Peter C Experiences
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EXPERIENCE DESCRIPTION 3044:

In some sense, physical existence feels like a steal box. It is one with inextricable walls. Within its walls is all that there is, at least in your world. One day, when the box closes in on you that�s that! You are, what my son calls, �worm food.� I have experienced this vision with varying levels of intensity many times now, most recently about a year and a half ago. However, much more recently, I have be having a new vision, one that repeats itself and on July 26, 2015, when it come upon me with full force.

It is a powerful vision which I do believe is real, even more real than the keyboard I am typing on. This is a vision of what lies beyond the confines of the steal box. My prior vision of physical reality describes time standing still, freezing reality, and the breakdown of physical existence until there is nothing left but the pure unadulterated self, the self, left alone for eternity until it goes quite insane, fractures, and forms a new reality as a form of �mental survival.� That�s a schizophrenic God, God which is, and of, and in, and out of me in every respect. This is a God that is ultimately nothing more than me, the ultimate I AM, the only I AM that can be known and verified directly by apprehension of the mind.

So what is beyond the steal box? I got a glimpse the great I AM during my prior visions. I used several metaphors for it, the nest of observers stacked upon observers until you reach the observer that itself needs no observer to be self-aware. That is the great I AM. I basic scientific principles to establish the existence of other people, animals, and rocks, and separate and distinct from the little me. Of course, in the physical existence is subsumed into one and in time for all of us it is crushed together in a shrinking steal box beyond which is what?

I now know.

The box is physical existence, and I use the words �reality� and �existence� to mean different things, subtly different. �Reality� is ultimately all that is, it is the totality of the great I AM. It is the totality of physical worlds, universes, multiverses, the �spirit world,� other existential dimensions, the afterlife, call it everything and anything that you will, reality is it all.

Existence is for the separate realms, the schizophrenic pieces of the great I AM that make up our world, the world in which we life. So for example, I can say that physicality exists, and its existence is real. Some believe that this is all that is real, however, my visions have shown me something much, much larger. It is another realm entirely, one that encompasses and transcends this physical realm of existence. Perhaps there are many more realms, but I now know that there is at least one, and it�s a big one!

Returning once again to physicality, the physical world exists and we find ourselves separated in time and space from one another. We have glimpses of how this is just a show for the facade of physical existence in the rare occurrence of mystic visions, psychic phenomenon, and near death experiences. In these rare instances something that we hold dear, time or space, is bent, warped, or done away with altogether for a brief moment and somebody comes to know something that they, according to contemporary science, could not. Somebody interferes with quantum events, or dreams of a train wreck before it happens or catches a glimpse of a realm beyond the one of our 5 senses.

So, what is beyond the box?  I do not know the totality of it. There is so much, perhaps an infinite amount, but I have had a striking vision of what comes next.  The reason we do not ordinarily see beyond the box is that we are alive, simply meaning that we are tied by our brains into physical existence and 5 senses, but reality is so much more than that. The box is merely a border, a boundary of the physical world which is difficult to penetrate. Beyond it lies an expansive realm of reality that we cannot even imagine since we are confined to our physical world. It is a realm that has been seen in the visions of some mystics for thousands of years, probably millions of years. In this, the experience I am about to recount to you is nothing special. I am just privileged to have it happen to me.

I have an urge to turn on music, loud. The melodies are ordinary enough. It is classic rock of an era that was the hallmark of my childhood. I recognize most of the songs.

Then everything seems remarkably flat. There is no depth to anything. It is as though I were looking at a picture and not real things. I am in the box, and all of existence is what I see immediately before me. I do not see a chair or a table. I see pictures of chairs and tables. These define the confines of the steal box.

I am in the box, and it is shrinking. The pictures are coming closer and closer to me and all I can do is stand in the middle of the room with as much space around me as I can get, but this is merely holding off the inevitable. Everything touching the box is fraying at the edges. At first it appears that physical existence, what I think of as the totality of reality, is �fraying� at the margins as the box closes in on it. Eventually the box closes in on me and I am terrified. It touches my arms and legs. It slowly works its way up to my head. I am running around the living room, dining room, and kitchen in a panic. When I am in the kitchen the walls of the box slam together with my head in the middle.

