My first step into the Spiritual World in 1967, Hawaii

My Spiritual Awakening in 1967, Hawaii ... Since I am not an accomplished writer and cannot describe my feeling of self-loathing well, you will have to take it on faith that I finally hit bottom, my

... Since I am not an accomplished writer and cannot describe my feeling of self-loathing well, you will have to take it on faith that I finally hit bottom, my consciousness peppered with thoughts of suicide. Then, on a lovely tropical morning, I` was sluggishly lumbering through the International Market Place on my way to the post office, the pavement glistening from a light morning shower, the sun playing hide and seek with big billowy clouds as the plumerias sprayed their erotic fragrance and gentle trade winds rattled the palm fronds. I noticed a jaunty old man, a vacationer or pensioner come to Hawaii to idly pass the sunset years, appropriately attired in Bermuda shorts, aloha shirt, tennies and a straw hat, perusing his mail as he ambled my way. As he got closer I realized we were on a collision course and sent a message to my feet to move left, but nothing happened! Panic stricken, I tried to move out of the way a second time, but the body wouldn’t respond!
I had completely lost control.
A couple of seconds before impact the bodies stopped face to face and I heard a sweet voice speaking through me.
“Excuse me, sir, may I ask you a question?” it said.
Someone else had taken over!
Since I had no idea what the voice was about to say, I tried to apologize, but the words wouldn’t come.
I wasn’t connected at the mouth either!
The old man looked up, unaware of my distress, a kind smile on his wrinkled face.“Yeah, sure, sonny, shoot.”
Then the voice, flowing like nectar from a deep place within, resumed,
“Out of curiosity, sir, how old do you think I am?”
Since I already knew the answer and didn’t have the slightest interest in the opinion of the doddering old codger, I was completely flabbergasted. Certain that I was going mad, I ran frantically around inside my mind looking for the control panel, but reality, which had a mind of its own, was completely uninterested.
The old man stepped back, pulled on his pipe, gave me the once-over, and judiciously replied,“Well, sonny, I’d say you’re forty-three.”
A long history of untruth meant I could spot a lie a mile away; he was deliberately underestimating my age to spare my feelings.
“Well, yes, thank you very much,” the voice said sweetly.
“Don’t mention it, sonny,” he said, proceeding on his way.
I seriously considered the possibility I was losing my mind, but the experience was permeated with such a sense of clarity, I didn’t indulge my fear. And then I regained control and proceeded toward my mailbox, the mind settling on the concerns of the day.
But as I entered the foyer I lost it again! Instead of proceeding into the post office proper as programmed, the body confidently turned left, entered the men’s room and parked itself in front of a big mirror over the wash basins, eyes glued straight ahead, feet welded to the floor.
“Oh no, not again! Am I flipping out?” I thought anxiously.
But I wasn’t going mad. I was having a good look, courtesy of God, at what I had become. I don’t know how long I stood there, unable to move a muscle—perhaps a full five minutes—aware but unaware of the stares of the men coming and going, the flushing toilets and the irritating flicker of the neon light over the mirror. But it didn’t matter because a brand new world had miraculously opened up, an inner world illumined by a powerful light in whose presence I saw every last bit of the sin and corruption that I was. The moment of truth in the post office lifted a monstrous weight, like Saul’s epiphany on the road to Damascus. Though I still looked a wreck, overweight and run-down, my face etched with deep pain lines, I felt young again, inspired by the conviction that I might find an exit from my dark labyrinth.
And for the first time in my twenty-six years I realized there was a compassionate God.
...
[A couple of days later I had another experience on a trip at Berkeley]
...
I looked through the body’s translucent shell and saw an infinitely expanding, self-generating radiant light of indescribable purity pouring the sweet ecstasy of life into each and every cell.
For the first time, I noticed that everything here had a purpose, objects nestling into one another like pieces in a puzzle. I saw everything as a living whole vibrating to a wondrous, all-pervading sound that was spontaneously arising from the emptiness between the atoms. Though inseparable from this indefinable sound, every blade of grass and humble pebble, containing universes within itself, unselfconsciously displayed its uniqueness. My fractured and lonely life suddenly seemed meaningful, fitting as it did snugly into the total, a guileless child nestled in its mother’s arms.
As I gulped fresh air with the relish my former self had guzzled champagne, the healing draughts flooded my worn and damaged body, shocking it to life. I ran down the grassy gully and gracefully leapt over a barbed wire fence.
Until that leap, which seemed a symbol of something profound, the trip was ordered and purposeful, an ever-expanding spiral of unbelievable experiences strung one after another, lustrous pearls on a string, way stations at which my soul briefly stopped, took instruction, and then moved on. But as I approached the brow of the hills, the warm summer sun a ripe golden fruit slowly dropping into the graceful mouth of the Golden Gate, and the Bay Area spread before me, everything ceased to move, and the bundle of ignorance that I was dissolved into Light.
Not that I did not exist. But I ceased to exist as a fat, rich, unhappy businessman. That person, a sort of distorting and concretizing lens, had somehow fallen from the camera and shattered into bits, left behind on the other side of the fence. And the I, the real I, a limitless vision hidden within the body, apparently asleep for centuries, began seeing things as they actually were.
I looked into the body and saw the whole nervous system circulating an unbroken carousel of light, the synapses—microcosmic exploding stars— glowing bright as the energy leaped from terminal to terminal.
Journeying into finer and finer worlds, I experienced a tremendous rush, which I would later recognize as love, when I came upon the place within where God dwells, giving and taking life. Overcome with a feeling of deep sanctity, tears of repentance dripping from the sides of my eyes, I fell to my knees to thank the Great Spirit as day turned to night in an awesome and unforgettable display of transcendental beauty.
I realized there were two parallel realities: the eternally living reality of God and the frozen world of conditioned perceptions.