I traveled to India in the mid-1990s to study, and at that time I was deeply fascinated by Indian philosophies. I read about them voraciously and followed everything related to yoga, meditation, and consciousness. Through my readings, I began to encounter ideas suggesting that some meditation techniques are not merely methods of relaxation or calming the mind, but can actually transport a person to another level of perception… to what some call the unseen world, or the world of spirits.
Around late 1996, I came across a book titled Meditation: The First and Last Freedom, which contained 114 meditation techniques, said to originate from what is called “Adi Yogi,” meaning “the first yogi” or the primary source of yogic knowledge. I never imagined that a mere book could open a door that would change my understanding of life entirely, but that is exactly what happened.
One exercise caught my attention because it seemed extremely simple—so simple that you would never expect anything extraordinary from it. It involved nothing more than walking in a secluded place, looking at the ground, and focusing entirely on the sound of your footsteps while moving. Nothing more.
I began the exercise, and after only a few steps, something happened that I was absolutely unprepared for.
I suddenly felt that I was leaving my body.
The most accurate description I can find for what I felt then is that I was overwhelmed by what I can only call “an immense bliss.” Only later did I learn that some describe such a state as mystical ecstasy. It was a pleasure that kept intensifying as my sense of separation from my physical body increased. Then I found myself looking down at my body from above.
You can imagine the extent of the astonishment that struck me… but astonishment was not the only thing present. There was also an overwhelming happiness, a joy almost unbearable, and at the same time a real fear that I had entered something I did not understand.
At that moment, I began repeating instinctively: “In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.” I was trying to steady myself, to gather myself, to return. And after a few moments, I felt that I had indeed returned to my body… but strangely, that intense bliss did not disappear. It remained moving within me, as if it were dancing through every cell of my body.
What happened afterward was no less strange.
In that state, the sound of birds was like something intoxicating to me. I no longer heard it as I had before. I could also see around the trees, and even around what we usually call “empty space,” a kind of extraordinary aura, as if the whole world had begun pulsing with an energy that is not normally visible. Everything felt alive in a different way.
I remember hugging the trees and feeling a genuine, not metaphorical, love toward everything around me. Even when I reached home and placed my hand on the gate to open it, my hands were trembling from the intensity of the ecstasy still flowing through me.
I went up to my room in a state unlike any I had ever known before and opened the book once again. Ironically, that was the first time I read its introduction carefully. Only then did I begin to understand that these exercises, which had seemed so simple to me, could indeed open an unknown path toward something unfamiliar… and that they were not innocent mental games as I had imagined. The warning was clear: these practices could be dangerous and were meant to be performed under the guidance of a spiritual teacher.
But the problem was that things did not stop with that one experience.
After that, I began to feel as though I had been drawn into that world against my will. It was as if something had pierced the veil and I was no longer able to close it. I realized then that I had perhaps opened a door I neither had the power to shut nor the courage to continue through to the end.
And then something happened that I still regard to this day as a form of divine care.
In a way I cannot explain, I later found myself before a man whom they told me was an “avatar,” meaning a holy person or someone of elevated spiritual rank, with a sacred connection to “the people of the heavens,” as I was told. I do not claim that I fully understood what that meant, nor do I ask anyone to accept it as such, but I can honestly say that his presence was extraordinary. He had an incredibly powerful presence and a strange aura, to the point that I felt he was not an ordinary man of this world.
When I sat before him, I tried to explain what had happened to me and said, “I did…,” but before I could finish, he interrupted me immediately and said, “I know… I know… leave this matter to me, for I am here for that.”
To this day, I cannot explain why I believed him instantly, but deep down I was certain that he truly knew what had happened to me and that he was capable of dealing with it.
After that, I noticed something very clear: that “energy” which used to come to me suddenly and against my will no longer carried the same terror as before. It did not disappear completely, but it became less threatening, and I began to experience it without fear—sometimes even with a sense of enjoyment and reassurance.
The real problem was not what happened to me, but trying to explain it to others.
When I tried to share what I had gone through with some people, I was surprised that their reactions were not what I expected. I found no real curiosity or attempt to understand, only questions like:
“Were you taking something illegal?”
“Were you drunk?”
And it was obvious from their tone that they did not believe me at all.
Gradually, I stopped talking about this experience. I almost never shared it with anyone anymore. Perhaps that is why I later turned to writing fiction, because a story allows you to tell what you lived through without asking anyone to believe you or deny you. A story does not interrogate you… nor does it judge you.
When this incident happened, I was about twenty years old. Now, after nearly thirty years, and being in my fifties, I finally find myself able to tell it as it truly was.
Not to convince anyone…
But simply because this is what truly happened to me.
