How would you interpret this strange experience?
I've been having some experiences that I don't fully understand, and since there are many knowledgeable people and experts here, I'm hoping to gain some insight. Any thoughts or perspectives would be greatly appreciated.
I started meditating around four years ago, and it helped me tremendously with depression, anxiety, and nightmares. Over time, however, I began having some unusual experiences.
At first, I noticed tingling sensations in the center of my forehead and occasionally at the crown of my head. I ignored them, assuming meditation had simply made me more aware of my body.
About a year later, during one summer, I experienced an intense burning sensation around my tailbone. I assumed it was due to the heat and long hours of sitting because of my job.
But over the following years, stranger things started happening that I couldn't ignore.
Around the middle of 2025, the burning sensation in my tailbone became more intense. Eventually, my throat also started burning. The sensation in my throat lasted for months and often felt like choking. Over time, I became accustomed to it, much as I had with the forehead tingling and occasional sensations at the crown.
One day while meditating, I heard a sound in my throat that reminded me of opening a soda bottle, a pop sound, except it seemed to come from inside the throat area and wasn't very loud. It startled me, but nothing physically harmful happened afterward.
Around this time, the burning sensation in my throat seemed to move upward toward my forehead and eventually to the crown of my head. When it reached there, I experienced something that felt as if I was being "absorbed." That's the closest word I can find, though it doesn't truly capture the experience.
I remember feeling frightened and thinking of my mother, and somehow the experience stopped or receded.
Life continued normally after that. My job, family life, and responsibilities all remained the same. But inwardly, I kept wondering what exactly was happening to me.
Then came an experience that went beyond mere physical sensations.
The intense burning in my tailbone returned, stronger than before, so strong that I even felt feverish. It would often peak during the evenings.
This time, the warmth seemed to rise gradually through my body in stages: tailbone, below the navel, stomach area, the point between the chest and stomach (which was somewhat painful), chest (which felt warm and pleasant), throat, through my nostrils, the middle of my forehead, and finally the crown of my head.
When it reached the crown, my entire head felt warm and nice.
After this experience, the warmth began moving freely through my body and at times along my spine.
Later that week, I experienced something very strange and profound.
One day I was simply sitting on a chair, and for reasons I cannot explain, I suddenly felt no real separation between my body, my mind, and the chair I was sitting on. All of them appeared simply as experiences, only in different forms.
At the same time, even those forms felt secondary, almost like appearances or labels placed upon something more fundamental. It felt as though there was only one experiencer, and that everything experienced was somehow not separate from it.
I cannot fully explain this in words. Even writing about it now feels strange because I no longer experience things in quite the same way as I did then. Not as intensely as that time.
Another strange aspect of the experience was my perception of time. During that period, it felt as though time itself was not fundamentally real but rather something created by the mind to relate events to one another. It felt as though there was no time, only experience unfolding.
I no longer felt there was an "I" or "me" controlling anything. Thoughts were happening, actions were happening, life was unfolding automatically, yet there didn't seem to be a central entity inside directing it all.
There was no one. The person I thought I was actually don't exist.
I saw this during the experience, and I cannot fully unsee it now.
Surprisingly, this wasn't frightening. If anything, it felt deeply liberating.
Yet there still seemed to be an experiencer of all this, and I couldn't locate who or what that experiencer was, or where it existed. It felt as though the experiencer was somehow beyond what the brain could understand conceptually.
I felt an overwhelming sense of love, though not directed toward any person in particular. It felt more like love for existence itself.
Eventually, the experience faded after about a week, but the insight remained and changed me deeply.
I find it difficult to genuinely hate ( even if they did something bad or harmed me in any way ), judge or get angry on people now. My mind still produces judgments out of habit, but they disappear almost immediately when I remember what I experienced. There is no one. No one is doing anything intentionally. So whom to really hate or get angry on?
So my conclusion: there is no one to hate and no one who truly hates. There is only life expressing itself.
The thing we ordinarily call "I" now feels more like a construct of the mind than an independently existing entity.
My present feeling is that love is fundamental, while hatred arises from conditioning and misunderstanding, which themselves seem to be constructions of the mind.
Hatred is not opposite of love. It feels as though hatred is layered over a deeper and more basic sense of unconditional love. Similarly, the sense of being a separate self feels layered over something much larger and more fundamental. The covering seems to exist in the mind and in our understanding rather than in reality itself.
Sometimes it feels to me as though much of what we learn about existence is based on misunderstanding, and that we unknowingly pass those misunderstandings on to future generations. Not intentionally, but simply because we don't know any differently.
The realization itself was the most meaningful part of the entire experience.
My thoughts may be all over the place, and I apologize for that. I don't fully understand what all of this means, and to be honest, I'm still confused by it.
From a physical perspective, the warmth still moves freely through my body. It can be difficult or painful at times, but I have largely stopped worrying about it and simply allow it to be there. When it becomes too intense, I pray and ask the Almighty for relief.
Has any of this affected my life negatively?
Honestly, no.
If anything, the overall effect has been positive. I feel lighter now, less burdened, and more at peace. Nothing external changed, only my perspective on life changed.
Life feels more effortless now. It feels like a natural flow, much like breathing itself.
Everything about this is strange for sure, but nothing about it feels supernatural. On the contrary, it feels incredibly normal and natural, almost too normal. Like something that has always been obvious, yet somehow I had been missing it all my life.
That's perhaps the strangest part of all.
My understanding of all this does not come from intellectual knowledge as much as from the experiences or an innate intuition.
I'm curious how others would interpret these experiences. And if anyone has gone through something similar, how did you approach it?
I apologise for the long post and thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope you have a good day or night wherever you are.
P.S. I don't remain in this state continuously. It seems to arise on its own and eventually fades on its own as well.
During these periods, my thoughts and perceptions feel noticeably different. The grip of the mind and the usual sense of self seem to loosen somewhat, and ideas that would normally feel abstract or philosophical instead feel immediate and obvious.
Outside of those periods, I return to what I would call my normal state of mind (though part of me feels that the other state is actually the normal one, if that makes any sense).
I've also learned to be careful about how I talk about these experiences with family and friends, since ideas such as "there is no self" can sound alarming or nonsensical.