Encounters Beyond the Pond: The Limit Expe-
rience of Senior High School Students
from which the following three
examples are taken.
Two experiences were described in fairly conventional religious terms:
At times of great difficulty or danger in my life I have felt I could
always pray to God and get help. One night we were in a traffic acci-
dent and I was very frightened, and I prayed. Somehow I knew there
was someone else with us, a presence of some kind; and I escaped with
just a few bruises. At other times too, when I have felt very depressed
I have had this same feeling of being given strength and hope.
It was about mid-morning, I came from the kitchen into the bed-
room, sat at my dressing table, opened a drawer and began to do some-
thing quite ordinary, I can’t remember what, when I was absolutely
overwhelmed by the presence of God. I was absolutely astounded.
I hadn’t known there was a God at all. . . . I was pretty much an atheist
or agnostic and had no interest in religion. I had no such thoughts at
the time, however, I was just shattered, shaken to the roots of my
being.
86
The third reflected a more open view:
[A]s I sat thinking, looking at the beauty of the valley below, I felt as if
the whole scene became luminous, I was aware of the tremendous inten-
sity of colour – I felt intensely happy, for no reason at all. I suddenly felt
at one with the very life force of creation, whatever that is. I felt part of
it. I felt caught up in a tremendous theme of praise . . . the feeling of ela-
tion lasting for some time.
87
The RERC has many records of experiences which took place in
childhood.
As far back as I can remember I have never had a sense of separation
from the spiritual force I now chose to call God. . . . From the age of
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about 6 to 12 in places of quiet and desolation this feeling of `oneness’
often passed to a state of ‘listening’. I mean by ‘listening’ that I was
suddenly alerted to something that was going to happen. What fol-
lowed was a feeling of tremendous exaltation in which time stood
still.[786]
When I was on holiday, aged about 17, I glanced down and watched
an ant striving to drag a bit of twig through a patch of sun an a wall in
the graveyard of a Greek church, while chanting came from within the
white building. The feeling aroused in me was quite unanticipated,
welling up from some great depth, and essentially timeless. The con-
centration of simplicity and innocence was intensely of some vital pres-
ent. I’ve had similar experiences on buses, suddenly watching people
and being aware how right everything essentially is. [680]
Many people have spiritual experiences in childhood, which are often
not spoken about, yet have a lasting effect on their entire lives. Here is an
example of two boyhood experiences, not obviously similar, but linked in
the mind of the experient, which had remained unshared and unexplained
until the grown man heard of the work of Alister Hardy. Now an active
member of the Alister Hardy Society, he recounts the moments which had
such a profound effect on his life.
The major incident in my life occurred in June 1949. It was a hot
summer Sunday afternoon, I had gone out for a walk, and was lying on
my back in a copse (on a knoll under a lime tree) lost in reverie.
I was aware of the singing of birds, the buzzing of insects, the sound of
bat against ball in the cricket nets near-by, aware of the scents of
summer, and watching the flickering of the sun-light through the leaves
of the lime tree. I was not really thinking of anything, and then my
mind went a blank . . . suddenly I found myself surrounded, embraced,
by a white light, which seemed to both come from within me and from
without, a very bright light but quite unlike any ordinary physical light.
I was filled by an overwhelming sense of Love, of warmth, peace and
joy - a Love far far greater than any human love could be – utterly
accepting, giving, compassionate total Love. I seemed to sense a pres-
ence, but did not see anybody . . . I had the feeling of being ‘one’ with
everything, of total unity with all things, and ‘knowing’ everything –
whatever I wanted to know, I ‘knew’, instantly and directly. And I had
the sense of this being utter Reality, the real Real, far more ‘real’ and
vivid than the ordinary every day ‘reality’ of the physical world. I do
not know how long this lasted: it did not seem to be a
long
time in that
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97
dimension, and in this, a minute? a few seconds, a split second, I don’t
know. Back again in this world, lying under the lime tree, I felt thun-
derstruck. What was that?
