by John Anderson

Created on: October 17, 2008

In 1978, I had a spontaneous experience of sudden transcendence. I was inside a ritual called Kensho. Suddenly, I was enveloped in what appeared to be a light blue mist composed of the most powerful and unconditional love imaginable. I could still see the world around me, but every molecule of it was infused with this spirit of love. So here are some of the things I realized in that moment. I will call it spirit simply because I have to call it something.

The most important for me was my relationship to this spirit. I instantly recognized it as home, where we are from, not at all like discovering something new. I knew that it has always been here, just outside our view. It was also obvious that nothing could possibly exist outside of it, such is its power. So everything that is happening in this world, the good and the bad, must somehow be events that it is using for our learning.

Another amazing aspect was that I could feel that this spirit loves everything equally. The spirit must be what religious people call God, but the energy of a jealous God or demanding obedience or any of that has nothing to do with the spirit I encountered.

The entire experience may have lasted only a second or two, I don't know for sure. Friends ask me if I am trying to have the experience again and I say no. I got to see behind the curtain and it seems rather greedy to try to have another peek, given how rare these experiences appear to be.

It resolved a lot of my concern about death. With this spirit enveloping the world, we must somehow return to it. And I wish I could describe for you what that feels like. Imagine being 10 times more relaxed than you are right now, like after the best massage you have ever had. Now, imagine being a hundred times more relaxed than that and being in the presence of more love than you can imagine.

Having spent decades in mystical practice, I had many other beautiful experiences, but nothing like the power of this one. During a sufi exercise which includes moving vigorously in a circle, I had the experience of not moving, perfect stillness. My body was still moving at high speed, I could still see the world passing by, but who I am, the me I have always known myself to be, was not moving. This felt to me as a proof that consciousness cannot be produced by the brain. It just doesn't make sense that the brain makes something when it can do something that the brain can't do. I wish I could explain it better.

In another meditative experience, I felt as if all my problems were, quite suddenly, lifted from my chest and hovered in front of me. I felt that I could just let them go and that would be that. I sat and watched them for a minute or two and then I felt compelled to pull them back to me, recognizing that these are gifts for my learning. It may not sound too mystical, but that is what I learned about mysticism through my practice.

It's not about spaceships or finding out that you were once Cleopatra. It is simply a direct experience of the spirit of love that surrounds us at all times. Look around you. It is here now, wherever you are and whatever you are doing. It isn't something that is distant and some people go and find. It is here all the time and the reason we don't know that is that we are looking at the world through something like a distorting lens. I imagine that one day, we will be returned to that home and we will look back at our human lives and be thrilled with how difficult they were and all the imaginative challenges that we engaged.

We need to take back the concept "mystical" and define it as an experience of our true home, where we have always been and will always be perfectly safe and adored.

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