Embark on a profound exploration of mystical experiences and the nature of consciousness with filmmaker Ron Meyer and modern mystic Dr John Stone on this episode of Exploring the Mystical Side of Life.

Unravel the mysteries of the Divine, the transformative potential of mystical awakening, and the deep resonance that connects us all. John and Ron share their life-altering experiences—from the overwhelming realization of unity with all existence to encounters with “the black light” and the ineffable “Room of All Knowledge”—reminding us that the true mystical journey is available to everyone, regardless of spiritual background.

Here are three inspiring takeaways from this enlightening conversation:

🔹 Mystical Experience is Universal: As John and Ron reveal, mystical encounters can happen to anyone, regardless of belief system. These moments of profound connection can appear unexpectedly—in meditation, nature, or even dreams—and invite us into direct relationship with the Infinite.

🔹 The Power of Questioning and Letting Go: The journey often begins by asking deep questions like “Who am I?” and being willing to strip away limiting beliefs. As Ron shares, the process is not about adding to ourselves, but about letting go, allowing our deepest essence to emerge.

🔹 Connection Beyond Time and Space: Through practices like the Enlightenment Intensive and “We Space,” John, Ron, and Linda demonstrate how genuine resonance and presence can connect people across distance, dissolving the boundaries of time and space and awakening us to our wholeness.

Tune in to this transformative episode and discover why you are already whole and precious—perfect and complete, just as you are. Allow yourself inspiration to follow the breadcrumbs of synchronicity, embrace your mystical nature, and share your own experiences on the journey to self-realization.

Don’t miss this awe-inspiring conversation on Exploring the Mystical Side of Life.

Transcript:

John Stone:
My eyes were closed and I looked… started looking around and I could see that what I am is everything. Everything was that that I’d woken up to and it was just overwhelming. It was so outside of everything else I’d ever experienced. I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t know how to think about it. I didn’t know how to talk about it.

Announcer:
Welcome to Exploring the Mystical side of Life with your host, Linda Lang.

Linda Lang:
Hi, this is Linda Lang from ThoughtChange.com. We are Exploring the Mystical Side of Life once again this week. If you enjoy our conversations, remember to subscribe. Share with a friend. Today we are talking mystical experiences. We have filmmaker Ron Meyer with us, as well as modern mystic John Stone. Welcome to you both.

Ron Meyer:
Great to be here.

John Stone:
Thank you. I had some contemplations around death, but this whole thing started when Ron was doing a film on near death experiences and he asked me if I’d be interested in sitting in on some of the interviews. But before then I started reading up about near death experiences and I was struck by what I read, that the experiences of these people are very, in some important ways, similar to my own experiences, even though I did not have a near death experiences in the encounter with the Divine, God, the Infinite. There’s no really word for it, but we’ll call it God. And with the experience of unconditional love. And those both resonated deeply with me. And the circles I run in, when I start talking about the divine… usually I can see people’s eyes glaze over.

Linda Lang:
Let’s talk a little bit about the similarities of mystical experiences and near death experiences.

John Stone:
Well, they’re both mystical experiences. There’s a woman named Dr. Yvonne Kason who came up with a term called “spiritually transformative experiences.” And one of them is mystical experiences of which an NDE or near the experience is one. Mysticism, the way I think of mysticism is it’s the practice or the pursuit of union with the Divine in one form or another. So Christianity, Islam, Hinduism in particular have those traditions. Buddhism doesn’t talk about the divine so much.

Ron Meyer:
So I hung out with this one very famous Roshi in Zen (Buddhism) and I asked him about that and I said, “Don’t you have these people have their experiences when they’re sitting?” And he said, “Oh yeah.” He said, “You know, we can’t talk about them in that way. We have to refer to the Buddhist literature.” And then I asked him, “Did you ever have a profound experience?” “Oh, when I was young I had an amazing out of body experience.” So people do have these in Buddhism when they’re meditating, but they don’t talk about them in that way, at least according to Genpo Roshi. They’re not excluded and they do occur.

Linda Lang:
You can have an experience and no connection to any particular belief system.

John Stone:
That’s correct. And mystics are often the heretics. They don’t toe the party line because they have a direct connection to God.

Linda Lang:
I’d love to hear about your first experience, John.

