More Registry Submissions

***Rise and Shine, 37 year old male

***This Indescribable Feeling - 23 year old, female

***Very Mathematical, a Complete Oneness - 26 year old, male

***Now or Never - 28 year old, male

I am uncertain as to whether the following account should be filed under the description "mystical experience" or not. What happened to me was not like an experience of any kind. Indeed, the term "experience" is far from accurate. I am sending this account primarily in the hope that it may inspire or enlighten others and would welcome e-mails from Yoga students or anyone else who is filled with the neccessary passion required to investigate their true nature.

Now or Never

It was during my twenty-eighth year, while I was studying yoga and attending classes that an illumination occured.

After each weekly session of, mainly Hatha Yoga, a small group of us would meet at a friend’s house to chat, discuss Yoga and philosophy, listen to Indian music or just relax.

On one such evening, I became very deeply relaxed, my body assuming the weight and consistency of a sack full of water. I recall lounging about, not needing to talk or consciously communicate, I felt so tired, so at home and so self contained. I lumbered home late that night, had a bite to eat, went to bed and sank into a deep slumber. The following morning I awoke to a beautifully
transparent spring sunlight and a curious sensation trickling up and down over the centre of my forehead, between my eyes, in the centre popularly known as "the third eye" or in Yoga, as The Ajna Chakra. It felt like there was an army of tiny insects swarming over this space.

The next thing I noticed was that this sensation was occurring at intervals of, I would guess, about every 15 to 20 seconds or so, in other words it was cyclic in nature. The occurrence of this sensation was totally involuntary. It was subtle and pleasant, but also very fascinating. I arose and got out of bed. Now I do not know how to really describe this, but I knew immediately and beyond any words, that this day was going to be special, very special.

After my breakfast I set off for work, still with that curious cyclic sensation flowering on my forehead, between my eyes, about every 15 to 20 seconds or so. I arrived at work, settled at my desk and immediately plunged into a very boring task which involved the manual entry of columns of data into a series of printed lists. As the day wore on, still with that curious cyclic sensation, I became more and more absorbed in the task and into myself. A point was reached whereby I had virtually no conscious awareness of what was going on around me, in the sense that I was not taking in details, or looking for them. I was aware for instance that people were conversing, but their conversations became nothing more than a mere background ambience within which I was immersed.

I kept on, trying not to scatter or divert my attention from the deepening immersion that was taking place. It was like being funnelled, inwardly
and ever more inwardly, towards a place that had no name, some obscure and totally unknown, but yet longed for destination. I had no idea, no glimpse, not even one tiny, glimmering foresight of where or what I was being led to. So I kept on and on and on, through a kind of fiery passion with one pointed concentration, not giving way, not giving in, not giving up. I had come this far and I was not going to let go, for anything.

At 5-00 I left work as usual and set off for the doctors, as I needed a repeat prescription. I was accompanied on my walk by that same curious sensation, repeating at its usual interval. It had continued all through the day, since waking up that morning.

The impression I received was that something was entering or exiting the Ajna Chakra. Perhaps "circulating" would be more accurate. I arrived at the doctors, entered, picked up my numbered card from the reception kiosk and took a seat at one end of the long waiting room. How long I sat there before it happened, is hard to tell, but I became aware of light, a light that I realised immediately was within me. It is impossible to relate at just what moment this light became apparent. It was just there and did not seem to have a definite starting point. It was like a very, very, very gentle sunrise without specific beginning. I remained still and the light was filling my body, filling my mind, completely filling my entire being. Then I noticed something extraordinary. As I began to
gaze around that waiting room, at the sad, waiting patients, the pile of magazines on the central table, the coloured doors and the paintings on the walls, everything my eyes met with shone with an intense inner light, a light I had never, ever seen before. It was as if my vision had become purified. An analogy would be the experience of looking through out of focus binoculars, then focussing them and seeing an object suddenly appear in crystal clarity, when previously it had been nothing more than a dull, boring blur.

It was astonishing, I was held in a trance. I waited. Eventually the coloured bulb on my doctor’s door lit up and I arose and entered his office. The transaction was swift, he hardly spoke. I picked up my prescription, stood up, said cheerio, left his office and walked the hundred yards or so to the bus stop to await the next bus home.

The double decker pulled up after only a few minutes. I paid the fare, took my ticket and climbed to the top deck. I was the only passenger up there. I sat down. All of a sudden it hit me like a bolt from the blue. Never, never for one infinitesimal moment had I ever been anything different from this! The past was irrelevant, the future, merely an effervescent dream. Now was the only time, the only place, the only life, the only reality and it was inescapable. This is where I had always been. I had not attained anything or discovered anything new - never. The light flooded me, an interior illumination at the very heart of myself. This was the Self, beyond ideas, beyond thoughts, words, beyond images, beyond grasping; it was nothing to do with faith.

I remember sitting there, actually shaking my head from side to side in absolute disbelief. How could I have ever been ignorant of something so supremely obvious as this, for god's sake how? Then I realised how utterly fruitless, how utterly futile was the desire to fight, to struggle, to try to wrench
the simple truth of one's supreme identity out of oneself! I was amazed. I was dumbfounded. Another insight told me how ridiculous the notion is that thought must come to an end in order for the Self to be realised.

Thought flowed on and on in the background, as did every other phenomenon, but always against this background of being ness, but now I saw it and everything else as simply existing perfectly in it's own right. Everything took on this new dimension, everything appeared to me to be just the way it was, so
self evidently and so perfectly right. Nothing was out of place. I basked in the bliss of this light; it was like arriving home but paradoxically, the home from which I had never, ever departed. The bus trundled on and I became aware that the light was very gently beginning to fade, as gently and as mysteriously as it had arrived. Within a few minutes I was at my front door, I opened it and
entered the house.

