Strange Mental Phenomenon

Has anyone experienced... I would have to call it a temporary loss of reality? sort of a "WOW" moment? This happened to me a LOT about 6 months ago, which was one of the most significant times of my life. I would be doing something casual, mainly something like listening to music or just thinking, and all of a sudden I would lose hold of my reality and for just a thousandth of a second, I would perceive things as if I were just born... and for several seconds after it ended I would experience things as if they were completely new, even if they were the most boring and repetitive things ever. in computer terms, it was like my brain temporarily froze and when it rebooted (we're talking indetectably small amounts of time, no "gap") my hard drive had to restart and re-apply my knowledge of reality to everything, taking several seconds to do so and in that gap of time i experienced an incredible wash of information, kind of like when you wake up in mid-air, having rolled out of bed but not hit the floor yet, without the adrenaline and the sudden stop at the bottom. Your mind is experiencing a rush of information, but you haven't truly woken up yet. could it be a mental problem? my mind randomly slipping into sleep frequency and then out again?

any suggestions? it's not bad, but it's weird enough to bring up.

mods, feel free to move this thread if i put it in the wrong place, i wasn't sure where it might go so i guessed.

hmm, i think im familiar with the feeling your talking about, as though your unconscious stops for a moment and all your aware of is all your senses but of no sense of the past or seperation between the self and everything i guess, kinda hard to explain.

if it happens often though without any triggers it can be a problem in your brain, heres a story from a brain surgeon which sounds kinda familiar


yeah i know she starts sounding like shes preaching at some points but its still interesting!

[edit on 16/12/09 by countercounterculture]

reply to post by vyrox


I experienced something like this for a period of a few months. I had been deep into meditation and Tibetan Buddhist cleansing prayers. It was like the world rebooted, I'd always see everything in golden light for a split second, then a hollow pulse sound (like astral traveling if you're familiar with it), and then everything would be clean and appreciable. I would even view people and situations differently right afterward!

I think it's a wonderful thing and could be associated with some mental/spiritual advancement.

There could be other slight possibilities like temporal lobe epilepsy and various brain issues, stroke, etc. So if it keeps up and doesn't seem to have any benefits or spiritual side, or you have pain or ringing in the ears or something I'd recommend keep track of the episodes and speak with a physician. Monitor your dreams too.


Edited to add - that video posted right above me is AMAZING!! So worth watching sometime. If you don't have 20 minutes now, save it for later.

[edit on 16-12-2009 by Thermo Klein]

I can kind of relate to that, it was probably roughly 3-4 months ago.

I was out on a smoke break, and just kind of immediately could see how the local area would immediately look like without all the concrete as it would from its origins, and how spectacular the growth of life was, it was pretty intense, I guess not as if I was just born, but more of a bystander to the earth itself.

I'm not chalking it up to a supreme reptilian leader chanting something in a fancy hottub causing this, probably something that people just really don't talk about, so it seems weird.

I had experienced something similar one year ago twice time. It wasn't matter of few seconds but maybe one hour.
Late at evening I was reading some article on globalresearch.ca . At one moment my view was focused on few pixels on the screen and then: BANG. I had feeling that I finally grasp whats going on in the World. I was somehow enlightened. I though, that I know everything. But then strange idea came to my mind: Knowing everything is domain of God (I'm not religious but have pretty good philosophical education) so if I know everything then I'm in unity with God hence I'm dead. Then I started panicking, ran out of my room to yard where something like heart attack happened to me. I was sure I'm dead. After while I went to kitchen then back to my room and so on and so on in circles. There was an orange on kitchen table and I thought that if I eat orange prior the event I could save my live. Most terrible thing: I was sure that I'm condemned to live my life backward - it is really terrible because you know all your mistakes and you are forced to repeat them. Not only your own life but whole history was somehow supposed to repeat. I was trembling while thinking about nazi camps and all the war suffering.
After say 30 minutes of such state I calmed down little bit and went into bad still not totally sure if I'm live or dead and felt into sleep.
It was repeated one month later almost identically. I was watching last episode of beautiful manga "Samurai Champloo". There are three main characters but whole serial is in fact about inner grow of personality - particular characters just depict inner fight of growing man. At moment of final catharsis it happened again. I was bit calmer this time but still it was frightful experience. This time I did not sleep then and tried to wright everything what I was given by this experience.

It was not nice experience but there was really positive aspect. I read a lot, I'm like information sponge. At these experiences the pile of chaotic information was reorganized and interconnected.

I discussed this events with my friend - professional psychologist - and he said that I'm perfectly normal. No help. Later I had heard at radio our best neurologist who was depicting exactly same experiences. He said, that he don't know what exactly such events are, but that they are perfectly visible by magnetic resonance imaging methods as extreme activity of many brain areas. It is consistent with my feelings - large parts of neural networks was reorganized in few tens of minutes - process which usually take months or years.