I came into this experience with a very open mind, clear of expectations about what I should accomplish. This stemmed from the fact that, having had such a transcendent experience in my previous attempt, I did not know what else to seek. So I let my mind free to drift as the transition into a non-ordinary state of consciousness began. So relaxed was I this time that I immediately slid into hypnagogia. Upon noticing this and trying to retain my lucidity, the suspicion immediately arose in my mind that I probably visit my inner theater during regular sleep cycles. Perhaps the familiarity I felt with that place was not only due to old memories, but due to recent ones as well. Perhaps all my dreams were projections onto the screen of inner theater. Perhaps I just could not remember, in the morning, where I had been or how I had gotten there. Regular dreams, like the experiences of other non-ordinary states of consciousness, are very fleeting and elusive in that we tend to forget them very quickly.
The difference between regular dreams and the experience I was now undergoing was the following: in regular dreams, we seem to lose the capacity to reason according to the standard constraints of consensus reality – namely, the laws of logic and physics. During a lucid experience of a non-ordinary state of consciousness, on the other hand, we largely retain those abilities. Other than this difference, both states can be surprisingly similar phenomenologically. A lucid, non-ordinary state of consciousness can be just as free-minded as a regular dream. Both are also difficult to remember and articulate afterwards. Both come accompanied by the feeling of belonging to a different reality, not quite like what we experience during ordinary waking states, but nonetheless no less real.
After this observation, it became more difficult to hold on to lucidity and I slid further into an experience that seemed to last days, though that was obviously not the case in objective reality. I felt as if I had drifted in time and space, experiencing what felt like different moments in history, and feeling as if I were different people. I could not recognize these other people nor see their faces; the experience was more subtle. I simply recall having that ineffable feeling of the inner life of another person: the feeling of a different body shape, of different ideas, world-views and paradigms of thought, of different emotions and motivations, different psychological scars, etc. I seemed to have little control of this process and, for a moment, I entirely forgot the context of consensus reality where I was located, becoming fully immersed in the experience just like in a regular dream. Sometimes I felt as if I were in different countries; other times in very different and truly bizarre places that I could not recognize nor describe in words.
The mandalas and spinning Kandinsky scintillae that occupied my inner theater during previous experiences now seemed to take coherent form, clumping together and self-transforming to compose fantastically beautiful spacescapes in a kind of cosmic morphogenesis (see Figure 6). Images of alien, unrecognized landscapes and cities would then coalesce from within those: magnificent skylines of smooth, high-rising architecture coated with an iridescent, aura-like fog irradiating the colors of the rainbow; an iridescent fog contrasted against the dark skies of a non-refractive atmosphere bathed in sunshine (see Figure 7). Planets, stars, and nebulae could be seen in the background. Many of these amazingly beautiful images followed one another, melting and morphing into one another in fluidic motion. Some could easily be, or so it felt to me, real landscapes of distant places. Others were more akin to the output of an extraordinarily creative, artistic mind not my own, which I was having the privilege to observe. Was there even a difference between these two possibilities? I knew not.
Recovering some lucidity, the thought occurred to me that consciousness was surely a non-local phenomenon in both time and space. That is, I had the certainty that consciousness was not limited to the here and now of my physical brain but could, under certain circumstances, gain awareness of places and times beyond, whether real or imaginary – the difference between real and imaginary, once again, appearing nonsensical to me.
I wondered then if I could steer this drift in time and space. Could I bring myself, through intentional visualization, to “remember” my distant past or “return” to places I had not been to in a long time? I formed the intent to return to a particular moment of my childhood. Another self-transformation of the images ensued, as if they were made of a highly malleable and compliant material, and a different point of space-time crystallized before me. I was back at the brackish water lagoon where I used to go fishing when I was a kid. Those were some of my fondest memories; periods of absolute simplicity, peace, contentment, and total communion with nature. I could again hear the delicate sounds of the water ripples splashing against the rocks where I used to set myself up. I could feel the gentle breeze against my face, the sound of the fresh air flowing gently round my earlobes. How peaceful. For all cognitive purposes, I was there again.