My parents were sat watching the television as usual. I gazed at their faces. The light had now dissipated and to me they looked their usual selves. Everything had returned to its dull, monochrome normality. I was suddenly overwhelmed by a deep, existential sadness, a sadness which told of the impossibility of me ever relating to them what had happened. How on earth could I ever even begin to make them understand such a thing? My lips were sealed by a blinding sense of inadequacy.

Postcript

It has now been over 22 years since the illumination took place. The light has never returned. But even now, something of that original insight remains. It is a sense that whatever and wherever I am, this is where it's at, right here, right now and there's nowhere to go, nowhere to hide and in a spiritual sense, nothing to achieve. The seeker and the thing sought are one and the same. Ramana Maharshi said that a housewife living alone in a London flat has the same chance of attaining Samadhi as a yogi meditating alone in
a cave in the Himalayas. He was right.

The words of Patanjali, the author of the famous Yoga sutras, continue to echo in my mind, "Samadhi is closest to those who desire
it the most intensely”.

***"I" Am Born and Die Over and Over- Male

This experience has happened to me twice in my life, and
both times it was essentially the same. I was meditating on
the nature of my "self", working on the koan "who am I?". As
I concentrated on the question, every so often I would feel
a shiver, almost convulsive, as part of a momentary feeling
that I was about to understand something, but it would
dissipate and I would begin concentrating again on my
nature. After a few hours of this, feeling I was about to
learn something important and then losing it, I just gave
up. I got up and headed for home, but in the act of getting
up, I felt the weight of my world lifted from me and I felt
an immense joy and identification with the whole universe.
Both times the experience lasted only a few days, fading
gradually. After it had faded, I felt a sense of loss, but
also a sense of strength, because I still knew something
intellectually that I had experienced directly: God and I
are the same, a living universe where "I" am born and die
over and over as each creature is born and dies. I had
nothing to fear.

***A Total Infilling of Joy, Bliss and Wholeness- 24 year old, male

I am a 50 year old male. My experience occurred at age 24. Over a two month period I was seeking spiritual guidance with the Abbot of a Benedictine monastery in Southern Michigan. I was in a fragile marriage and was searching, not so much for answers to the problems of the marriage, but because the problems were generating questions about truth and substantive meaning in life.

On the third or fourth parlor meeting, I asked "why did the miracles happen back then (in Christ's time on earth) but not now?" He responded with, "Well ... we can ask. Would you like to?" I said yes and we proceeded to go into the
chapel and into one of the side alters. I knelt down and he stood behind me with his hands lightly on my shoulders and prayed a prayer that went something like this ... "Jesus, here we are in this mystery of life and your friend would like to know the reality of your existence. Would you in some way show him, by a sign of your presence....."

And then it began. My legs were vibrating at a rate that could only be described as a hum. In an instant my mind, emotions, body and thoughts were washed with an energy that caused a complete and total infilling of joy, bliss and wholeness that was beyond description and yet so very real. I began to laugh in joy and tried to look out the side window to see where Jesus was. It was an instant knowing of completion where I lacked nothing, except wanting to greet the source of this incredible and extraordinary experience. I asked while chuckling "what do I do now?" and the abbot replied "you need do
nothing except say thank you" which in my heart and mind I was already doing.

I walked around the abbey grounds for several hours and finally felt I could drive home. Upon arriving home, I was immediately challenged about where I had been and found I could not utter any words to describe the events of the day. My tongue literally would not allow words to describe what had happened. Within the next twenty-four hours the bliss slowly tapered and all the "challenges" of ordinary life crept in. I found an inability to reconcile what had happened with the chaos of a troubled marriage swirling around. I felt
anguish that such divine and complete bliss was gently subsiding and became angry and felt abandoned by this Godly power that had entered so quickly and beautifully. I dared not contact the Abbot to talk about it because I believed I was the one who chose and lost the essence of grace that was given to me.

For years when I tried to talk about the wonder of the experience, my tongue would not allow me to speak. It literally would spasm as I searched for words to describe the event. That was probably why I couldn't speak about it, just as others have experienced, there are no words sufficient to describe such an
experience. When I was able to form some crudely strung words, it was perplexing for me to make sense of the incredible and why it went away. It wasn't until I began reading in "A Course in Miracles" twenty years later in the Teachers Manual that direct union with God is possible but usually doesn't last.
According to the book, the reason it doesn't last is the individual would probably not want to remain in physical form because the bliss is so wonderful. Normal desires to eat, work and perform other daily functions would lose all interest in favor of direct union. This made sense to me and ushered in some
peace about what had happened on that day at St. Gregory's Abbey.

I am grateful to have discovered this site on Christmas Day, 2001 and write of my experience to encourage others to be grateful and not despair when the "ordinary" returns after an "extraordinary" experience. Keep searching for others who share similar experiences to talk with. Find ways to bring tangible meaning to what you know within your own personal awareness and experience. It's not always easy to make sense of such grace within our lives.

At Last We Can Work With Him - male

My experience was about four years ago. I had lost my job, girlfriend, house and everything else all within a week. Then I was talking to a neighbour about it, she advised me to hate the people involved. I said that I was sick of hating, then I heard a voice behind me say .."at last we can work with him."

There was a brick wall behind me and no one else was there, except me and this one person. A few days later I felt compelled to give a Tibetan, hand made, silk hanging to a man I hardly knew. From this, he gave me one night's work.....where I met a woman who talked about spiritual things....she seemed a bit weird at the time.

We kept in contact and I told her that I wouldn't mind hearing what she had to say on the world....So I ended up one morning at her house waiting to talk to her, but I felt very strange, really frightened, sad, angry...all these emotions.....so strong that I had to just lie on her couch.

The whole day passed, and I kept feeling that if I left it would go away. But I wanted to hear what she had to say, and stayed. She called me into her kitchen and told me that I was being tested....all complete nonsense to me....I had never heard of things like this. But she then said that I had passed...whatever that meant. Then the whole room was very bright and my whole body was buzzing...I had never felt so good before, and was very very happy.....there was no logical explanation. I felt in contact with a higher power and seemed to know things that until then I never thought possible.

