“The thing that is so powerful about psychedelics is that they perform on demand, which almost in principle you cannot expect of a mystical experience because that would be essentially man ordering God at man’s whim, which is not how it’s supposed to work.” – Terence McKenna.
There is much that can be said for leading a normal life; some say it is the best way to live, some say that normal is safe and therefore the better way to be, others complain that normal is just too boring for them. But no matter how normal or adventurous you life is, it will never be quite the same after having a mystical experience.
Many people misunderstand the word ‘Mystical’ and often associate it with ‘Mythical’, passing it off as the stuff of fairy tales and superstition; but the origin of the word comes from Middle English and was first recorded in writing in the early 1600’s, meaning ‘hidden meaning’, thus its close knit relationship with the word ‘Occult’ which also means ‘hidden/concealed’. Mystical experience is anything which ‘inspires a sense of spiritual mystery, awe or fascination’ and can also be defined as that which has ‘spiritually symbolic or allegorical meaning which transcends human understanding.’ In truth, mystical experiences do not transcend our understanding, they simply challenge it, and force our minds to work in ways we never knew or believed they could. Don’t be misled by my opening citation; mystical experience is not solely dependent on psychedelics to be attained, but this is one of the fastest methods through which shamanic practitioners can project the consciousness into other dimensions of perception. Alternative methods for attaining mystical experience are dancing, chanting, rhythmic drumming, meditation, hypnosis, breathing exercises, Yoga, Thai Chi, mantra, drawing Sacred Geometry, sun/moon gazing, scrying (in flames, reflections etc.) and practicing lucid dreaming. All of the practices listed above can alter the wavelength in the human brain, stimulating heightened perception, hallucination, precognition, telepathic communication and Out-of-Body experiences (O.B.E.). I will be looking at a number of methods for attaining mystical experience, and describe to the best of my ability, my recollections of those experiences for anyone who has either had an experience but doesn’t know how to make sense of it, or anyone who is thinking about trying to pursue the mystical experience.
My experiences, in order of intensity-significance ratio, lowest to highest are as follows.
1.Breathing exercise – Intensity: low-medium, started slowly then gained in intensity. Symbolic significance: Medium, simple lesson conveyed through basic symbols. I used to suffer from extreme stress to the extent of making myself physically ill. So a friend of mine suggested a couple of basic breathing exercises to calm me. I tried them whenever I felt the familiar tightness in my chest, but it only served in alleviating the anxiety for a short period of time. One day I was sitting in my bedroom, having no work to do, nothing to worry about and no one to disturb my solitude. I had this vague feeling that I should try doing the breathing exercise despite not feeling the onset of stress, but I decided to try it anyway. The little voice in the back of my mind urged me to be patient and focus on my breathing, so I inhaled slowly, counting the ticks of the clock until I hit eight, then held for two more ticks before releasing the breath slowly, counting four ticks, then finally held for another two seconds before repeating.after the first two repetitions I felt my muscles begin to relax. After eight repetitions I could no longer hear the ticking of the clock, nor any other sound beyond my breathing and the beating of my own heart. After twelve repetitions I began to see images behind my eyelids, as one does when dreaming. The images were fleeting at first, fragmented and never holding their form like whisps of smoke in the blackness of my closed eyes. I attempted to focus on them but when I did they faded, so I returned to focusing on my breathing and soon the images returned. The smoke danced and swirled and there appeared to be colour, red and blue, and then the smoke became a small bird in flight. It fluttered through the inky black and blue haze around it until it began to leave a trace, almost like a smoky trail of red which grouped together to form flames. The little bird was consumed in the flames and vanished, then the red flames merged with the blue haze turning it purple. The purple then changed, transitioning through each colour in the light spectrum until it became a mixture of orange and green from which emerged the little red bird again, as if hatching from an egg. I then felt my arm slide off of the edge of the bed as i drifted towards sleep and jolted back to full wakefulness. After the experience I looked up the symbolic meanings and correspondences of each of the colours, as well as tried to find the species of bird that I saw. After some research I learned that the bird was a Lark. Larks are associated with the sun and daybreak. They are known primarily for their beautiful singing and represent the warmth and vitality of the sun and therefore are correspondent with the direction South. This ties into the fact that the Lark was red, which is the colour associated with the South and the alchemical element of Fire. This represents masculine energy and vitality and again is sun related. The message of the vision was to openly express and manifest my male creative energy through music. The blue haze represents stability, wisdom, loyalty and communication hence its association with the Throat Chakra; so the red flames merging with the blue signifies the application of the creative energy to communicate wisdom or knowledge to others. Purple is the colour of regality and higher knowledge, attributed to the Crown Chakra; from manifesting my ideas in the world I will elevate my consciousness. The colours changing to a mix of orange and green can be symbolic of the Chakras again, for between the Sacral Chakra (orange, sexual energy) and the Heart Chakra (green, love and compassion) lies the Solar Plexus Chakra (yellow) representing creative expression and self confidence from which the Lark of joy and creativity is reborn. This is just one way of interpreting the vision.
2. Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) – Intensity: medium-high, experience itself wasn’t intense but the after effects were. Symbolic significance: medium-high, too many images to remember in order and thus difficult to analyse and translate. I was introduced to the idea of DMT when I stumbled across a book in Waterstones entitled The Cosmic Serpent, DNA and the Origins of Knowledge by Jeremy Narby. I found this book fascinating and definitely recommend reading it, for it put so much into perspective on the thorny issue or drug use versus shamanic tradition. I asked around and finally made a contact through a transfer student in my University who was able to acquire a very small amount of crystalline DMT. The substance turned to liquid very quickly under high temperature so had to be mixed with dried sage which acted as a binding component without adding any mind altering effects which would disrupt the effects of the DMT. The mixture was smoked in a pipe, yielding only two tokes, but that was perfectly sufficient. within minutes a began to feel light headed which intensified into a feeling of sea-sickness inducing very mild nausea. After about a minute of this discomfort I ‘took off’; it felt as though, despite being seated on a sofa, that my body had dropped into the seat but left my mind/spirit/consciousness standing upright. My friend had Jurassic Rock playing quietly on his laptop and the ambient sounds of guitar and keyboard carried me through the oil painting which was our dorm room with a feeling of being freed from captivity, a bliss amounting to euphoria. The sequence of images that I saw is impossible to relay accurately in full order in which I saw them, but I remember seeing a giant snake with wings, I remember flying across a vast desert on its back and seeing the clouds beneath me change into rocks then back to clouds again, transmuting the formations of nature from vapour to solid then to vapour again. I remember moving through seemingly endless tunnels of light, changing colours constantly with infinitely complex fractal geometric patterns. I recall apoint where I was seeing the music, the sounds translating into light and then into coherent visual patterns like ripples from water droplets on the surface of a still lake. All the while there was this feeling that I was accompanied by something, a hyper intelligent being which was trying to teach me things through the images I was presented with. I was taught about the structure of matter, about plants and animals, I was shown the patterns in nature, spirals and vortexes of energy, the communication between all things animate and inanimate. I tried to question what I was seeing, to have it explained to me, to keep it fixed in my mind to be studied and to make sense of it, but I was told to not ask questions, to not wonder in that moment and to simply ‘be’ and let the images come. There were dozens of other sensations and emotions, colours, shapes, images, people, places, symbols which I saw on my journey, but I cannot remember them, plus I would be here forever trying to write them all down. Over all, the visual journey itself was nowhere near as vivid or terrifying as some people have described, but it did grow in intensity, reaching a peak then slowly drifted back to wakefulness, and some of the images I recalled afterwards are ones which have been seen by many people in exactly the same way, the feathered/winged serpent for example. This suggests to me that there is some fixed nature to the ‘world’ we are transported to when on DMT, and that each experience is not entirely subject to the individual’s own mind but rather there is some objective truth which is shared by all who experience it. As stated, the after effects of the experience were more intense. When I opened my eyes, the dorm room did not seem real to me. Everything was too straight, too square, too rigid. My mind had become accustomed to perceiving the loose, free-flowing energy of the higher dimension and had difficulty in processing the static, boxed in dimensions of physical reality. It felt as though the walls wanted to bend and flex to match the way my mind was working, but they were unable to do so resulting in disorientation and a degree of frustration at the fact that I could not make the walls more fluid to ease my constrained perception. Strangely the whole experience was only supposed to last for 15-20 minutes, but I was journeying for up to 45 minutes before starting to come down. In total the effects lasted for 1 hour and 7 minutes. It was by no means an unpleasant experience, for it was mind altering, enlightening and liberating, but very difficult to translate into coherent messages unlike the vision from the breathing exercise.
