i posted this at another site a few years ago and thought i'd share it here.
i was an atheist, who turned agnostic only after carefully considering that 'something' had to have created the universe. and i was a very scientifically-minded person, filled with skepticism that often caused me to be less than tolerable to all things mystical or theological.
sometime around early 2009 i was searching the net for an acronym of some company or software name and accidentally stumbled upon a wikipedia article about DMT -a highly potent psychedelic drug. i was so amazed by the effects outlined in the article that i immediately read Rick Strassman's DMT: The Spirit Molecule. oddly enough, it was quantum physics with it's multiple dimensions and startling discoveries, such as the double-slit experiment, that created just enough objectivity (open-minded skepticism) to allow me to read The Spirit Molecule with an open mind. as it turned out, that book was a fork in the road for me. it chronicled the first government approved studies with psychotropics since the twenty-year moratorium imposed after Timothy Leary's reckless antics with LSD in the 60s. it explained how DMT trips were nearly identical to meditative states and mystical experiences, as well as profound out-of-body experiences witnessed during momentary death or while in extreme pain and/or stress -many times happening to mothers during child birth. next i read a hefty book on Buddhism, followed by books on out-of-body experiences, near-death-experiences, lucid dreaming, and a litany of scientific material regarding quantum theory.
during all my research it became clear to me that all these events were either the same thing, or just different flavors of the same thing. all these accounts also declared that during the events, time and space were dilated, or, time and space did not exist! as if that isn't hard enough to grasp, they also conclude that reality itself is just an illusion, or a hologram, by which we all share the experience of physical reality. this is the same thing Einstein discovered while trying to prove his 'unified field theory' -that all physical matter, specifically, and reality, in general, stem from a non-physical field. this is also what the budda was trying to say 2500 years ago.
during all this research i had experienced a few lucid dreams, and with the aid of some OBE manuals and some of the TMI recordings, i had almost gotten fully Out-Of-Body a few times. it is pretty amazing when you find out for yourself that these types of things are actually real. they change the way you perceive existence, well, at least they did for me. those early days were really neat for me.
while reading about Buddhism i realized something that i feel christianity failed to truly teach me: the importance of thinking, speaking and acting in a way that is kind and compassionate; not because it is the right thing to do, but because those actions originated from sincere intent within me. that last sentence creates a conundrum for those of us who are human, and flawed -how can you think, say and do nice things all the time, when they might not jibe with your true feelings and intent? as you can see, i had my work cut out for me. i had a lot of things to consider.
so that is where my mind was at in late 2009 when i took a few hits off of a joint with my niece's boyfriend, Avi. smoking pot is something i did very infrequently back then, and even less now. i might have a hit once in a while now, but i use it selectively. so the buzz was kicking-in and i decided to put Dark Side Of The Moon on. Avi left the room for a bit and the song On The Run started playing; it is the song with the weird synthesizer loop that phases and morphs throughout the tune. at that moment it sounded a lot like the TMI tracks or the binaural-beat recordings i had been listening to, however, it worked extremely quick and although i felt the 'tug' that meditation often creates when it starts ramping up, i totally blacked out.
a few moment/minutes (?) later, when i regained consciousness, i heard my niece and her boyfriend in the other room arguing about why i was saying such wacky things. they seemed pretty concerned -i wasn't. i looked around my room and it looked somehow different and peculiar, not uncommon for a stoned person, but this was different. i saw through it all at once, i understood everything to be a type of simulation, someone's, or some thing's conception of what a physical reality might be like. normally, we all think we know what we know, but this was the first time i have ever been certain of anything in my life.
i started shouting 'it's all fake!', referring to reality. i also thought that i might just be stoned out of my gourd and i might feel differently tomorrow, but that thought was very brief. i shouted 'and i'm not going to feel any different about it tomorrow!' my mom came into my room and said 'what is going on here???' her concern was understandable as it is pretty outlandish to hear someone say 'the universe is fake' with such conviction. i live in one end of the house, and my mom and my brother -my caregivers, since i broke my neck in 1995- live in the other end, and they were familiar with my theories that the universe might be an illusion, so i'm sure that served as a cushion while dealing with me in that state.
she asked again 'what is going on? why are you saying these things? did you take something?' i told her about the pot and said something like 'but that is not the reason. i can see through this whole illusion right now'. i was in bed and she pulled up a chair and sat next to me, waiting for me to come down. that is when i sensed 6 or 7 'beings' above my house. one by one, my mind instantly held the full understanding of some of the world's big problems. imagine spontaneously knowing literally everything there is to know about world hunger. knowing all those affected by it, all the effort and motivations behind those seeking to solve it, all the efforts, motivations, fear and greed behind those who seek to perpetuate it, and understanding the relationship between all the players involved, as well as the details of those relationships hidden within them. everything! that happened 6 or 7 times in a row, each time containing all the details of certain world problems. it was like a big data transfer in one quick burst. i knew that the data came from the beings above my house, not from my own mind.
