An introduction to religious and spiritual experience

any 
emotion; there was, and is, 
only love
, and 
I am love 
and 
everything 
is love 
and nothing is separate.
I recognized all the objects in my room – books, pictures, the vase of 
roses, the lit candle on the dresser – but it was as if I was ‘seeing’ them 
all for the first time with a very deep knowingness, an indescribable 
clarity of understanding and appreciation. I was aware, also, of the 
world outside my window that was open to the summer night; the 
stars and the silent houses and the river and gardens: they too were 
golden, living, streaming light; and 
everything is one, 
near and far, 

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beyond the night sky and the stars and in the depths of the heart. 
Distances dissolved; space and time had ceased to exist.
How long in terms of physical (chronos) time, I remained before 
I ‘saw’ the vision I don’t know. What happened is extraordinarily diffi-
cult to describe in words (as is all of this!) but it was in Blake’s words: 
‘Too beautiful to be untrue.’
I turned my gaze towards the wall above the candle flame. A face 
appeared, head and shoulders only. Transfixed, I found myself gazing 
at an exquisitely beautiful countenance; beyond imagination and 
experience, beyond words . . .
The head was that of a young man or woman (in retrospect perhaps 
more male than female), the head framed with soft curls. What 
emanated from the face was indescribable beauty, love, compassion, 
serenity . . . A white-gold light (unlike any ‘light’ I’d ever before known) 
emanated from the beautiful countenance, and as I gazed the face 
slowly turned from side to side. As it turned the expressions changed 
in a continuum of gentle motion, first to one side, then the other, 
slowly back and forth. To the one side the expressions were varying, 
negative states of being; increasing in extremity and ending in utmost 
anguish, before slowly turning back through the same spectrum to the 
centre and continuing to move to the other side in ever changing 
expressions of positive states, again increasing in extremity and ending 
in utmost joy. The expressions covered seemed to include the entire 
span of possible human experience, from agony to ecstasy, and every-
thing between, in perfect order – nothing was left out – insecurity, 
doubt, anxiety, jealousy, deceit, betrayal, isolation, loneliness, separa-
tion, aggression, fear, hatred, lust, revenge, cruelty, cowardice, remorse, 
guilt, grief, alienation, despair, anguish and so on . . . and back to the 
light of awakening, insight, pity, willingness, creativity, honour, 
courage, humility, altruism, charm, playfulness, delight, truth, sincerity, 
honesty, integrity, mindfulness, self-awareness, self-knowledge, wis-
dom, joy, love . . . and back again, in reverse order, from light to shadow 
and from shadow to light, back and forth . . . and all the time underly-
ing the constantly shifting expressions was the original beautiful coun-
tenance of peace and unbounded love. 
I don’t know how long the vision lasted, nor how many times the 
face turned from light to shadow and back again.
It has been difficult indeed to attempt to express in writing the 
experience that I can only describe as transcendent and sublime in 
its mystical beauty. The transcendent state of consciousness I had sud-
denly and unexpectedly been pitched into stayed with me for a long 
time – several weeks – and the sense of unity and connectedness, and 

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perfect love, was so real and so powerful that I feel certain it was 
authentic.
The experience transformed my life in many ways. One of the first 
things I did was join the Alister Hardy Society, in order to make sense 
of the experience. [005454]
Love
Many people find a sense of overwhelming love the most powerful of 
all spiritual experiences and it certainly features large in the mystical 
literature.
One night of, I should think, neurotic misery I suddenly had an experi-
ence as if I was buoyed up by waves and waves of utterly sustaining 
power and love. The only words which came near to describing it were 
‘underneath are the everlasting arms’ though this sounds like a picture, 
and my experience was not a picture but a feeling, and there were the 
arms.. . . it came from outside unasked. No wishful thinking was 
involved, my unhappiness did not matter if the world was sustained by 
love in that way. [0356]
Familiar throughout the ages is spiritual searching, often triggered by 
a longing to believe, but the inability to do so. This experience, triggered 
by doubt, brought an intense awareness of love.
Exasperated after years of being unable to believe in God, yet unable 
to accept an atheist way of life, I determined to force the issue. I had 
some days free and undertook a kind of solitary retreat, reading, think-
ing and attempting to pray – but the gist really was – ‘If you are there, 
let me know’. My head began to ache terribly and this went on for 
some days. During that time I had to take my mother and a friend to a 
concert, over an hour’s drive away. I did it all, but felt somehow dis-
tanced, as if my real self was somewhere else. All the time my headache 
continued. It was a strange, incessant pain. 
Eventually I gave in and accepted that there was indeed a transcen-
dent reality, or God, whom I asked to take the headache away. Within 
half an hour, the headache had gone and I was flooded with an extraor-
dinary feeling of total love. This encompassed absolutely everyone, all 
creatures and all life. Breaking my solitude, I went to the local shop 
and realized just how much I loved everyone there - I felt as if I would 
have given my life for them. It was a love beyond anything I had ever 