Since then I have meditated, studied an enormous amount of books and lectures, and feel that I have got it......but as you know...you only get it once you realise that there is nothing to get. My only question, after many amazing experiences....is why?....

***The Slightest Movement of A Hand - 19 year old, female

This experience happened when I was 19 and I am currently a 49 year old woman.

I have shared it with only a handful of people because the attempt to decribe the experiential/sacred aspects cannot remotely be captured with words and it is so personal that I am not willing to share it and allow it to be demeaned. I share it here in hopes that it will offer some meaningfulness, support or validation for others who may have similar experiences.

I was happy at the time of the experience. I was a college student who was also tutoring poor children, and their world and minds had had a special effect on opening my heart. I have always been even as a child, one who was searching for a "god connection/experience" and organized religion had not provided this. I was basically an agnostic.

The experience began about 5 pm as I left my home in a car with a friend who was driving. As I looked out over the lake nearby the colors of the trees and and all that was in view became INTENSELY ALIVE. At the same time I felt bathed in a warm, joyous love and felt as though it was being poured into my head. Along with it was a pouring of "truths/connections/understandings". I began talking to the friend and he said "Keep talking!".....That is the last thing I recalled about the evening until about 4 a.m. in the morning when I became aware of my "I" again. I was in my bed and the pouring into my head of the "aha's" kept coming in...they were like ..yes there is that..and there is this ...Things were as they should be. We are so loved.

Their were many long term effects of the experience...Mostly positive but challenging to integrate at age 19 (One that was remarkable was that for about 3 months, the slightest movement of a person's hand would reveal things to me about their life and the state of their soul). I had to learn to be less sensitive and aware in order to filter out and find balance for myself as time went on. I
feel truly blessed to have had the experience and my life would not have been at all the same without it and yet until this stage of my life I would not have wished for another of this magnitude. Perhaps that is why I searched on the net to hear of others experiences today for the
first time.

***Tunnel of Light & A Voice - 30 year old, female

My experience all took place at the beginning of the year (2001), while everyone was celebrating the new millineium, I was in a state of deep depression.You see I had met this man, I had only known him for 2 days but felt a deep soul connection with him.

For many reasons this meeting was all so right but then it was all so wrong. I felt that I could spend the entirety of my life with him, it all felt so right,he was everything I had ever wanted in a man, I really wanted him more than anything else in the world! But I knew that I couldn't have him you see I was at the end of a relationship with another person and he well he had twins on the way at the time.

So we go our own seperate ways about 2 weeks after meeting him I was so depressed, I couldn't sleep, eat I had lost heaps of weight. I got to the stage where I had had enough of life and all that it had to offer me. I was on the brink to suicide, I knew that I needed help so I fell to my knees and prayed to god that day, I prayed from the sincerity of my heart and I knew he was there for me. I have never prayed that way ever not once in my whole life, but pray I did.

The night falls and I am in a deep sleep all of a sudden I am going through this tunnel of light, I have heard of the black voids but I had none of that, it was so beautiful the music I cannot explain but shocked by the whole experience I brought myself out of it. I sat up in my bed and I thought I was going crazy. I manage to fall asleep again and once again this beautiful light appears it is so wonderful.

Then I hear this voice. I do not want to repeat what was said to me because I feel that this message was from god to me. What gets me the most about all this is that I didnt know anything about mysticism at the time, had I known then what I know now I would have embraced this light with all my heart and soul, I know this was a communion with god and I know he is there for me but I have to learn to trust him. I have other mystical experiences as well where sometimes I feel at one with the whole universe, but what I have learnt from this whole experience is that god is with me always and forever and he will never harm me. I love you god.

***Life Affirming Lighthouse - 19 year old, male

After 20 some depressing days aboard a troop ship, we were moving south along the east coast of Japan. I stood alone at the rail of the ship. As I watched the Japanese shore a few miles away, I spotted a lighthouse. I briefly felt transported to being within yards of the lighthouse rather than miles. I felt a very beautiful, happy, and life-affirming feeling. The days of depression turned to a feeling of joy and hope. I've tried to express my feeling in words, but they don't do it adequately. It was wonderful!

***Shared Experience of the Void - 29 year old, female

I have had 10 or 12 experiences over the past 25 years. On 3 or 4 of those occasions the person with me had the experience too, and they thought I was 'doing it', which, of course, I was not. I have never seen any written accounts of this 'shared' experience, although I do know one person who had it with a friend of his who was at the moment of death.

I would say the first experience was the deepest, but perhaps it seems that way because it was the first. The first experience consisted of suddenly, but in no way violently, finding myself in eternity. It was eternal and infinite blackness, a void where I saw nothing at all. This might sound scary, but it wasn't. The 'void' was totally filled I felt a profound sense of peace. I thought, 'This is where you go when you die.' Then I thought, 'This is where we are before we are born.' Then I thought, 'This is where we always are; we just don't know it.' There was an element of recognition about the whole thing. I realised that there isn't any time, or perhaps just one moment of time. The darkness was full of perfect, infinite and eternal bliss, peace, love, safety, comfort, joy. There was a presence that filled this 'void' which was immeasurably and infinitely benevolent, and that presence was/is in charge. It was 'in' me, but I was also 'in' it, and I was only a very small part of it.

Although I do not subscribe to any religion, I did get a little bit of biblical imagery. I realised that the presence really did know how many grains of sand there are and that they really are all numbered. It knew the number of hairs on my head. I had an internal image (although I saw nothing) of two giant hands beneath me, and the message I got was that, no matter what things might look like, I was/am safe. I thought about planet Earth and what it would look like if I could see it. I thought it would be a little speck, a tiny pin-prick 'way down there', if it was visible at all. If you compare a pin-prick to the size of the universe, that is as close as I can get to describing it.

