Twenty years ago an acquaintance of mine called Tracy was devastated when her partner, the father of her two-year-old daughter, left her suddenly. She arrived home one day to find that he’d taken his money and some of his possessions; he called later that day to say that he was staying with a friend and would call round the following day for a chat. But the next day he called to say that he was abroad and wouldn’t be coming back. He said that neither Tracy nor their daughter would ever see him again and that they would be better off without him.
Tracy felt a massive sense of betrayal, together with a terrible sense of loss and separation. She couldn’t believe that the man she loved could be so ruthless and cruel. And now that she was a single mother, she felt marginalized and isolated, the scorn of ‘respectable’ society. On a practical level, she didn’t know how she was going to cope. She was a student, her partner had cleared out their bank account and she had a mortgage to pay. She became so anxious that she developed an eating disorder: she started to binge eat, making herself sick afterwards.
After a few weeks, the anxiety and turmoil built up to the point where she started to feel suicidal. One evening, when her daughter was staying with her parents, she found a bottle of sleeping tablets and emptied them into the palm of her hand. Her desire to kill herself was almost overpowering, but every time she moved to take the tablets, the image of her daughter rose up inside her mind and stopped her. She cried for what seemed like hours and eventually fell asleep.
Two or three hours later she woke up in the dark and everything felt completely different. The mental torment had disappeared, for no apparent reason. It had been replaced by a profound sense of peace and well-being. As Tracy described it, ‘I felt the most intense love and peace and knew that all was well. Even though it was night, the room was illuminated with light and energy. This light was beautiful and vibrant. It was the most beautiful feeling I’ve ever had. I felt such peace.’
The experience probably only lasted for a few minutes before she fell asleep again. But when she woke up in the morning, the feeling of dread had disappeared from her stomach and she felt able to cope again: ‘I looked around and thought about all the good things in my life and the future. I felt more positive and resilient.’
There are three different types of spiritual alchemy and this is an example of the first type: when turmoil and trauma give rise to temporary ‘awakening experiences’. (The two other types, which we’ll examine a little later, are when turmoil and trauma give rise to gradual but permanent change and when they give rise to sudden and dramatic transformation.)
From time to time, most of us have experiences when our normal vision of the world is transformed. It could be at the moment of waking up in the morning, while running or swimming, after meditating or doing yoga, or after having sex, but all of a sudden the world seems more real and beautiful than normal. The trees and fields, even the houses and other buildings, seem somehow alive and connected to each other, as if they’re the expression of a force or energy. You might feel that you’re a part of this energy too, rather than separate from your surroundings. And you might feel completely different inside, filled with tremendous serenity or ecstasy and a sense that you have somehow become someone else – a deeper and truer self.
These are what I call ‘awakening experiences’. Sometimes they can occur spontaneously, but usually they are induced by different situations and activities. As I showed in my book Waking from Sleep , they can occur as a result of physiological changes which disrupt the normal homoeostasis of our bodies and brain. This is why, throughout history, people have used sleep deprivation, fasting, self-inflicted pain and drugs as ‘spiritual technologies’ to transcend the limits of normal consciousness.
In addition, awakening experiences can occur as a consequence of what I call an ‘intensification and stilling of life-energy’. This can happen when we meditate, listen to music, walk in the countryside or just relax. We’re removed from the normal energy-draining activities and stimuli of everyday life, and the normal thought-chatter of our mind becomes quiet. New energy floods through our being, intensifying our perceptions and creating a sense of wellbeing. Our ego boundary becomes softer, so that we are no longer separate and incomplete.
Most paradoxically, however, as Tracy’s experience shows, awakening experiences are often induced by states of despair or mental turmoil. Paradoxically, great suffering often gives rise to experiences of great joy and liberation.
In 1969, the biologist Alister Hardy established a Religious Experience Research Unit at Oxford University and began to collect examples of religious or spiritual experiences from members of the public. When he began to analyse the experiences, he found that the most common trigger of them was not – as might be expected – prayer or nature, but ‘depression and despair’. He found that 18 per cent of the experiences were apparently triggered by depression and despair, compared to 13 per cent by prayer or meditation and 12 per cent by natural beauty. 1
I’ve been collecting examples of awakening experiences myself for almost 15 years, and have found a similar pattern to Hardy. Even now, I’m still surprised at how frequently people send me reports of intense experiences of bliss, harmony and oneness which come to them in the midst of mental turmoil.