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imagined, and which I have since recognized in the writings of the mys-
tics. That feeling lasted for several days and it was almost a relief as the 
intensity faded. [005449]
Here a similar experience of love for absolutely everyone is recounted 
by an Indian writer:
There was a man in the village community whom I had come to regard 
as a consummate bore. From afar, if I spied him, I would grasp any 
means of escape. His absolute determination to buttonhole me and 
then to pin me to the wall with his face close to mine to pour out his 
inanities, was a frequent experience from which there seemed for me 
no escape. In this, my moment of sudden enlightenment, all parts and 
portions of creation seemed suddenly to be imbued with a new and 
absolute significance. For the moment, all nature, including my pet 
bore, seemed to fit naturally into one inclusive pattern of past, present 
and future. Every one and thing achieved a new and striking signifi-
cance. I wanted to run out of the house as I saw from my window my 
pet bore approaching and to embrace him. I wanted to tell him that he 
too had a part, a significant part inside this great overall picture. [from 
002417]
Simone Weil felt that God could not be loved directly but only implic-
itly, as she explained:
The implicit love of God can have only three immediate objects, the 
only three things here below in which God is really though secretly 
present. These are religious ceremonies, the beauty of the world and 
our neighbour.
103
Voices
The phenomenon of hearing a voice can be deeply comforting.
About five years ago I went through a domestic crisis. I divorced my 
husband after much stress and soul searching. I prayed earnestly in 
church one Sunday evening during prayer time. To my amazement 
I received a direct answer to my question, quite definitely a voice which 
to me filled the Church where I knelt – a voice ‘like a rushing mighty 
wind’. I looked up expecting everyone else to have heard and was 
surprised to find silence. The message I heard changed my life, and 

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was to me a profound and deeply moving experience, one I can never 
forget and strengthened my faith, and saved my sanity. [003375]
The voice in this case seemed to compel obedience and to lead the 
hearer in a new direction in life.
A widow was devastated at the loss of her husband after 42 years of 
marriage, and 49 years since first falling in love (marriage postponed 
because of the young man’s consumption). Her experience took place 
after an exhausting time of nursing her sick husband and the subsequent 
hectic period over the funeral.
Then I was on my own with unending days ahead. Everyone expected 
me to need help – including myself – but that first day the words of 
Psalm 139 kept coming back to me ‘Oh Lord, thou hast searched me 
and known me’. Then I was aware of a presence in the room and 
looked round for my husband (forgetting, as so often happened) he 
was not there. No-one was there, yet there 
was
someone. A voice said 
clearly – I have work for you – 
I sat and prayed and thought, doing nothing, not moving. Then sud-
denly I thought ‘I’ll go to the prayer meeting tonight’ – I had not been 
for three years! No-one expected me and the leader was horrified, 
I found out afterwards, as the subject was the story of ‘The widow’s 
cruise of oil’. I came home still thinking ‘I am empty, Lord fill me’. The 
presence was there again ‘I have work for you to do’. 
I went to Church on Sunday with my daughters. The passage was 
1 Corinthians 12. I came home alone again. Again I was being told 
‘I have given you gifts. I have work for you.’ On the Tuesday I decided 
to rejoin the women’s meeting. The speaker chose Romans 12.6. 
‘Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use 
them.’
The voice was confirmed as that of the Holy Spirit. I rang my minis-
ter and he came to see me. I told him all this and said ‘What do I do? 
He said ‘You are an answer to prayer – ‘I have been praying for over a 
week for someone to help me.’ He explained we had in the Church a 
number of new Christians (women) from a mission I had missed. They 
were ‘problems’. Divorcees, unmarried mothers, various problems 
easier to talk about with another woman. Would I visit them? I did. 
I have never been so busy in all my busy life. I had the experience of the 
world and troubles to help, to listen and often to advise. I went to 
solicitors’ offices, matrimonial courts, bad debt offices etc. with them 
and eventually sorted them out. 

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(This work led on to her being appointed to the Church as pastoral 
Worker and to leading worship once a month.)
I am indeed, once again, a person. Not in my own sight, but in God’s. 
[004507]
There are times when what is heard or overheard strikes a deep chord, 
which seems to bring a message, which again seems to have authority and 
compel obedience. St Augustine famously heard a voice, which he obeyed. 
It happened at a time of his life when he was finding it difficult to over-
come the ‘desires of the flesh’. He it was who had said, ‘Give me chastity 
and continence, but not yet.’ Although Augustine had been wrestling with 
doubts about the Christian faith, he had overcome them. However, he 
was still living an unrighteous life when, 
there occurred a famous experience which brought about his conver-
sion. While in a garden, he heard a child’s voice from over the wall 
saying ‘Tolle lege, tolle lege’ – ‘Take up and read, take up and read.’ 
Seizing a copy of the Epistle of Paul which he had been reading, he 
opened it at random, at the passage in Romans which says, ‘Let us 
walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in 
chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.’ The sudden-
ness of the voice, the appropriateness of the message – both these facts 
impressed themselves on Augustine’s mind. He felt that it was surely a 
divine oracle. His doubts were resolved.
After a period of seclusion and self-discipline, he was baptized, in 
387, on the eve of Easter.
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Tongues
On New Year’s Day 1901 in Topeka, Kansas, a young woman named 
Agnes Ozman, like Dorothy in