An introduction to religious and spiritual experience

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.
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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.
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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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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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