Even what seem to be fairly minor episodes of turmoil can give rise to awakening experiences. Here, for example, a student of mine described an experience she had at the age of 15, one summer when she was on holiday in Wales. While walking back from the beach late at night, she had a massive row with her mother that left her feeling angry and frustrated. The problem they’d been arguing about seemed insoluble. As she described it:
Instead of walking back along the road with my mother and sister, I separated myself by walking along the beach, parallel to the road they were on… Suddenly I felt that a great peace had settled inside me. Something magnificent had happened. I felt as if nothing would ever upset me again. The world was wonderful. I have spent my life searching for the feeling again because I know it’s there.
Similarly, a woman described to me how, as a 17-year-old girl, she was distraught after splitting up with her boyfriend. She felt overwhelmed by life and cried for hours, begging for someone to help her (although she didn’t know who). And, as with Tracy at the beginning of this chapter, when she woke up the next morning, she was filled with a peace and contentment she’d never known before:
I was extremely happy and felt a great love for all things. It was a very strong feeling, the strength of which I have never felt before or since. It was a very sharp contrast to the despair I had felt the previous night. I felt as though I was filled with love and compassion. My bedroom looked brighter and sharper and I remember touching things in my room whilst feeling a huge feeling of connectedness. I was conscious of not wanting the feeling to go away. But unfortunately it didn’t last long.
Like the two experiences above, for some people awakening experiences can occur after fairly short periods of turmoil – a few minutes or hours, or perhaps a few days. For others, however, an awakening experience may come after years of very intense turmoil. And perhaps because the turmoil that produced them is more intense, these experiences tend to be more intense.
For example, a correspondent called Emma told me how, at the age of 20, she was suffering from serious depression, which was partly the result of her upbringing by an emotionally abusive mother. She became so depressed that she felt suicidal and was hospitalized for several weeks. At one point in hospital, when she hadn’t spoken to anybody for four days, she picked up a marble that was lying on her bedside cabinet and started playing with it with her hands, watching it closely. All of a sudden, it was as if the familiar world melted away, to be replaced by a vision of beauty and perfection:
I saw reality as simply this perfect one-ness. I felt suddenly removed from everything that was personal. Everything seemed just right. The marble seemed a reflection of the universe. All my ‘problems’ and my suffering suddenly seemed meaningless, ridiculous, simply a misunderstanding of my true nature and everything around me. There was a feeling of acceptance and oneness. It was a moment of enlightenment. The euphoria and inexplicable rush of ‘knowledge and understanding’ (it was like suddenly gaining access to a whole new comprehension of what we call ‘reality’) following this episode lasted for days.
Although the experience wore off, in a sense it has never left her. It made her aware of a spiritual dimension whose existence she had never suspected and awakened a lifelong interest in self-development. ‘In some ways,’ she told me, ‘I have spent the 25 years since exploring what it meant and how I could perhaps go back there.’
Similarly, a woman called Jill described to me how, over a seven-year period, her whole life broke down. Everything seemed to be stripped away from her:
I had studied for a degree, but my career collapsed; I suffered from infertility problems; my partner was an alcoholic. I became severely depressed and separated from my friends. Every day I would be in tears and suicide was often in my thoughts. However, I couldn’t bring myself to do it, for the sake of my family and dogs, all of whom needed me.
Then one night it happened. The void rolled out completely, the world disappeared and my consciousness expanded into an infinite timeless consciousness which was me, although everyone else at the same time. When I came back to my body, I realized that life was all a dream and not ‘real’. I was terrified, although laughing and crying at the same time at this great cosmic ‘joke’. I knew what had happened was the pure truth, beyond any question.
Everything shone with a light. I looked at my dog and saw myself looking back and again laughed and cried at the same time. A massive energy pervaded my body, which I couldn’t seem to contain.
This is a high-intensity awakening experience, an experience of oneness with the spiritual ‘ground’ of the universe which is beyond time and space and is the source of everything which exists. And because it was so intense, Jill found it difficult to process. She knew nothing about spiritual traditions or practices and so didn’t understand it. She longed for it to happen again, but at the same time was afraid of it. She also felt isolated, because she felt she couldn’t explain it to anyone else. As she puts it, ‘When I tried to speak about it, everything seemed to be swallowed in a great silence. And even when I could elucidate something, no one seemed to understand. They thought I had cracked up.’ (We’ll find many similar examples of this incomprehension throughout this book.)
