A few nights ago I was discussing religious phenomenology with a Christian gentleman in private. I asked him a question that lately I've been asking persons who I think will be receptive to it.
"Have you had any religious, supernatural, or mystical experience?" I said.
"Yes," he said. Then he told me about an incident a decade earlier.
At the time of the incident, he had been studying mystical experiences. One day he prayed for God to give him such an experience. That night, while lying in his bed, he suddenly felt surges of energy in his body, and heard a loud ringing tone emanating from his head. Emotionally, he said, he was in bliss and not dread. He also sensed a presence above him. The next morning he was exhausted from his experience, and needed time to recover. Remarkably, he would continue to hear a subtle ringing tone in his daily life from time to time since the incident.
Fascinated, I mentioned to him that two months prior, I had had a similar experience to what he had. My experience also involved lying in bed while feeling surges of energy in my body and a presence above me. (Note: This is not the dream experience I wrote about at
http://fruitofthecontemplativelife.org/forum/index.php/topic,1176.0.html. The experience I'm referring to now was more lucid and powerful, and occurred while I was awake.) I also mentioned that I had read about the phenomenon of a ringing tone on the Great Western Vehicle website. Remarkably, it turned out that after having his experience, he had also read about the phenomenon on the website (at
http://www.greatwesternvehicle.org/clairaudience.htm).
The next evening I was once again talking with him privately about religious phenomenology. We discussed his experience further, and I read him material from the GWV site on the stages of religious experience. In the midst of our discussion, he picked up a glass and went to get water at a water fountain. I followed behind him to get some myself. Then, as he went to turn a corner in the hall we were in, he suddenly collapsed. I was surprised to see him sprawled on the floor with his glass lying next to him.
"Are you all right?" I asked, as I picked up his glass for him.
He rose uneasily, and said, "I'm having the experience again." I felt chills.
After he got to his feet he made his way slowly to the water fountain with me behind to make sure he was all right. His face had become very pale, and he was trembling. At the water fountain, he informed me that the experience was continuing strongly. When I asked him about his fall, he didn't even remember it. I wanted to know what he was going through, but he didn't want to talk about it. I watched over him for the next few minutes as he recovered. When he had returned to a more normal state, he decided to retire for the night.
In the following days I would ask him what happened that night, but he didn't want to say much for fear of triggering the same experience. He did tell me though that falling like he did was unprecedented for him, and the experience he had had was as intense as the first one he had had in his bed.
How do you interpret what happened? Have you experienced similar occurrences?
