I'll post these strange experiences from a time when my mind grew through childhood into adulthood. I fully recognize that they sound a bit crazy. They are what they are. They happened and I've read in Varieties of Religious Experiences and other books that similar things happen to people. It doesn't mean the people that these experiences happen to are crazy. I drew God's Vehicle (which I got in and crashed in the dream) 100s of times. I still draw it in my class notes and on greeting cards today. I learned all the mathematical formulas that define the symbolic shape of God's vehicle and have seen similar shapes in Cromlechs and even in a Mexican setting within the movie Altered States. Nobody will ever be able to convince me that I don't know what the word of God sounds like because once you hear it you can never forget. God speaks through the fabric of matter and enters signs (impressions of experience) at the neuronal level greater than any external impulse could. Anyhow, here are those memories.
"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God" (New Jerusalem Bible, John. 1.1).
Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice" (American Standard Version, John. 18.37).
Introduction
This is actually a rough draft taken from my notes which I still have from when I wrote them upon awakening that day in 1979.
Although the religious experience written here is in dream format, the information transferred and situations experienced were of a supra-consciousness nature. The religious experience developed as an independent psychological process over a twenty year period--from adolescence to adulthood. This religious experience happened to me at age 24 on September 03, 1979. I am 57 years old. Since I was 24 years old I have had no extraordinary psychological experiences.
Personal experiences with the direct spiritual development of consciousness are eternal and transcend both living experiences and after death experiences. Heaven is not strictly an after-death state and something, perhaps a cosmic mind, interacts with the human brain and shares some obscure affinity with each human mind. In a sense .It. is omnipresent; heaven is all around us but we typically fail to see it. Both living and after death experiences attest to this fact. This experience is of the living variety.
The Trances
From age 4 through 21 I had experienced approximately 10 trances that would take me to what seemed like another dimension. My first recollection, of two symbols that appeared in one form or another throughout the trances and in the religious experience, was from a time as a kid with a high fever. I saw two sparkling nuns that were walking along an infinite seashore. Children were playing beneath a sun umbrella and fragile autumn leaves blew across the sand. I perceived an infinitely dense black line coming from the sky to crush the leaves, the sun umbrella, and the children. I cried out, .the line. the line. as my mother put cold water and rubbing alcohol on my forehead to reduce the fever.
The trances stopped occurring during fever (associated with illness) around 10 years old. But I would try to stay awake by watching T.V. late into the night because I knew the trance would take place if I fell asleep and that scared me.
Usually, when the trance started I'd get up out of bed and sit in a chair. The experience then caused the world to fade out. The walls of the room would disappear and a dark space with two huge dense masses of sparkling energy would transfer their energy back and forth through a sparkling, connecting line along which the energy flowed. I had no recognition of my presence. When the one mass would become infinitesimal to the point of disappearing, the other would become dense and heavy. Then I would become frightened. But, eventually, the energy would transfer out of the dense and heavy sparkling mass along the line and back into the one that almost disappeared.
The last few times, around 20 years old, when I experienced the trances, the episodes were witnessed without fear. I'd get up out of bed, sit on a couch and simply watch the show. Afterward, I thought that was really strange but it didn't make any sense so I didn't think much of it.
When I was 24 years old, at a time when my mind was biologically mature, I had a profound religious experience that seemed to be the end result of the trances. It was in the form of a dream that I could understand. Although this experience was in dream-like symbolism. I experienced it far greater than waking life experiences. Perception and emotion while in it had been enhanced. I refer to it as an increase of reality to a magnitude of 10 when recounting the experience. Carl Jung stated that what acts is actual and this experience was actually the most intense experience in my life.
Like a dream that you try to recall, while it fades away with the more time that passes between waking and the writing of it, much of the details escaped my memory at the time of writing it. I was in tears and quite overwhelmed upon waking but some parts of the dream that I remember and wrote are still remembered along with the emotional intensity as evidenced in my consistent efforts to hold back tears upon retelling it.
In real life, I was not married to the women that appeared in the dream and I have no children. Despite not being able to remember the entire dream, I am certain that the training that took place within it involved a lifetime of situations and experiences.
The Religious Experience - One Fine Day
In the beginning, I was not aware of my body as I glided across the vast surface of a black ocean toward a beautiful light that brought all existence into being. The closer to the source of the light the more aware of joy I became. The light resulted from the emanation of love into the world. The world was the result of that love.
As I floated toward the source of the light, an island, made of many heavy dark quarried rocks, appeared off on a horizon of black sea and blue sky. In the middle of the island, upon the highest stones, the source of all existence was set. There I saw two geometrically shaped translucent ellipsoids of about 18 feet long and about 12 feet wide each. The higher one was exactly horizontal and perfectly balanced on top of the vertical lower one. They connected to one another at the tiniest of points. The lower one nested upon a base composed of the dark and dense island rock.
I set down, in physical form, onto the island. The island was about 50 yards across. I came to know, without words but rather through the communion with the love within the light, that this was God's vehicle. I marveled at the intensity of awareness brought about by the presence of the setting and was overwhelmingly drawn to be within God's vehicle.
Almost immediately I found myself, enraptured by joy, inside the top ellipsoid. Then suddenly the weight of my body caused the top ellipsoid of God's vehicle to tilt. I slid to the end of the upper shape that contained me and began to fall along with it. When the connection to the lower part of God's vehicle broke so did the membrane of the upper spheroid that contained me.
