EXPERIENCING GOD
Article about Modern day experiences of God. What is it like to meet God? Can we experience God when we die? What is the God-experience?
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The Experience of God
All that dwells upon the earth is perishing, yet still abides the Face of thy Lord, majestic, splendid.--The Qur’an
 There is only one God but He (or She) can take many forms. The experience of the light is a merging with the infinite and unformed aspect of the godhead. I believe that, when you enter the light, you will realize the oneness of all things and have the ecstatic realization that everything is love, everything is bliss. This is our natural state as energy, as spirit beings at one with the godhead. It is the real you. However, this moment may be so fleeting that you will hardly know it has happened. For some who have already drawn close to the light during earthly life, it will be a sustained experience that can be vividly recalled. For the spiritually advanced person, it will remain as part of their consciousness forever. And for the enlightened person it will be as if nothing has happened, for they are already at one with the infinite. Your level of spiritual attainment achieved on earth will determine your experience of the afterlife.
You have experienced the eternal.
GOD EXPERIENCES
Many NDE casebooks describe the incredible feeling of love that surrounds the journey to the afterlife. Among researcher Dr. Ring’s subjects, quoted in his book Heading towards Omega, is the case of noted anthropologist Professor Patrick Gallagher, who was a complete agnostic until, at the age of 46, he had a terrible car accident in Death Valley, California. He was airlifted to Los Angeles with a badly fractured skull and other serious injuries. He was in a coma for several weeks and at one point during this time had a classic NDE experience. He realized that he was dead, and he describes how he has a joyful feeling on realizing that he was flying.
GOD EXPERIENCE:
“…Then I noticed that there was a dark area ahead of me and as I approached it I thought that it was some sort of tunnel and immediately, without further thought, I entered into it and then flew with an even greater sense of the joy of light…
After what now I would imagine to be a relatively short period of time--although again time was dispensed with--I noticed a sort of circular light at a great distance which I assumed to be the end of the tunnel as I was roaring through it… and the light--the nearest thing I can barely approximate its description to is the setting sun at the time under ideal circumstances when one can look at this object without any of the usual problems that staring at the sun causes…
The fact is, this seemed like an incredibly illuminating sort of place, in every sense of that word, so that not only was it an awesome brightness…with a tremendous beauty, this kind of yellowish-orange colour, but it also seemed a marvelous place to be. And so this increased the sense of joy I had about this flight. And then I went through the tunnel and seemed to be in a different state. I was in different surroundings where everything seemed to be similarly illuminated by that same light, and, uh, I saw other things in it, too… (a) number of people… I saw my father there, who had been dead for some twenty-five years…
I also felt and saw of course that everyone was in a state of absolute compassion to everything else… it seemed, too, that love was the major axiom that everyone automatically followed. This produced a phenomenal feeling of emotion to me, again, in the free sense that the flight did earlier, because it made me feel that… there was nothing but love… it just seemed like the real thing, just to feel this sense of total love in every direction.”
Your experiences after going through the tunnel of light are determined by your own cultural background and beliefs. In the case of Professor Gallagher, the experience of the afterlife was apparently not influenced by religious preconception and it is more convincing by way of this fact. Many people, however, interpret this feeling of “total love” as an encounter with God.
It is not my intention here to question your personal faith or to push my own religious ideas upon you. However, there are certain qualities of God that are fundamental to all religions. All the great faiths of the world would probably agree with the fact that there is only one God and that God is omnipresent. God is also Love in its highest sense. You would probably also agree that God has an infinite dimension and can exist everywhere. God has no limits.
THE GOD EXPERIENCE AND RELIGION
 The differences arise when we say that our own religion is the only custodian of truth. Yet when you look without prejudice at the core teachings of all faiths you find that they are the same. They speak the same language--the language of the heart. The multitude of religious beliefs could be likened to a pure light shining through a stained-glass window made of many colours of glass. The source is the same but the expression is different. God is the pure light, and the colours are the faiths.
Throughout history, infinite God has manifested in many forms.
Similarly, the unformed God will take form when we separate from the light. We are limited spiritual beings so this is the only way we can comprehend what is happening to us. We will see God in a form that is in keeping with our expectations.
During the next stage of your transition, the Light now appears to you as a figure. The personage is always a product of your belief and understanding of reality. For example, if you are a Christian you will most likely see Christ or an angel. If you are a Buddhist you may see a Buddha, or one of the great teachers. The ancient Egyptian would have seen Osiris. A Hindu may see Krishna, a Moslem may see Allah in the form of the prophet Mohammed, a generic believer may see an angel (still a symbol of the spiritual realm), and some are just aware of the Light. The afterlife is an inner world. It is the inner you that has survived death. Your experience now accords with your expectations. A personalized form of God gives us something understandable. There is something out there that is limited and with meaning. |