3. Guided Meditation – Intensity: High, occurrences in the vision were experienced on a physical level, sounds, smells, textures and sensations. Symbolic significance: High, everything in the vision meant something or represented part of my psyche/soul/higher being. An old friend of the family spent many years as a working psychic and spiritual healer, and had ample experience in hypnotherapy and guided meditations for the purposes of Soul Retrieval. One afternoon I was visiting and our conversation came to the subject of spiritual healing. I had no experience of spiritual practice at that time, and the only internal visionary experiences I had had were random and incoherent at a young age. She suggested guiding me into my first meditation to meet my spirit guides and, in my youth and zeal, I agreed enthusiastically. I was seated in an arm chair and made comfortable. I was given a glass of water before we began, then I closed my eyes and listened. My tutor described roots growing out from the soles of my feet and digging into the ground, down through the crust of the Earth, through the mantle of lava and into the Earth’s core. She had me picture the roots sucking up the heat and the light from the molten metal sphere and channel that heat ad light back into my body, spreading up from my feet and into my legs, stomach, chest, arms, head, until finally it would erupt from the top of my head and the light would spill down around me until I was encased in a safe shell. As she described this I could feel and see in my mind, the energy moving through my body like a fiery snake. Once enveloped in the protective light field, my tutor talked me through the colours of the rainbow, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, having me focus on the colours in order in my mind, seeing them behind my eyes, feeling them in each part of my body. Once I had violet fixed firmly in my focus, she had me impose a shape, any shape, into my mind and to imagine myself walking towards the shape; I pictured a heart. I was guided through the centre of the heart like a door or portal and found myself standing in a field full of wild flowers of blue, pink, and white interspersed with small yellow buds. behind e was a mountain, to my left was a sunlit forest and to my right was a forest shrouded in mist and shadow. Ahead of me, sloping downhill, the field ended in the distance at the shore of a lake over which sat a red sun as if setting into the water. Above me the sky was clear and light blue but with pinky orange clouds of dusk despite there being another sun, golden and blazing at its height. I was drawn to the left hand forest so was instructed to go there either by walking, running, flying or teleporting. I could feel the grass between my bare toes (even though in the waking world I had shoes on), and I could smell the flowers. flew across the field, feeling the gut wrench of G-force at high speed and the wind rushing past me, and came to a red arch bridge across a narrow, slow moving river inhabited by little red fish swimming in circles amongst smooth, flat stones. I looked at my reflection in the water and saw that I had three pairs of dark brown wings. I marveled at them and mused on the fact that the sound of running water was so clear in my mind along with the sound of birdsong; I could even feel the wings on my shoulders as if I had phantom limbs which I could move. I then ventured into the forest, down a dirt path lined with small brown mushrooms. A stag appeared out of the bushes and jumped across the path from right to left in front of me, with seven bluebirds flying around it’s head. The path led me to a clearing in which there stood a large stone which vaguely resembled pride rock in the Lion King. upon it were carved Runes, though the words that they spelled when translated were Greek. I didn’t find this out until a long time afterwards when looking back over my original notes from the session. I sat in contemplation by the stone thinking of what to ask my spirit guide when I met it. while I was thinking, a green snake appeared in the long grass at the edge of the clearing amongst the golden saplings of Ashes and Elms. The middle of the clearing was lit by a strange golden light which didn’t come from either of the suns, and I felt its warmth on my skin. I proceeded down another path which was darker with no mushrooms or animals, until the trees thinned and I stood in a long gorge, covered in grass and wild flowers, the same as the first