What do mystical experiences imply?

Vic Shayne author 13 Pillars of Enlightenment: How to realize your true nature and end suffering

I have had my share of mystical experiences over the decades, but what can we make of any experience? Experiences, like all else in this world, arise and fall so that in the end, there is but a memory that the mind tries to make sense of. A memory is no more than information from the past, and there is often a pull to repeat the experience for the “Wow!” factor.

Awakening to what we truly are, beneath the sense of self and consciousness, however, is not an experience. Experience is impermanent and exists within the mind of the self, yet that which is uncovered beneath all phenomena is permanent and beyond the self.

While experience is but a passing occurrence, there’s still a question as to whether it can lead beyond a mere intellectual understanding to some sort of inexplicable, life-altering realization. This is the difference between the egoic self-relishing a phenomenon and how it feels versus an event that points the way to something beyond it.

Defining the word ‘experience’ The Oxford Dictionary defines a mystical experience as an inspiring sense of spiritual mystery, awe, and fascination. This description leaves a lot to be interpreted and does not address what the experience feels like and how it may change our worldview.

However, the awakened state is not linked to an experience, an event that requires the experiencer-experience duality. Duality is but an illusion and experience can easily bind the self even stronger to its own attachments and identities, including its experiences.

A mystical experience usually happens quite surprisingly to the experiencer. It is an event that is out of the ordinary and comes on quite unexpectedly jars the logical mind, senses, and intellect. In the aftermath, though, is where the real contemplation begins: What just happened, and what did it imply? Rarely, however, is the question asked: “To whom did it happen?” Without enquiring into experiencer, we are left staring at the finger pointing to the moon.

Not every experience has a meaning, of course, and we may refer to Freud’s oft-cited quote (that he may or may not have actually said): “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” But some spiritual experiences do beg to be examined because they point to something much deeper than the mind’s attempt to figure out, or process, some sort of problem.

Catching the implication If you don’t catch the implication of a profound mystical experience, then perhaps another experience will follow; and then another. This is what I found on my own path — much like a recurrent dream or repeatedly meeting up with the same problem until you figure it out and can move on with your life.

What was I missing? I am reminded of a particular experience that occurred when I was a 19-year-old college student working as a deliveryman over summer vacation. I returned home one late afternoon from a day’s work and sat my exhausted body down beneath the eave on the patio of my parents’ home in Miami. My back rested against a set of sliding glass doors and the usual summer rains were imminent.

Dark and heavy clouds began to gather, and within minutes a raging thunderstorm was upon me. Lightning was cracking so loudly that I could hear the jolting clack before the thunder. If you have ever experienced an afternoon storm in Miami in the middle of summer then you know that the rain comes down that so hard that all other sounds become indecipherable. It’s like being inside a symphony of a thousand drums.

Soon my entire surroundings were pounded by rain bouncing off the concrete patio, roof, and aluminum framing of the screened-in pool. The sound became deafening and hypnotic. Although fully awake in the midst of this thunderstorm, suddenly all fell silent within me. Complete and utter silence. How could that be? I was fully awake, but there was no sound at all. I closed my eyes and not only did the sound and environment disappear, but I did as well.

The first aspect of myself to disappear was the body and its sensations. Next, all thoughts, memories, and senses dissolved into blackness so that only awareness remained as the “I am.” Finally, even awareness disappeared and all was gone without a trace, as the body remained upright while a refreshing spray of rain covered it in mist.

This falling in and out of oblivion repeated itself several more times as I went from the din of the storm to an inconceivable silence. And yet beneath the experience, something that is essentially me yet existed. Then everything reappeared in the reverse order as they had disappeared. Each time this had happened I was left with only a clear mind devoid of a single thought.

What had happened to me? What was my take-away from this experience in the deafening thunderstorm? At that time in my life I completely missed the implication. I walked away from the experience thinking that something amazing had happened to me, something mystical and unexplainable.

It wasn’t for another several decades, after many more experiences of the disappearance of all things related to the self and its world, that I realized that nothing had happened to me at all. Nothing ever happens to me.

This is the realization that I had missed way back in 1978— nothing had happened TO me, because the “me” is not who I am. When I had identified as the me I perceived that things happened to me, including experiences. But when I eventually identified as the silent stillness then I knew that there really is no me.

While experience comes and goes, despite its profundity and awesomeness, nothing happens to that which exists beyond the self (the experiencer) that is having the experience. And within this nothingness of nonexistence, there is no longer the duality of the experience and the experiencer; there is only that which is aware of the experience.

Perspectives are usually shaped by belief, not reality Like most people, my identity had been tied to my body for the greater part of my life; and the belief system called “me” believed that it resided in a body that resided in a world.

With regard to the experience in the midst of the thunderstorm, I had identified as the experiencer even after returning to my senses despite that everything that I was not had disappeared. My perspective had been shaped by my beliefs and not by reality.

This would not be the last time this “disappearing” experience occurred in my life and it would not be the most profound. It continued to happen until I finally woke up to the implication: I am not the body, thoughts, memories, or even awareness. I am some thing that is fundamental and irreducible. When consciousness disappears I yet exist as something irreducible. Even the word “I” stopped making sense, though its use is unavoidable in our world of language, relationships, and communication.

Breaking the spell of the egocentric perspective What is an experience other than a fleeting occurrence fettered to an experiencer? And what remains after the experience and experiencer relationship has long faded into memory?

Unlike an experience, a realization is not a memory, it is a change of paradigm — a new way of looking at reality — brought about by way of a clear mind. The experience becomes irrelevant to the great space that holds it.

It’s not entirely known why the mind clarifies so easily at a certain point in one’s life when it had failed to do so on so many previous occasions. I once had a teacher tell me that this could be chalked up to something she called “divine grace.” The “how” or “when” may never be known, but it does seem that enough persistent and earnest attention on the “I am” brings one to a gate of sorts, and beyond this gate, where the self cannot go, is the great capacity out of which all arises, including experience and the experiencer.

Once inside this metaphorical gate, all that remains is that which is aware, and if you go even deeper, even the awareness gives way to the silent stillness.