What did it mean? I felt that it was of great importance and must
have some tremendous meaning . . . but what? What was I supposed to
do? Why me? Was I being ‘called’ for anything? Was I being called to
be a priest (I was preparing for Confirmation at the time)? but that
didn’t seem right. I toyed with the idea of becoming a monk, but
that didn’t seem right, either. I remember at the time being puzzled
that the experience did not seem to relate to the ‘religion’ I was being
taught. and in which I had been brought up: saw none of the iconogra-
phy of Christianity: I did not see Jesus, or ‘saints’, or ‘angels’, nor were
received concepts of ‘God’ or ‘Heaven’ any part of this experience.
I remember asking myself. Was that God? - but surely not: ‘God’
wouldn’t come to me, an insignificant small boy!
But, whilst puzzling over this (and feeling intense chagrin that I was
quite unable to remember anything of the wonderful ‘knowledge’ that
I had then enjoyed) I was convinced, beyond all shadow of doubt, of
the ‘reality’ of the experience, the Reality, the overwhelming Love, the
‘Oneness’ of all things – and this has lasted, despite all reasoning, later
‘reductionism’, and suggestions that this was just my ‘imagination’, or
that I was ‘dreaming’, or ‘hallucinating’. But, at the time, I could not
‘ground’ the experience, and I felt that I could not talk to anybody
about it, so I locked it away, pondering over it - a very big, unexplained,
question.
A month later, a second, different experience took place.
Again, it was a hot Sunday afternoon and I was in the Music School
practicing a Mozart sonata on the piano. . . . suddenly, I felt an urge to
go for a walk. I remember resisting this strongly, not wanting to go for
a walk, but wanting to play the piano. But the urge to ‘go for a walk’
became too strong and, eventually, I had to put the music away. Going
out of the Music School I thought that if I had to go for a walk I would
go over to a high mound of land just outside the school bounds . . .
But as soon as I set foot in that direction, I found I could not proceed –
some ‘force’, exterior to my own will, prevented me, and so I had to
take another direction! . . . again, starting to turn right, I found that
I could not proceed: once more the ‘force’ stopped me. I tried again to
go down to the village, but I couldn’t. There was just nothing for it but
to take the left turn. Walking down this road I came to four red-brick
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workers’ cottages outside one of which a woman was clipping a high
hedge. It was a very hot day, and it seemed only right and natural
that I should offer to help. She looked at me quizzically, but gave
me the shears and, after I had cut the hedge, she invited me in for a
cup of tea.
. . . I subsequently often went there on Sunday afternoons for tea –
and came to call her ‘my second mother’. The ‘force’ never came back,
and never again have I received such a direct physical or mental ‘urge’.
This experience was very different from the ‘mystical’ experience of a
month earlier but, nevertheless, I felt that in some way the two were
connected. I wondered at the time if this second episode was a ‘guard-
ian angel’ or possibly the spirit of my Grandmother, who had died
three years previously, looking after me? . . .
This experience, coming so soon after the ‘mystical’ experience,
therefore became linked with the other in my mind. Both, in their
different ways, had overwhelmed and over-ridden ‘my’ consciousness
and will-power. And the thought and remembrance of the two
experiences affected in a very formative way my life subsequently.
I have come to see that the form and nature of these two experiences
was the best thing that could have happened to me, really opening
me to the significance of the spiritual dimension. And the fact that
I had to think about them so much was good: they left me with a ques-
tioning and ‘open’ mind, not locking me into any ‘faith-system’ – which
enabled later developments, little by little, to widen my horizons, and
‘perspective’, more comprehensively. [Abridged from 004300]
Despite not clearly understanding the meaning of his experiences, he
has never ceased to be aware of and receptive to a greater power directing
his life.
Perhaps there is an openness in children, which is later reasoned away
in adulthood, closing the mind to such messages, although some people,
such as this person, are able to retain this.
I think from my childhood I have always had the feeling that the true
reality is not to be found in the world as the average person sees it.
There seems to be a constant force at work from the inside trying to
push its way to the surface of consciousness. The mind is continually
trying to create a symbol sufficiently comprehensive to contain it, but
it always ends in failure. There are moments of pure joy with a height-
ened awareness of one’s surroundings, as if a great truth had been
passed across. [651]
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