If you have explanation or own story to share. Do not hesitate and post it if it is not too personal. Thanks!
The mind has extraordinary potentials, and you now realise this.
I could share stories, but I won't, at least not now, because I want to share more general thoughts with you.
I began my inner life so to speak at about age 15, when I learned of the processes of sequential relaxation and what I then called self hypnosis. After school I would go to a quiet place by the river, and just trip out. Quite naturally without drugs.
Later in life I became a practitioner of Buddhism under the direct guidance of a lama. Tibetan Buddhism involves developing skill in visualisation.
Every night you dream. You are completely involved in the dream, which is a world in itself.
So you know that your mind/brain can internally experience ANYTHING.
Fortunately, as a teenager exploring the mind, I had no religious affiliation or background, and did not discover my mind's potentials in that context.
My meditation practice has opened up more conscious control of those potentials.
What I want to suggest to you is - don't take these experiences too seriously. That may sound disrespectful and I apologise if it does, but it is meant with utmost respect.
I have no cause to doubt that your experiences are intense and as-if-real. What I have learned is that the subconscious will produce varieties of different experiences - and the nature of them is determined primarily by how you use your conscious mind.
Robert Anton Wilson, author and teacher of sorts, suggested an experiment. The experiment is to choose some mythic, meaningful or mystic being to make the focus of your mind for three weeks.
Choose freely, it could be Krishna or Ra or even Superman. Meditate on this being every day for at least one hour. Regularly remember this being during the day.Have pictures of this being around you. Write some poetry to or about this being.
In other words, focus to the point just shy of obsession on this being for three weeks.
Preferably pick a subject not currently very familiar or special to you - because it will make the result clearer and easy to grasp.
Wilson more or less guarantees that you will have 'visions', coincidences and so forth centered around this being.
Then do it again with a different subject.
When you get the same kind of results, the point will become clear.
Whether or not you do this experiment, others including myself have. And it makes clear that the conscious programs the subconscious. And the subconscious produces output....
Apart from all that...the meditation process is one of not actively engaging in the products of the subconscious. The meditator observes what arises, and releases any engagement in the reactions to that.
Are you able to sit in 'tranquil abiding', just following your breath, without these extraordinary events ?