However, after the experience Jill’s life gradually became easier. She felt drawn to books about spirituality and eventually began to build up an intellectual framework to help her understand her experience. And over the last two years or so, she has started to have other, less intense spiritual experiences, especially when she’s out in nature and can sense what she describes as ‘something ancient and indescribable’.
Another example of an awakening experience which came after a long period of turmoil was given by a friend and ex-colleague of mine called David, who was a counsellor at a college where I once taught. He went through a long period of inner turmoil due to confusion about his sexuality. He was married with children, but had always felt sexually attracted to men. Finally he began to realize that he was denying his true self and that he had to come out. And inevitably, as he realized this, his marriage began to break down. However, this turmoil led to an experience of great peace:
We were on a family holiday in Tunisia and went on an excursion down to the Sahara. We went on a camel ride across part of the desert and at the end of the day I sat on a sand dune watching the sunset. There were quite a few people around, but it was as if everyone else disappeared. Everything just ceased to be. I lost all sense of time. I lost myself. I had a feeling of being totally at one with nature and a massive sense of peace. I was a part of the scene. There was no ‘me’ any more. I was just sitting there watching the sun set over the desert, aware of the enormity of life, the power of nature, and I never wanted it to end.
These experiences can sometimes occur in the midst of physical suffering too. A recent student of mine, a middle aged lady, told me how several years before she had been seriously ill and spent four months in hospital. A lot of the time she was so weak that she couldn’t get out of bed, and often felt depressed. However, occasionally this gave way to a powerful sense of serenity:
The first time I was ill, I was ill for six years and in hospital for four months. Even though I was very ill and in danger of dying, there were times when I didn’t feel afraid at all. At times I had a marvellous sense that all was well, that there was a force supporting me, that I was being cradled … I felt a marvellous sense of wellbeing. At the time I was religious, and I felt as though God was protecting me.
Another student told me how once she had broken her hip and been confined to a hospital bed for weeks, feeling frustrated and uncomfortable. One day she was lying there when:
Out of the middle of my forehead intense energy seemed to be flowing out of my third eye. I didn’t know if anyone could see it. When my mother came in I felt intense love for her, and it was the same for my friends and family. I felt such intense love and vulnerability. I felt connected to the universe, as if the source of everything was flowing through me.
I had a similar experience a few years ago, just a few months after the birth of our second child. It was a very stressful time, mainly because our baby, Ted, was stubbornly refusing to sleep at night. I also had a heavier workload than normal at the college where I was teaching and a deadline looming for a new book.
All of this stress manifested itself in illness. One morning I woke up and felt as though my throat was wired shut. I couldn’t eat or drink and one side of my face had swollen up massively. At hospital, I was told I had quinsy, a complication of acute tonsillitis, and was given intravenous antibiotics, plus a saline drip. The infection had already spread to my neck and chest – which was bright red and swollen – and my bacterial count was very high and kept rising. I also kept getting weaker, until it was difficult to walk more than a few paces.
For the first few days I felt worried and depressed, partly because of the pain and discomfort and partly because it wasn’t clear whether the bacterial infection could be kept under control. It was the Christmas holidays and I felt sorry for myself, alone in a hospital bed when I should have been with my wife and children.
But slowly, as I began to adjust to the environment and accept my predicament, a sense of lightness and ease began to fill me. I began to feel a glowing energy inside me, as if I had made contact with a kind of reservoir of well-being which was normally too deep for me to have access to. I spent hours lying on the hospital bed, too weak to read or even watch television, but felt carefree and content. All of the things that had worried me at first – whether I’d have to take time off work, whether I’d be able to finish my book on time – seemed completely meaningless. All of my plans and ambitions for the future and my memories and concerns about the past became meaningless too. Life was pared down to the present moment, the bare fact of being alive at this very moment in this situation. Nothing beyond the moment had any meaning.
