Gypsy Hand Grenades, DMT and the Holy Ghost...

I found myself walking in the dead of night up the street where I used to live with my father. On all sides of the road and on the front lawns and driveways of the houses unsavoury gypsy-type characters were camped, in small tents, in sleeping bags, in small groups huddled around open fires. Their children played naughtily around the parked vehicles and with the wheely bins.

I had in my possession explosive devices, and I had apparently been planting them in opportune places whilst trying to avoid being caught by the campers. It seemed to be my mission to destroy their efforts by sneaking around and laying these bombs.

I made it to the top of the hill and out of the area where the campers were and realised for the first time that the road was wet around my feet as if from a burst water main, and the water was flowing the direction I was walking. I carried on walking around a bend in the road and took a turn down one of the side streets, just as I heard a loud and slightly distant bang which I was certain was from the explosions going off that I had set, eliminating the sinister trespassers from the lower section of road.

At the end of the road I noticed the first difference between the dream landscape and its waking-life counterpart: where the housing development finished, behind which should have been fields and trees, there was instead the vista of a huge city lit up at night with the image being reflected in a body of water sat between the houses and the cityscape.

I walked along the path through the houses taking me to the very end of the street and looked down at my feet again, this time to discover the water had become stronger and more voluminous, and was flowing along the path I had taken leading to this body of water. In fact, as I stopped at a concrete precipice overlooking the lake in front of me and taking one last look behind and down again at my feet, the water was now strong enough to move me along and push me over the edge into the lake.

The instant I plunged into the water an incredible thing happened: the dark of night lifted and was replaced in a flash by bright beaming daylight and clear blue skies; the water around me was alive and vivid and fresh to the point where I could feel the spray on my face; the old streets and houses had completely vanished and were replaced on all sides by beautiful buildings, weeping willows and the like. The entire sequence became incredibly realistic and charged with significance as if a switch had suddenly been flipped, and the whole episode was accompanied by a feeling of euphoria and "things all fitting together". It only lasted a few seconds however before I felt as if I was being pulled out of my ecstatic dream state and forced awake.



I awoke in my bedroom to a visual overlay of semi-transparent geometric forms being imposed over my regular sight. The bold shape in the middle was of a rotating circular mandala, with a cog-like centre that rotated the opposite direction at a slightly different speed, and various other minor shapes around it. I was frozen with surprise, having not experienced a psychadelic visual of this nature before, but having encountered similar experiences in literature regarding mystical visions and experiences reported by users of certain hallucinogens, particularly DMT and shamanic formulas derived from datura, peyote and other naturally occuring vegetation.

This visual display went on for 30 seconds or a minute before a faint droning noise that I had been aware of began to pick up volume and become unbearably loud and intense to the point of being highly unnerving and causing a strong fearful response in me. I was overwhelmed by the cutting of the whirring sound and felt it beginning to consume me as I started fading out of consciousness and into the noise. I violently shook myself to resist the onset of the altered state that I felt myself being pulled into such was the level of fear I was experiencing, and the noise subsided and left.

The visuals were still rotating slowly in the semi-transparent overlay that sat like a sheet of acetate over my regular vision, and in the absence of the whirring noise I became very aware of a strong presence in the room with me. The presence was that of a small child which I perceived to be at my side as I laid in bed, either as if laying next to me, or actually being a part of me, I could not discern. I can only relate the presence of the child to the Holy Spirit as the child Jesus, being that it was such a pure and holy feeling that accompanied it.

At one point I became faintly aware of a trio of presences in the room, as if standing around me, but this feeling was faint and was far over-shadowed by the presence of the small child who was a part of me/laying next to me.

I have never experienced these types of visuals before in my life, neither the whirring sound that accompanied it or the intense feeling that had I not violently resisted I would have been pulled into a full-blown vision, nor the strong and very holy presence of a small child which here I can only equate with the Holy Spirit and which was quite remarkable.

The dream and subsequent experience occurred during the first week of working a new job which is itself very much tied in with what I believe is a life-calling for me and a way in which I may contribute by helping those in need, and I took it as a sign that I had set foot on the path I was meant to be on, and that I had the blessing and presence of God as I moved forward on this new path. It was definitely one of the most varied and significant mystical experiences I have encountered and the one I can most readily and obviously associate with Jesus Christ being that it was so intensely charged with positive holy energy and revolved around the presence of a holy child. In this sense it can probably be viewed as my most spiritually positive experience, if not necessarily my most impacting or memorable.

Date experienced: Mar/Apr 2010

Anubis

I found myself in the grounds of a university, although with the distinct feeling that I was not a student like those that were congregated around me or walking by.

Behind me was a huge dome structure, almost white in colour and resembling a cathedral, in a similar style to some of the old University buildings you might see around Oxford. Groups of students were congregated around the entrance with backpacks and books and the like, relaxing between lectures.



I noticed for the first time an elegant black dog, proud and alert and most resembling a Doberman, sat just by the side of one of the groups, but not part of it. It seemed a little out of place.