John Stone:
I was taking a retreat. It’s called an Enlightenment Intensive. There are typically four questions. Who am I? Who am I? What am I? What is life? And what is another? But instead of contemplating on your own, you have a partner. So there are four sessions. In each 10 minute segment, each person goes through this process. So one person will say, “Tell me who you are.” And the other person will receive their question, contemplate it, and then communicate whatever comes up as a result of the contemplation.

If it’s thoughts, feelings, whatever, get it across to the partner, go back to the contemplation and the person who’s given the request listens without judgment. That’s the idea. And then at the end of five minutes there’s a, usually a gong. And then people switch partners and the person who was communicating gives the command or the request. And the person who was listening is now contemplating. So they have those four periods of back and forth like that. It can get pretty intense.

Usually people are crammed together. We contemplate from six in the morning to 11 at night. And that particular one for four days; we’re all sleeping in the same room, so it’s really intense atmosphere, as you can imagine. And I had two experiences. One, I started out with who am I? At first I was frustrated because of course I know who I am. And then suddenly dawned on me, I didn’t know who I was. And I was so struck by that.

I was 40 some years old at this point. How could I not know? How is this possible? Okay, so who am I? So I got really intrigued by the question. And then at some point I had this little… it’s hard to describe this. I sort of like this. And so I went up to the teacher and I said, “I know who I am.” And he said, “Who are you?” And I said, “I’m this.” I said like, “This, I’m this.”

And he said, “Are you satisfied with the answer?” And I said yes. There was a little, little remainder there of “Well, I don’t really understand this thing,” but it was enough. I was… I’d definitely gotten enough. So then he changed the question to what are you? And I contemplated that and I said, “Well, I’m this.” Well, what’s that? And on the evening, just before the meal of the fourth night, fourth day, I broke through and this huge rush of energy went up my body and I started shaking. And I knew at that moment what I was, but I could never have said it. It’s unsayable.

It was as if I was reunited with someone I thought, someone dearly beloved that I thought had died. There was kind of the feeling of like this love and grief at the same time. I’ve missed you kind-of-feeling so much. But also it’s deep, deep love and deep recognition, without knowing what I was recognizing. It’s hard to describe. And then as I was shaking like this, my eyes were closed and I looked, started looking around, and I could see that what I am is everything.

Everything was that, that I’d woken up to. And it was just overwhelming. So that was my first experience and I didn’t know what to do with it. So outside of everything else I’d ever experienced, I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t know how to think about it. I didn’t know how to talk about it. But all I wanted to do was talk about it and think about it. Because what was this? What is this thing I’ve discovered? So that’s what got me started.

Ron Meyer:
He used to tell me about this and I would say, “Yeah, that’s, that’s good, John.”

Linda Lang:
Yeah, it’s hard to understand. It’s really experiential. Right? It’s not something you can know without experiencing.

John Stone:
No. The closest you can come without experiencing it, I think, is if you can find resonance in poetry, certain kinds of poetry, or at least for me, I’ll break into tears because it’s so beautiful. So any, any place where you experience, one experiences, beauty is a, is a good place to start.

Ron Meyer:
Nature, for example, sometimes.

John Stone:
Nature, yes. People often have experiences briefly that involves contemplating and question. A moment of deep silence and respect and awe in nature will be close.

Linda Lang:
And I think I would say too that those moments seem eternal.

Ron Meyer:
They are outside of time. Outside of time and space, in the ordinary consensus way.

Linda Lang:
Exactly. So, John, how did that change your life?

John Stone:
Well, it started a long, long process. I just wanted to go back. That’s a common error. I wanted that lovely intensity and I wanted that clarity. So I went to more intensives. But on these intensives, a lot of people spend a lot of time talking about their stories. I didn’t really want to talk about my story, I just wanted to go right for the gold, you know. But at some point I realized I had to chew through that too, that that was part of it. So that, you know, trying to go right into bliss is usually called spiritual bypass. So you have to go through your junk, you have to look at it, you have to own it, look at it, recognize it for what it is, and then hopefully throw it away.