The spheroid cracked open and as I began falling toward the black water of the sea, a black and infinitely dense devil reached up out of the ocean. With limbs of saber-steel, he stretched out his arms in wait of my fall. In mid air, I prayed, Oh Lord please help me. I was saved by the Word of God from the devil's clutches and transitioned into a very long series of life's lessons.
The Word demonstrated the power over reality by enhancing the actual perception of dreamlike content. By comparison, real life experience, even after 33 years, is shrouded in a question of subjective validity.
I remember one training experience where I was in my two story house. I was there with my second wife. I was at odds with her over some small disagreement, perhaps an expression of a former promise not honestly made or a physical discomfort, crankiness or insensitivity from willfully trying too hard. I do not remember exactly the reason but emotion gave rise to heated words at the top of the stairs. Our son was walking from the hallway to go down the steps past us. Our words distracted him. He slipped and fell tumbling to the bottom.
I prayed, Lord please help me. Time stopped. The Word of God allowed me to correct my mistake. But first He showed me our child 20 years from then. There he rested scared and broken; in an institution, he lay. After recognition of the consequences of my mistake, as if by magic, the Word returned me to the point in time when I was about to argue with my wife. But, instead, we looked into each others' eyes and knew enough this time to forget ourselves. We walked hand in hand with our child, between us, down the steps.
I went into the living room where our dog was resting in front of the fireplace. I sat down beside my wife on the couch and held my son on my knee. Our newborn child was asleep in his crib. The air had a warm glow of satisfaction in it. We were united in peaceful bliss. The child on my knee had just been blessed by the Holy Spirit.
I got up and put my shoes and a jacket on, then walked to the back door. I called for my dog, a Collie-Shepard mix, to go for a walk. We walked out across the yard and over through a field of yellow and green grass bordered by trees. The dog ran along ahead of me beneath the blue sky and occasional up-cropping of tall weeds. We walked through a tree lined field boundary and into another field. At the end of that field was a cliff beyond which no land could be seen. The fog obscured our vision.
I began pulling some burrs out of my dog's hair as he sat beside me. Suddenly his ears perked up and he stood quite alert and straight when he noticed something arising out of the mist. He backed up with hair raised and growled. Then I too saw it: an island of land rose into view close to where we stood.
From the island came snorts and howls and then the sight of about 7 ferocious baboons. They flashed their sharp fangs. Some ran back and forth in front of others that sat but they all glared their eyes toward me.
It was then that the Word commanded me to jump across the expanse between the cliff and onto the island. I was too frightened to jump and instead sent my dog. Maybe he thought I would jump along with him I don't know but he courageously jumped the void onto the island. His yelps brought tears to my eyes as I saw the baboons descend upon him. I prayed, Lord please help me. and I was immediately taken into the future. There I saw my dog was starving because the baboons had lamed him and he could no longer eat. When I saw this I again prayed, Lord please help me.
Immediately I found myself standing at the edge of the cliff with my dog beside me. The island with the ferocious baboons again appeared out from the fog. I heard the commandment by the Word of God to jump onto the island. This time I matched the wave of my will, without hesitation, to the commandment of the Word and jumped but did not land upon the island.
Instead, I awoke in a bed of mossy ferns inside a hollow at the base of a large sequoia-like tree. I got up and quickly climbed out to see where I was. A forest of huge trees like the one I woke up under surrounded me. I was wearing a sackcloth robe and thought that was odd because my clothes were the closest thing to me and I would never wear any clothes like that. The robe was very much like a forest monk might have worn in the middle ages. It seemed to fit well enough.
The freshness of the forest entered my heart and lifted my eyes to seek in wonder. A newness of life flowed into me and increased the perception of enchantment. It was no earthly forest with the need to survive...no mosquitoes, or sense of discomfort--a reality filled with an inquisitiveness born out of a fearless and childlike mystery. Then a sound sweeter than the scent of honeysuckle caught my ears. A sound like a soft om-hymn was everywhere and originating from many locations.
As I looked around, out from other trees came people dressed like me. I checked to see if I knew anyone. I noticed a guy walking toward me from farther back. He hummed along with the sound in the air. The sound was like the light from God's vehicle which had brought all things into being through love but more personal in that it united us with each other and all things. I recognized this person as someone that I had known in my early teens. I wanted to ask him about what was going on as I greeted him. I said, Hello Michael. He recognized me with an I know you gleam in his eye, smiled, and said, .Hello Michael. My questions met with a sensation of realization that spread through me with understanding.
He called me Michael, although he knew my name was Ray, to let me know that all of us coming from the trees had gone through training from the Word of God. We were united in the love that constellates matter into form; united in the love of the light and connected through the meaning within the hymn. The resonance of our voices with the sound united us in knowing beauty in a sustained state of supra-consciousness.
I turned to walk with the others and began to hum the sound in the air. We walked downhill toward a crystal clear river to rejoice. I noticed something off to the right and up across the bank. I wondered what it was. Then I awoke.
God's presence is everywhere.
My father who always said he was an atheist is in the picture shown with God's Vehicle tattooed on his arm. He got the tattoo on his own and it surprised me the first time that I saw it. One thing for sure is that he knew what was important in life.
