“Well, there was this one girl from Philadelphia…”
Dottygumdrop: that is classic sleep hallucination. It feels completely real, doesn’t it?
I am positive that all the people who think they’ve been abducted by aliens and/or are having weird experiments done on them by aliens are having some combination of hynagogic and/or hypnopompic hallucinations and sleep paralysis. What they describe is exactly what I felt was happening to me during mine, but since I don’t believe in that stuff I went looking for a more logical scientific explanation instead.
I think my last one was a year ago. Not something I miss.
About 2 years ago, sitting in a sweatlodge, during the purification days before the Sun Dance. I was staring at the rocks. As I was staring into them a small bubble pulled out of one of the rocks. It turned to look at me. It was the face of a young boy. 2 weeks later my wife tells me she’s pregnant. 9 months later we have a new baby boy.
This year at the Sun Dance. The dance takes place the last week of June. It was supposed to be a hot week. During the 4 days of the dance, as I was dancing, it felt cool and shady for all 4 of the days. Later I found out that on the 2nd day of the Dance the temperature had reached near 100 degrees F. Never felt like it got above 80 or so. Nice and cool and shady. The 3rd day of the dance lasted 12 hours, which is unusually long. It was night before we left the Mystery Circle (loose translation). We usually dance for about 8-10 hours (closer to 8) with a few breaks (about 10-15 min each), while the supports and drummers smoke the cannupa, during that time with a longer break during lunch (1/2 hour). I was not tired or fatigued, despite having pierced that day. We sometimes danced for as long as 2 hours a round. I could have danced forever. But during the breaks and after we completed that day, I was exhausted. The next day (last day of the dance) lasted about 6 hours and I was struggling to get through the day. Felt fine on Monday, the day after the dance.
Don’t know if these qualify as a mystical experiences according the OP’s definition but it sure felt divine and mystical to me.
I’ve only had the flu once and at its peak I hallucinated crazily. I saw myself from above, could see through the walls of my bedroom and at one point it seemed like I was falling through an endless tunnel. Apparently my temperature got very high, and my doctor had been worried about secondary infections, and had to treat me accordingly (antibiotics?). This was when I was twelve, but I still retain clear memories of some of the images 27 years later (or at least I think I do). Very odd. I wouldn’t wish a right dose of the flu on anybody, I didn’t get back to normal for ages afterward.
The only comparable hallucinatory experiences I’ve had have been deliberate.
No out-of-body experiences, but I’ve had one experience that might qualify as mystical. I was sitting underneath a tree on top of a hill overlooking a lake. Very peaceful. I was reading the Bhagavad-Gita when I had this thought that maybe everything was connected. For just a second I could feel it, like there were a million million threads that connected every part of me to everything around me. It was really neat. That was around 10 years ago and I haven’t ever felt anything quite like that since.
Yes, sometimes chemically aided, sometimes not.
Well, this one: happened during a group exercise at a teaching in Memphis. For whatever reason,( no altering subtance at all) my mind went on out way onyond, and saw that every single thing was Absolutely connected, for a good while I saw how each and every act one does really matters, and, beyond self, it was like an incredible kaleidescope of seeing how everything connects, quite importantly, and understanding that in it’s complexity for a mere glimpse of a second, but so much understanding stuffed into that mere glimpse.This what would be called the ineffable, and why people tend to shut up about it, because it’s hard to explain.
For me, one of the most remarkable effects was that, when I was coming “back into body”, I just couldn’t stop Laughing: it really seemed like coming back into a stupid cartoon world in comparision to what my mind saw. I remember looking at my hands and laughing, thinking how absurd as a means to get things done that hand was…I was a real laughing idiot, collapsed into it . The laughing at body lasted for about a week in fits and wonderful throes, then back to normal observance.
In reading about Transcendence experience later, the Laughing thing happens. Hasn’t happened to me in a long while, but, the residual results stay to keep my mind in an alert check.
I had several, when I was younger, that were all part of lucid dreaming.
I would get up in the morning, shave and shower, then set back in a recliner in the living room to rest and cool off before getting dressed for work. I would often dose off for 15-30 minutes and do a lot of lucid dreaming during these times.
