One of my Facebook friends is Jordan Bates. I can’t remember how I first encountered him. Perhaps it was through the online community HighExistence, in which he is an advisor and co-owner. He has had quite the journey in his life, and is continually inspiring in his openness to life, love, the Divine, and the wonderful mystery of it all.

Today he shared “My Ayahuasca Story.” For those who don’t know, Ayahuasca is an entheogenic brew which has been consumed traditionally in spiritual ritual and medicine in ceremonies by the indigenous peoples of South America and the Amazon basin for millennia. It includes the psychoactive molecule N, N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT).

Part of his story he writes:

My fear of death diminished by about 90% overnight as I watched myself vividly decompose and dissolve into the Earth…

Through Ayahuasca I witnessed dimensions of this Reality I didn’t know existed, populated by spirits and beings I couldn’t have dreamt up—things I had scarcely considered possible.

Ayahuasca is no walk in the park: I remember the most brutal ceremony of my life, right after a severe heartbreak, in which I was sobbing and vomiting for hours on end after being sucked through some kind of inter-dimensional wormhole into the deepest recesses of my psyche…

Yet after those hours of purging, I broke through into a Space of Pure White Light in which there was no “I” anymore.

There was only God. ☀️…

After that Experience with the White Light, I wrote that I had been, “Melting into the White Hot Sun of the All-Embracing Love of the Father-Mother Mind.” ☀️

It was the most Profound Experience of my Life…

-Jordan Bates, “My Ayahuasca Story,” Facebook, 23 October 2020

For my Mormon friends, some similarities to Joseph Smith’s First Vision experience, and mystical experiences generally, seem to be:

• He was fearful and uncertain, suffering heartbreak and unease
• He saw himself dying, decomposing, being destroyed
• He went into a very dark place, a thick darkness, a deep wormhole, and it was a very difficult journey
• He realized a new heavenly reality, beyond the everyday reality
• He saw a pure white Light
• He compares that Light to the brightness and power of the sun
• He felt that he might melt or otherwise be consumed by that Light
• He met spirit beings
• He felt like he was in the presence of God, and refers to the “Father”
• He felt an all-embracing Love
• It was the most impactful experience of his life, forever changing him

If you would like to submit a “First Vision” account, either personal or found, for inclusion on this website, please click here.