Archives: Submitted Stories

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in early sixties
Current location: U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  45

I had taken up meditation in hopes that I could learn to control my thoughts better while golfing. I am prone to the yips while putting. So, I thought some meditation may help me quiet the destructive thoughts.

After maybe 6 months or so of meditation, I was finding it to be very interesting. It didn’t help my golf game, but I was intrigued by where it led me. Then, one day I was just sitting in my usual spot on the floor focusing on my breath and setting aside any thoughts that drifted into my mind when all of a sudden everything changed.

There was a frequency I could hear in my head, maybe 300hz or around there. Everything became alive. I don’t remember if my eyes were open or closed, but I could see things near me and I sensed that they were alive. I mean tables, chairs, the air, everything… I don’t mean that they were moving or anything it’s just that I could sense them as alive, or conscious if you’d rather.

I sensed at the moment that this is the true nature of reality. Me and everything were all the same. I believed that it was the truest thing I had ever encountered in my life. I was excited, I didn’t want it to end. It slowly started subsiding. As it did, I was bummed out.

The first thought that crossed my mind was the world looks so dead to me now. I want the other thing back. It brought life to everything. I never told anyone about it. I didn’t know how to describe it and if I did try, I would fail because there are no words. I’ve spent many nights thinking about how can I describe it to anyone.

I think of myself before this experience. We’ve all heard the “We are all one” thing…blah blah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we’re all one, but it doesn’t mean anything to anyone who hasn’t been through an experience like this. And you can’t blame them. It’s utterly just words. There’s nothing in their life experience that can make them understand.

I thought to tell someone to imagine that you’ve been seeing in black and white your entire life and for 1 minute somehow color gets turned on. Then, afterwards, try and describe to another person who also has only seen black and white what green is. That’s how I feel trying to describe my experience.

Mystical Experiencer:  Female in mid-fifties
Current location: U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  54

I almost always have some sort of “ feelings” when I drive the stretch of highway I was on – I do have a special affinity to it – love the rolling green hills contrasted with the turbines. This time I was listening to music (Pink Floyd maybe?) and had feelings that are so difficult to describe…

It was as if I was on the verge of reaching a perfect moment in my life with everything balanced, and true, and pure, and free, and it was ecstasy without the tension. Just pure light and everything that was anything. It was so direct and pure and now included me just for a moment… and then it was gone.

I broke out in tears afterwards…. I don’t know why…

Mystical Experiencer:  Female in early sixties
Current location: U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  16

This experience was so profound that 45 years later I’m able to still recall the experience.  I was a typical 16-year-old.  Had spent a lot of time prior in churches singing and playing bells.

I recall that my friends and I used to like to take some acid and go to concerts.  We had done this earlier and I was home in my living room sitting quietly on my couch most likely listening to music.  Then, out of nowhere, a presence of love and light entered my body and told me not to worry about the future because I was going to heaven.  I felt heaven for a bit.  Not sure how long.  I was bathed in a blanket of the most amazing love you can ever imagine.

It was a beautiful experience and my best friend came over shortly after and I was wide-eyed telling her what had happened to me.  We are still friends and she brings it up once in a while still to this day.  I have lived a wonderful life and am now at 61 undertaking a spiritual awakening quest.  I’m very close.  I meditate and am on a continual search for the truth.

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

My partner and I had been lying in bed one evening reading an assigned article on terror management theory, which, if I remember correctly, posits that we create cultural signifiers, traditions, etc., to manage fear of our eventual death. It was argued that many motivations are reducible to death anxiety, particularly wanting to literally or figuratively live on.

I loved the article and thought it made a ton of sense. I thought about my own motivations and asked my partner her own. We reduced her career goal motivations to death anxiety. We simultaneously felt a surge of panic.

I’d been growing increasingly curious about DMT at the time (still haven’t tried it), and remembered reading that at the threshold of ego dissolution (the “breakthrough” experience), the tripper will feel terrified and try to clutch to a sense of self, but if (s)he lets go, the trip will give way to bliss. I told this to my partner, and said, “should we try to give into it?”; she said sure, and, once we surrendered to the panic, it did give way to the most beautiful feeling of oneness with an undivided, connected-to-all-things light.

All the muscular tension and nerve twitches I typically feel completely dissipated, and my body felt 100% comfortable. I’m also an extremely anxious person and my anxiety subsided entirely. My partner was likewise completely “blissed out.”

I had been agnostic with atheistic leanings prior to this experience, but it changed my worldview at that moment and this feeling – that upon death we’ll return to “The Source” – persists. My partner has soberly had this sort of mystical experience since she was young (the first time at around age 10), but was amazed because she’d never felt it with another person.

After what felt like about 10-15 minutes, it abated, and I tried so hard to get it back through pure awareness meditations and mindfulness exercises, but it hasn’t returned.

Mystical Experiencer:  Female in her mid-fifties
Current location: U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  34

I had finished a workday and picked up my two youngest children (ages three and seven months) from daycare. We were driving home. I was completely “vegged out,” driving a familiar route and thinking no particular detailed thoughts.

My current life situation was overwhelming—full-time job, five children, miserable marriage. I meditated when time allowed, which was not on a regular, disciplined basis. I was driving across the bridge that crosses the main channel of the Tennessee River in Lake Guntersville.

As I reached the highest point on the bridge, a voice from within me and around me and throughout me said, “Everything will be okay.”  At that moment, everything fell into place and made sense. I felt at one with everything and I was aware that I knew all of the answers to everything. Everything mattered and nothing mattered. Complete peace. Complete understanding.

I thought, “Oh, shit, we’re about to go off the bridge and die.” I equated that feeling with how I imagined an end-of-life experience would manifest. I was changed by that event in a way that I did not consciously undertake. The inner workings of my body—chemical? cellular?—shifted.

