I never had an NDE, but I experienced something remarkably similar. Has anyone here experienced this?

I know this isn’t technically a Near-Death Experience, but after reading many posts in this community, I was surprised by how many descriptions felt incredibly similar to what happened to me. That’s why I’m posting here in the hope that someone might recognize what I’m describing.

This happened about four years ago, and I still think about it every single day. I’ve searched for answers ever since, but I’ve never found a story that truly matches what happened to us.

My ex and I were completely sober. No alcohol, no drugs, no medication—nothing that could have altered our state of mind.

We were simply lying. Everything was completely normal.
Then, within a matter of seconds, something extraordinary happened.
As I looked into his eyes, I noticed that his irises began to change. They looked like moving ocean waves, almost as if they were alive. I kept staring because I couldn’t understand what I was seeing.
Then, suddenly, I felt myself being pulled somewhere.

The closest physical sensation I can compare it to is diving into a swimming pool. It wasn’t painful or frightening. It felt as though my awareness—not my physical body—was being pulled away.
Then I was… somewhere else.
There was no body.
No sound.
No space.
No time.
Nothing.

And yet, somehow, everything existed at once.
I was still conscious, but I wasn’t “me” anymore. I had no identity, no body. I was simply awareness. At the same time, I somehow felt that I was everything.
Words don’t really do it justice.
What affected me the most wasn’t just the overwhelming peace.
It was the absolute certainty that everything suddenly made perfect sense.

I remember thinking:
“Oh… so THIS is it. This is what everything is about.”

Then something even stranger happened.
It felt like an instant download of knowledge, not information in words, but direct understanding. It was as though I suddenly understood reality itself. Every question I had ever had seemed answered in a single instant.
But when I returned, it was almost immediately gone.

I remembered that I had understood everything.
I just couldn’t remember what that “everything” actually was.
I spent several minutes desperately trying to remember, but it had completely slipped away.

The part that has stayed with me the most is this:
My ex experienced the exact same thing.
When we came back, we were both in complete shock. It took us several minutes before we could even speak normally.

Without influencing each other, we described almost the exact same sequence of events.
He told me that my eyes had changed too.
He described my irises exactly as I had described his, as moving like ocean waves.
He also felt himself being pulled into the same place, experienced the same timeless, bodiless state, and returned with the same overwhelming feeling that everything made perfect sense, followed by the frustration of not being able to remember what he had understood.

Neither of us had ever experienced anything remotely like this before.
Neither of us has experienced it again since.
For four years, I have thought about this almost every day. Every time I look deeply into someone’s eyes, I remember that moment.
I’m not trying to convince anyone that this was supernatural or that it was an NDE.
I’m simply wondering whether anyone here has experienced something similar—especially the feeling of becoming pure awareness, existing outside of time, receiving an indescribable sense of complete understanding, forgetting it upon returning, or, even more unusually, sharing the experience with another person at the same time.
I would genuinely appreciate hearing from anyone who can relate to any part of this.