A bright light is one of the most common manifestations of a Heavenly vision, but is not in itself a guarantee for divine origin. The revelation still needs to be verified, according to the experts. And then you put it aside.

This entry is really written for Christians. If you are curious you can read it anyway, but I don’t expect it to be useful to others.

Still reading the book Fire Within about St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross. I haven’t really studied great saints in much detail before, so perhaps they are pretty normal for their sort, but Teresa in particular really blows me away with her awesomeness. (As usual, when it comes to Teresa. I feel like a complete fanboy when I think of her. She is so awesome!) It turns out that for her, it was quite natural to hear the voice of her Lord or to see the risen Christ in a vision – not a vague daydream, but an unimaginable beauty in a blinding light beyond anything she had thought possible. She also had various other direct perceptions of Jesus and God.

Now, this surprised me, but that was not the awesome part. The awesome part is how she didn’t make a fuss about it.

St Teresa and St John insisted that no matter how absolutely certain it was that a vision or voice was of God, there was no reason to talk about it to anyone except ones spiritual director (the person a Catholic goes to for confession, normally a priest). After that, just set it aside. These things happen, and their purpose is our sanctification. That is to say, they should result in us becoming more humble, more loving, more patient and so on, if they really are from God. These perceptions of Heaven – and even of the Trinity, it was implied – was not a proof that one was extremely holy. Sure, genuine communications did not appear until a certain point, usually, but not very far into the purification process. After that, even a genuine vision of the risen Christ was not really saying anything about one’s progress. And many people live and die without any such event, and are the better for it.

That is a pretty cool attitude toward something that would send most of us screaming or make us full-time preachers or selling books on Amazon about our Conversations With God.

I imagine that if I had a grand vision of the Lord when I was even remotely young, I would have been all over the place thinking I was a Chosen Vessel of Salvation, a Very Important Person in the cosmic hierarchy. Everyone show respect for the Great Man of God!

(Of course, that is how I imagine it. In reality, any genuine meeting with God will automatically reveal one’s sins, faults, weaknesses and imperfections. So one will immediately become very humble – although I am not sure how long that lasts. I think that depends on one’s attitude.)

The reason why St Teresa eventually mentioned these events to a broader audience (originally the nuns under her care) was that she had been ordered by her superiors (in the church hierarchy, not necessarily in the spirit). Being a very obedient old woman, she wrote her rambling, charming books that changed the history of the Church forever.

The Catholic Church is still fairly monolithic, but the Protestant churches have split into probably more than a thousand sects, not to mention splinter cells within the various denominations again. And frequently this is because someone has had some sort of vision, voice, or inspiration that they felt certain was from God. And perhaps it was. Why not? God does things like that, evidently. But as the book about the two saints points out, one thing is what God says and another is what we make of it. The Bible is supposed to be the Word of God as well, and people interpret it in wildly different ways. Why wouldn’t they do the same with a voice or a vision or a revelation?

And this also came to pass. They say that here on the south coast of Norway, every village used to have a prayer house or two, beside the church. That is because each village had some kind of sect which had some revelation that the church did not have, like a different variant of some ritual or dogma. And then someone in the sect would get their own revelation, and break out and make a new sect. They would make their own prayer house and try to poach followers from the church and the other sects; and if they failed to convert them, threaten them with eternal damnation.

I guess when God tells you something, it is hard to stay cool and wait and see. But if great saints like Teresa and John could do so, certainly some random guy should.  (And before you ask, no I have not have any visions of the Lord in a bright light. Yet. Hopefully if it ever happens, I’ll now be able to not go off the deep end – which everyone would believe anyway…)

Jesus Christ has a saying that applies to this, I believe: “A teacher who is educated for the Kingdom of Heaven is like someone who brings out treasures old and new from his storage.” If you have learned something from God or from High Spirits in Heaven, and you know it comes from there because you have become a more virtuous and humble person yourself from it, then obviously you have something in your storehouse for the day someone needs your treasure.

Speaking of which, Amazon has moved The Way of Perfection (by St Teresa) up to second place in my Kindle recommendations list recently. I found this amusing because of the name. When I was young, I thought that I was pretty close to being perfect. But since then I have learned that I was actually very far from it, and still am far from it. God told me so!

I agree with marine officer Johan Oscar Smith, who wrote to his brother that  when he got the Holy Spirit, he expected to learn the hidden truth about the beasts in Daniel and the Apocalypse. But instead God showed him the beast in himself. Now that’s a truly useful vision! However, bear in mind that even God’s reproach is filled with hope. It has nothing to do with depression, and it won’t tell you that you are beyond salvation. Those who are can’t hear Him anyway. For it is written: “Today, if you hear His voice, harden not your hearts”.

“Such a mundane question is nothing for one with access to the Akashic Records.” Actually, I have come to understand that Akashic Records strongly discourage unauthorized broadcast.