But once this catastrophic event occurs, I find that I am not gone. The chairs and tables around me remain intact. What is gone is the box. I am in some sense still �here.� I may still exist as a physical being, but my mind is in another realm.

The music shifts. It envelops me; surrounds me with sonic brilliance as if I were a young man again and hearing the songs for the first time. It is all familiar, yet I hear it as if with new ears. The notes are clearer, the chord progressions more fascinating and it all flows in and through me leaving behind its energy.

Then colors in my surroundings begin to grow brighter and more deeply saturated. The brightest ones seem to glow with an internal lite all of their own. Sounds are more vivid, a little louder and increasingly more precise as I am more aware of their individual attack and decay.

After that, the walls, floor, and ceiling seem to lose their true bearings. The room is no longer square. The angles where the floors and the ceilings meet the walls are in constant flux, moving from one crazy angle to another, like a funhouse. Even the floor moves, and although I can still walk on it without trouble, it is moving.

I also feel as though I am moving ahead at great speed. How do I know I am moving? Do I feel something? Yes. I feel acceleration, and the illusion is quite convincing. I can feel nothing other than acceleration to ever increasing speed. I feel as I move from one direction to another. It as though I am on a roller-coaster in a sealed box. Even though you cannot see beyond the box but you know when you are moving. You have a bit of a sense of how fast you may be going, and you definitely know it when you go over hills and around curves. The speed increases and increases as I move forward until I am traveling at terrific speed, the speed of rockets, and more.

All around me the walls seem to become translucent and I can see right through them. Not only can I see through them but they become superfluous. Whatever this other realm of reality this is exists within the room too, and it simply appears seemingly out of nowhere to fill the room and seamlessly meld with that which is beyond the room. It is not so much that it appears as I know that it is always here. I just don�t have the subtlety of perception to �see� or �sense� it ordinarily. How do I say this; the confines of the room become permeable and less real than the intruding realm that flows in, out, and around it.

And it does flow. Like waking from a dream I �awaken� to something more real than the walls of my room ever were. I come to sense, and at the same time my physical senses are not involved. I am still in standing in the living room, but this room has been less real than what I infer through my 5 senses as flowing in and around me from about and beyond my room, coming from no place in particular and everywhere at once.

I am still able to function within my physical existence, pick up objects, open and close doors, all that sort of thing, but these small actions seem trivial, they are prosaic by comparison to what I am apprehending from my newly awakened state. I also seem to be at one with everything that is around me, everything I perceive. I am one with the chair. I am one with the table. I am one with the sofa. There is no real border between the ending of me and the beginning of any object.

When I touch something, I do not think, �I am feeling a door handle.� It doesn�t feel like that at all. There is no real me, and no real door handle. There is just the sensation of hard metal, its texture, its temperature, its solidity� sensation in the present moment� that is all that is real.

It is a little like being in that state between dreaming and waking where the 2 seems to intertwine for the briefest of moments, and where the world of the waking state has so much more reality to it than the dream state that it wins over. Only, in this case, my ordinary waking state is the dream state, and the new awareness, apprehension, super-sensing, whatever you choose to call it, corresponds to my normal waking state in comparison to a dream. It is that much more �real.�

I know instantly that I have entered another realm of existence. That lies as far away as ever, but it is a form of liberation of the mind and physical being that I will call the soul.

Immediately, I become aware of both past and future lives. These are not happening sequentially, one after the other, set in a style of birth, death, and rebirth. Instead, they are all happening concurrently. It doesn�t matter how long or short the life is, it is still occurring as though speeded up or slowed down to match the pace of some other timeline, or perhaps the life in which I am having this vision.

This is my most immediate awareness, but in being aware of these, that they are an intimate part of me, of my character and of my soul, they do not define me. I am still me, separate and apart from these lives. Though we may share a common soul, each of these lives is separate and is independent in their own minds. I know that these eventually merge and become one with the learning and wisdom of all and the minds of many. But for now we are separate, but remain interconnected in an intimate way.