each time i received these data transfers i instantly understood the solution to that particular issue. the answer was Love! if someone would have told me 'Love can fix any problem that we have' an hour earlier, i would have just considered it cliche hippie-talk, but i now knew it as fact and understood exactly why it was fact. i don't recall if i said the word Love out loud or not, but when that word came to me i was hit in my heart/chest by so much love that it physically hurt, while also being the most euphoric sensation i have ever felt. the love came from the beings, it was like i was getting rewarded for getting the answer correct. the best metaphor i can give is a four inch fire hose of pure genuine love blasting me in the heart, and i wasn't sure how much more i could handle. tears poured out of my eyes, i couldn't help it.
like i said, this happened 6 or 7 times in a row, each time i understood a different painful problem faced by mankind, realized the answer is 'Love', and was blasted by the fire hose to the point of tears. by this time my mom was holding my hand, i looked over at her and knew she was my guardian angel. i was confused because i always thought guardian angels existed in some sort of spirit form, not as physical people. apparently this is not always the case.
with that roller coaster of sensations and emotions behind me it was even more clear that this life is just an illusion or a sub-reality of the larger 'real' one. with that, i considered the game exposed, the jig was up and i thought 'ok, i've solved the puzzle, now i can leave here!' and i was excited to leave! i expected my room and all of physical reality to dissolve away, delivering me to my real domain, but obviously nothing like that happened.
there were a few other components to this event that were pretty peculiar, but i think i'll keep them to myself.
then, as now, i had zero religious beliefs, yet i had this very spiritual experience. because it was such an eye-opener for me i began to ask certain people that i knew to be very religious if there was some event or stark turning-point in their lives that made them 'believe' -i was fishing around to see if any of them had a similar experience, but either they had not, or they chose not to talk of it. i now believe that religion, although flawed by its dogmas, has most-likely provided many more of these types of mystical experiences to its followers (due to its large number of followers) than has agnosticism, OBEs, NDEs and drug related states that act as conduits to the larger reality (when used by the right people with a conducive mindset). in my opinion, religion does not have a monopoly over mystical experiences, they just have a lot more members who are willing to open themselves up to the possibility of something beyond this life/reality -something bigger than themselves. i believe this is the key, in conjunction with the desire to improve one's self, that facilitates transcendental events. i used to despise religion until my experience, now i see it as a productive mechanism -although limited- in spiritual evolution.
a few notes:
i have no recollection of what happened during the time i blacked-out, but Avi finally told me (after prying it out of him a month later) that he came into the room and i was staring up at the ceiling, i told him i was looking down at my body from up above. i also have no recollection of what the 'world problems' were that i fully understood at the time.
lastly, my mom is pretty religious, and later when i asked her about her thoughts on what happened she told me she thought i was going to be 'raptured up' lol
i was an atheist, who turned agnostic only after carefully considering that 'something' had to have created the universe. and i was a very scientifically-minded person, filled with skepticism that often caused me to be less than tolerable to all things mystical or theological.
sometime around early 2009 i was searching the net for an acronym of some company or software name and accidentally stumbled upon a wikipedia article about DMT -a highly potent psychedelic drug. i was so amazed by the effects outlined in the article that i immediately read Rick Strassman's DMT: The Spirit Molecule. oddly enough, it was quantum physics with it's multiple dimensions and startling discoveries, such as the double-slit experiment, that created just enough objectivity (open-minded skepticism) to allow me to read The Spirit Molecule with an open mind. as it turned out, that book was a fork in the road for me. it chronicled the first government approved studies with psychotropics since the twenty-year moratorium imposed after Timothy Leary's reckless antics with LSD in the 60s. it explained how DMT trips were nearly identical to meditative states and mystical experiences, as well as profound out-of-body experiences witnessed during momentary death or while in extreme pain and/or stress -many times happening to mothers during child birth. next i read a hefty book on Buddhism, followed by books on out-of-body experiences, near-death-experiences, lucid dreaming, and a litany of scientific material regarding quantum theory.
during all my research it became clear to me that all these events were either the same thing, or just different flavors of the same thing. all these accounts also declared that during the events, time and space were dilated, or, time and space did not exist! as if that isn't hard enough to grasp, they also conclude that reality itself is just an illusion, or a hologram, by which we all share the experience of physical reality. this is the same thing Einstein discovered while trying to prove his 'unified field theory' -that all physical matter, specifically, and reality, in general, stem from a non-physical field. this is also what the budda was trying to say 2500 years ago.
during all this research i had experienced a few lucid dreams, and with the aid of some OBE manuals and some of the TMI recordings, i had almost gotten fully Out-Of-Body a few times. it is pretty amazing when you find out for yourself that these types of things are actually real. they change the way you perceive existence, well, at least they did for me. those early days were really neat for me.
while reading about Buddhism i realized something that i feel christianity failed to truly teach me: the importance of thinking, speaking and acting in a way that is kind and compassionate; not because it is the right thing to do, but because those actions originated from sincere intent within me. that last sentence creates a conundrum for those of us who are human, and flawed -how can you think, say and do nice things all the time, when they might not jibe with your true feelings and intent? as you can see, i had my work cut out for me. i had a lot of things to consider.
