Having grown up in a non-religious westernised household, my early views on the subject of existence and reality were very much in accordance with what is currently scientifically provable and observable. You're born and you die, that's it, and we live in a logical and rational world that follows our current scientific understanding of the world. Although I thought it was interesting to hear about the experiences and religions of people in different parts of the world who had a much more mystical view of reality, full of spirits, powerful naturalistic forces, reincarnation, and other fascinating concepts, I ultimately dismissed all of these stories as superstitious nonsense.
Since my late teens, however, I've had a couple of rather interesting experiences that really made me take a step back from things and start to question if my very atheistic view of the world was in fact flawed.
For the purposes of this thread, I would be interested to hear what kind of interesting experiences that you guys have had, be they near-death experiences, crazy paranormal stories, or amazing synchronicities, anything that goes against our current scientific understanding of the world.
I can personally think of two separate events that have led me to question my previous 'rational' world view. After I finished writing up the first event, this post started getting pretty damn long so I'll just limit it to this one for now, maybe I'll share the second story once this thread gets going.
The first is probably the strangest event that I've had the chance to experience in my life.
It occurred while I was travelling and visiting family members of mine in a certain Asian country. I had arrived maybe a day or two before and was still jet-lagged, so during the afternoon I had retreated to my room, and was resting on my bed. Unless I'm extremely sleep-deprived, I generally can't sleep during the day, so I was just relaxing on the bed, my upper body inclined slightly with some pillows under it. Due to my on-and-off practice of meditation throughout the last couple of years of my life, I'm pretty good at slowing down my thoughts, and allowing my mind to rest as well.
At a certain point of time chilling on the bed I reached a very deeply relaxed, almost trancelike state possibly due to the combination of my jet lag and my efforts to still my mind. My mind was absolutely clear, no thoughts whatsoever. I started to feel a faint pressure on my forehead, or on my temple to be precise. It was a strange sensation, but not unpleasant, so I felt content to simply observe the feelings that arose. Gradually I felt the pressure on my temple increase, as well as a gentle vibration throughout my body. The intensity of both the pressure as well as the vibrations continued to escalate (and to reiterate, both due to the depth of the relaxed state that I was in, as well as a lack of painful sensations, I continued to simply sit back and observe what I was feeling, just like during meditation), until I heard (and felt) a 'pop'.
My vision went completely black, and all of a sudden I felt as though as I was being sucked through some kind of tunnel at a very high speed. It's very tough to describe: my sense of vision was gone (only blackness all around), a sensation of movement and vibration stemming from my temple, and a distant awareness of my body still lying down on the bed where I lay.
Suddenly everything stopped, and I was now viewing somewhere in a completely different environment from where I was staying. I remember the details of this scene quite vividly because it was so beautiful: it was a group of people sitting at a table at the side of a house sitting on a lake during an amazing spring or summer day. The people were young (late-20's ish), and they were sitting together and laughing, enjoying the beautiful day.
To give you some kind of a visual aid, it was a house situated like this, except that everyone was sitting at a table on some kind of a veranda on the edge of the lake, and that it was a beautifully sunny day, and thus the colors of the lake, and the greenery around were much more vivid.
The strange part was that I was observing this scene slightly above and away from where they were seated, as if from a floating camera or a drone. I could still dimly feel my body in the bed in the back of my awareness, but my body was not with me (so different than something would be in a dream), and it felt as if I were viewing this scene from a point source or something like that, rather than my eyes. The only word that would help this description would possibly be I was 'disembodied'.
After observing this for maybe 10-20 seconds, I felt the vibrations return, and they ramped up in intensity (quicker this time) until my vision once again disappeared, and I once again felt as if I was being sucked through a tunnel at extremely high speeds. What happened next was a repeat of what occurred before: I 'arrived' at a new place, once again observing things from an elevated viewpoint without my body being present until the vibrations returned. Unfortunately my memories of the next two or three scenes that I was transported to are very much hazy so I can't really tell you what I saw. After I believe the third place, when returning back to the blackness and tunnelling sensation, it kind of felt like I 'ran out of juice', or that I was tiring from this effort, so the vibrations petered out and my senses returned to body, and I was looking out of my eyes again.