I have a powerful sense that Judy is in all these lives, but we play different roles in relation to one another in them all. Yes, in some lives we are married at different ages, and in some lives we have our own biological children and in others we do not. But this goes much farther. In one life she is my sister. In another she is my mother. In a third she is my daughter. What seems to be constant in all of these is that she and I are both present and we play a major role in one another�s lives.

I become aware that time is fluid and has no real meaning in this realm. All there is, is the present. There is no necessary cause and effect. Something I will do a �minute� from now has an �immediate� effect, and yet to say that there is a time stream where cause and effect can be drawn is unreal. There is no time stream, at least not like there is in the physical world. It is as though time flows back and forth as I need it to, as my consciousness desire it to flow for the observation of what is now and then. A narrative such as this is necessarily linear with one word following another. Such linearity is necessary in this physical realm to make sense of it all, but this makes it very difficult to describe what happened to me.

I became aware that everything in reality is centered on me, around each one of us. It reflects my own moods and attitudes. If I love myself, then that love will spill out to others and they will love me back. Likewise, if I approach the world with an �attitude,� (whatever that attitude is) then that is what the world will reflect back to me, be it malevolence or peace. Because this happens for each of us reality is like a hologram in this respect. Even though we each look through the glass at a different point we still see the picture in its entirety. Given that, what we see is SLIGHTLY different than everybody else and that is what makes reality unique to us and us to it. It is what makes us a unique expression of reality.

Another way to look at is that reality is like a ball. No particular spot on the surface of the ball can be considered the center, and yet every spot is the center because the ball stretches and curves out in all directions equally.

This does not mean we should go around trying to think happy thoughts. That is a �put on� and reality knows what is genuine and what is not. The best way to get into the right mood is to center and ground the self. For me this takes the place of working meditation as I express my thoughts on the keyboard in a free flowing stream of consciousness. I have gotten into the habit of burning incense and listening to great liturgical choral music when doing this. It seems to work for me. Others find a good walk in nature helps them. This often works for me too. Meditation is another way to do this. To each his own.

When we ground and center ourselves we can see with greater clarity and in a calmer, more deliberate way. We lose the stress we were carrying around, and we can approach life from a more genuine perspective. Perhaps our thoughts are not yet happy ones, but at least they will be honest ones. When we are calmer and more centered then we will find that solutions to our problems often come to us, and some problems melt away. These do not always resolve in the way we expect them to, but they do happen none-the-less, and when we learn to accept not only the fact that they happen but are at peace with how they happen then we will find ourselves a lot happier.

I became aware of a tremendous amount of information, all at once. It�s like I woke up and found that somebody put me in the middle of a raucous carnival, complete with flashing lights of every color, a cacophony of music, Barkers for the infinite number of games, rides, and attractions, each one an important piece of information, much of which I don�t understand or is strange and foreign to me. However, unlike a real carnival, this one was immensely beautiful. Tears began to flow as I beheld the beauty that is beyond imagining.

It is ineffable. Trying to describe it is like trying to describe a color to someone who only sees in black and white. They can know all about it, its electromagnetic frequency, its psychological effect on people, how much light it reflects, the concepts of saturation and hue. They can even look at the black and white image of the color and see the shade of gray, but they cannot fully know in the first person sense until they see the color for themselves.

I was exposed to an entire pallet of colors, colors beyond imagining.

I have a powerful sense that everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, will turn out perfect. This does not mean that I do not have free will. I most certainly do! It simply means that no matter what decisions I make concerning my own behavior, ALL things will still work out in the end. There is a saying that everything will be Okay in the end. If everything is not Okay then it is not yet the end. There is always a right and perfect outcome.

Then I become aware of people in my life. Some of them long deceased, but most of them not. Most are quite alive, like Judy and my friends, but not just these people but other people whose lives I have touched. I am not aware of what they are doing now, beyond my physical sense, but I become acutely aware of the times I affected their thoughts and feelings, particularly their emotions. I am overcome with guilt as I sense how much pain I have caused people who are in my life, or who may have crossed my path for even a short period of time and incurred my wrath. But that guilt swiftly disappears as I realize that with their passing into death we will merge our hearts and minds for the moments I most regret, and though we remain separate, we become one for that moment which, as I said, is not linear, and in that moment there will be reconciliation.