***Searching & Finding God - 30 year old, female

I am now 49 yrs. old. Since childhood I had suffered from depression. As I grew older, the depression worsened. I read all the self-help books, finally trying the latest anti-depressants that the medical profession had to offer. At age 30 I came to the end of myself, realizing that nothing was going to help and the thought began pressing more and more into my mind that I needed God to heal me. I had always believed there was a God, the question was "how" do I come into contact with Him for the healing that I needed?

One evening I sat on my sofa listening to music. All of a sudden, I seemed to be transported into a dream, though I was not asleep at the time. I seemed to be transported into the Paradise of God, and there, I was a "watcher" looking about at the beauty of nature in that place. I saw three beings in long white robes ascend a hill, and as they reached the top, they turned and faced towards me. They began singing, as if praising God. All of a sudden, I was brought close to the face of the one standing in the middle and knowledge came into me that it was "myself" in Paradise. At that moment God's Love seemed to fill every cell of my being. I had always heard that He Loved me, but I had never felt it before. I began to weep, and the dream left me. At that moment I decided within myself...Love this vast, this eep...required a response from me. And I determined that no matter what the sacrifice to myself - I would give my life, my all to my Creator that Loved me.

The next morning after I awoke, I knelt and poured out my heart to God. I repented of all the times He spoke to me in my conscience, and I disobeyed His Voice. I told Him, "whatever you say, I will certainly do. Whatever you ask, I will certainly give. Only heal me and teach me Your Way."

After this prayer, my conscience spoke to me instructing me to get up and write letters of apology to anyone that I had wronged, or hurt. Most of that morning was spent in writing letters. After I mailed the letters and returned home, I knelt again repeating the same prayer. As I waited before God in silence, my conscience spoke to me about the material things that I loved. I was never aware before that time, as to the "power" that material things wielded in my life. I spent the better part of that week selling or giving away the things that I loved. I continually kept my thoughts towards God, towards my desire to do
His will only. When my thoughts began to wander, I brought them back again and again. I discovered that my thoughts were a most unruly thing ! Like a bridle in the horses mouth, I had to keep turning them about.

This process of "purification" was continued outwardly, and inwardly, with my constant repeating of the same promise that I had made to God to relinquish all for Him. During this process of "letting go" of the things that my conscience spoke to me about; I began to feel more and more "free" .

Finally, when I knelt and nothing else came to mind, I realized the Way was cleared to ask for Divine healing by faith. To my disappointment, that day ended, not having received the blessing that I sought. By the middle of the following day, I was beginning to get concerned and anxious that I had not received what I had expected from God. Standing before a large
window in the dining room, looking out at the blue sky and puffy white clouds, I began to speak aloud in prayer to God. I was by now very desparate, I had given all for Him and He had not answered. Suddenly, it dawned on me, "what if there's no God? What if I have given everything for nothing?" Agony shot through my heart like an arrow, these thoughts were more than I
could bear !

I yelled at God, demanding that He must do something for me. In tears and in a state of terrible emotional upheaval, I turned from the window and walked to the living room and sat down facing the wall weeping. All of a sudden I came into such a state of "stillness" within my mind. It was as though I were standing in a vast empty hallway, poised on the very threshhold of Eternity. I thought to myself, "I have yelled at God, now He is going to strike me down...this must be the moment that people come to before God strikes them down..." I searched for my "thoughts", those annoying, rambling thoughts...like a radio that
could never be silenced...they were gone out from me, taken away entirely out of my mind. I said to myself, "what is this?"

The next moment I can only describe in these words, for words are entirely inadequate to describe what occurred. I felt as if I would drown in God's Love flowing into me, it seemed to be "liquid" Love. It flowed over me, and into me and I was filled with an indescribable joy and such a state of blissful peace! Weeping, and laughing at the same time!

After that experience, my conscience was very much alive as never before, speaking so directly to me. My prayers were answered even before I could finish speaking. I was in a wonderful Union with God, enjoying a state of bliss day after day. The instruction which I received at that time was that as long as I continued to obey His Voice through conscience, I would stay in that wonderful Union with Him and He would empower me so that I would remain beyond temptation...and it was so. I was tempted concerning things, but it seemed to be that as long as I chose His will and not mine, I remained in that state of
fellowship.

I have since come to see that the "Word" which speaks to us through Conscience is the Voice of God to our soul. That this is the "Word" which it is said, "came to the various prophets (seers) of old". That this "Word" was made flesh (as the Scriptures say) and dwelt among us in a tent of flesh, so that we could behold His glory". When the Jewish nation crucified the Word
made flesh, they were crucifying the savior of us all...the "Light that Lightens EVERY one that has ever come into the world". (John 1) Jesus says, "the Words that I speak TO YOU, are the very Words that will stand up against you in the judgement." No one else knew what was said, but you did...and God did, because those were His Words to you personally. This is the Way of
Union with God. And ,my depression went away that day, and never returned...Praise be to God!

***A Blinding Light - 21 year old, male

I was 21 when this happened. I am now 33 years old. This experience I will never forget, it was the true beginning of my spiritual life. I have told it to only a few people.

This is how it unfolded: I had fallen asleep on my daybed the night before, and just about dawn I woke up. I glanced out the window for a second, and then began to drift back asleep. Suddenly, I was standing outside the door at a hall at the college I was attending at that time, and I was staring up at a very full, beautiful moon. I then was startled when strange symbols began to appear on the moon. I didn't know what they meant, but inside they reverberated in my soul.