This is also true of NDE experience experiencers. They’re often depressed when they come back because, you know, they were in this beautiful place, now they’re not. So I found out a similarity there as well. I went to more retreats and over time, gradually it opened up, things got clearer for me. But it was a rocky road a lot of times. Two things happened. The day after the retreat, I went to a boxing camp which is conducted by the leader of the retreat. It was a martial artist named Peter Ralston.

And when I first got on the mat, “I said, why am I doing this?” I lost total interest in it. Why am I doing this? And eventually I realized that I was doing Aikido out of ego based needs. So I don’t do Aikido anymore. But at the same time, my abilities began to expand in new ways. I could see things I couldn’t see before. So I had access to these things, a way of experiencing the world and other people and interactions that I hadn’t had before. They kind of started opening up. And that had also been true of Peter Ralston, that he had an intense, intense series of awakenings and that helped his ability grow. So that was one of the interesting side effects.

Linda Lang:
And yet it’s something so many spiritual seekers chase.

John Stone:
Chase what?

Linda Lang:
Chase those enlightenment experiences, let’s say.

John Stone:
Yes. Yes.

Linda Lang:
And Ron, you’ve had some interesting experiences too. You talk about the dark light sometimes. Can you share that experience with us?

Ron Meyer:
So there’s, there’s two. I’ll give you the first one that was really transformative for me. You know, I’m a filmmaker and we had been hired through a really weird combination of circumstances which were… I live in Boulder, which is one of the centers of Tibetan Buddhism and has been, you know, since the ’70s when Trungpa Rinpoche came here. And we got to be like the first crew, film crew, to go to China in 1988. And our goal was to follow a string quartet as we traveled all through China and then ending up in Tibet. And I got a documentary series out of. It was also quite interesting for me.

I had just started Aikido at that time, so I was beginning a spiritual path and we were at this sacred site where a Taoist temple existed. And you had to walk up many steps, I guess Mao had done it. But that night, I had a dream in which is reported by many NDEers that they enter what you just call the Room of All Knowledge. I knew everything, all answers. It was all there. And there was a presenter associated with it, a man. And like people who have NDEs, when I woke up, I had this moment of, “Oh, wow, I get it.”

And then it all just faded away. And eventually this was, you know, in the middle of China. We ended up going to… our last stop was Tibet. We were in Chengdu. I came down for breakfast, and they said, “Well, there’s another American here. Would you like to have breakfast with him?” I said sure. It was Jimmy Carter. He was a president in the United States. I don’t know if you remember him as a Canadian.

Linda Lang:
Oh, I do.

Ron Meyer:
Okay. So that helped in some ways. So we flew together to Lhasa, which is the capital, and we were able to finagle, with the help of Jimmy a little bit, get into the most sacred place…

John Stone:
…in Tibet.

Ron Meyer:
Yeah. And we went into the temple, and there waiting for me was the man who presented the Room of Knowledge. He was the leader of the Jokhang. And that blew me away. And he took me aside immediately because he recognized me. And we went and looked at some specific shrines. And then he said I was a llama, too, which, you know, was kind of nice. He said, “You have to, you have to save Tibet.” I was like, “Holy ****!! How can I do that?” But actually, I knew how to do it previously. So in some ways, ever since then, I’ve been trying to go back to that world of all knowledge and know the truth that I once knew.

Linda Lang:
What’s really amazing about that story is that you had a dream that you had this guide, or the person who was there, the head of all knowledge, and then you actually met him, which is one thing, but that he recognized you is a totally other dimension. Right?

Ron Meyer:
That’s impossible, isn’t it?

Linda Lang:
You would think, but apparently not.

Ron Meyer:
Yeah. So this raised questions that were beyond anything I’d ever thought about before. And so that, that began my real pursuit of figuring out what the heck the truth actually is, again, in a way that I could formulate it. And, you know, being a filmmaker, I have a lot of cachet. And I did go around and speak and get to know other, let’s say, leaders of all the practices and see if they knew the truth in a way that they could articulate it to me, but not really. It’s, it’s, it’s elusive and in the way John just described. Right.

John Stone:
I’ve talked about this as well. You know the truth by being the truth.

Ron Meyer:
Yes.

John Stone:
And when you know you are the truth, there’s no saying it because you were being it. It’s instantly recognizable. You know, it’s like coming home. At the same time it is completely unknown. There’s very strange paradox.