In that moment I am touching their lives I become aware that what I did to them I also did to myself. In the long run, in the big picture, in the multitude of lifetimes I am having, I have never hurt anybody more than I have ultimately hurt myself. It is not that at some form of emotional retribution has been exacted from me. That is not what I am saying at all. I feel no guilt now, no remorse. This is the merging of hearts at work in that I feel what they feel, and with the case of those who are deceased, they also feel what I feel, and we wrestle with that moment together and see that in the end that moment piled on top of a lifetime of moments makes for a unique, lovable and loved soul. Thus, guilt has no power or place in this awakened state and it quickly passes out of my mind and my heart is cleansed.

No forgiveness is necessary in this realm. To ask and to be forgiven is something that is necessary in the physical realm because we are not fully conscious of how we are touching one another. We rely on the spoken word, touch, movement, and the subtle facial expression to communicate what we do not consciously know about each other�s thoughts and feelings.

It is said that sickness of this world will end when we come to realize that there are no �us� and �them.�  There is only �us.� In this realm, the equation is brought even further. There will be perfection when there is no �me� and �you.�  There is only I, and that is what it mean when I say that what we do to another we do to ourselves and to everyone else.

I sense that the great I AM is all of us, and much more. It loves, we are all loved. We are all worthy of love. We are all a Gandhi, a Marten Luther King, a Mother Teresa. That is who we are in our higher selves. In our very highest selves we have to go further and say that we are all a Jesus, a Buddha, a Mohamed, a Lao Tzu. The miracles they worked in their earthly lives we could work too, if we were only fully aware and took in the full truth of our greatness as part of the �I AM.�

But I must be careful, for I am also a potential Hitler, Pol Pot, or Genghis Kahn. This may sound unacceptable to some, but even these horrendous creatures of our collective past are loved as I am, as each of us is. They are also worthy of love as we all are, merely because they exist, only because they are real. Even they reconcile with the ones they tortured and killed. In the end, they did what they did out of ignorance of the degree to which they are unconditionally loved, and out of their own lack of self-love.

Even the worst criminal, a rapist and murderer, does what they do because they are not aware of the extent they are loved in this greater realm, and as a consequence, they do not love themselves. They do not know how they, themselves, are genuinely a perfect expression of the great I AM. They do what they do out of ignorance and self-hatred. They have no idea how much they are loved. If they did, then they would begin to access the perfection that they really are.

My heart now feels totally free and I feel unconditionally loved. I am really and truly loved in a way that no physical person could ever love because it is the love of reality itself. I feel loved by reality, not the mere physical existence that currently defines me. Such love is powerful. It is so real that I can almost reach out and touch it. I am overwhelmed by it. I think to myself, �So this is what it means to be in true ecstasy.�

This all goes on for a while, and I explore this realm as I might explore a carnival having never been to one before, but more than that; having never even been told that such a thing exists. Then it quickly fades away. It does not turn off as with a switch, but neither does it linger. Everything returns to �normal.�  The room once more becomes the sold confines of my limited existence. The walls and floors return to normal, no longer having that funhouse effect of tipping and twisting. No light. No translucence. The music plays, beautiful yet ordinary as ever. Everything returned to the dream existence that we call physical reality. Even the music is �normal� once more.

And still I have an afterglow of the intensity of what I just experienced, the ecstatic experience, and my mind immediately starts trying to make sense of it all, but there is too much to do at once so I put it off for a better time when I can remember, when I can interpret, when I can articulate.

The afterglow is a sense of one-ness with all things, of the innate perfection of all things, of the great love that is mine whether I ask for it or not.  It is an afterglow that slowly diminishes with time. It is a heartfelt understanding, something that goes far beyond intellectual understanding.  It is a little gift, left over from the experience that is mine for a little time.

My senses return to normal. I no longer have that form of emotional merging with others that I had in the other realm. These, and the other super-sensory abilities of that realm are gone. What remains is a sense of love, of being loved completely. I struggle with my own lack of self-love. It is deep seated aspect of my character that I have been working hard to change but did not know how. I now know. That much is a gift this experience I have come away with.

