Childhood Mystical Experiences 1

I will be writing a series of my own mystical experiences in these posts. The reason for sharing them is to encourage others to have direct contact with their own spiritual nature. 

“. . . I speak not now of your ordinary religious believer, who follows the conventional observances of his country, whether it be Buddhist, Christian, or Mohammedan. His religion has been made for him by others, communicated to him by tradition, determined to fixed forms by imitation, and retained by habit. It would profit us little to study this second-hand religious life. We must make search rather for the original experiences which were the pattern-setters to all this mass of suggested feeling and imitated conduct.”

William James. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (pp. 4-5). Heraklion Press. Kindle Edition.

I have had a number of what could be called mystical experiences in my life. They were mystical only in the sense that they defied ordinary sense perception and the demand of the ordinary mind for the constraints of logic. The amazing thing for me was that I had the majority of these experiences and the truths they presented to me before I encountered them spelled out in sacred texts such as the Vedas and the Buddhist scriptures. Imagine my surprise (and relief) that these things had been experienced by others, for certainly no one I knew could relate to this type of direct knowing. For the most part I kept them to myself, feeling that others would not understand. That was the hardest part, being utterly alone. It is now after having studied some of these scriptures and seen how my experiences fit into a larger framework of spiritual practice that I feel comfortable sharing them. I am doing this because I wish others to know that what these texts are teaching is not mere philosophy or dogma but living truths that can be experienced by those who seek them and even those who don’t seek them for they can just pop up unexpectedly, as you will see. Each person will experience these truths differently according to the images his or her own mind prefers, due to cultural and religious training, but the truths remain the same.

On occasion I have had the experience of becoming aware of the astral realms of existence. The beings who inhabit astral realms are either there between lives on earth or beings who will continue living there until they have perfected themselves enough to move on to the causal realm. The means of communication between astral beings is telepathy consequently there can be no such thing as a lie. One’s thoughts are available to anyone who seeks to know them. For the most part astral beings sustain themselves through cosmic light, not food. In the astral world we meet friends and relatives from our former lives. The life span of an astral being may be as long as 500 to 1,000 years. One’s astral body most often resembles that of one’s physical body between the ages of 20 and 30.

My contact with the astral realms began at a very young age, two or three years old. In my adulthood I remember reading a letter my parents had written to my grandmother about my two “imaginary friends.” Of course, they were not imaginary at all but were denizens of an astral plane. I say “of course” because I have come to learn though reading the accounts of others that young children are often attuned to the astral world and even to past lives. This ability will often fade away as the child grows up.

I do not recall any of the communications I had with my two astral friends, but I do remember feeling that they were my true companions and fun to be with. The last time I saw them I was three or four years old. They were sitting on the polka dots of the wall paper in the kitchen. At that time my mother was not so delighted to hear about them and, so they ceased appearing to me. There are many books with accounts of life in the astral worlds. Among these are Raymond Moody’s accounts of other people’s near-death experiences and “Nosso Lar” by Fancisco Candido Xavier. There are many others. In the book “Lives between Lives” by Michael Newton, the author’s clients came to him for hypnosis and Newton was surprised to find them not only recounting stories of their past lives but their lives in the astral realm. For some people the aid of hypnosis is not necessary. Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), scientist, mystic and founder of the Swedenborg Church had among other mystical experiences, those of playing with astral children when he was very little. Of course, there are many other people who have had such experiences, however the most eloquent account of the astral realms I have come across is from Swami Yogananda’s autobiography:

“Just as many physical suns and stars roam in space, so there are also countless astral solar and stellar systems. Their planets have astral suns and moons, more beautiful than the physical ones. The astral luminaries resemble the aurora borealis. . . The astral day and night are longer than those of earth.

“The astral world is infinitely beautiful, clean, pure, and orderly. There are no dead planets or barren lands. The terrestrial blemishes — weeds, bacteria, insects, snakes — are absent. Unlike the variable climates and seasons of the earth, the astral planets maintain the even temperature of an eternal spring, with occasional luminous white snow and rain of many-colored lights. Astral planets abound in opal lakes and bright seas and rainbow rivers.

Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi (Self-Realization Fellowship) (p. 472). Self-Realization Fellowship. Kindle Edition.