One day I felt myself in a lucid dream and got up from the chair and walked into the kitchen. I knew my physical body was still sitting in the chair and it was my dream body that was walking around. I went to the door leading to the garage, but the door was locked and I couldn’t open it. I was the woken from my dream by a noise and found myself still sitting in the chair.
The next morning I had the same thing happen. This time, when I found the door locked, I smiled to myself, stepped back about 15 feet, got a running start, and slid underneath the door like I was sliding into home plate. The feeling of sliding under the door felt like briefly moving through molasses, but it worked and I stood up and found myself in the garage.
I wanted to go outside, but the garage door was also closed. I calmly walked up to it, closed my eyes, and walked through the garage door. Same slow feeling as when I slid under the door. I found myself outside and was very impressed with the brightness of the colors around me and the detail of the trees and branches.
I walked out to my car and looked closely into the finish. I didn’t see my reflection, but I could see the moving clouds overhead reflected in the paint. I picked up a rock from the driveway and set it on the roof of the car, wondering if there would indeed be a rock sitting on my car in the real world when I left for work that morning.
I turned away from the car and the dream dissolved. I was once again sitting in the chair in the living room. I was also disappointed that I did not find a rock sitting on the roof of my car when I left for work.
What about Wiccans and Pagans on this board?
In this thread WhyNot said
Any other Pagans/Wiccans want to share their experiences?
Are they similar to what WhyNot describes?
No. And believe me, if I could get out-of-this-body, I would.
Lots and lots and lots.
First off, I spent the majority of my free time between my 17th and 18th birthdays actively seeking out OOBEs with dissociative drugs. I tended to find them, at a rate of at least one per week, if not three or five. Of course, most of them were on nitrous oxide, meaning they were gone after about 40 minutes; what I learned from them still hasn’t left me, but there’s no way I could describe the experiences in words after the fact, then or now. Suffice it to say that, once I built my sensitivity up, every last one of them was utterly mind-blowing. (Nitrous is unlike other drugs in that you become more sensitive to it, not more tolerant of it, as you do it more.)
The other drug I used on these quests was DXM. (There was no acid in Southern California back then, but acid isn’t a dissociative anyway; you’re not guaranteed to get an OOBE, IIUC.) Anyway, a few of those experiences stand out in my memory, but they’re sufficiently different from most of the meditation-type accounts there that I won’t spell them out unless specifically asked to. They were by and large a learning experience for me, too; while nitrous oxide taught me simple, abstract things like my place within the universe, the importance of introspection, etc., DXM often presented me with clear, concrete fixes for the problems in my life. I kicked some bad habits with that stuff, and often my trips would actually tell me directly how to avoid the various forms of social awkwardness I’d encountered in the last week. I pretty much stopped taking it when I doubled my dosage one day and ended up in the hospital–I actually wasn’t anywhere near the overdose range, but I was severely dehydrated and I was so disconnected from the world that the people around me thought I was dying. That experience touched off a chain of events that left me spiraling downward. I’ve only ever done it a handful of times since then; it must’ve been a year or more since the last time. Every once in a while I realize that I have enough lying around to do it safely, at my old dosage, but then it just kind of shuffles to the back of my mind and I forget about it for a while. I’m OK with that.
As for non-drug-related ones, once I stopped doing drugs I started having hypnagogic hallucinations, which are fascinating in their own right and (for me) almost always a positive thing. I can’t say I ever left my body in those, though; in fact, I’ve always been extremely well connected to my body and the physical objects around me. I don’t get sleep paralysis, since I’ve actually turned over and manipulated various objects during those hallucinations; for example, I once neatly laid a tissue out on my nightstand, because during my hallucinations I decided to defrost a hamburger on a tissue, and that the hamburger would come out great if and only if I laid the tissue out neat and flat right next to my bed. Thankfully, I can’t actually get out of bed during hypnagogic hallucinations, or I might have woken up to a fairly horrifying sight on my nightstand.