I know that psychology experiments have shown that if you smile at a person, even a fake smile, they are most likely to unconsciously smile back at your and when that happens your own smile will turn in to a genuine one.  You will have successfully made yourself happy by first making another person happy. 

It is much the same with self-love. As I make external expressions of love for other people, even simple ones like engaging them in a positive conversation, then they will be lifted up and will begin to love me. In turn, that love they have for me will cause me to love myself. It may be a slow process, but I have already begun even before this experience. I just didn�t know what I was doing. Now I need to broaden the practice to perform genuine acts of kindness.

I also learned that I must eliminate 4 words from my vocabulary as much as possible. These are �Good, Bad, Right, Wrong.� I now know that even the worst criminal or terrorist in the worst is loved, and loved to the fullest. What can I do but the same? The terror organizations we face now recruit by offering young men an opportunity to belong. They offer them a sense of purpose and self-worth. If we, as a society, made sure that these young men know of their perfection early in life then they would not grow up into criminals and terrorists. Ultimately, that is the cure for terrorism in the world. It is to starve them of people who are committed to their cause by making sure that every child grows up with a good sense of self-perfection.

I can no longer look at political parties, organizations, or armies, with judgment putting on categories of �us� and �them.�  They are all �us,� and I need to behave that way.

Another thing, I no longer believe in a creator God, at least not in the conventional sense since I have experienced timelessness firsthand. Creation assumes the existence of time the great I AM transcends time. Reality isn�t created. It simply IS. The great I AM simply IS. That does not mean that we lack free will. We have free will, but everything we feel, think, and do, we feel, think, and do, simultaneously in a great NOW, a present moment with no past or future.

As I let down, it helps me to know just how much I am loved by reality itself. The love I felt wants me to live, and live fully. Will I comply? That is yet to be seen. I am of a very willful character and I often have to learn things the hard way.

In the meantime, it has started raining. I open the large garage door, plop a folding chair at the opening, sit down and enjoy the wonder of nature in the glory of thunderstorm. I see with new eyes. In my mind, I hear the words that came to Judy in a sacred moment  "Live your life NOW!'

Any associated medications or substances with the potential to affect the experience?   No   

Was the kind of experience difficult to express in words?   Yes    Trying to take non-temporal experiences into a linear narrative is difficult. Super-sensual senses that are ineffable

At the time of this experience, was there an associated life threatening event?   No    No, just the opposite. I felt like I was awakening from a dream.

What was your level of consciousness and alertness during the experience?   Totally conscious and alert  

Did you experience a separation of your consciousness from your body?   Uncertain   expansive, existence far beyond the physical boundaries of my body

What emotions did you feel during the experience?    Love, euphoria, ecstasy

Did you hear any unusual sounds or noises?    Yes. Music I was playing in the background took on an unearthly sound with chords and melodies became louder and more distinct and comingled in what because a cacophony of sound that hardly matched what was actually playing.

Did you recognize any familiar locations or any locations from familiar religious teachings or encounter any locations inhabited by incredible or amazing creatures?    No   

Did you see a light?    Uncertain    I experienced an realm of reality that exists beyond our limited physical realm of existence. This involved blinding white light in my inner eye, but not my physical ones although it felt just as real as if it were physical.

Did you meet or see any other beings?    Yes    I encountered persons both living and dead at points where our lives intersected and merged hearts with them at those times. The deceased persons let me know that I forgiveness was not necessary because what I did to them I did to myself, and ultimately, to everyone. I never really heart them. I heart myself, and that is the shame of it. I found this out because I didn't encounter them so much as I merged with them and was aware of their loving thoughts and feelings toward me regardless of the temporal past.

Did you experiment while out of the body or in another, altered state?   No   

Did you observe or hear anything regarding people or events during your experience that could be verified later?   No   

Did you notice how your 5 senses were working, and if so, how were they different?    Yes    I could still move about, touch objects and such, but the experience was very much heightened. When I touched something I became one with the object. We were no longer sensor and object, we were both at once, simultaneously, and I felt that, so I didn't touch a doorknob so much as I touched something hard, slightly cool, and round. The fact that it was a doorknob was an afterthought and seemed irrelevant to the experience. As a consequence, I was acutely aware of every little thing and it took a long time for me to do the simplest things.

