Peak experience? I'm not sure if it qualifies for that; certainly not a “religious experience.” It may have been related to Zen “satori,” it was certainly all about being in the moment, but in the end was simple, nothing grand.
I was in my big truck on a small two lane highway winding through the hills of Southern Indiana. It was a beautiful day as only high spring days can be; the temperature in the low 70's, low humidity and an intensely blue sky adorned with fluffy clouds. The vegetative world was burgeoning, the trees in full leaf and the pastures thick with grass and wildflowers. I was admiring the landscape when there was a sudden shift, a heightened experience. I was no longer just looking at the landscape, I was a part of it, almost as if I could see the whole scene from above. “Wow, this is it!” I thought, “The very best time of the year!” A thought tried to intrude to say that if this is the top then it's all down hill from here, but I let that trail away ineffectually and reveled in the euphoria of the moment. I can mark no point where the experience ended. It faded in the shifting of my gears, surely, but perhaps I still carry it to this day.
I was blessed to have another such moment not too long ago. It was a mediated experience, but none the less real or intense. I was playing the video game Dark Souls III, fighting a particularly tough boss monster: the dragon Darkeater Midir. During the battle he sometimes goes berserk, charging forward savagely and spewing fire in an ark before him. This can be devastating if you're in his path but if not then it's a fairly safe moment that can be taken to heal or buff. Darkeater was raging and I was running after him with my trusty Wolf Knight Greatsword on my shoulder. In the moment's respite before the dragon turned on me again I was suddenly uplifted in another of those sublime moments. “Wow,” I thought, “I'm fighting a dragon!” Once again what was already completely known was taken to another level, and in this case what was fiction was perceived to be actual fact. I was fighting a dragon and the superb programming of FromSoftware, inc. allowed me to experience it as real.
Please note that the video is not a capture of my gameplay, but is from YouTube.
