by: Christosphere
Total views: 42
Word Count: 2014
While I believe for
some individuals certain non-addictive drugs can help open the
door to spiritual experiences, this experience was not the
result of using drugs, I had been anti-drug my entire life to
the point of usually refusing simple over the counter pain
relievers, so rest assured it wasn't induced by any kind of
substance. The night before I had this experience I was at a
very low point in my life, the world seemed so terribly unjust
and cruel that I was at a breaking point and when just getting
home walking from my car to the front door I paused to look up
into the star filled sky and with tears rolling down my cheeks
quietly cried Why, why, why? I could not understand how
complete innocents could be treated so terribly, how children
could suffer so unjustly under the hand of another. I did not
believe that God could exist because any such "God"
which would allow these kinds of things to happen wasn't any
kind of God to me. I couldn't pray to the concept of God but
the universe was real, the immense out there, the all that is
was something I could pour out my heart to without needing a
belief in God. That night I gave the heavens my full heart
seeking an answer to that question, with all my heart
tearfully pleading for the answer.
The next afternoon I received an answer to that question;
since we are all a part of one another we do it to ourselves.
Although the answer didn't completely make up for all of the
pain, much of the edge of that pain was taken off by being
able to understand why such terrible things could happen to
innocent children, because we are all really one, we in effect
are only hurting ourselves when ever we hurt another. Because
of this and this alone we are allowed the freedom to do good
or evil, if we weren't really one I do not believe God would
allow any of it to occur. In the end we all pay the price for
any wrong as well as reap the reward for any good. The
following is how the answer came to me through a dream that
was the most lucid moment of my life before or since:
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One warm afternoon in 1996 I took a short nap. I awoke within
it to find myself standing in the presence of a huge sun or
sphere of light, quickly understanding that this sun was pure
conscious awareness. Although its surface was only swirling
light and did not have a face, it seemed as if it was smiling
at me and had nothing but love for me.
I felt its thoughts as one with my own and felt it peering
deeply into my own awareness, knowing everything about me all
at once. Standing in its presence I was overcome by a deep
sense of awe and at the same time I was surprised to find
myself so fully conscious in this empty, but light-filled
void. There was nothing in existence for me but myself and
this bright bluish-white (more white than blue) sun smiling
its awareness at me. It was unlike any place on earth, and yet
as real as waking reality. In fact, it was more real; I was
super-conscious.
Suddenly I came to a profound awareness that this sun was God!
I was so overwhelmed and surprised that God was real that I
mentally gasped and then yelled out, “You’re Real!” I
had always had a deep mistrust of religion. Years before this
experience, I had decided for many seemingly valid reasons
that religion and God were only a product of the human mind,
yet there I was standing in the presence of what I knew
without a doubt was God. What I had previously thought to be
the truth about the universe was shattered and I stood there
stunned, having had my world turned around so quickly.
I was happy because I had always hoped that God was real and
that there was a future beyond the physical. As I stood in its
presence, I perceived myself to be nothing but pure awareness
and without a body. This sun of awareness fully merged with
me, seeing everything inside of me. It saw everything I had
ever done (and failed to do) both good and bad, and yet I did
not sense or feel this Being was judging me or my past. There
was no serial or motion-picture-like review of my life, just a
sudden and full knowing about all things I have ever done,
thought and experienced.
Because this sun of awareness/God was peering so fully and
deeply into me, I felt totally naked, more naked than if I
were standing without clothes in front of a million people.
This Being seemed to be the consciousness of everyone I had
ever known plus that of millions of others. It seemed to be
everyone, but incredible as it might seem, most of all it
seemed to be me.
Even though I had no awareness of having a body, this feeling
of nakedness was more than I could stand. Before I had time to
think about what I was doing, I began moving away from this
Being as fast as I could. It wasn’t that I was afraid, nor
that I wanted to get away from this wonderful sun of light, it
was more like an automatic response to feeling more naked than
I thought naked could be.
As I was traveling away from this Being I found myself
bursting through some kind of barrier into a blackness that
was filled with wonderful stars; space. As I continued moving
forward at a tremendous speed through the star fields, I soon
found myself slowing down as if I was up against another
barrier or membrane. It seemed to stretch slightly and then I
burst through it into another blackness of star-filled space.