Linda Lang:
I often describe it as being unknowable to the human mind. Right? Because we like to categorize everything and it’s just… there’s no category for it.

John Stone:
It is beyond our knowing and yet we are it. That’s the other thing about the encounter with the Divine. It is intimately us and it is so beyond us, impossible to conceive. So both are true of the Divine, intimately known as us, and yet unsayable. And unknowable. The vastness of it all.

Ron Meyer:
The experience of the black light occurred twice on intensives like John was describing. John was there for one of them; that took place north of San Francisco. And I was that dark light. And the way I would describe the first one was that it was absolutely nothing. There was no me, there was no boundary, there was no articulation of anything. The second one had an extra dimension to it. And I would put this in my terms, saying I was, but it wasn’t really the one who’s talking to you right now, that I was infinitely…

Everything was possible. The infinite potential of everything was, was the way I would describe it now. But it wasn’t really me. I was being that, as John just said. So those are two experiences I had that correspond to people who have near death experiences. And, and to what John said had a similar one, I believe of the black light, as they call it in the literature of near death experiences.

John Stone:
Yeah.

Linda Lang:
Can we talk about that black light a little bit? Is it like the void?

John Stone:
It is the void, yeah. It is, as Ron says, absolute nothing. Absolutely nothing. In my case, I was at a retreat and I disappeared. I, there was no I. I still had perceptions. Ron apparently didn’t have perception.

I still perceived the world, but everything I perceived was insubstantial. Nothing really. There was talking and there was seeing, but there was no one talking. There was no one seeing. It was stunning because I couldn’t even say the word “I.” I mean, I can’t do that now. But I just… the word just would not. It didn’t mean… It didn’t make any sense. What does “I” refer to? Nothing. You Know.

Linda Lang:
So it holds nothing and everything at the same time, Right?

John Stone:
Yes, that’s, that’s the amazing thing. Later on I’d experience the fullness of everything, the beauty of being, the glory, the presence of God, you could say. And then I’ve had these other experiences of nothing and the nothing is… Right? It was. There’s nothing. I mean, you can’t talk about it. So I couldn’t figure out. Well, is it everything or is it nothing and what’s the truth here? They’re not different. They’re not different. Just as the Buddhists say, form is nothing but emptiness. And emptiness is nothing but form. It really is true.

Ron Meyer:
A little side note to that experience. John and I were going back to the San Francisco airport and I could drive, but I couldn’t read any signs. John couldn’t drive, but he could read signs. And somehow we made it back with John saying, “Okay, you’re turning now, right here, get off here.” I had no idea what any of these things meant. I just drove.

Linda Lang:
It’s like you had to readjust to being back in the body.

John Stone:
It was weird. Yeah. What are those things out in the highway? I don’t understand them. What are they doing? Why are they driving that way?

Linda Lang:
So life changing experiences, I would imagine for you both.

John Stone:
Yeah. There have been many, many experiences over the years, all different kinds of. It definitely does often bring other abilities out that you didn’t know were there. So it brought out the poet in me. I find that when I’m speaking from the place where I know these things, I’m able to articulate it so that other people can hear it.

Linda Lang:
It’s really interesting because a lot of people think of gifts that might surface, might be things like psychic ability or knowing the future, but this was actually communication and a deep resonance with poetry.

John Stone:
With the poetic expression of what I know. It arises spontaneously and I write it down and if I read it several days later and it makes me cry, then I know if I hit the right note.

Linda Lang:
So, Ron, did you awaken to any gifts that you were unaware of after your experiences?

Ron Meyer:
I would say that it would be synchronicities. And can I define what I mean by synchronicity?

Linda Lang:
Sure.

Ron Meyer:
And that is that there’s dual aspect. Monism is, is a term for the basis of it that some people use. And that is that there’s the mind in the physical world that show up in a relationship that’s not causal in the normal sense. I can give you an example. This is pretty much how I make my filmmaking, why I’m Talking to you right now is that these things just show up for me this way. And I’ve learned to pay attention to them. So I don’t know if you heard of Skinwalker Ranch.

Linda Lang:
No, it’s.

