My definition of a mystical experience: Achieving a higher or deeper state of consciousness. Piercing through the veil of our physical reality and becoming aware of the interconnectedness of everything. Ever since my first psychedelic trip, which I refer to as a mystical experience, I've been on a journey to understand what happened to me. Was the drug making me crazy, or was it enabling me to experience something real? That first mystical experience felt like I was a young adventurer, thrown into an entirely new world where everything needed to be discovered and learned for the first time. It was incredibly overwhelming. This is where journaling saved me! I had already developed a personal writing habit, knowing the calming effect it can have on the mind. I tried to slowly put the immensity of my experience into words. This was hard because every few seconds, a new line of thinking would jump in, opening an entirely new realm of possibilities and distractions. It was impossible to stick to a thought and finish it. Putting things into words felt incredibly hard because my brain seemed unable to interpret and process it all. But by trying to hold on to the first few written words of a sentence, I could stick with a certain thought until I got distracted again. When I regained a new moment of lucidity, I could finish the sentence. Slowly but surely, I was regaining some calm. Using writing as a mental lifeline to climb out of the vast sea of information in which I felt I was drowning, I regained calmness and was able to ride out the peak of the trip. After the peak, everything became much smoother, and I experienced an incredible sense of peace and harmony. I had a deep knowing that I had gone through something of great significance. I was intensely proud to have faced this internal challenge. Over the past seven years, I've had a few more mystical experiences, some entirely self-induced. Each gave me a clearer understanding of how our reality works. However, I had to complement my personal experiences with a lot of theoretical research and quickly noticed that all this information was hard to find and very scattered. It takes a lot of time for people to dig into these spiritual topics, which is a big reason why people don't start in the first place or give up their search at a certain point. ### This is why I decided to write this book. The aim of this book is to serve as a concise and comprehensive introduction for people interested in these topics. Something that appeals to a generation that thirsts for spiritual direction but is repelled by the existing stories out there. With this book, I want to show that you don't need to be religious, a secluded monk, or a new-age hippie to concern yourself with these matters. My dream for this book is to translate ancient spiritual concepts and belief systems into a vocabulary that is easy to grasp for our current generation, showing that a path of spiritual self-discovery is possible and meant for everybody. ### This is why you should read this book. In the back of my mind, I intend this book to be the ultimate resource I wish I had after my first mystical experience—a concise clarification of what had happened, what it meant, and what I should do with it. Over the past months, I've collected all the questions that came up and found in online groups, put them into a cohesive outline, and presented answers in three ways: 1. Through my own mystical experiences. 2. Through metaphors of similar phenomena we find in nature. 3. By paraphrasing the people who have been most useful to me in understanding all this. With this approach, I hope to achieve three things: 1. Show that if I can experience these things, you can too. 2. Show that these things can be easy to understand. 3. Show that I'm not the only one saying this. Because I'm just a simple, straightforward, cut-the-crap Dutch guy with no impressive mystical background. I'm no monk living in a cave, no student of a Yoga guru, nor do I have relations to any indigenous tribes. And you don't have to either. Everybody can understand these things rationally, but I've noticed that to truly believe them, you need to experience the mysticism yourself. This is for those who had a mystical experience and want to understand better what happened, as well as for those who are interested in working towards one. ### Outline This book should serve as the foundational understanding that gives you everything you need to know to start working on your deeper purpose. The first part will be about the interconnectedness of everything and your unique role in it, explaining all the foundational concepts rationally and easily to follow so that you can start to align with your deeper purpose. The second part will go into working with the nature of this reality, applying the concepts of Part I so you can become whole again, and continuing to gain more clarity on your deeper purpose as you progress. I don't claim to have all the knowledge, but I'm sure I can point a few of you in the right direction. So let's start!