Did you have any sense of altered space or time?    Yes    Sense of temporal distortion. I had a sense that time does not flow linearly in the other realm I experienced, but flows back and forth as we need it too. I also felt that time was superfluous and all that existed and mattered was the present moment. Cause and effect didn't occur one after the other, but concurrently so that they could not be separated. It's very difficult to articulate.

Did you have a sense of knowing, special knowledge, universal order and/or purpose?    Yes    I have shared some of the wisdom I received in my narrative. There was so much information I all at once that I am still processing it and trying to put it into order. Some knowledge had to do with the nature of self-love, which is very important to me. Other knowledge had to do with the nature of time and space, and the nature of being at the center of existence, each one of us is at the center as if existence was a ball and each spot can be considered the center on the surface because the ball stretches out equally in all directions no matter where you stand. Other knowledge is coming as I contemplate what happened, but this is just a little bit of it.

Did you reach a boundary or limiting physical structure?    No   

Did you become aware of future events?    No   

Were you involved in or aware of a decision regarding your return to the body?    No   

Did you have any psychic, paranormal or other special gifts following the experience that you did not have prior to the experience?    No   

Did you have any changes of attitudes or beliefs following the experience?   Yes    I didn't used to believe in past lives or in reincarnation. I now do, but in a different way than is normally described by people. I believe that all of our lives occur simultaneously, concurrently in a different kind of time-scape represented by the realm I experienced.

How has the experience affected your relationships? Daily life? Religious practices? Career choices?    I am more loving toward other people, particularly people who are in a service capacity and are usually treated with indifference by people. I am able to detach from personal drama like family "stuff" leaving it alone to resolve itself not feeling like I have to do anything for it to ultimately come to a right and perfect outcome. I now believe that everything is perfection in it's own way.

Has your life changed specifically as a result of your experience?       

Have you shared this experience with others?    Yes    Positive, yet concerned that I am getting out of control given my history of mental illness. However, I have related this to my therapist who said he does not consider this to be a pathological experience, but a true mystical experience as happens to mystics for possibly millions of years. None of the other signs of my mental illness getting out of control were or are present when I relate this experience to others.

 

 

 

Experience description 3032:   

I spend most of my spare time reading science books and periodicals, still searching for the answer to the questions of life, the universe, and everything .  Aside from my nuclear family, that is my other burning concern. 

This morning, I feel myself lying in my own comfy bed, just me.  It's Saturday and I am wide awake.   I just had a brief conversation with Emma and she went off for the day.  It is her Saturday, her day off from babysitting our son and my day to spend one-on-one time with him.  He is now just over a year old.  I don't really want to get out of bed so I lie there with my eyes open, just thinking of what to do for the day, what adventure I would like to share with my son.

Suddenly there is light.

It is brilliant.

It comes from everywhere.

It is blinding.

I have to close my eyes and lie back down.

I can still see the light.

I am weightless.

I begin to float off the bed.

I feel warm.  Not just warm, but a comfy blanket kind of warm.

I feel joy.

I feel such elation as I have never known before.

I feel serenity that I have never thought was possible.

My mind, my heart, the very core of my inner being is wholly infused with the most powerful passion of Love and Joy. 

Words to describe this fail me.  Such words can only come from the pen of a poet.

Very gently I sink back into bed and feel my heaviness once again.

Oh moment!  Sweet, joyous, wonderful moment!  If I could stay with you forever I would be happy for eternity!

But the moment is past, and I am once again lying in my bed, ready to get up and start my day.

What should I do?

I just had an experience of monumental proportions, an experience that I cannot deny.

Who should I tell?  Should I tell Emma?

I have had a hug from the cosmos itself.  Aren't I supposed to tell somebody?  Who?

What do I tell my friends?  Should I say anything?  I feel as though I have been touched by God, the Big Guy, the Man Upstairs, Mr. Numero Uno.

Like an ax felling a tree, this experience cuts me off right at the trunk.  My towering branches were made of philosophy, physics, and mathematics.  These have always been my passion.  My beliefs, my atheism, and all the rest so nicely packaged in a tidy little bundle, are shaken to the core.

