I seem to recall some poster (I can’t remember who, sorry. I have a faint recollection that it was OpalCat, but I apologize to her if that’s incorrect) saying they had a moment of incredible beauty and connection with the world that resonates with them the rest of their life.
I also seem to remember reading in some book somewhere (sorry, I don’t remember where) that someone had a sort of “anti-mystical experience”. They saw a mental patient seizing in the corner of some Cuckoo’s Nest-esque place and they had a green eye (I don’t think that refers to the iris only :eek:), and the observer had a moment of pure, unimaginable horror at the incredible disgustingness and terrifyingness of the universe that “anti-resonated” with them for life in a way analogous to the effects of positive mystical experiences.
Nothing of the sort has happened to me, except possibly for something that occurred in a chemically induced state. Just alcohol, believe it or not. Rum and coke, if I recall. It was one of the first few times I really got drunk and I realized that the day-to-day consciousness we live in is not the only valid possibility, since the alcohol brought me into a different state. Okay, so that’s not exactly mystical, but it’s the best I could come up with from my own experience. Based on this experience, it’s probably a good thing that I’ve never used any drug except alcohol and tobacco, since I get a lot of mileage out of mere alcohol. I suppose you could also argue that alcohol is more powerful than people will admit.
A few years ago I was out walking around on a clear night. This is nothing out of the ordinary for me: I’ve walked around and looked at the stars every so often for a good part of my life. But tonight it was different: For no reason I felt mild vertigo, imagining the stars as klieg lights mounted on the ceiling of an unimaginably large gymnasium. I really felt all of the empty space surrounding me. It felt like I might fall off the world. I went inside.
A little later I’d collected myself and I went back outside. I looked up and just kept looking until the sensation of the empty infinities passed. It’s never happened to me again. I have no idea why it happened to me then.
Yes. It would probably qualify as a ‘mystic’ experience, although as a Jewish gnostic agnostic a-theist, I interpret it as a wonderful bit of my own possible neurochemistry that I was previously unaware of.
Yes, several times. Usually, but not always, outdoors. Part of why I became a pagan, I guess.
The thing is, I can’t get it to stick. I used to get all angsty about that and even had some depressive spells when the “connection high” wore off. Now I’m just more resigned. It will probably happen again, sometime, and that will be wonderful. In the meantime, I’m just getting on with life.
I sometimes have friends who express surprise that I’m still agnostic after I’ve felt (and/or been) the presence of the Divine. There really is no “proof”, though. Maybe it was a misfiring of neurons in my noggin. Maybe those neurons were designed to fire that way so I could meet Creator. Maybe it was all a psychodrama, maybe it was imagination. Who knows? Not me.
One occured when I was 17 in my Latin class. I’m not sure what caused it, only that I got bored with studying Latin and the wondered “What is God, really?” The next moments involved being aware of something that seemed to be a power greater than anything I could comprehend. I thought it would destroy me, so I shut my mind off at that point to prevent it from getting at me. Within a few seconds I was fine. Nothing like it has ever happened to me since.