Then the stars began to brighten in their magnitude, and all at once began to shoot like comets toward the moon. They entered and became one with the moon, and the moon grew slightly in size, bt tremendously in brightness. There was then a stillnes for a few moments, then the moon exploded, showering a blinding white light down upon me, but it did not hurt my eyes. It was then that the force of the explosion blew me backwards slightly, and then I became aware of a presence behind me. It caught me in my fall and gently layed me down on my back with my arms spread out like a cross. Then the most beautiful male voice I had ever heard spoke directly into my mind. First it said my name, then "No longer is there any need to be afraid."

It was then that I looked directly into the light. It was so bright
that I couldn't see its origin any more. I then felt a love like I had
never known possible permeate every fibre of my being. It came over me like warm flowing water, and I began to weep from the depths of my soul. I reached out for the light, and to my suprise I began to levatate toward it until I was united with it. It was pure ecstasy, beyond description. Words are meaningless as well as time in that place beyond places.

I hovered in that love for what seemed like a very long time, bathed in that love, one with it. I knew without a doubt that IT WAS GOD! I also know now that what had layed me back onto the ground was Jesus himself.

The emptiness around me as I hovered there was alive with energy and love, and to describe it best it was as if I was in the lap of God, and His hand was upon my head giving me All of Himself into my being. After a short while I heard a sound like a wind, and I was back upon my daybed, and tears were streaming down my cheeks.

After that occurance my life has been filled with mystical experiences, at times on a daily basis. I see brilliant blue dots of light, feel fire moving up my spine, and feel the Holy Spirit move in my life. But remember, it isnt the experience thats important, its what one learns from it. Not with the mind, but with one's whole being.

I am thankfull that I was given this gift so early in my life, and it is
a treasure that "moths and dust " shall never corrupt.

I shall leave with one of my favorite quotes from Meister Eckhart: "The eye with which God sees us is the same eye through which we see God"

***In the Vortex - 6 or 7 year old, male

This was probably fall 1959/spring 1960, and I was at primary school in England. It was a low brick built Victorian building, similar to many other purpose built schools constructed around the 1870’/80’s, particularly in the industrial areas of northern England.

As a child I often felt quite alone and was described as diffident; I found it hard to join in games and was probably not invited to....I seem to remember playing with others in a 1 to 1 situation rather than being part of a team, gang or organized game. I seem to remember being on my own often too, in the playground or standing on a low parapet and holding onto iron railings, looking through them at the lorries and vans passing on the main road. At that time they were often beautifully sign written, hand painted, with the name of the company, the telephone numbers and where they were based.....decorative cream or ivory lettering, often outlined and shadowed, painted onto the cab doors or the sides of dark blue or bright red wagons.

That was in the big playground. Round the other side of the school was a smaller playground, surrounded by old brick walls, with a scruffy patched tarmac surface and a large old hawthorn tree that flowered in the spring, cast shade in the summer and dripped from bare black twigs in the winter.
To return to the school buildings from the small playground one had to go through a doorway in a wall. To the right of the doorway, within the playground, was a shed that contained sports equipment.

It was a day that was neither sunny and warm, nor cold and grey....it was what people used to call a mild day. I was about 6, maybe 7, and I was standing on that spot, just a few feet in front of that doorway, with the grey painted shed to my right. There was playground noise ....boys pretending to be aeroplanes, a football thudding and scraping around and the shouts of a game, girls bouncing balls against a high wall....shouts and screams and footsteps running around me, the sounds of that semi organised freedom that is compressed into 15 minutes before the bell goes and the playground empties.

On that spot a voice started saying my name in my head, quietly but insistently at first---Mark E.--- Mark E.---Mark E.---Mark E.--- over and over and over, and as it repeated these words, it became not only louder but somehow bigger, emptier and with more echo, and as it expanded in this way, the words began to cease to contain their meaning. The playground noises faded away, the sense of standing on the tarmac surface disappeared, the buildings and my sense of place were replaced by a vast darkness that was unimaginably enormous. The voice continued but no longer sounded like a voice and the words had ceased to be words, but the sound continued to expand and amplify....becoming like an endless wailing bellowing howl, unimaginably loud and continuous, echoing in some vast black space without edges or boundaries. The sound just kept on growing....ceasing to become sound and becoming just a huge booming universal resonance that was like witnessing something primordial and fundamental, as if this was the root of all sound, the raw material of sensation. Any sense of space and time or awareness of contrast was gone, there was nothing to see, or to feel and it seemed that the noise reached such a pitch, such a resonance, such unfathomable depth, that it became truly nothing; not ‘nothing’ as something small, but nothing so big that it contained every imaginable thing in the universe.

When the sensation began to subside, like thunder rolling away, I had an incredibly intense feeling that I had been hurtling at unbelievable speed through, up or down some vast spinning vortex of darkness, completely alone. I really felt as though I had been picked up by a gigantic hand and been thrown across the universe until I had reached the absolute zero limits of something, and then deposited back on earth, as if by a reverse whirlwind that spun itself down to a tiny point to leave me exactly where I had been standing before.

I remember feeling strangely and completely stunned. The activities going on in the playground were as if I had missed about 2-3 minutes. The bell had gone, most people were going in, and I was kind of in the way, standing as I was just a few feet in front of the doorway. The playground was emptier and children were walking and running past me through the doorway, back to the building. I had no one to tell this to, either at school, or when I got home, and it was a long time before I told anyone, I was perhaps in my 30’s, and since then I have only told about 3 people at all....and this is the first time that I have written it down.

Looking back over 40 years, to that moment, it still seems that it was the most real thing that has ever happened to me somehow. If I try and make sense of it, why it happened and why it happened to me, I can’t. If I try and find explanations....was it a fit?, was it a religious experience?, was it a symptom of mental illness?..........I have no success at all.

The only way I can describe it, as an adult, is in the most general terms. It is as if I had been given some form of insight into the personally specific and the totally universal, and the relationship between them; how they co-exist in reality. I don’t know if it was a gift or a curse, I sometimes feel that it is something that I was given but have never discovered how to use; at other times I think it was random, without rhyme or reason or purpose. I have never met anyone who has had a similar experience.....but then maybe many people have and have kept it to themselves, because they don’t want to be thought of as crazy or can’t make any more sense out of it than I can......I just don’t know.