I continued this exercise for what felt like a long time, willfully returning to various places, moments, people, and circumstances of my past that were of particular significance to me. Inevitably, eventually the memory of one of the most intense experiences of my life began rising in my awareness: that of falling in love with the person who today is my wife. This time, however, the experience was entirely one of inner feeling, not of physical perception. I was just overtaken by the inner warmth and the sense of wholeness that seem to characterize the act of falling in love with someone. And then the experiment took me to the next level; one that, at that moment, I was not expecting. Somehow, the feeling of falling in love with a particular person keyed my consciousness into what I can only describe as a kind of universal “tone,” or specific vibration. By remembering the feeling of falling in love, I latched onto that apparently external vibration of pure subjective feeling. It then amplified what I was feeling in a kind of sympathetic resonance. My own feelings and this “tone” seemed to be reinforcing one another in a positive feedback loop. Though I do not like to use the word “love,” because it is so overloaded with loose semantics and charged with shallow and cheap sentimentalism, I am unable to find any other suitable word. Indeed, and I blush to say this, I felt as though I was falling in love with the entire universe. There was, of course, nothing sexual about it; just a feeling of profound belonging and integration. It was as though the entire universe were one incommensurable, connected, living structure, and I somehow were a part of it like a cell is a part of my body.
The sensation of a vibration was still there. It seemed not only to accompany the experience but to be the source of it somehow. It was as though I had tapped into the backbone of the universal pipeline of vibrating subjectivity. I could feel this “tone” as a gentle but nonetheless strong, full, irresistible hum resonating everywhere. It felt wonderfully pleasurable. It seemed to provide everything needed to sustain one’s existence.
I might have forgotten to say that I underwent this experience while reclined in an adjustable bed, alone in a very dark and very quiet room. In that comfortable position, I felt absolute contentment with the feeling of this vibratory “tone” running through my body and mind. Frankly, at that moment, I would not have exchanged that feeling for anything in this world of ours. It was sufficient in all ways that “sufficient” can be interpreted. And it felt like a recognizable dream that I thought I probably had before. This was not the first time I was having this wonderful feeling. I had just forgotten it. Yet, I was in full possession of my reasoning skills at that moment. I knew exactly who I was, what I was doing, and how I had gotten there. I could think about the experience as lucidly and logically as I can think about it now. And I found it marvelous, confounding, beyond the explanatory power of my models of reality.
This experiment was unique in many ways, but one in particular seems more significant: unlike my previous attempts, which all seemed to transport me to a different, ineffable, perhaps hyper-dimensional realm of subjective reality, this experience was pretty much grounded on our familiar three dimensions of space and one dimension of time. Though extraordinary in many ways, particularly as far as its apparent nonlocality and its profound emotional content, it never departed from the framework, references, and archetypes of regular life and standard space-time.
As that wonderful vibration was running through me, resonating with me, I felt as if I were being charged up like a battery connected to the electricity mains. This feeling of being charged could no less validly be described as a feeling of being fed, consoled, loved, or healed. All these things seemed to be equivalent. At the same time, the strange idea popped into my mind that perhaps I was made of the very substance of this “tone.” Perhaps all things we see and feel, even we ourselves, are like vibratory ripples in an ocean of a single substance. Perhaps this tone was the natural frequency of vibration – the fundamental note – of this ocean, whose oscillation sustains, through sympathetic resonance, all harmonic notes around it, whatever their octaves. Perhaps this is why I had the subjective impression that all things in the universe were somehow connected. Perhaps all we need to do to heal ourselves, I thought, is to tune in to this fundamental note and simply let it do what it does. A phrase popped in my head, fully formed: “All we need to do to heal ourselves is to bathe in that we are made of.” All we need to do is to stop trying and, instead, allow ourselves to enter into resonance with this fundamental note of existence. The overarching theme of this thought: healing does not require action, effort, or trying, much to the contrary. It seemed to be an entirely passive process, there lying the main difficulty in achieving it. I sensed a fractal order of vibratory hierarchies in which the same principles applied self-similarly at all levels of the hierarchy. The planet could also heal itself by bathing in that it is made of, it seemed to me. I cannot point out exactly where I got this idea from.
I could have remained in that state of bliss forever if biological necessities had not taken me out of it. Returning to regular consciousness was not difficult this time: the entire experience had taken place within the context of regular space-time anyway. Once back, I quickly began feeling a strong longing for that state of attunement to the main universal artery of contentment and warmth. But all that was left was the need to adjust to the reality that such occasions are special and ephemeral.