Mystical Experiencer:  Female in mid-sixties
Current location: U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  18

I was alone in a studio apartment that I was staying in temporarily as the tenant who was a friend was out of town. I wanted the opportunity to get away from my house where I was living with my mother and sisters. However, I had never lived anywhere outside of my family home and I had never been alone (without sisters, parents, friends) in a house overnight. (I was 17 or possibly about to turn 18).

I was surprised by the yawning, even gaping, mouth of time that opened in front of me without a parent telling me what to do or without a sister bothering me or a friend to talk to. I realized I could stay in bed and not get up and no one would notice. I could eat or not eat. Leave the house or not. Do homework or not. I was conscious that I was alone in the universe.

It was late morning, I believe, and I had just laid across the bed (sort of in savasana) and was contemplating this feeling of myself as completely alone. I had never meditated, but now, having meditated quite a bit, I realized upon reflection that I was perhaps moving into a meditative state because I had stilled my mind and was opening myself. I was relaxed and detached.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, I dissolved and had no sense of myself as a body. I had become the bed, the apartment—I was dissolved into the universe. I was aware only of becoming everything and everyone—I was expansive and whole. In this state, I could see I was not alone but was, in fact, a part of everything and everyone and that there was no separation.

I could feel the deep loving connectedness of all things and realized I was joining God or God consciousness or something. I knew everything as a gestalt. That I was a part of all things – everyone, everything, all of reality – and that there was no division. It felt like Love.

I can only say that I “understood,” and this experience informed my soul or me in a way that gave me a wisdom that has always grounded me. I believe I experienced God consciousness or I experienced myself as a spirit/soul.

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in early sixties
Current location:  U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  59

A year ago, in February, I was sitting on my back porch trying to figure out my life, when I suddenly realized my shoulders that had hurt for 50 years weren’t hurting.  That in itself floored me…

When I looked around, I realized that the sky seemed to be on fire, and I felt more love and peace than I ever felt.

It’s hard to explain… But I KNEW it was God…. And He wasn’t out there – well, He was – but He was IN me… Or WAS me… and I was him…. And I WAS peace, and love and joy… I’m not sure how long it lasted, but I wanted it to go on forever…. I’m still not sure how long it lasted… A minute?  Ten minutes?  There was no time.  There was no world… There was just GOD. Or me…. Or God IN me.

Mystical Experiencer:  Male in late seventies
Current location: U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  9

Finishing lunch in the school cafeteria, suddenly life (consciousness) expanded in a feeling never before experienced, where everything was alright – no issues to deal with, a knowing that is indescribable, blissful, a perfect state of mind, nothing to be concerned about, wanting to stay in that state forever.

I can’t think of anything I had done to get there.  It was very transient, gone in less than 3-4 minutes – immediately wishing I could recapture it.

Did not experience “God” or any aspect of the divine, just a perfect state of consciousness.

Mystical Experiencer:  Female in late fifties
Current location:  United Kingdom
Age at time of experience:  37

I had a few mystical experiences; I cannot say that the one I now recall was the more significant since I believe they all were. The one I speak about here is the one that is different from all the others.

I was in my apartment in Rome. It was a sunny day and I had just finished washing the dishes after having lunch. I went from the kitchen to another room, and, at a certain moment, I ‘entered into time’.  There I felt eternal and experienced a joy I only experienced when I had mystical experiences.

I remember I felt fearful of losing that experience and as soon as I felt fearful, I came out of it and I was in the “normal reality” again.

Mystical Experiencer:  Female in late fifties
Current location: U.S.A.
Age at time of experience:  38

I was hiking in Alamo Canyon to a significant cultural landmark in Bandelier National Monument. A friend and I left the canyon when the sun was rising, so it was still cool. Being July in NM, it would get scorching hot mid-afternoon.

We each brought 3 liters of water and set out for Stone Lions, which was 13 miles from the cultural center of Bandelier. We walked up and down the canyons along scenic trails that were breathtaking. The sky was cobalt blue and clear.

We stopped for lunch about 5 hours into the hike and then sat and took in the surroundings. We were, at that point in the hike, tired and had talked ourselves out over the past few hours. We continued on the hike and it was 2 pm when we got to our destination. At that point, we each only had 1 bottle of water left.

I decided we needed to turn right around and go back because it was going to be dark on the last leg if we weren’t quicker on the walk back. As I understand it now, most people camp when they get to the Stone Lions; we had only planned to walk there and back.

At the 4-hour mark on the way back, I ran out of water and it was at the hottest part of the day. I remember being at a point where nothing hurt anymore. In fact, everything felt really good. Like I was injected with painkillers. And I was looking at the oak shrubs and liking the shapes of the leaves that we passed.

And as we made our way up a small hill, I looked up into the trees and marveled at how green they were. Then, the next moment, I noticed not only were they green, but they were also an amazing color of green. The leaves seemed to disintegrate on a molecular level, and I followed the molecules into the sky.

The world around me was that green color and I seemed to float up above our walking bodies and I watched us continue in our physical form, as I was in great pain. But I suddenly understood my place in the universe. I understood what everything meant and that all that I’d been looking for was that we are all connected. That’s all that mattered – our connection.

I felt my breath was going into the universe as my friend was breathing in my air. I saw the molecules of everything around me and how the molecules all around me mixed with mine. I was one with the world and the stars around the planet.  This feeling lasted for another 6 months. It was how I shaped my world view after that.

It eventually faltered and left, but I still remember the experience. I’ve been chasing the feeling ever since. I had it once more during a meditation retreat later on. The experience made me understand what my place was in the universe is and what the ultimate reality is. I experienced the infinite and what the life force that holds everything together is.