It presented itself as a feeling, accompanied with a feeling of knowing, if that makes sense. It is not actual knowing, ( and how would there?) just a feeling of knowing. That is why, I think, asking someone to explain or prove their their religious or mystic conviction is a very frustrating and fruitless experience, for all involved.
As for what I experienced, I looked on the web yesterday to see if anyone had written my experience down better then I could have done. I found this short pieceby Alan Watts, a philosopher and priest. He also writes in a way that would not have pinged my own Woo-Annoyance-Sensor too much if I had read it before my own experience.
He boils down the psychedelic experience to four (psychological) elements. I’ll quote him in short. (Watts also does a good job, at the end of the piece, to explain why this kind of experience meshes better with Eastern religions then it does with the Western ones, although even Western religions have their own mystic branches, that they tolerate unless they get too vocal).
[ul]
[li]1. The first characteristic is a slowing down of time, a concentration in the present. One’s normally compulsive concern for the future decreases, and one becomes aware of the enormous importance and interest of what is happening at the moment.[/li][li]2. Awareness of polarity. This is the vivid realization that states, things, and events that we ordinarily call opposite are interdependent, like back and front, or the poles of a magnet. By polar awareness one sees that things which are explicitly different are implicitly one: self and other, subject and object, left and right, male and female-and then, a little more surprisingly, solid and space, figure and background, pulse and interval, saints and sinners, police and criminals, in-groups and out-groups. Each is definable only in terms of the other, and they go together transactionally, like buying and selling, for there is no sale without a purchase, and no purchase without a sale. As this awareness becomes increasingly intense, you feel that you yourself are polarized with the external universe in such a way that you imply each other.[/li][li]3. The third characteristic, arising from the second, is awareness of relativity. I see that I am a link in an infinite hierarchy of processes and beings, ranging from molecules through bacteria and insects to human beings, and, maybe, to angels and gods-a hierarchy in which every level is in effect the same situation. …From this it is but a short step to the realization that all forms of life and being are simply variations on a single theme: we are all in fact one being doing the same thing in as many different ways as possible. [/li][li]4. The fourth characteristic is awareness of eternal energy, …one sees quite clearly that all existence is a single energy, and <part of> that this energy is one’s own being.[/li][/ul]
Contact, mostly wordlessly, with the greater universal life force. Which knew me intimately because I was talking to the part of the greater life force that was myself. A twin, if you will. But a wiser, greater, connected, timeless twin. But it loved me tremendously, with all the force and patience of the greater life force, because HeSheIt loved life. In the bigger picture, there is a LOT of empty cold void and very little life in theis Universe. Even though our own planet seems to be teeming with life in annoying quantities, life is, in the bigger picture, rare and precious, and especially lovable for Life itself. ( duh ;))
( Note: the rarity of life in the greater universe is undeniably a scientific fact. Astronauts have said similar things when looking at that little blue dot in a vast sea of cold nothingness).
I said the contact was wordless, but there were some visuals and some words.
My whole experience was also colored by a sense of importance, a sense of “rightness”. That feeling was of course chemically induced, but it made whatever I experienced t very meaningfull. Think about it this way: if that sense of “rightness” can make puking a sacred experience, it would have no trouble make such a [del]delusion[/del] insight into a meaningful notion.
I would compare it, psychologically, to experiencing great fear, which also focuses the mind and etches the experience and the lessons learned deeply in the brain. (Science has proven that fear can make people accidentally fall in love, as well. The people working at the Ayuahasca retreat said that people on the same trip often develop friendships)
Still awed, still good, still convinced. A bit like a mystic hermit coming down from the experience on the mountain, and well, life calls and there have to be crickets caught to eat and sand to wash with. 
Or, in my case, I travelled back home, hugged my loved ones, and started doing my ordinary chores. *)
But the conviction remained with me that all is, in a larger sense, well. And that there IS a purpose. And that other people, and other living things are kindred souls to be kind to, if possible, just like I should be kind to myself. And that I’m not alone and that I can call on a larger source of benevolent energy if I need it. And that is a pleasant feeling that I might very well analyse until it’s gone, but I see no reason to. I like this particular kind of madness.
*) Some people don’t go home. One of the tripsitters did live at the place, temporarily. After his experience he had decided to get his affairs in order, to return, stay there and learn more. His story sounded much like a young man visiting a convent and deciding to live there for a while.
