My first mystical experience

The language of film

My first mystical experience came to me, or rather happened to me when I was 19 years old in Pisgah Forest, North Carolina. It was actually two mystical experiences in quick succession, maybe weeks between them. One happened with friends, camp friends. Content and comfortable. A keen sense of belonging.  The other happened alone. Both experiences were marked by a fairy tale sense of understanding the natural world around me and my small yet profound belonging to it.

Before I describe the experiences, I must explain what exactly a mystical experience is. As described by Douglas W. Shrader, there are 7 aspects to mystical experiences.

1. Ineffability : inability to capture the experience in ordinary language

2.  Noetic quality : the notion that mystical experiences reveal an otherwise hidden or inaccessible knowledge

3.  Transiency : the fact that mystical experiences last for a brief period of time

4.  Passivity: the sense that mystical experiences happen to someone; that they are somehow beyond the range of human will and control

5. Unity of opposites (a sense of Oneness, Wholeness or Completeness),

6. Timelessness : a sense that mystical experiences transcend time

7. Encountering “the true self”: a sense that mystical experiences reveal the nature of our true, cosmic self. That is beyond life and death, beyond difference and duality, and beyond ego and selfishness.

Here is the full, enlightening paper by Shrader. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.601.4094&rep=rep1&type=pdf

I went with camp friends to the Goodwill, where I picked up Henry David Thoreau’s 'Life in the Woods'. Living in a cabin at the “Heart of the Wooded Mountain” was romantic to me any ways. The sound of the waterfalls and cicadas lulled me to sleep. The humidity dampened my clothes and the countless bug bites that now have marked my legs permanently remind me affectionately of my time in Brevard, North Carolina.

We then drove to Pisgah forest, a lush gem of forest and waterfalls.  I broke off from the group, they went swimming in a nearby pool of lukewarm water where  instead, I followed a clearing. There was trees lined the edges overhanging large grey mottled rocks with a shallow brook running through the middle.  It was an Indian summer so everything shimmered as it moved in its own small motion. 

I found a flat rock in the middle of the babbling water, the sun shining directly on it. I took off my shirt and stretched my body out. My fingers hanged low, dipping into the water.  An incredible sense of calm and peace washed over me, my limbs heavy, my body  warm. The sunlight glinted through the trees, twinkling, streaming down. It felt perfect. As if everything was in its right place. That I had stumbled upon a profound sense of quiet joy I had never felt before. I was in a fairy tale, I had the first person view, looking upon the glorious green.
A light show was made when the sunlight hit the water, making it sparkle and shimmer.
Each one of my senses were tantalised.

To see the world in a grain of sand 
And heaven in a wild flower, 
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand 
And eternity in an hour.
William Blake