Inner Experience and Perception
Inner experience
Inner experience belongs to the most fundamental and least describable parts of being human. Thoughts, sensations, and perceptions move as a continuous stream that usually feels self-evident and is rarely questioned.
Perception is often treated as something aimed outward, at the world. Yet every perception also has an inner side. Between what happens and what we experience of it lies a process that filters impressions, interprets them, and ties them to what came before.
In certain moments this process can shift. The familiar way of perceiving reality changes. The outer world does not become another world. The way it is experienced becomes another way. Identity, the sense of time, and the relationship between observer and surroundings can take on a new quality.
The one moment that changed everything
After my own experience, a single realisation stayed with me. It sounds small, and it changed everything.
The body and I are two different things.
On paper this reads almost plainly. Lived, it takes away the fear of death. If I am not the body, then the end of the body is not my end. That one shift reorders everything else.
These two works show the same moment. Above, Spirit Walker, the self that loosens and walks away. Below, Cosmic Resonance, the body that stays behind, still and yet flowing with something. The inside and the outside of a single instant.
How seeing changed
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Since then I perceive differently. The threshold between the material and the spiritual world grew thinner. My senses became finer, intuition clearer, compassion for others more immediate. Things I once passed over now step forward.
In time another insight came, and it turned the usual order upside down. Consciousness is not produced by the body. It is the other way around. The body is the place where consciousness appears, not its source. Whoever looks at the world from this perspective sees a different picture.
When experience becomes form
Such changes are hard to put into words. Language catches only part, while the actual experience keeps working underneath. For me, painting became the place where this inner seeing is allowed to show itself without having to be explained. Colour, presence, and texture speak in a language that is understood intuitively.
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Read on
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What a tunnel experience is, and how it differs from a near-death experience, is described on its own page.
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How such an experience can be processed over the years is described in Processing an Extraordinary Experience.
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What happens when someone tries to force such an experience is described in Dangers of an out-of-body experience.
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A selection of my work can be found under Selected Works.
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Shorter reflections appear on Substack, each starting from a question about perception, inner experience, and art. Read on Substack.
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A personal exploration of such an event and its long-term integration is described in my book Beyond the Body - The Radiance of the Soul.