The other one came at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. The tradition for Jews there is to write a prayer on a little slip of paper, in any language, stick it in a crack in the wall, and then lean your head against the wall and pray. I did so, and I actually had an experience very similar to a DXM trip. My prayer had something to do with the light and warmth of God’s love or some such thing. I closed my eyes and saw all of the people on the trip to Israel with me, in fantastic shades of pink and purple (like the imaginary Pink Man my friend and I would see on our DXM trips). Then I actually saw a bright light flood my vision, and then felt an incredible warmth, just like in the prayer I wrote. It was a hell of an experience. I came away from it thinking that there must indeed be a God who’s listening to me, considering that I was stone cold sober at the time. The research I’ve done since then has led me to believe that it all stemmed from the religious indoctrination I’d had growing up, and the neurological significance it’s been given.
I had a similar experience while meditating in Air Force boot camp about six months later (before I came to my current conclusion about it).
Not much has changed, especially in Encinitas.
When I was maybe ten, I had a very vivid dream that’s stuck with me to this day.
In this dream/vision/whatever, I realized that after death, we would undergo a serious of “tests” that measured one’s worth. The tests involved things like bravery, etc. and would progress from some unspecified higher number to test number one. If you passed up to test #1, you were “safe”, your soul was deemed worthy and would continue to exist. If you failed any of the tests, that was basically the end to existence. After passing test #1, if you chose, you could take another test, test #0. If you failed this test, nothing happened, but if you passed it, you could move onto a higher plane of existence and know everything about the universe. It was almost a form of godhood. I also knew that the life I was living now was possibly one of the tests but there was no way to know.
As I awoke, still kinda half awake, I could see a trio of three glowing white indistinct figures, softly crooning. In retrospect, I would possibly say “angels” but it didn’t occur to me at the time. It was such a strange and vivid dream and very out-of-character for me because I was not raised with any sort of religion and I’m not particularly introspective.
Never had another dream even remotely similar. Sometimes I wonder if dismissing the dream a "just a dream’ means I failed one of the tests I dreamed about…
If you count my sleep paralysis incident. It felt like I was outside of my self at times, like looking down. Or, um, well…SOMEONE was near to me. Sorry to be so vague. It was bizarre. I didn’t feel like me, though.
Side note, does anyone ever feel dissociated in non mystical, every day life? Sometimes I’ll be walking down the street or outside (usually isn’t an at home thing), and I’ll think, “Wow. I can’t believe I’m…here. Alive. In my skin. Looking at things.” Things feel almost…too real. It used to happen more when I was younger.
Remembered another one, this time on salvia. It was the first time I ever used salvia, and I never got it to do anything pleasant (ETA: or useful) again; I tried it probably some 10 times after that, and all but two did nothing at all. The other two were distinctly unpleasant, and the worst part was that I didn’t realize until it wore off that I was actually under its influence. That was the only time a drug “fooled” my reality check system, and it freaked the hell out of me.
Anyway, that first salvia trip was amazing. When it first started to kick in, I was watching a Winamp visualizer in a dark room, and all of a sudden I found myself flying through the twists and turns of the visualizer, in some kind of futuristic spacecraft…then suddenly I was born, I lived someone else’s entire life, and I died. It was terrifying, but fascinating at the same time. Then I was talking to the salvia itself, or the spirit of the plant, or some such thing; it wasn’t in English or any real language–the plant seemed so in tune with my mind that it was like we were communicating through my bare brainwaves, with no need for a linguistic system to clarify (or muddle, even) our meanings–and she asked me something that basically translates to, “Do you want to see how far down the rabbit hole goes?”
I was rendered completely unable to respond for what seemed like hours (the whole experience, including what comes next, couldn’t have lasted more than 15 minutes in real time). Finally I realized that I was only going to regret it it if I said “no”. So I told her that, yes, I wanted to see where she would take me. She reassured me and told me not to worry, that I would be perfectly safe; she would make sure of that. As she was warning me that OTOH it wouldn’t be entirely pleasant, I was suddenly born once more. Lived. Died. Born. Lived. Died. Born. Lived. Died. Ad nauseam, for at least hundreds if not thousands of entire individual lives. I married countless soulmates, received dozens of college degrees, worked in many jobs across the spectrum, went on spirit quests, disappointed parents, saved people, killed people, bought into scams, sold goods and services, adopted and renounced various religions–some on my deathbeds–fought in wars, won prizes, mentored, been mentored, etc., etc., etc.
Then all of a sudden I open my eyes and I am in a room. There is a palm tree outside. I must be in California. Bonnie is breathing and I can feel her skin; she must be real. I’m back in the real world. It’s all over.