Ron Meyer:
It’s the number one paranormal hotspot in the United States. And the next one is a thing called Bradshaw Ranch, which is outside of Sedona. And I was looking for something for a new movie. I was doing the way to end it, which would be participatory. We go investigate and so on. And so I was stressing on what am I going to do? And I woke up in the morning, looked at my news feed, and the first thing that showed up was a story about Sedona and its vortexes. So that’s the physical thing, the mental thing was I need some place to do something like paranormal. And immediately I knew that I had to pursue that.

And so that began a sequence of investigations. That’s how I learned about Bradshaw Ranch through meeting people one after another who pointed me in this direction. One thing followed after another. And I did make the investigation at Bradshaw Ranch, where we found a portal, interacted with an alien being, and other things. And right now you can watch it on YouTube movies and it’s doing gangbusters. So this aspect of synchronicities is something that I hadn’t done before, but now I just, I just follow it all the time. It points me in the right direction.

John Stone:
It’s also how we got the film together that you and I did.

Ron Meyer:
There’s synchronicities because as I started interviewing these people, I was thinking about poor John. He has nobody ever to talk to about his experiences. I got some people he can talk to about these experiences. I developed an ability to connect with people for which I reflect back to them, who their, who their essence is. And then they open up, they savor it because it’s so wonderful. Because mostly people do not have other people recognize who they really are at the deepest level.

So those would be two examples of things that emerged after these experiences I had. You want to do an experiment? One of our teachers, Edrid, is working on something, going deeper. He was one of the founders of this technique we’re talking about, the Enlightenment Intensives, and it’s called the We Space. And so I will ask the question, there’s three of us here, “Who are we?” And John will contemplate it and give an answer, and then I’ll ask you and you’ll contemplate it.

Linda Lang:
No pressure going after John. Right?

Ron Meyer:
I just did that with Dimitri, John. And we got into this space and he touched me, and I had like a Kundalini experience coming up my spine, and I lurched forward like this, a powerful jolt of energy. So it’s greater than just a regular Who am I? What am I? You want to try?

Linda Lang:
There’s more power where there’s, you know, two or more gathered, right?

Ron Meyer:
That’s what we’re talking. You want to do?

Linda Lang:
Exactly.

Ron Meyer:
You ready?

Linda Lang:
And then you’re going to do it too, right?

Ron Meyer:
John can ask me after.

John Stone:
So what’s the. What’s the command or question?

Ron Meyer:
Tell me who we are.

John Stone:
Okay.

Ron Meyer:
You ready?

John Stone:
Okay.

Ron Meyer:
Tell me who we are. Oh, by the way, I’ll say thank you when he’s done. Tell me who we are.

John Stone:
It’s interesting. Even though we’re separated by miles, lots of miles, I can feel a connection. Though I can’t really express what it is among us, between us. There’s this feeling of an intelligence that I’m picking up from a presence from both of you. As you’re aware of me and I’m aware of you, and there’s this feeling of… I could just say connection and presence. So that’s. That’s what I got for now.

Ron Meyer:
Thank you, Linda. Tell me who we are.

Linda Lang:
The first thing I see is darkness. And out of that darkness comes bloom of a flower. Looks like… not an orchid, but a similar looking flower that just opens. The petals just open. And it’s like we are the presence of that flower. And then when that opened, it was like looking out at space and looking at the stars, and we are the stars. So I find that very interesting because it’s the three of us together that I’m kind of tapping in. And yet I had an experience of chunking up if you like, and chunking down if you like. And both of those experiences were vast in their own way.

Ron Meyer:
Thank you.

John Stone:
Tell me who we are.

Ron Meyer:
At an immediate hit that we were connected to a vast distance of time. That we’re somehow connected not as we are now, but in a, in a different way that goes… that’s very old and ancient. That’s it.

John Stone:
Thank you.

Linda Lang:
Now, it’s really interesting because just this little experience or experiment that we just did really opens the energy up. I can almost feel my eyes starting to tear because of that unknowable connection. Right?

John Stone:
Yeah. It is strange that it is palpable. Even though it’s just images in front of me and voices, somehow there is a connection.

Linda Lang:
No time and space, right?

John Stone:
Yeah.

