So about a year and a half ago, I was scrolling on DeviantArt when this ( https://www.deviantart.com/avchonline/art/Octavia-the-world-of-my-own-777725763 ) caught my eye. Immediately after clicking on it, I felt a very strange feeling. Almost uncanny, but not necessarily in a negative way as that word usually implies; more in an out-of-place way. Prior to seeing it, I had been doing something I often did at the time, which was browsing deviantart and rapidly downloading related artwork through the right-hand sidebar. I was doing it quickly and wasn't really that much attention, but as soon I found this particular artwork, I stopped in my tracks and was immediately fixated in a very jarring way.

For a solid minute or two, I stared intently at the image; not only contemplating the image itself, but trying to understand exactly what I was feeling as well. After thinking for some time, I thought to myself that it had a strong aura of innocence and serenity.

Immediately afterwards, I found the artist's other artwork. Hundreds upon hundreds of images of My Little Ponies in tutus ( https://crba.dedyn.io ). At first, I thought it was very peculiar, maybe even a bit "cringe worthy", but within about fifteen minutes, all of that melted away into an irresistible infatuation with it.

Before I can continue, I need to give a bit of background. I've had a recurring type of dream for long time. In them, I encounter or get ahold of some mystical abstract object. Importantly, it can only be comprehend within the dream. In many of them, I even become self-aware of this and desperately attempt to take it out of the dream. When I wake up, I remember the rest of the dream, but the "thing" is blanked out of the dream, occasionally with "corona"-like feeling of almost being able to get ahold of it but not quite.

Anyway, what happened after looking at the artwork for some time was a sudden shift in my perception. I began to visually perceive the artwork with an entirely new mode of perception. This mode of perception is also something I had also seen only in dreams before. The best description I can muster is a transcendental level of sharpness where something becomes so sharp that your lowest level of visual perception sees things that can't be perceived in reality. Like seeing new colors, but for edges and shapes.

As this happened, everything else on my mind and in the world faded away completely and I was completely immersed within this new world I was perceived. It was a complete trance that didn't snap even for a moment.

When looking at the artwork, one particular word came to mind: "saccharine". I felt this incredible mix of total serenity and ethereal beauty, combined with an entirely new plane of perception. I'm not exaggerating in the slightest in anything I have written here. In fact, I'm having a hard time getting across just how powerful the experience was.

One other thing to note is that I don't know anything about My Little Pony, and after some time of looking at the art work, it became completely disconnected from it and became an entirely original (in my mind) series.

I also began to hear these very vivid ethereal voices that were link to the artwork. Each one of his characters had their own voice, and I could all hear them extremely clearly. They sounded like nothing I have ever heard before. Despite them only being static images, I could somehow incredibly vivid voices from every single character in an every character, with no reference or instruction at all for it should be thinking. I could hear them so well, I could even subtle inflections that were unique for each character. As for what exactly they were saying, they weren't saying anything in any language I can understand, but I could sense there was a deep meaning behind it. To this day, I can even hear the voices to some degree and they perfectly line up with what I heard for each character originally.

After about 30-45 minutes, something even weirder began to happen. I began to smell an incredibly overpowering smell. I can't exactly describe what it smelled like as I have never smelled anything like it, but the closest I can say is a very strong perfume. For the record, I had never had any type of synesthesia from prior to this event. The smell was beyond just a smell, I could perceive with every part of my body, especially my taste buds. It completely overpowered everything else; it was like floating through some kind of ethereal wind. And it only grew stronger and stronger as time passed.

I would describe more at this point, but I can't remember it. Not because it was years ago - I couldn't remember it back then either - but because it had been erased afterwards like in my dreams. In fact, I can't even remember anything else I did after seeing the first image. I can only remember some of the things I felt during it - and those faded as I got deeper into it.

The next day when I woke up, I had assumed that it had just been one of those dreams again. But I went to check, and I was astonished when I saw that it was actually real. In addition to the feeling of seeing something from what felt like a dream in real life, I felt like (because I was) I was perceiving something that shouldn't even be possible to comprehend in real life.

Now this is where things get even stranger, the next thing I can remember is about 12 hours after I woke up, thinking to myself "the feeling is starting to wear off". I had spent about 12 hours in a complete trance staring at the artwork in a state of complete bliss. And I couldn't remember a single thing in the past 12 hours right after it had happened. Even stranger, at the time, I didn't even think about just how strange this was. I only began to realize the just how bizarre the events that had transpired were a few days after the fact.

Ever since this happened, I feel like my perception - especially my visual perception - has been irreversible altered in some indescribable, low-level way. Occasionally, I can even get hints of that "supersmell" and sometimes I can hear those voices. I've become completely obsessed with it and think about it regularly. I actually created the linked website to catalog all the artwork in one place.

What is spiritual answer to this? How is this even possible?