I was still in a deeply relaxed state, so I blinked a couple times and spent some time trying to make the sense of what the fuck just happened (although I should note that I wasn't freaked out or anything like that, just very interested and confused). It definitely wasn't a dream, as I was very much awake and aware throughout the whole experience, so to be honest I'm not sure what it was. In the mystical arms of many of the world's religions they speak of the third eye (located between our two eyes) as some kind of inbuilt feature of all humans that allows for perception of otherworldy things, so after having conducted some basic research about the subject, this is the closest explanation that I could find that would match with this experience of mine that all started with feelings of pressure and vibration in my temple. No matter what the case may be, it certainly added to my feeling that there are still a lot of things out there that cannot be rationally explained within our current scientific understanding of the universe that we live in.
I should note that I hadn't done any kind of psychedelics since 6 months before this episode (I'd done acid maybe 2 times, and never experienced anything close to as weird as this), nor have I ever 'looked for' some kind of weird experience like this. I'd meditated on and off for the last couple years before this, around 15 minutes a day whenever I did it, and beyond that nothing else to prime me for something like this, so it was definitely a random, spontaneous event.
I was very much hesitating on posting this thread due to the rather fantastical nature of this experience (inb4 thebassist is the ultimate 5-year sleeper cell troll), but I figured it would be worth a shot to see if some of you guys have also had some interesting experiences that you'd like to share, and I promise that I'm telling the absolute and utter truth.
Although this is by far the most dramatic thing of this nature that I've had in my life,
I've had a couple other strange events that I would be unable to explain, and have heard all kinds of interesting and weird stories from friends of mine who would absolutely never lie to me.
So, with that out of the way, I would be interested to hear from y'all about your experiences with the strange and inexplicable, be they stories of amazing synchronicities, ghosts and spirits, mystical experiences or anything (even some small mundane thing that you find interesting).
I'm looking forward to hearing your stories!
Since my late teens, however, I've had a couple of rather interesting experiences that really made me take a step back from things and start to question if my very atheistic view of the world was in fact flawed.
For the purposes of this thread, I would be interested to hear what kind of interesting experiences that you guys have had, be they near-death experiences, crazy paranormal stories, or amazing synchronicities, anything that goes against our current scientific understanding of the world.
I can personally think of two separate events that have led me to question my previous 'rational' world view. After I finished writing up the first event, this post started getting pretty damn long so I'll just limit it to this one for now, maybe I'll share the second story once this thread gets going.
The first is probably the strangest event that I've had the chance to experience in my life.
It occurred while I was travelling and visiting family members of mine in a certain Asian country. I had arrived maybe a day or two before and was still jet-lagged, so during the afternoon I had retreated to my room, and was resting on my bed. Unless I'm extremely sleep-deprived, I generally can't sleep during the day, so I was just relaxing on the bed, my upper body inclined slightly with some pillows under it. Due to my on-and-off practice of meditation throughout the last couple of years of my life, I'm pretty good at slowing down my thoughts, and allowing my mind to rest as well.
At a certain point of time chilling on the bed I reached a very deeply relaxed, almost trancelike state possibly due to the combination of my jet lag and my efforts to still my mind. My mind was absolutely clear, no thoughts whatsoever. I started to feel a faint pressure on my forehead, or on my temple to be precise. It was a strange sensation, but not unpleasant, so I felt content to simply observe the feelings that arose. Gradually I felt the pressure on my temple increase, as well as a gentle vibration throughout my body. The intensity of both the pressure as well as the vibrations continued to escalate (and to reiterate, both due to the depth of the relaxed state that I was in, as well as a lack of painful sensations, I continued to simply sit back and observe what I was feeling, just like during meditation), until I heard (and felt) a 'pop'.
