convinced were lost. I made it home to sleep for what was left of the night.

It is very significant that the voice communicated objective real information – without this element I could conceivably write off the experience as a highly unusual manifestation of mere neurological dysfunction. It was also not a simple direct outcome of being drunk – I've been drunk probably a couple of thousand times, but this experience was as different from drunkenness as any experience can possibly be.

The experience has so far been a one-off – nothing remotely similar since. My immediate analysis of the experience was to reject atheism, and immediately following that I considered that I could not seriously do science anymore (at the time I was employed in university biological science research). It's not that I think science is invalid – it's more that the typical problems science addresses have become less compelling to me. I have subsequently engineered myself into a different and more satisfying career path.

A sense of well-being persisted for weeks after the experience, and my compulsion to drink was absent over this subsequent period. However, a stressful circumstance caused me to drink again and I was back to my old habit. But this time, drinking was completely hopeless like never before and the consequences reached a sudden new low of appalling which drove me into an AA meeting. I have been free of alcohol ever since (nearly 14 years) and I have met and married my soul-mate (now married for nearly 10 years). There is no more social isolation. The experience marked a distinct positive turning point in the course of my subsequent life.

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in late sixties 
Current Location:  U.S.A.  
Age at time of experience:  28

I was dancing and chanting (in Sanskrit) at Swami Muktananda's ashram in Ganeshpuri, India. It was late at night in 1971 when there were only a dozen or so Westerners staying at the ashram. I was there for a week or so. (Although this next part may have occurred the night before or after my primary experience, it is well worth mentioning.) I left the main shrine to urinate, then came back in the dark. I stumbled upon a smiling Muktananda peeking through a small window or view slot at the dancers. We briefly looked at one another, with mutual smiles, as I passed.

Once inside I resumed the whirling dancing and exuberant chanting of Om (and some other mantras). At some point, my heart simply filled with love and warmth and universal goodwill. How could one not love everybody and everything since there was no separation between one's self, other selves, and the Self itself? I saw the scene like a Pointalist painting with all the matter being interconnected atoms or tiny points of light. There simply was NO DIVISION at all between me and everything that I viewed.

I'm sure that this way of seeing would have extended endlessly in all directions if I had walked outside to see the stars or other people. All the stories of past mystics made more sense as I experienced what they so often poetically yet inadequately described. Where was fear or death when there was only a total one-ness? I felt that the world truly is a stage on which we as disguised incarnations of God play out our parts for sheer enjoyment, regardless of external circumstances.

Mystical Experiencer:  Female in late seventies
Current Location:  U.S.A.  
Age at time of experience: 32

I had been in a sort of mental turmoil for a period of time. I had considered myself an atheist for several years and now was trying to find something that might fill in what seemed to be an emptiness in my life. I had just determined that I had drinking problem and was in the process of overcoming it. At the time I was at home alone, mid-day, lying on a couch, reading from two books intermittently. The New Testament (King James) and The Will To Power (Friedrich Nietzsche). I did not seem to be getting anywhere, so stopped reading and did some thinking.

I had read somewhere that making the mind blank would help steady the thinking process, so decided to give it a try. In order to accomplish that, I had also read that by imagining I was standing in front of a huge billboard that was painted white with nothing else on it and my entire field of vision was filled with the whiteness, that by concentrating on the blankness of the billboard I could shut out all thought. It did just that. For what now seems to have been only a moment I was aware of nothing except a blank whiteness. The next thing I was aware of was being surrounded by darkness and a coolness and at some distance away there was a white light (not bright). The light seemed to be attractive, in that I wanted to get closer to it. Then I seemed to be moving toward the light, just slowly.

As I approached the light, I could see that it was coming from what appeared to be the top half of a Dutch door, shining down onto the ground or floor in front of me. I could feel a strong urge to enter the light and started to do so. There seemed to be a barrier of some sort in my way and I had to use some force to overcome it. This is where the experience really takes place. Once in the light I was only aware of what seemed to be total knowledge, total perfection, total peace, all that is, all that was, all that will be. Absolute beauty, absolute contentment. (All of that rolled into one and that still does not come close to describing what it was like.)