I continued to speed away faster and faster, but regardless of
how much physical distance I traveled, I was never any farther
away from the sun of awareness at all. I quickly traveled
through several star-filled spaces, at least six of them
beyond the great sphere of light, each separated from one
another by barriers that I was easily penetrating. As I passed
through each layer, my speed increased each time, but its
consciousness was still with me. It was still deeply within my
own consciousness.
All of a sudden, I fell through the top of my bedroom ceiling,
hit my body with a jolt and immediately woke up. The jolt was
so strong that my bed physically bounced as my body jerked
awake in response to the sudden stop. I opened my eyes and
immediately spoke in a low and powerful voice, "I am that
great I am." I said this almost involuntarily; the words
spilled out of my mouth without even thinking about what or
why I was saying it. I also knew what this meant: that I was
the very consciousness that I was trying to get away from!
As much as I tried to get away from that Sun of Awareness, I
could never get one fraction of an inch farther away from it,
no matter how far or fast I traveled. Even after waking up, it
was still with me. To this day, I still feel and know its
presence. I believe that this Sun/Intelligence/God wasn't a
single Being, but is the center of all beings, that it is me,
you and perhaps all conscious beings.
From this experience I think that somewhere at the center of
each of us is a spark of this same light, and without it we
would not have consciousness, and perhaps without us it would
not exist either. As I was flying away from this being, I had
the impression that I was traveling through several layers
within a sphere, but I was bursting through layers like the
layers of an onion but between each layer was star-filled
space. I can’t really tell you if I was traveling from the
inside out, or the outside in, but as I traveled through them
I had an impression that the farther I got from the sphere of
light, the smaller I got and the more divided I became.
As I was returning I felt like I was not only traveling
through spheres within spheres, but also as if I were
traveling from the top of a pyramid down, the peak an all
seeing eye of omni-present consciousness, the blocks below all
of the individuals which make the whole. While trying to move
away I could both see and feel myself splitting into more and
more diverse copies of myself, each branching off into many
other branches of selves which also split into their own
branches, dividing and dividing into ever larger numbers.
Because of this experience, I came to see everyone around me
as myself. At the same time, I also see this as equally true
from everyone else’s perspective, that I am them too. They
too can look around and only see other parts of themselves,
other selves experiencing life from another point of view,
separated by their physical bodies and world, by their
individual minds and wills, but in reality they are one at
their core.
These feelings and thoughts were so strong within me that I
had trouble referring to other people at work as anything
other than “I.” I had a tendency to think about others as
just another part of myself. Just as I think about my hands as
being a part of me, I would sometimes refer to others as
“I” instead of the name of the person. For example,
instead of saying, “He had finished working on that
project” it came out as “I had finished working on that
project.” I had to re-learn how to refer to others as
separate from myself. After four years, I still think of
others as myself, but now I can stop from verbalizing it.
If I had the chance to do it over again and stand in the
presence of this sun-intelligence-God, I wouldn't run away
from it no matter how startling it is to be seen to such
depth. I now hope that I would stand in its presence no matter
how naked I felt. I don't believe that my motive for running
was because I couldn’t stand to face the light, or that I
felt like a bad person, but because I was so unaccustomed to
being seen so fully, so suddenly, so clearly and to such
depth. Unfortunately my flight away from it took place before
I could think of what I was doing and why.
I believe that the words I spoke after the experience, "I
am that great I am" meant that, although I am individual
here, I am also a part of every other consciousness at the
great central point of consciousness; God. I am now secure in
the knowledge that this presence of consciousness has always
been with me, and that I have never been alone and never will
be alone. I now know that this presence is closer to me than
anything else in the universe. I had been so accustomed to it
that I didn’t know it was there, much like becoming used to
a smell in a room, once you are there with it long enough, it
begins to fade into the background. Like silence, it is always
there, maybe in the background, behind and between the sounds,
but always there. Like a quiet pure awareness, completely
silent but ever present. To find it within listen to the
silence and then try to find what is behind it, it's there as
strong as your own silent awareness forever smiling at you.
About the Author
Christopher Hazlitt lives in Palmer,
Alaska working at an electronics technician in the satellite
telecommunications industry for a long distance telephone and
data networking company.