All the while I was aware of the majesty of the dome building.

There were now two men talking, distinct from the students by their appearance and style, they were standing where the dog had just been sitting.

I overheard one say to the other, "Does he know this is his last time?", and was instantly struck by the realisation that they were talking about me, and that this was my last incarnation on earth.

At this moment one of the men left, and I approached the one remaining, asking him questions about who he was, how he knows about me, and what was going on.

He stood stoically with the presence of one who knows more than I ever will and refused to speak a word, only looking me in the eye as I spoke.

As I was talking he transformed before my eyes and now appeared from the neck down as the same man that he was a moment ago, but from the neck up he now had the head of the dog that I noticed earlier.

In an instant the comfort of ignorance was destroyed and I was hit with an overwhelming sense that I was standing before a supernatural being, that the dome building was something even more important than I could ever have assumed just from looking at it, and that I had just overheard a God of the underworld mentioning in conversation to someone else that I was living out what is to be my last life on earth.

I violently projectile vomited all over the being stood before me and crumpled to the ground, totally levelled by the shock and magnitude of what I had just been exposed to, and immediately woke up.



Date Experienced: Approx. Winter 2007/2008

First Experience of God

It wasn't until about a year later that I thought to myself I had better make good on my promise and I started where most Westerners would probably start: by picking up a copy of the bible. I read the Gospels, and although I found myself drawn to a lot of the teachings of Jesus Christ, I never considered what I was reading to be any more than a book. One night I was up late reading in bed, and I came to a passage in one of the Gospels that to this day I wish I had earmarked, but I think it was either in the book of Matthew or the book of John. I found myself reading and re-reading this one piece of writing, stopping in between to try and process exactly what I was reading but drawing a complete blank. I felt as if there was something just beneath the level of my conscious perception that I was missing out on, that despite reading this particular passage multiple times I was still missing out on the real meaning contained therein, and that there was something potent lurking beneath the relatively banal surface-level layer of literal meaning. You know when you check your watch and then realise after that you didn't register the time? It was exactly like this. I decided to stop, put the book down, and say a prayer to God. "I can sense that there is something in this writing, but I cannot see what. If it is your will, if I am at all worthy, bless me with an insight to see what is really written. Amen." I turned my lights out and went to sleep.

I should add that at this stage despite praying, I was not a believer in God: I was however open to the prospect that a reality represented by the word God might actually exist, and I was offering a prayer with an open mind and an open heart and literally seeing what happened.

Sometime in the early hours I was awaken by a strange phonecall. My phone was on the table next to my bed, and I answered it almost immediately. "Hello?" I said, "Hello?" said the voice on the other end of the phone. "Who's this?" I asked, "Who's this?" was the mocking reply, imitating my tone of voice. "Yeah what?", I was now more than a little annoyed at the obvious prank caller, "yeah what?" came the reply, just managing to finish before I slammed the receiver down in a half aggrevated, half too-tired-to-care manner. I was living in student digs at the time, and prank calls of one nature or another were relatively common among the internal phones that every room had. More significant to me though, was the fact that I had been woken out of a very deep sleep in just such a way that I was aware of what I was dwelling on once I fully regained waking consciousness, something which rarely happens, to me at least (I often cannot recollect upon waking exactly what the deep levels of my mind were mulling over only a few seconds previously). Allow me to elaborate: the moment the first ring of the phone went off, I "awoke", but I awoke within my deep level of sleep, within my unconscious mind if you will. It took a few seconds and a few more rings of the phone for me to fully "ascend" out of deep unconsciousness and into a full waking state, and as I gradually ascended, I equally gradually lost my grip on whatever it was that my mind was dwelling on, so that by the time I fully awoke, I was left with only an imprint and a vague memory of the thing that I was previously fully connected with. I hope I have explained that well enough to understand.

The thing itself is something that cannot be put into words. As far as our relatively puny consciously controlled minds go, it was something so significant and meaningful and powerful as to be able to exist only in conceptual form; but in my deep levels of sleep, while my waking mind was dormant and an older more venerable part of my mind was doing the business, I was fully aware of it and fully connected with it. I only remember thinking right before I fully awoke and lost it for good, "If only I could tell people about THIS!". It was monstrously epic, and profoundly positive. Beyond that, I have no waking recollection of it to speak of.

That day marked the first day of my true believer status. I experienced something profoundly life-changing, and have walked the earth ever since with a sense of something I can't quite put my finger on.

What was it? This "thing" that can exist only as an ungraspable concept in the waking mind I am using to type this blog? I do not know, for certain, but it was something very deep and very powerful and profoundly positive and pure. Was it God? Was it the Holy Spirit? It was certainly a revelation, and it was as real as the socks on your feet, or the monitor you're looking at to read this blog.

Date experienced: Approx. Winter 2003

Going back to my roots...