My vision went completely black, and all of a sudden I felt as though as I was being sucked through some kind of tunnel at a very high speed. It's very tough to describe: my sense of vision was gone (only blackness all around), a sensation of movement and vibration stemming from my temple, and a distant awareness of my body still lying down on the bed where I lay.
Suddenly everything stopped, and I was now viewing somewhere in a completely different environment from where I was staying. I remember the details of this scene quite vividly because it was so beautiful: it was a group of people sitting at a table at the side of a house sitting on a lake during an amazing spring or summer day. The people were young (late-20's ish), and they were sitting together and laughing, enjoying the beautiful day.
To give you some kind of a visual aid, it was a house situated like this, except that everyone was sitting at a table on some kind of a veranda on the edge of the lake, and that it was a beautifully sunny day, and thus the colors of the lake, and the greenery around were much more vivid.
The strange part was that I was observing this scene slightly above and away from where they were seated, as if from a floating camera or a drone. I could still dimly feel my body in the bed in the back of my awareness, but my body was not with me (so different than something would be in a dream), and it felt as if I were viewing this scene from a point source or something like that, rather than my eyes. The only word that would help this description would possibly be I was 'disembodied'.
After observing this for maybe 10-20 seconds, I felt the vibrations return, and they ramped up in intensity (quicker this time) until my vision once again disappeared, and I once again felt as if I was being sucked through a tunnel at extremely high speeds. What happened next was a repeat of what occurred before: I 'arrived' at a new place, once again observing things from an elevated viewpoint without my body being present until the vibrations returned. Unfortunately my memories of the next two or three scenes that I was transported to are very much hazy so I can't really tell you what I saw. After I believe the third place, when returning back to the blackness and tunnelling sensation, it kind of felt like I 'ran out of juice', or that I was tiring from this effort, so the vibrations petered out and my senses returned to body, and I was looking out of my eyes again.
I was still in a deeply relaxed state, so I blinked a couple times and spent some time trying to make the sense of what the fuck just happened (although I should note that I wasn't freaked out or anything like that, just very interested and confused). It definitely wasn't a dream, as I was very much awake and aware throughout the whole experience, so to be honest I'm not sure what it was. In the mystical arms of many of the world's religions they speak of the third eye (located between our two eyes) as some kind of inbuilt feature of all humans that allows for perception of otherworldy things, so after having conducted some basic research about the subject, this is the closest explanation that I could find that would match with this experience of mine that all started with feelings of pressure and vibration in my temple. No matter what the case may be, it certainly added to my feeling that there are still a lot of things out there that cannot be rationally explained within our current scientific understanding of the universe that we live in.
I should note that I hadn't done any kind of psychedelics since 6 months before this episode (I'd done acid maybe 2 times, and never experienced anything close to as weird as this), nor have I ever 'looked for' some kind of weird experience like this. I'd meditated on and off for the last couple years before this, around 15 minutes a day whenever I did it, and beyond that nothing else to prime me for something like this, so it was definitely a random, spontaneous event.
I was very much hesitating on posting this thread due to the rather fantastical nature of this experience (inb4 thebassist is the ultimate 5-year sleeper cell troll), but I figured it would be worth a shot to see if some of you guys have also had some interesting experiences that you'd like to share, and I promise that I'm telling the absolute and utter truth.
Although this is by far the most dramatic thing of this nature that I've had in my life,
I've had a couple other strange events that I would be unable to explain, and have heard all kinds of interesting and weird stories from friends of mine who would absolutely never lie to me.
So, with that out of the way, I would be interested to hear from y'all about your experiences with the strange and inexplicable, be they stories of amazing synchronicities, ghosts and spirits, mystical experiences or anything (even some small mundane thing that you find interesting).
I'm looking forward to hearing your stories!