I had to have an operation under general anaesthetic, but didn’t feel at all worried. When I was lying down waiting to have the anaesthetic, I felt the kind of calmness and serenity that I normally only feel after a deep meditation. I completely accepted whatever was going to happen. I felt connected to something larger than myself, a kind of benevolent force which filled me with reassurance, a sense that ‘all was well’.
The operation was successful and the antibiotics began to work on the infection. After two weeks, I was sent home, and the sense of well-being continued over the three weeks it took me to recover fully. And as I realized that I was returning to full health, I also felt a new gratitude and appreciation for my health – for the automatic physiological processes and the energy levels I normally took for granted. It seemed like a miracle just to be alive in a healthy, well-functioning body with enough energy to play with my children, to write, to talk to my wife and friends and meet the tasks of my daily life.
It’s true that illness brings a disruption to our normal physiological functioning, so that these experiences could be interpreted as the result of homoeostasis disruption. However, as I noted in Waking from Sleep , it’s quite rare for illness to generate awakening experiences, probably because when we’re ill we’re so low on energy and all the energy we do have is channelled into healing ourselves. (Although there are exceptions, such as temporal lobe epilepsy, when seizures are often preceded by intense spiritual and religious feelings.) It’s probable that the main factor here isn’t the physical suffering itself, but the psychological effects of being ill.
Experiences like these don’t seem to make any sense. How can people who are severely depressed or anxious slip so easily into joy and freedom? How is it possible to move from the deepest turmoil to the highest ecstasy in a moment?
When awakening experiences are induced by meditation or relaxation, they seem to occur in an organic way, but here there’s an abrupt shift to a completely different state, one which is almost the polar opposite. Perhaps this is why people sometimes interpret these experiences as being given by the grace of God, especially when they seem to come in response to prayer. The shift from despair to joy seems so abrupt that it seems logical to believe that a higher power – God – has intervened.
However, I don’t believe that it’s necessary to invoke God as an explanation. I’m going to save a full explanation of these experiences until the final section of this book, but here it’s useful to look at how the process of detachment works. Often, when we’re depressed or confused and go through major upheaval and turmoil, it’s because our psychological attachments are broken. The beliefs, hopes, status, success or roles we depend on for our well-being and security have been taken away from us, leaving us feeling broken and empty.
You can see this quite clearly in illness. If you’re in a hospital bed for weeks, everything in your life is taken from you. You can’t play the roles that normally give you a sense of identity – such as your professional role or your role as a husband or mother – and you lose the status that you normally gain through your job or your social position. At the same time, you might have to let go of your hopes and ambitions, now that you’re not in position to try to realize them. And if you’re in danger of dying, you have to face the prospect of your life itself being taken from you too. In addition to any physical pain you might be feeling, this can cause a lot of psychological pain. (Both of my students who had awakening experiences while they were in hospital experienced this, describing how they felt frustrated and depressed, and I experienced the same when I was ill in hospital too.)
These attachments are the scaffolding that supports the ego – we use them to reinforce our fragile sense of self. And so, when they are broken, the ego breaks down too, in the same way that a fragile building collapses when it’s not supported any more. But if we let go and accept our predicament, this state can transform from one of desolation to liberation. Rather than a breakdown, you have what might be called a break-up – a temporary shift to a higher level of being and a glimpse of the higher self that seems to exist inside us all the time as potential.
Awakening experiences often have long-term effects. Like the woman who argued with her mother on her way back from the beach as a 15-year-old girl, or Emma, people often feel inspired by them for the rest of their lives. They may make us aware of a dimension of reality whose existence we never suspected and awaken an urge for spiritual development, as happened to Jill after her high-intensity awakening experience. Tracy responded in a similar way: she started to read about Buddhism and spirituality and learned to meditate.
Nevertheless, one of the characteristics of awakening experiences is that they are temporary . They last for a certain amount of time – anything from a few seconds to a few days – but then fade away. The ego manages to re-form, like a boxer who picks himself up again after being knocked down. The structure of the normal psyche may fade away, but the ‘mould’ that holds that structure in place is still there, so the psyche grows back into it.
However, we’re now going to look at a second type of spiritual alchemy where this doesn’t happen. Over a long period of time, turmoil and trauma can ‘chisel away’ at our normal psyche in such a forceful way that once it has dissolved away, it is never able to reform itself – and the individual experiences a permanent state of wakefulness.