so that is where my mind was at in late 2009 when i took a few hits off of a joint with my niece's boyfriend, Avi. smoking pot is something i did very infrequently back then, and even less now. i might have a hit once in a while now, but i use it selectively. so the buzz was kicking-in and i decided to put Dark Side Of The Moon on. Avi left the room for a bit and the song On The Run started playing; it is the song with the weird synthesizer loop that phases and morphs throughout the tune. at that moment it sounded a lot like the TMI tracks or the binaural-beat recordings i had been listening to, however, it worked extremely quick and although i felt the 'tug' that meditation often creates when it starts ramping up, i totally blacked out.
a few moment/minutes (?) later, when i regained consciousness, i heard my niece and her boyfriend in the other room arguing about why i was saying such wacky things. they seemed pretty concerned -i wasn't. i looked around my room and it looked somehow different and peculiar, not uncommon for a stoned person, but this was different. i saw through it all at once, i understood everything to be a type of simulation, someone's, or some thing's conception of what a physical reality might be like. normally, we all think we know what we know, but this was the first time i have ever been certain of anything in my life.
i started shouting 'it's all fake!', referring to reality. i also thought that i might just be stoned out of my gourd and i might feel differently tomorrow, but that thought was very brief. i shouted 'and i'm not going to feel any different about it tomorrow!' my mom came into my room and said 'what is going on here???' her concern was understandable as it is pretty outlandish to hear someone say 'the universe is fake' with such conviction. i live in one end of the house, and my mom and my brother -my caregivers, since i broke my neck in 1995- live in the other end, and they were familiar with my theories that the universe might be an illusion, so i'm sure that served as a cushion while dealing with me in that state.
she asked again 'what is going on? why are you saying these things? did you take something?' i told her about the pot and said something like 'but that is not the reason. i can see through this whole illusion right now'. i was in bed and she pulled up a chair and sat next to me, waiting for me to come down. that is when i sensed 6 or 7 'beings' above my house. one by one, my mind instantly held the full understanding of some of the world's big problems. imagine spontaneously knowing literally everything there is to know about world hunger. knowing all those affected by it, all the effort and motivations behind those seeking to solve it, all the efforts, motivations, fear and greed behind those who seek to perpetuate it, and understanding the relationship between all the players involved, as well as the details of those relationships hidden within them. everything! that happened 6 or 7 times in a row, each time containing all the details of certain world problems. it was like a big data transfer in one quick burst. i knew that the data came from the beings above my house, not from my own mind.
each time i received these data transfers i instantly understood the solution to that particular issue. the answer was Love! if someone would have told me 'Love can fix any problem that we have' an hour earlier, i would have just considered it cliche hippie-talk, but i now knew it as fact and understood exactly why it was fact. i don't recall if i said the word Love out loud or not, but when that word came to me i was hit in my heart/chest by so much love that it physically hurt, while also being the most euphoric sensation i have ever felt. the love came from the beings, it was like i was getting rewarded for getting the answer correct. the best metaphor i can give is a four inch fire hose of pure genuine love blasting me in the heart, and i wasn't sure how much more i could handle. tears poured out of my eyes, i couldn't help it.
like i said, this happened 6 or 7 times in a row, each time i understood a different painful problem faced by mankind, realized the answer is 'Love', and was blasted by the fire hose to the point of tears. by this time my mom was holding my hand, i looked over at her and knew she was my guardian angel. i was confused because i always thought guardian angels existed in some sort of spirit form, not as physical people. apparently this is not always the case.
with that roller coaster of sensations and emotions behind me it was even more clear that this life is just an illusion or a sub-reality of the larger 'real' one. with that, i considered the game exposed, the jig was up and i thought 'ok, i've solved the puzzle, now i can leave here!' and i was excited to leave! i expected my room and all of physical reality to dissolve away, delivering me to my real domain, but obviously nothing like that happened.
there were a few other components to this event that were pretty peculiar, but i think i'll keep them to myself.
then, as now, i had zero religious beliefs, yet i had this very spiritual experience. because it was such an eye-opener for me i began to ask certain people that i knew to be very religious if there was some event or stark turning-point in their lives that made them 'believe' -i was fishing around to see if any of them had a similar experience, but either they had not, or they chose not to talk of it. i now believe that religion, although flawed by its dogmas, has most-likely provided many more of these types of mystical experiences to its followers (due to its large number of followers) than has agnosticism, OBEs, NDEs and drug related states that act as conduits to the larger reality (when used by the right people with a conducive mindset). in my opinion, religion does not have a monopoly over mystical experiences, they just have a lot more members who are willing to open themselves up to the possibility of something beyond this life/reality -something bigger than themselves. i believe this is the key, in conjunction with the desire to improve one's self, that facilitates transcendental events. i used to despise religion until my experience, now i see it as a productive mechanism -although limited- in spiritual evolution.
a few notes:
i have no recollection of what happened during the time i blacked-out, but Avi finally told me (after prying it out of him a month later) that he came into the room and i was staring up at the ceiling, i told him i was looking down at my body from up above. i also have no recollection of what the 'world problems' were that i fully understood at the time.
lastly, my mom is pretty religious, and later when i asked her about her thoughts on what happened she told me she thought i was going to be 'raptured up' lol
