A few years ago, I climbed over a gate and found myself gazing down at a valley. After I’d been walking for a few minutes, looking at the fields and the sky, there was a shift in my perception. Everything around me became intensely real. The fields and the bushes and trees and the clouds seemed more vivid, more intricate and beautiful.

I felt connected with my surroundings. What was inside me, as my own consciousness, was also “out there.” Within me, there was a glow of intense well-being.

This is an example of a higher state of consciousness—or, in my preferred term, an awakening experience. Awakening experiences are a temporary expansion and intensification of awareness that transforms our perception of the world.

As a psychologist, I have been studying such experiences for nearly 20 years. (My book The Leap: The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening summarises my research.) Awakening experiences are sometimes viewed as mysterious and random, but I have found that, to a large degree, they can be explained.

My research has found that they have three main triggers.

The most common trigger may seem counterintuitive. Around one-third of awakening experiences are linked to psychological distress, such as stress, depression, and loss. For example, as part of my research, a man described to me how he went through inner turmoil due to confusion about his sexuality, which led to the breakdown of his marriage.

But amid this turbulence, he experienced an awakening experience in which, he said, “Everything just ceased to be. I lost all sense of........

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