Where did my belief come from? I was born and raised an atheist in a completely secular household, i can count the number of times I ever visited church on the fingers of one hand and all of those were at christmas time to sing songs and hold funny contraptions which in previous lives were once oranges. I had no religious organisation to my life whatsoever, at any time, and no religious influences. I was not interested in spirituality, the notion of God, or anything of the kind. At best I was an agnostic, although a better word would have been an apathetic: I simply didn't care one way or the other and the concept of God or anything spiritual simply never entertained a second of my thoughts.

When I was 19 I experienced what some people would refer to as a Near Death Experience. I was very ill and spent somewhere between a week and two weeks at the bottom of my health levels. One night I experienced a dream which was so vivid and real that it left an impression on me that would in some respects shape my life thereafter. I am reluctant to refer to it as a dream because even now it was so much stronger and more immediate than a regular dream that I would personally classify it as something else entirely. It was heavily laden with universal or archetypal symbolism and themes, and felt more real and significant often than waking reality does. I was "there".

I floated up through what looked like I was coming out of it like a large rabbit or badger hole, and started to look around me to see a landscape resembling the English countryside at night, with slightly rolling hills, grass, hedgerows and bare trees. The scene was very gothic and the sky was very black, although everything was entirely realistic in proportion, colour, appearance etc.

As I floated just a few feet above the grass a creature that can only be described as a bulldog on steroids, possessing a serious attitude problem and a formidable set of drawl-covered teeth, barked and snapped at me, jumping up and locking its jaws around one of my ears (I can't remember which one). It held on and shook its head briefly but I managed to escape and continue floating upwards out of its reach, feeling relieved as I looked down on it jumping and snarling but unable to now reach me. I remember feeling startled at the prospect that this creature wanted to cause me so much pain and had so much refined aggression for me, with me having never before seen it in my life.

I landed some way away, with the threat of the dog now gone the dog itself seemed to have disappeared, and I found myself stood in the middle of a meadow, looking towards a patch of high ground perhaps a few hundred metres away, with the landscape rolling away from me. Two figures stood completely still in a field on the near side of this undulation, with their garments blowing in the wind, otherwise they were completely still and completely silent. How best to describe these figures? Imagine the ring-wraiths from the first movie of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, black garbed riders on horseback with frayed robes and large hoods sitting atop jet black steeds, and you have precisely the image of these figures. I felt intuitively that where their hoods drew over their heads, where their faces should be, there was a vacuum: a black hole of empty nothingness. No skull or disfigured face like in the horror movies, but an impossible void of non-existence. That was a prospect that shook me to the core and filled me with a profound and overwhelming sense of pure and very heavy despair, the likes of which I have never experienced in waking life.

I turned to my left and walked towards the outside of a tree-lined path, the trees lining it had grown in such a way so as to arch over the path and meet atop in the middle so as to create a tunnel lined all around by thick tree branches, and there was a small break in the trees just in front of me. The path itself led in both directions, and as I stood on the side I leaned precariously over the path and into the tunnel, looking both left and right, and seeing that it was dead straight and it faded into complete darkness in both directions. This was the archetypal "long dark tunnel", and I could sense that the darkness in both directions was the same void that filled the hoods of the grim black figures on the hill. I teetered on the edge of the void for a few moments, and then withdrew with a step back. I drew immediate inspiration from the fact that I had not actually set foot on this path, I had only stepped right up to the edge of it and taken a good look; however, the overarching feeling that accompanied this experience was one of a despair and deep deep darkness too pure and extreme to put into words.

I awoke shortly after in my bed and was in a state of uncontrollable fear and disturbance. I prayed heavily for the first time in my life and asked that God let me live long enough to see the next sunrise, as I had a feeling that I was at a crossroads, and if I could just make it through the immediate hours I would begin to move away from danger and start on the road to recovery. In my desperation I offered a deal of sorts, as I imagine many have done in similar circumstances, I pretty much said "Let me live through this and come out the other side and I will promise to seek you out". I'm not sure such deals are the best way to go about communicating with the all powerful creator of life but I have decided this much as a result of my experiences since: if you make a promise to God in one of your prayers, you will be called to account for it whether you have any intention of delivering or not, and it will be on God's terms, not yours.

Well, as evidenced by me typing this blog, I did recover, and I thank God for that. But when I woke up the next morning, feeling truly blessed to be alive and filled with a positive feeling that the worst was now behind me, I still did not necessarily "believe" in God, "believe" that there was a God, or "believe" that he had tipped the balance in my favour as my future hung by a thread in the deep of the previous night, I only knew that I was awake, alive, and starting to think positively for the first time in a number of weeks, and I felt in my heart of hearts, that I had "been somewhere" the night before, to a place where my physical body could not follow, and to a place that had touched me at a previously untouched depth of my being. It was my first mystical experience; a taste of the shadowlands that lay between this life and whatever comes next, complete with archetypal "rabbit-hole", trans-realm guard dog, grim-reapers and the classic of classics: the long dark tunnel. This was to be my first taste of the mystical experience, but not my last.

Date experienced: Approx. February 2003