And maybe that’s the whole point......that I have some proof of sorts that we really do not know, that we have absolutely no idea at all.
I went back to the same spot and stood on it about 18 months ago. The buildings and playground are still there, though they have a different uses; it is no longer a school. The wall and the doorway near where I stood have gone, as has the shed, but I can still identify the exact point were it happened.
I stood on it. Nothing happened, nothing at all. The same person, nearly 40 years on, in exactly the same spot. Just a gritty scruffy piece of tarmac, no children. Just a man standing still for a minute, then walking away.

Standing Stones - 42 year old, male

Traveled to Shrophshire, England, the place my ancestors left from in 1703 to immigrate to the United States. Prior to my trip I had several dreams about England. At some point in time I decided to go to England, I don't recall if this was before or after the dreams. While looking at a map of Shrophshire, I noticed a note that said, "Mithchell's Fold Stone Circle." I had no idea what this was and I could find no information other than what was on the map. I felt drawn to go to this point on the map and had a general plan to go there.

On Monday the 17th I set out for the Shrophshire countryside, and a few miles outside of Shrewsbury the roads became desolate and I encountered fewer and fewer cars. I took some back-roads out of Bishop's Castle (a small town with neither a bishop nor castle) and headed for Church Stoke on the Welsh boarder. I took a small road, barely wide enough for one car and surrounded by high hedges towards the towns of Old Church Stoke and Priestweston. Once I arrived in Priestweston I discovered that it was smaller than its dot on the map and consisted of a few houses. There, at a fork in the road, I saw a sign for the Stone Circle and as I made a left turn, I noticed a man of about thirty and we exchanged glances, he looked familiar to me.

On the flight over I had been reading The Celestine Prophesy, a "New Age" mystery novel about a search for a mysterious document of revelation. In it there was references to synchronistic encounters, and the need to overcome the reluctance to speak to the other people involved in these encounters. The book also made reference to the spiritual characteristics of mountains and sacred places and the "energy" that they contain. The book came to me quite by “accident” and I had not heard of it till the day before my departure.

Leaving Priestweston for the Stone Circle I encountered another small sign that pointed the way. I followed a muddy, rutted road, which looked like a driveway to a house. I drove a short way up a small hill and I encountered a gate that I assumed was locked. There were no signs and there was a house next to the gate and I waited to see if someone would come out. I could not see anything that remotely resembled a stone or a circle. Finally, I gave up and returned to Priestweston but with a determination to ask the man I had seen about the Stone Circle.

Encountering him again, I asked about the location of the Stone Circle; telling him that I had followed the signs and that I had found only locked gate. He told me that the gate should not have been locked and I had to confess that I had not tried to open the gate. (This was an important insight about projecting assumptions onto “reality”.) He told me to go through the gate and that the Stone Circle was at the top of the small mountain. Up to this point it had not occurred to me that the Stone Circle was at the top of a mountain.

Going back to the gate, I opened it and then drove up the muddy, rutted road, following the well-worn path to the top of the hill. At the top the view flattened out into a magnificent vista and right in front of me was the Stone Circle. A small sign indicated that this was a 4000-year-old monument that probably had some religious significance. All that remained was a collection of 15 stones arranged in a circle of 72 meters in diameter. I paced off the distance between the stones that seemed to be opposed to each other and discovered that the distance was 26 paces between them. I did this several times in order to determine the center of the circle. I marked off the center and discovered that the center seemed to be a small area about a foot square.

Standing in the center of this square, I felt a euphoric rush of energy. I faced the four points of the compass with my eyes opened and closed. It felt so good that I didn't want to leave the spot and considered spending the night there and at the very least, returning the next day to take pictures. I felt that somehow this feeling of energy was the primary reason for my coming to England and that this energy was somehow for the benefit of my life from that point forward. I prayed that I would be able to use this energy for the greater good as well as my own. I had a sense that this was somehow connected with a feeling that I had, which was that there was connected with me some ancient royal lineage; that I had been a king in some time past and that this spot was connected with that incarnation.

The Stone Circle is on a mesa, on the horizon are mountains and the land below is not visible, only the sky and mountains can be seen. To the east is Corndon Hill, which was also an ancient burial ground, and is the
dominating view on the horizon. The view to the south, far off in the distance is a mountain range in Wales and to the west is again a mountain range in Wales. I was amazed at the choice of this spot because the view was so spectacular and it blocked out any view of the mundane reality of the land below. The stones had to have been carried up the hill from great distances and the stones were big and heavy, the biggest was about the size of a large man. It had the characteristics of a cathedral in that it blocked out reality and enabled a focus on the heavens above. The Stone Circle cannot be seen till one reaches the top and once at the top one cannot see from whence one came.

The surrounding foliage was a rich burnt umber color and the grass a dark green and tan. The sight was very intoxicating and the colors seemed artistically perfect. I arrived at the Circle about 1:00 pm and stayed there till about 4:00. In all that time I encountered few people. Once a grandmother, her daughter and two small children arrived and walked to the circle, but they did not stay long. A man on horseback arrived, we exchanged greetings and he rode through twice and that was the extent of visitors while I was there. My time alternated between experiencing the energy in the circle and mapping out the positions of the stones. On paper, I have been unable to replicate the geometry that causes the square to appear in the center of the circle when the circle is paced off.

Returning to the Stone Circle the next day in order to take pictures, I did not experience the surge of energy that I experienced the first time, however I did stand in the center and meditate and take pictures of the views.

