t’s been 16 years since my experience and for many years I wasn’t able to talk about it out of fear of judgment. I’ll do my best to remember as much detail as I can, athough much knowledge has faded away at this point.
I also need to state that although this NDE is associated with a psychedelic drug experience, I urge you to not discredit my story. I hold the firm believe that what I experienced was a bonafide NDE that still has a profound effect on me to this day.
I was a freshman in college and living in campus dorms with three other guys. It’s safe to say that I was in my ‘experimental’ phase. One day, two of my friends asked if I wanted to eat psychedelic mushrooms with them. After much deliberation, I was curious about the experience. I trusted them, so I agreed.
Up to that point alcohol and cannabis were the only other ‘drugs’ I’d tried. I was completely ignorant about how much of a dose to take, so I asked my friends. I ended up buying a large baggy half-full of the mushrooms and proceeded to eat most of the bag. I remember my friends dumbfounded faces as I just kept popping in little mushrooms like popcorn into my mouth. I figure now that I ended up taking up to around 5-7 grams of dried psilocybin mushrooms that day. That was well over any recreational dose.
After I had eaten all of the mushrooms my friends left me with my roommates, assuring that they would return in a few minutes. My roommates did not take any drugs. As I wait for my friends to return and for the mushroom trip to begin, I sat with one of my roomates playing video games on our dorm room sofa. After about 30 to 45 minutes, I could start to feel the effects taking place. The colors on the TV became more vivid, my motor skills were slowing down, rational thought became much harder, and I started to sense and audible vibration coming from somewhere.
From this point on, I’ve pieced my story together with what I was experiencing and what I learned later from my roommates.
The vibration brought on a wave of extreme laughter. As I sat there on the couch laughing with a lit cigar in my hand, I starting having a seizure. My entire body straightened out. I rolled over onto my stomach and cigar, and then rolled onto my back again while shaking uncontrollably.
I don’t remember the seizure.
What I do remember is a sensation of floating in the room I was in. I was having an out of body experience. The sensation was less of a physical feeling and more of an awareness that I was floating in the room. I didn’t feel attached to my body. It was as if my soul was free and filling up the room. I don’t recall seeing my body, but I knew it was there below me. The feeling was that I was lifting up toward the ceiling.
At that point, I remember the feeling of being transported or attracted to something. I could see that I was surrounded by darkness and being pulled into a light at the end of the tunnel.
The whole time I felt like I was on my back being lifted up.I don’t recall any sounds or feeling any uncomfortable feelings like fear or anxiety. I remember feeling very calm and relaxed.
While moving toward the light, time and space seemed to slip away. But I remember the lack of time being very significant. I couldn’t tell you how long it took to move into the light, but once I arrived it was as if I had always been there. Light was everywhere, but it didn’t seem to have a source. There were no other landscape details to see. It was almost as if the light was a physical thing. It was the ground and the sky all at the same time, or it was none of that.
I still felt like I was on my back. I was greeted by three entities standing above me. They were standing side by side with the one in the middle being taller than the others. The middle one had more than a larger physical presence. It was as if it were more important in ‘rank’ like the leader. It had a very strong Virgin Mary vibe, so from here on, I’ll refer to it as ‘She’. I don’t know if I believe that it was the Virgin Mary or not, but the presence was very feminine and motherly, and that’s what matters to me.
All of the entities appeared to be dressed in long robes. The robes draped over their heads, like in the pictures depicting Virgin Mary in popular art. Although their forms drew fine silhouettes, no other details could be made out. I could not see faces, fabric, or anything like that. It was as if they were just energetic holograms. They had a softness to them, like a glow.
The one in the middle seemed to be reaching out her hands to me as if She was welcoming me. I think She was communicating with me, but I don’t remember any of those details. I do know that the communication came through as forms of telepathy since She wasn’t speaking.
Where was I? Where was I being welcomed to?
The best that I can explain it is that I was home. This awareness was primarily due to what I was feeling, which is best explained by what I wasn’t feeling. I wasn’t feeling anxiety, which I realized during this moment that I struggled with a lot. I was not feeling any pain, fear, or desires. All of these things seeming so trivial and small since they were only experienced during a human experience, which I was clearly not having at this moment.
I felt complete peace and acceptance. I felt all knowledge or truth. I could feel the infinite. I was infinite. I’m struggling to find words to express this sensation, but for me this sense of awareness was profound. I believe I relived my entire life in one instance. Everything seemed to be revealed to me at once.
I don’t know what those entities are or were. They didn’t seem to be anyone that I had met before, like deceased relatives. But I felt very safe with them even though I didn’t feel that I was one of them. They felt separate from me but not in a Earthly, judgmental kind of way because there was no judgement.
If this was Heaven, it wasn’t the Heaven I was taught about in Bible school. There were no streets paved in gold or winged creatures flying around. There was only love and wisdom. And I had a feeling that it was for everyone, not just ‘believers’.
At some point I slipped back into my Earthly body and back into chaos. I don’t remember any goodbyes, parting thoughts, or even a choice to leave. I just opened my eyes and was back.
From this point on, the NDE was over and I was back in my body and not quite normal. I was hallucinating very, very heavily. I was very confused at this point. I couldn’t even focus on the profoundness that had just happened because I was in such a state of chaos.
I remember looking around the room and seeing one of my roommates in the outside doorway to the dorm staring at me in shock and fear muttering expletives. The other roomate was already out the door and outside. I could hear him yelling, ‘Call 911! Call 911!!’
At this point I was very worried, since I didn’t know what had physically happened to me. I was in a state of declining fear and confusion, but I somehow was able to convince both roomates that no authorities needed to be called.
The rest of the story is significant to my life journey, but it is nonetheless just another trip story. For the purposes of this website I will end the story here. Let’s just say that I had two very soul-level deep experiences happen to me that day that I’ve been trying to make sense of every since. Sharing this with you helps me get one step closer to understanding what happened.