All the while there was no sense of myself being anything apart from the whole, only that there was one complete reality and I was part of it (the drop of water in the sea analogy.). Then, from somewhere, the thought that I must get back came. Instantly I was back at myself in my room. I was somewhat shaken to say the least. I had no idea what had just happened and did not find out for several years. I was in a state of awe. I felt that I had just seen beyond life into another world and felt that I would never fear death.

I felt compelled to go outside the house into the warm summer day. I did so and walking barefoot in the grass, feeling the sun on my arms and the warm air and wind in my face could feel a kind of reconnection with nature, actually feel the air in my lungs sparkle and the sunshine tingle on my skin, could feel life in nature. I wanted to tell people about this experience but after thinking about it decided it would be best not to since I did not know just what I had seen or did and what others might think of me. I still don't feel easy talking to anyone about it.

From what information I have gathered over the years (since Google came to life) I have no doubt that mine was a genuine mystical experience. It fits with Walter Stace's and William James' descriptions. (And my life did turn for the better, not instantly but surely.)

Mystical Experiencer: Male in mid-seventies
Current Location: Singapore
Age at time of experience:  38

I injected 2 vials of adrenalin IV in front of my wife, as I found out she was having an affair with a friend. The moment I injected myself with the drug prior to losing consciousness, there was a strong feeling of regret.Immediately after I injected the drug, I lost the waking consciousness, but it was replaced by an awareness of extreme bliss and peace associated with a sense of consciousness that there was no "I".There was just pure awareness of the bliss and peace.There were no thoughts also.In the experience, there appeared that there was nothing apart from this consciousness of peace and bliss.There was nobody experiencing this bliss.This state lasted I think about 5-10 mins. I was about 38 years old then.

About a few years later,I practiced a relaxation exercise where my body was completely relaxed.I then prayed to God that if he could let me have the same experience again so that I know that it was not caused by the drugs and my mental state. I was resting on my patient’s couch during lunch break when there was nobody in the room. I was lying down and then I suddenly had the same experience as I had before.It also lasted for a few minutes. After the experience, I became obsessed about reading spiritual books of all the religions, particularly the mystics. I then found that when I read the gospel of Ramakrishna and Ramana Maharishi,their experience seemed to be identical to mine. I started meditating since, but the awareness of this bliss and peace has not come back even after meditating for 30 yrs. All the spiritual books I have read, particularly from the mystics, seem to suggest I had spontaneous Nirvikalpa Samadhi.

Mystical Experiencer:  Male under 20 years of age
Current Location:  U.S.A.  
Age at time of experience: 16

I was at my friend’s house and it was a new environment. There were all new people there and still to this day I do not know their names. We all were hanging out listening to music. Everyone was on chairs around in a circle, but I was sitting on a mattress that was off to the side on the floor a little bit. A song comes on that I have never heard before and while I was listening to it, the lyrics in the song made a connection within my own mind. Everything clicked and it was like I could start to feel the wheels in my brain start to actually work. Immediately my vision started to change. Things were getting brighter but there seemed to be a pattern. Kind of like the matrix. But as the brighter and brighter things got, at one point I “blasted” off in a sense.

All my energy and my mind got pulled out of my body. There was a great intense pull from the center of my chest and it felt as if something else was holding me up in place. My body was the last thing on my mind. I couldn’t even understand what was happening. It was too bright for my eyes to really see, but yet I knew where I was and what I was feeling. During this experience, within the slight second it happened, three thoughts stuck in my head while coming back to my body…"You’re ready, the time is now, you are going to take care of everyone you will ever love…" Little did I know I’d grow to love the world. Out of pure beauty I would not stop crying for several hours. I would try to calm down and tell [a friend] what was happening but as soon as I thought about it again I would burst out crying like a little innocent child. I could not stop.

This was the first and most intense experience I have ever had in my entire life. The result of this experience changed my whole life. From the type of person I was to who I am now, I can only thank that experience for changing me. Before this I only cared about making my image to fit the way other people wanted it to. But now I knew who I was. I looked at the world not with closed eyes but rather with eyes of love and compassion. I knew there was something more to live for and if I ever wanted to feel the way I felt again it was not going to be from any type of negativity. So after all of this, I only strive to help and advance the lives of everyone around me….This experience validated that there is something beyond us and whatever it is. It is something pure and magnificent.