I always found my sanctuary in books, my beloved books.  Now suddenly I believe in something, but I really don't know what that something is.

There is something out there, beyond my little mind, beyond my little world and my meager understandings.  Am I a part of it?  What about the moon and stars as they run through their courses?  Are they real?  What about the very substance of reality itself?  What is it?  I have so many questions running through my mind that they crowd each other out.

I want answers!  None of my questions have been answered!  Can God give you a little tap on the shoulder and then sneak away?  Why haven't my questions been answered!  Isn't God supposed to give people some great message, something to crusade for, something epic to believe in, some great insight or wisdom?  Suddenly, I don't know anything!

What just happened to me?  To me of all people!

But there it is, I think.

What am I to do?  Do I stand on the roof and yell something?  What would I yell?

What if the means by which we are touched are explainable in terms of illness?  Does that invalidate the experience itself?  If we can explain an experience that makes us happy or sad, does that take our feelings away?  Does that explanation make us any less happy or sad?

I get up, and I begin my day.  In the end, I say nothing because I realize that there isn't really anything to say, and nobody to say it too.  It sounds too crazy.  I would come across as a mad man, and above everything I have to maintain my security clearance.  The clearance is the foundation of my job and experiences like this are not looked upon favorably by the rigid security personnel who conduct periodic investigations just to make sure a person is eligible to keep their clearance.

I push all my books and writings aside, and I begin to study Eastern mysticism.  There must be answers somewhere.  Where are they?

I ask myself, 'What happened to me that morning?  Was it God?  Was it real?'

Any associated medications or substances with the potential to affect the experience?     No           

Was the kind of experience difficult to express in words? Yes     It had an ineffable quality to it

At the time of this experience, was there an associated life threatening event?          No      

What was your level of consciousness and alertness during the experience?           Totally alert and conscious

           
Was the experience dream like in any way?   No

Did you experience a separation of your consciousness from your body?     No      

What emotions did you feel during the experience?            Unconditional love of a kind I had never experiences before. It surrounded me and went through me as a palpable essence like a giant hug from God.

Did you hear any unusual sounds or noises?           No

LOCATION DESCRIPTION:  Did you recognize any familiar locations or any locations from familiar religious teachings or encounter any locations inhabited by incredible or amazing creatures?    No      

Did you see a light?           Yes     The light was all around me, emanating from no place in particular.

Did you meet or see any other beings?           No      

Did you experiment while out of the body or in another, altered state? No      

Did you observe or hear anything regarding people or events during your experience that could be verified later?     No      

Did you notice how your 5 senses were working, and if so, how were they different?          Yes            All  senses were operating fine, although they were overwhelmed to a degree especially my sense of sight.

Did you have any sense of altered space or time?   No      

Did you have a sense of knowing, special knowledge, universal order and/or purpose?    Yes            I suddenly KNEW that God existed, which is transformative for an atheist which I was at the time of the experience

Did you become aware of future events?       No      

Were you involved in or aware of a decision regarding your return to the body?       No 
     

Did you have any psychic, paranormal or other special gifts following the experience that you did not have prior to the experience?
         No      

Did you have any changes of attitudes or beliefs following the experience?   Yes     Before the experience I was an atheist. Afterwards I instantly became a theist. I became spiritual, though not affiliated with any particular religion.

How has the experience affected your relationships? Daily life? Religious practices? Career choices?       I now attend a VERY liberal church that accepts and respects people of all kind of beliefs, no matter how whacked out they may be.

Has your life changed specifically as a result of your experience?         Yes     Before the experience I was an atheist. After they experience I was a theist unaffiliated with any particular religion

Have you shared this experience with others?         Yes     At the time I did not share the experience with anyone. I felt it was just too "crazy" to share with other people. In more recent years I have shared it with many people and their reaction has been supportive.

What emotions did you experience following your experience?  Unconditional love

What was the best and worst part of your experience?      The whole thing

Following the experience, have you had any other events in your life, medications or substances which reproduced any part of the experience?         No      

Did the questions asked and information you provided accurately and comprehensively describe your experience?                     Yes     I provided as complete an account of my experience as I am able.