field. There was a pi-balled horse frolicking in the grass and a silver wolf playing with it, and the sight of the two animals in harmony filled me with a warm happy feeling making me smile inside and out. in the side of right hand cliff was a cave which wound up through the rock and came out at the top of the cliff where my spirit guide resided. I took a seat on a bench beside a campfire near the cave mouth and waited patiently. after a while a small ball of white light emerged from the cave and became an owl which perched on a post opposite me and spoke to me of my confusion, my self doubt, my anger, my feeling of inadequacy and told me that I needed to take up the path of the Hermit, to look within and travel the realms of spirit to learn my true name, who I really am and what my purpose on the Earth is. The owl presented me with a bronze crown and told me that the weight may sometimes be difficult to bear, but I must never relent or remove it from my head. We conversed for what felt like an hour, then I was instructed to go back to the field from whence I came as night was drawing near, and that I could not be there when night time approached. I retraced my steps noting slight differences along the way; in the clearing the saplings had become fully grown and perched in one of them was the owl holding the green snake dead in its beak. There was a third path which had not been there earlier which was dark and forbidding so I avoided it and went down the path to the open field on which there were no more mushrooms, but instead there were bright red berries growing on the bushes which I couldn’t eat. Back in the field I could see stars as the second sun followed the first into the lake, and in the sky I could see the heart shape I had arrived through and was drawn back through it to full wakefulness, seeing the sequence of images from the start of the meditation going in reverse until I finally opened my eyes. If anyone is interested in knowing the symbolic interpretations of this vision then do send me a message and I’ll be happy to discuss any aspect of it with you.
These are just three of many Mystical Experiences I have had over the years, and as demonstrated, my encounter with psychedelics was far from the most vivid. Try out the breathing exercise for yourself and perhaps have a friend or relative try to guide you into your own inner world. Whatever you see, hear, feel in there is a clue to who you are as a person and as a soul, and can also offer clues as to something which ails you while offering solutions to your problems. Mystical Experience is a great form of therapy and one which I would recommend to anyone, though perhaps the use of psychedelics should be avoided if possible, as UK law prohibits it’s use and depending on your personal health, it you might not have the same experience that I had. Deep meditation, particularly on symbols or images can help you connect to the energies associated with them. Rhythmic dancing and drumming helps to synchronise your body and mind to a slower wave length making it easier to achieve and altered state of consciousness. Sometimes, however, the individual doesn’t need to seek out the Mystical Experience; sometimes the experience happens randomly, triggered by some subconscious workings being realised through symbols, words, music, pictures or an emotion. This can manifest as sudden moments of clarity, inexplicable bouts of happiness and laughter, sudden appreciation for everything in life, suddenly noticing the beauty and complexity of nature, images when you close you eyes accompanied by a high pitched ringing in your ears, and even a new perspective on space and time allowing you to conduct a lot of things in your day in a very short space of time, the feeling that your day has gone when in fact only an hour has gone by while you have done so much! You may start to have extremely vivid dreams, dreams which will either feel so real that you’re not sure if you have woken up at the end, dreams which come to pass a short time later, dreams in which a person will appear whom you have not seen for a long time only to bump into them in waking life. All of this is classed as Mystical Experience, and all of this is possible if you are willing to open yourself up to the possibility. I hope this has inspired you or given you some ideas. In all that you do, all that you are, and all that you will become, I wish you good luck. Namaste!
Enki Endymion. O(
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