Astral Relationship - 48 year old, male

3/19/00

Ms. X and I arrive at my house at about 3 AM. She goes to sleep on the couch in the living room, and me in my bed. I stayed awake for a while. As I start to fall asleep and begin to have a sexual fantasy about her. Suddenly there is a tremendous feeling of energy all around me and I realize that Ms. X is experiencing this too. I begin to see a mandala like image and the furniture in the room begins to make popping and cracking sounds. In a dream like state I begin to travel and I can see things hazily. I attempt to stop the experience; it frightens me and it has never happened to me before.

The next day Ms. X asks me if I want to talk about what happened last night. She asks me if I felt the energy, and I say I did. She tells me her version of the experience: She was making love to an unknown man, but not me, and I was watching and offering her instructions. I was telling her that this was the way to make love and conceive a child. We then traveled together to see some things. She says that she heard a noise in the dream like a buzzing or popping sound and that she woke up to check it out, and realizing that the noises were in the dream, she went back into the dream, but I was asleep and didn’t return to the travel.

During the next day I had several experiences in which she answered questions that I had not yet spoken and she would acknowledge a thought I had not yet spoken.

A few weeks later, with similar sleeping arrangements, Ms. X’s energy enters my room. There is an electronic cable leading from a recording device into a computer in my room. Ms. X had touched it and it made a humming sound on the computer’s speakers. This evening, while the computer was off, the humming sound once again came from the computer’s speakers while I felt her energy. We did not discuss this experience, since these encounters had put a strain on our Platonic relationship.

5/9/00

I slept outside on the deck and Ms. X slept in the living room. While I was still awake, lying on my back, I could feel her energy on my chest. It felt sexual and I told her I didn’t want this experience, she tells me that it’s good and that we should do this. She suggests that we have physical sex as well. This happens several times and I keep changing positions to avoid this contact.

Somewhere around 5 AM I have a dream in which I am camping with Ms. X and possibly some others; in the dream I fall asleep and I am being molested by what I think is a bear, but instead it is Ms. X’s energy.

Later that day, Ms. X and I go to a store and she seems out of sorts. We talk about her confusion and uncertainties. After about a half an hour of conversation, I told her that I had a restless night and we began to
discuss the experience, which she had also. In her version, at about 6 am she had a dream where I was laying next to her and I had an erection and was trying to have sex with her.

There were several more (at least a dozen) encounters like these; sometimes we were great distances apart These are the only two that we were willing to acknowledge to each other. In every case there was a highly charged sexual content, but in conscious “reality” we had no sexual desire for each other. This contact later caused a rift between us and we spent less time with each other after that.

Sometimes we would do yoga and meditate with each other and I could feel her energy. Once, while doing yoga, I decided to “use” some of her energy and she felt it and asked me what I was doing using her energy.

Must Go Back - 25 year old, female

In 1987 I had a near death experience. I was in a hospital and was given too much medication. I left my body and was surrounded by peace and an intense love. I was jumping around and playing in a field of green grass which had a lot of beautiful flowers in it. Suddenly I was standing in front of Jesus. As I looked up at him, He was very sad and had tears falling from his eyes. Then I saw a man who was bald. He was looking down. His eyes were lowered as if he was ashamed of something. He said to me "It's not your time, Go back." Then I was back in my body on the hospital bed and the nurse was giving me a shot. I had a cardiac arrest and was gone for over five minutes. After this experience, I was diagnosed with a mitral valve prolapse.

***The Awakening - 49 year old, female

The date was 18th January `95, I awoke and the clock said 8.40am. I was loathe to get up yet, as I felt unusually calm and serene. I began to think deeply about a book I`d read that week about reincarnation. I wondered " if it was true," I found myself smiling for no reason, and gradually becoming incredibly happy! I was surrounded by Pure Love and knew it was God. I had an answer to my question!

Next, I saw a beautiful bluey-white shaft of light, powerful yet gentle. I`ll never forget it`s beauty. Small white lights appeared, dancing around me, like a mini laser light show. This light held me, I could feel it especially round my shoulders. I could feel joy, compassion, harmony, tranquility, mercy, unconditional perfect love, seperately, yet all rolled into one, incredible! Immense Love, kept coming and I felt I couldn`t hold it all. Overwhelming! This Love ran through my body, the whole of my being, like a river. I was in
absolute ecstasy!

I looked to my chest area, as I seemed to be expecting something to happen. A small dark ball glided out from my chest area. Golden light shot out from it in all directions, very beautiful. This was my soul! I was having an involuntary `Out -of-body experience. All awareness was now hovering just below the ceiling. I looked down at my live body. I could see through the duvet to my bare legs, and I saw through the wall to the landing beyond. It felt quite natural to me and I weighed nothing, and I felt round like a ball. In this state I must have had X - Ray eyes! I realized our bodies are vehicles for the soul, and we are eternal.

I found myself floating in a void, beyond space and time. I could see our galaxy in the distance. I knew exactly where I was. I encountered an invisible barrier, and knew I could go no further. I saw huge white rays of light way in the distance, knew I would go there one day, when I die. In this place there was no time.

Then I received a telepathic message, coming from a great distance. The speaker was male, but I absolutely knew for sure, he wasn`t human. He spoke very clearly in English, he said, "God loves you, God loves every single one of us." I wondered if he was an angel, as they are supposed to be messengers of God. Pity I couldn`t see him.

Next, I heard a throbbing noise. I was aware of a Supreme Being, which I couldn`t see, but knew was God. This pulsating noise was constant and very, very powerful, a Living Prescence. His Song of Life reverberating through all the universe. I became ONE with it, in harmony with all creation, magnificent! Quite indescribable!

I had no reccollection of travelling back, I knew I was back in my body. I rushed to the mirror and saw my radiant face, a much
younger me staring back! The clock said 9.l0am. This wonder had lasted about 30minutes! Just then my husband woke up, I told him what had happened, and he said I looked very happy. The rest of the day I felt invincible and supremely fit. I could `see` a golden aura around my body, extending to about three feet. How, I don`t know! It faded by late afternoon.