Linda Lang:
You know, it reminds me very much of an experience I had probably… maybe three years ago, maybe two years ago… in Portugal with my husband and a friend and two total strangers in Portugal. And we had this moment, this eternal moment where we just connected with such appreciation for life. IT was completely silent in that moment, and yet each one of us had it. And it was like we’ve known each other before, a long time ago. I actually wrote a chapter for a book about this experience because it just touched all of us so deeply and it was spontaneous.

John Stone:
I’ve been trying to learn more about synchronicities from Ron. So when something shows up that intrigues me, I just follow it if I can. I don’t know if that’s the same as with you, Ron, but if it just sort of shows up. A lot of times it’s… you know, I’ll be thinking about something and there it is.

Linda Lang:
Following the breadcrumbs.

John Stone:
Following the breadcrumbs. Exactly.

Linda Lang:
Now, if you were going to give the listener one tip or one word of wisdom, what would it be, John?

John Stone:
Well, the thing I’ve been thinking about the last few days is what comes first to mind is a quote from Rumi. “You know not your own worth. You sell yourself for too little price. Being so precious, not knowing you are so precious in God’s eyes.” If it’s one thing that I would say is that you are already whole and complete just as you are. But seeing that is the trick. And following the spiritual pursuit can lead to that realization. It makes all the difference.

You are perfect and complete as you are despite what you think. You are not what you think. And something like the Enlightenment Intensive is something to consider or pursuing a question like “Who am I?” or “What am I?”

Linda Lang:
And Ron, I would ask you the same question.

Ron Meyer:
My advice would be is: it’s a process. If there’s a process, it’s one of letting go. Let go of some belief you have that’s limiting who you are. It’s not a building up or modifying or making your ego better, getting more stuff. It’s basically stripping away, let go of something because that’s what opens up. So when you’re working really hard and everything, you’re forced to kind of get rid of your brain modeling, of what the brain thinks the world is and predicts it to be. And so if you can let go of something and start peeling away towards what you really are, as John said, that would be my advice and see what comes out of it. Every time you let something go… because something will… you’ve broken the knot that’s holding you from recognizing the truth, as we would say.

Linda Lang:
Do you have a website you’d like people to visit?

John Stone:
I would just encourage people to investigate the Enlightenment Intensive if they were at all intrigued by my description of it. It is intense, it is challenging, but it is deeply rewarding and they’re given all over the country, all over the world in Canada, Vancouver in particular, but also in Ottawa, Toronto area. There’s a website called Sandoth, S A N-D-O-T-H.com. It’s kind of a primitive site, but it’s a site that has links to other sites dealing with near Enlightenment Intensives.

The other thing I’d say that Ron and I have talked about this before, if any of the listeners have had any experiences similar to the ones that we’ve been talking about, or even anomalous experiences like seeing a ghost or a psychic experience, and you haven’t talked about it because you’re afraid people would listen, I would urge you to find a way of communicating this and looking into it. It can often be a significant doorway into something new and wonderful. A lot of people have… this is one of the things that the NDEers early on… they couldn’t talk about it. And when they finally were able to, it really helped them a lot.

Ron Meyer:
People who have Bigfoot experiences or the typical UAP experiences, you know, the human’s always involved in these in some way. You think of it as kind of a communication and awakening up because you have to let go of something of your normal worldview which says this is not possible. And it goes back to the letting go process. And the same would be for psi phenomena.

Linda Lang:
I know for myself, whenever I’ve had one of these mystical experiences, they’re more real than human 3D life and they’re life changing for sure.

John Stone:
It’s a common experience in intensives that people will have an experience and then they’ll start talking about it. But if they can start talking from it, then it starts opening up. So even if you’ve ever had something and you can find someone who can listen to it and you can talk from the place that you experienced, it will open up.

Linda Lang:
Sit with your pen and paper.

John Stone:
That’s another way. Yes, exactly. The perfect listening partner is a piece of paper a lot of times.

Linda Lang:
Exactly. It’s been a real joy to have you both with me today. Thank you for being my guest.

Ron Meyer:
Thanks for having us on, Linda.

John Stone:
Thank you. Thank you for inviting us.

Linda Lang:
And thank you for listening to this week’s edition of Exploring the Mystical side of Life. You will find all of our conversations on YouTube and your favorite podcast platform. Come visit me at www.ThoughtChange.com. Pick up your copy of Learning to Listen, and we’ll see you again next time. Bye for now.