The following experiences I originally put down to a cerebral misconnection but I now think that I was asleep at the time but was dreaming that I was awake.
As a child I used to sleep on a metal wire framed bed .
Atrick my older brothers used to play on me was to crawl under the bed and lift it up with their back.
A couple of times this happened and laughing I looked under the bed but there wasn’t anyone there .
Years later as a young adult I was lying on my bed during the day time when I felt myself physically float upwards .
My eyes were open at the time and did not confirm my floating sensation but showed me to be still lying on the bed.
I haven’t had anything like a straight out of body experience, but my mother has and she remains stubbornly convinced of an afterlife because of it. When she was 3 or 4 years old, she was in the unfortunate position of being lodged under the wheel of a car. She was technically dead for a while, and she remembers seeing herself in the ambulance next to her wailing mother, the bright light, chatting with deceased ancestors, and not wanting to go back, but being told she must. After her heart started beating again, she apparently proceeded to tell everyone in earshot that she wanted to go live with Jesus. She has never forgotten this.
She also has a very vivid memory during college, when she was raising me while attending school full-time, and my illness prevented her from being able to study for an exam that would mean a passing or failing grade in her class. She had no idea how to answer the questions on the exam, but she says something took control of her hand and started filling in the circles before she could read the questions. She handed in her test within the first five minutes of class. When she got the exam back, she had not missed a single question.
I personally have had dissociative periods related to traumatic memories, especially in moments of severe depression have gotten the increasing sense that I didn’t exist. One particular time I remember sitting in the closet in the dark, feeling my true self float away and roam around the house. For a good portion of my life, I was convinced that literally anything could potentially happen–like if I thought about it enough, my furniture could come to life and attack me. I think this is called magical thinking, and all of these phenomena–the feelings of unreality, the fear of all possible worlds coming to be–are pretty clearly documented psychological phenomenon often associated with PTSD and other anxiety disorders. Once I learned that these are not rational fears, I stopped having them. I was too embarrassed to talk about those fears for many years, but once I confessed them to my psychologist and she calmly said, ‘‘No, that can’t happen,’’ I stopped believing in their power. I also have certain traumatic memories that run by like a movie shot from a great distance.
And this is probably for another thread entirely since it is such a long story, but when I was 12 I performed an exorcism on another girl my age who was apparently possessed. I am now an atheist, but the events of that day still remain a complete and haunting mystery to me.
A couple. One time while hiking on a beach with family - there was a fork in the path where it diverged to go around a large clump of that itchy beach grass for several feet. We all veered off to one direction (can’t remember if we went left or right) and walked around the grass. Suddenly, we were walking up to the grass again. Everyone veered off to the other direction, the one we hadn’t gone before, and I stopped and was like “Didn’t we just do this?” No one had any idea what I was talking about. Don’t know what caused it, but I’m sure it was just one of those things. I was a weird kid anyway.
The second I attribute to alcohol more than anything, but it was still quite odd. In high school, was getting drunk with a bunch of friends. I passed out on the futon in my friend’s living room. Had weird dreams about walking slowly though a grey space with music playing in the background (Sisters of Mercy, if memory serves). Came to sitting upright on the couch in the dining room, several rooms away from where I passed out. It was hours and hours later, everyone had passed out in other rooms, Sisters of Mercy was blaring on the stereo and a couple friends were knocking to be let in from where they’d gone outside to smoke. They saw me sitting on the couch, but were confused as the last time they’d seen me I was laying on the futon in the other room and no one had seen me walk into the other room. We decided, at that time, that I had actually walked into the other room on a different physical plane. These days, I tend to think we were all just very drunk. :rolleyes:
Zoggie, I think I know what you mean. Every once in awhile, I’ll suddenly realize that I’m me, that I’m alive and interacting with others, and they’re interacting with others, and so on. I’m not religious at all, but I’m so amazed at the fact that we’re all carbon and water, but we can think and speak and create. It’s hard to put into words, but I’m stunned at the marvelous complexity and simplicity of life.
Agh, I’m really bad at articulating stuff like this.
FTR, I think you articulated that feeling perfectly. I also think about that a lot; more now that I’ve taken a few classes in psychology, biology and chemistry.