I have learned, Earth is our nursery, to learn compassion for others. To enable our soul`s to evolve, we reincarnate. An Out-of-body is like dying, of which I am no longer afraid of. Dying is like entering another room, we move on. There is a loving God, I know this now for sure. I am so lucky!

Six months later I had another wonderful experience, but that`s another story.

***Elevated To See God - 13 year old, male

I was 13 when it happened and I am in my 40's now, so it has been over 30 years---yet I remember the events which took place as if it were yesterday.

I was feeling depressed about something as I made my way up the mountain trail to be alone as I often did when things got too heavy for me. It was getting close to dinner time so I decided not go far and made my way to a narrow ridge that overlooked the small West Virginia mining town that I grew up in. It was a beautiful late afternoon in May and I remember noticing how green everything had become since winter had past.

As I sat there doodling in the dirt with a small stick I had found I began to feel very strange, then suddenly it was as though I just elevated off the ground about a foot or so and remained there- suspended in mid-air! Glancing down, I could see that I was still planted firmly on the ground...so how???

Searching for an answer, I soon became conscious of something like a "breeze" that was rising from within me and escaping through the top of my head - like steam blowing up through the spout of a tea kettle.

As I marvelled at this glittering Energy that I knew was my life-force, it suddenly occurred that this was my own true self!!! I remember whispering in astonished recognition..."That's ME!" It resembled a gentle yet powerful stream which was taking a definite upwards and outwards direction leading behind me. I had not idea at the time why it was taking such an obvious direction, I was just simply AMAZED at what I was witnessing! For a second I became afraid that it would all run out and I would surely die, but somehow it didn't seem to matter and it would have been perfectly natural for me to die there on that lonely ridge.

Just then, an erie feeling came over me and it dawned that there was someone standing directly behind me. Naturally I assumed the worse and figured some drunk or crazy person from the town had somehow managed to stumble upon me. Confused as to how he could have gotten so close without me hearing, I froze, too terrified to run or even move for fear of provoking a sudden attack. I could move my head just enough to make out a slight portion of a solid black figure out of the corner of my left eye. As I started to turn completely around I heard a rumbling sound like thunder that seemed to come from inside me somehow and I understood perfectly well that it meant not to turn around.

I knew everyone in that small town, so I was concentrating with all my might for some clue of who it could be but there was nothing but this...Presence. Gradually I began to notice that there was something "odd" about it and as I began to believe the unbelievable it appeared to glow a little. So I believed more. It glowed brighter. The more I believed the brighter it glowed, and the brighter it glowed the more I believed, until at last it stood there in FULL BRILLIANT GLORY!

Being raised in a Christian family, I knew nothing of a Supreme Self, all I knew was that I was now in God's Presence yet somehow the word "God" just wouldn't cut it...IT was beyond all words and concepts. I KNEW who it was though and moved my head completely forward and asked humbly with my feelings, "Are you going to...hurt me?"

No sooner did I ask when I suddenly realized I was grinning from ear to ear! It began deep in my groin area and as it grew in intensity a feeling of incredible JOY overcame me. Such beauty! Then another a little higher up! They continued this way all the way up through my body and each one was joyous beyond description. Finally, the last one exploded in the center of my forehead and my entire being was in a state of total Bliss (I discovered later that these were known as chakras).

Then, as if looking into a mirror, I could see IT clearly, standing there behind me with arms outstretched as if to say...I AM. I gazed directly into the face to see if it looked anything like the pictures I had seen of Jesus, but the soft, yet powerful glow would not allow any distinct features to be made out. At one point during this time I felt the intense presence of a FEMALE radiating from IT!

As the experience began to dimish, I began to wonder if I could spin around very quickly and confront it, but when I did...ZAP! The whole thing was over in the blink of an eye. Dumbfounded, I stood up and looked around...judging by the position of the sun going down and the shadows being cast over the trail below, the whole thing could not have lasted more than a minute or two at the most.

I was completely disoriented as far as time and my first though was that I would be in big trouble for missing dinner. As I made my way back down the hill on my very weak and rubbery legs, I stopped often to reflect on it and tried to understand what it could have been. I had no idea at all but I was sure it was much too Holy to risk being laughed at so I decided then and there never to tell anyone about it. I kept that promise for 30 years; but now that I know others have experienced such things I feel safe in talking about it---perhaps for the last time.

***Dali's Art - 23 year old, Female

When I was 23-years-old, I had an experience that changed my life. I later learned that others had had similar experiences and that they were called mystical experiences. After looking at a piece of art (by
Salvador Dali), I became aware of some truths about myself and the world around me. Those truths included the sense of oneness with everything - other people, animals and nature - in fact, it seemed the whole universe. It felt as if I was tapping into some kind of God-like energy or truth and the world changed from black-and-white to colour. I had a feeling of inevitability - as if the "universe was unfolding as it should" (Desiderata) and that if I died at that particular moment in time, I would be perfectly happy and content. In fact an overwhelming sense of well-being, being loved by God and, for the first time in my life, being able to love myself, prevailed. I felt blessed and realized the insignificance of physical and material realities. An incredible sense of peace permeated my life and for the next three months I wandered around in a state of "bliss."

Although the feeling faded gradually, it has never totally left me. Over the past 18 years I strove to return to that state and to maintain it. I wonder if it is possible to remain in that state for any length of time. Pieces come back to me - and I find I can recall the feeling, for at least a short while, by utilizing mental imagery. If this is a glimpse of heaven or enlightenment - it is indeed a state to be pursued!

Seeing another's subconscious memory of action -- Female

I am a 30-year old female. This experience concerned a lost ring of keys for an office wing. The ring was shared by myself and my 2 support staff. A conference room needed to be quickly set up for a morning staff meeting. I unlocked the room, setting the keys on the conference table, and had to leave for other business. One support person (Ann) finished