While I've had a number of interesting experiences related to my meditation practice, two stand out in my mind. I've already described the view of the Nature of Mind. The other happened when I was in Eritrea.
First, a little preamble. In the months before I went to Eritrea, I had been seeing things "in a larger context". I particularly noticed it one night as I was falling asleep. Metaphorically described, it was if I were walking through a path in the woods. The path was clear and the weather sunny, so I could see where I was going quite well, and there was lots of interesting stuff to see, etc. However, past the edge of the path, the woods became quite dense, and I couldn't see into them at all. I would, mentally, go to the edge of the path and try to peer into the thicket of woods, but I could not even mentally go there, much less see anything. I was nonetheless somehow aware that beyond this sunny path stretched an infinite darkness, that beyond the world which forms our daily existence was this "something infinite." It was starting to see the thoughts or feelings of my daily existence within the realm of this "something infinite" which was the "seeing them in the larger context." Within that context, even things which were initially quite disturbing seemed quite minor. It was as if you were watching something unfold in front of you which you found very gripping, but in the larger context, the image you were watching somehow became kind of two-dimensional and turned on its side, so that, while still there, it became much less significant or troubling than it had originally seemed.
After a week or two in Eritrea, I got the usual sort of traveler's distress (except that it didn't seem responsive to antibiotics, so it might have been stomach flu or food poisoning), and even after having my GI tract cleared thoroughly, didn't eat much for a few days. Towards the end of that time, I was lying in bed in my weakened state and, at some point, came to view my weakened state in that larger context. My weakened self was a small opaque fleck in a large, shimmering sea of golden light, and I saw that this small fleck could vanish entirely and nothing would really change or be lost.
I interpret this as revealing, as the other vision showed, that we are not these isolated, limited individuals we appear to be, but actually that we are something larger, indivisible, and unchanging. Even as anger, fear, delight, apathy, etc., are not what they seem, neither is death.
After this, the Christian ideas of life after death began to make more sense to me. However, it's not really continued life after death in the literal way in which people seem to think of it. Rather, when we come to see ourselves within this larger context, to see what we truly are, what we truly are does not die. Rather than "larger contexts" and "shimmering seas of light," the Christian metaphors would be something about not dying because you have become close to God, or being reunited with God upon your death, if you have been "good" enough.
