Religion: Jewish
The most profound experience I've ever had, religiously speaking, was during meditation. I assumed my regular meditation position, which is sitting on the floor with my legs crossed on a dense pillow or rolled up mat. At this time, I was meditating in a traditional Buddhist 7-point position, because I had been reading books on both Jewish and Buddhist meditation practices and I found this position the most comfortable. However, on this particular day, I for some reason felt that I wanted to sit in a modified position that reflected my own Jewish religion.
I am a student of many forms of Judaism, but I personally adhere to traditional Orthodox observance. I also study the Kabbalah regularly, along with other religious texts. The Kabbalah speaks about the 10 fingers in man as paralleling the creative forces of the universe (called the Sefirot), and on this day, I decided to visualize that my hands were set together representing these creative forces. I began my practice as usual, reciting a mantra, which consists of 3 words in the Old Testament in the original Hebrew: Ayn Od Milvado, which means "There is nothing but HIM (God)".
After about 2 minutes, I suddenly felt as though I was completely removed from reality. I saw a vision, which shook me to the very core. The vision was of a tall tree sprouting from the ground, and bearing a strange fruit that I had never seen before. Then, the vision vanished and I heard a voice saying, "The Tree of Life is NOT FORBIDDEN!" The last two words seemed to be shouted at me. Instantly, my mind raced a million miles a minute, and I ran to the kitchen counter and pulled out a pad of paper and a pen. I wrote down a one page synopsis of my thoughts in this altered/higher state. Basically, it said that if man has high knowledge, he cannot have true life without experiencing hardships.
The reason this experience was so profound was not because I felt as though I had thought of something so unique or radical. It was profound because I truly felt that it was an outside force - to me, God - that literally handed me this experience. I still think about it to this day (this happened almost 4 years ago). I feel that unifying my actions and thoughts towards achieving unity with a higher power caused me to become a conduit for the experience. That is my personal, completely unprovable belief, but since I was the only one there, I'm going with it.
Interestingly, the Torah teaches that it is an obligation to "bond" with God. The Kabbalah says that this "bonding" is actually a meditative technique. While the technique described is different from what I did, perhaps both happened that day and what the text speaks of are similar/the same. Who knows. It was so awesome, in every sense of the word. I have never experienced anything like that since, nor had I before it happened.