Subjective reports of exceptional or anomalous experiences are common in the population.

Such experiences range from intense emotions to anomalous phenomena such as precognition and telepathy.

These experiences can be transformative, shaping self-understanding, relationships, and meaning in life.

Throughout history and across cultures, people have reported experiences that seem to transcend ordinary consciousness, traditionally interpreted as signs of divine or supernatural influence. Nonordinary states were often intentionally cultivated through ritual, trance, meditation, and communal ceremonies for healing, guidance, and insight, particularly during times of crisis. Modern research suggests that such experiences remain widespread. Large-scale surveys report subjectively reported phenomena including precognitive dreams, meaningful coincidences or synchronicities, crisis-related telepathic impressions, and encounters with the deceased. Although individuals may subjectively experience such events only occasionally, they are broadly distributed across the population. This prevalence challenges the assumption that exceptional experiences are rare or pathological. Instead, they appear to be a relatively common dimension of human experience, worthy of psychological investigation as part of how people interpret and make meaning of their lives.

These exceptional experiences are clearly out of the ordinary and could be life-changing—that is, subjective experiences can be a gateway to self-transformation, especially when they are interpreted as meaningful within a spiritual framework. The term ‘awakening’ refers to the experience of and process leading to wakefulness as an ongoing state, described as a high-functioning mode of being in which an individual’s experience of self, social relationships, the world, and the overall existential understanding of life undergo substantial positive transformations.

To explore whether subjective exceptional experiences are linked to positive self-transformation, we conducted an online study using a representative sample of the German population.........

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