I got into a conversation with an old friend online about the movie and book What Dreams May Come. The book and movie are actually quite different, but they both deal with a man’s journey after death and his attempt to rescue the soul of his wife who committed suicide.

The after-worldview of the author is actually somewhat similar to that of the new Japanese religion Happy Science (well, not brand new, it’s from 1986, but as religions go, that is new). It is not entirely surprising, since the body of occult material is rather similar, most of it of East Asian origin. But some also from the West: Swedenborg, for instance, spend a good part of his later years visiting the spirit world, which he tried to express in ways people could understand.

Richard Matheson seems to confine himself to what Happy Science calls the 4th dimension, where the souls of the dead largely prefer to ignore the fact that they are dead, and generally don’t think about spiritual things except the occasional stray thought. Their lives are basically like dreams. Or nightmares, for those who have messed up their souls badly enough. I personally am reluctant to use the word “Heaven” about the world the main character wakes up in once he gives up his attachment to Earth. Sure, it is pretty, but I would say I am more in Heaven right now, for I am still allowed to pray even though I am a sinful man, and repent my sins and experience the presence of the Light in my heart. I would not trade that comfort for the most beautiful of vistas and the presence of long-gone loved ones.

***

Despite the dire warnings in the Bible, there are still those who seek to contact the dead. But if you understand a bit about the spirit world, you realize that there is no point in seeking out ordinary souls in the fourth dimension. They don’t suddenly become awesome when they die, although I have seen those left behind  show a lot more respect once someone is dead. But that is a change in them, not in the departed. They are still ordinary and there is no particular benefit in contacting them, apart from asking for the combination to the safe. I really don’t think that is worth incurring a conflict with Heaven over.

There are greater souls who rise above this dreamlike state in which most men live and die. But they cannot be summoned – if anything, they could summon you. And you probably would not want that.

There are higher Heavens, several of them. I should probably not be the one teaching about them. Just know, if you ever watch the movie or read the book, that it only deals with the very lowest levels of the spirit world. There are higher, brighter, amazing places beyond the imagination of most people.

Seek the words of the Living, not the dead. The Bible says this from the Pentateuch onward. (Nor do other great religions disagree.) Heaven will make sure to have its duly appointed representatives on Earth when needed, and from them you can take lessons. But let the sleeping dead lie. Whether they are in dreams or in nightmares, they cannot help you, and you cannot help them in that way.

Relux and call it a deity, when the Light comes down from unchanging Heaven to unstable Earth – over and over again, in our heart.

This is something I didn’t think of first, but learned about from others. I have probably touched on it before – I am a bit of a blabbermouth with sacred secrets, I’m afraid, even if I have little actual experience. Think of it as a postcard from a strange land I am still exploring.

Anyone who engages in spiritual practice should be familiar with time having more than one dimension. There is the straight line of time, which we may call “horizontal time”, the one you measure with a clock. Then there is “eternal time”, to express it paradoxically. This is the constant, in most religions compared to the sky above us (“Heaven” originally means sky too). No matter how far you walk, the sky is still above you. Land changes to water and forest to mountain as you wander, but the sky above you is the same. In a similar way, there is a time above you when you pray or meditate that is endless and unchanging, clear and luminous. We can call this “vertical time”.

Sacred time is where the two meet. The Jews have their Sabbath, a day outside of time. A long list of traditions sets this day apart, puts it outside of the full rush of modernity, and makes it more similar to the Sabbath of a thousand years ago or a thousand years in the future than it is similar to the day before or after.

But this is not the end of it. For the observant Jew – or so a couple of them have claimed, I have not been that – it is more than a tradition. It is holy time, which belongs with eternity. It is consecrated, belonging to the Most High, a time when man meets his Maker and (usually) survives. A time when eternity touches time, when the vertical time comes down and infuses the ordinary time, giving it that extra dimension that it otherwise lacks, the vertical dimension where we have the freedom to reach upward.

The Sabbath is not the only such institution, of course, although it is exceedingly well documented, Jews being notorious intellectuals and lovers of writing. But every religion has its holy days, and for the hardcore practitioner, there is also the regular prayer time. The Orthodox and Catholic churches have the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours, in which fixed prayers or Scripture are quoted at certain set times of the day. (They got this too from the Jews, but it has been adapted a great deal over the centuries.)

Islam has, of course, its daily prayers. Unlike Christianity, where lay people are not expected to keep fixed hours of prayer, the faithful of Islam will stop their work if at all possible to pray at the correct time. In addition, there are holy days throughout the years, as there is in every religion.

Eastern faiths also share these traits. The hours of dusk and dawn are frequently set aside for meditation, as a time when the energies of  the Other World are more palpably present.

In each case, the meeting of time and eternity causes an infusion of the holy into the mundane, adding another dimension to time. For those who wish to experience spiritual growth, this is quite necessary. “Timelessness takes time”, and this time spent with eternity causes what St Teresa calls a “dilation” inside.  The moment of Now is by default so brief that it is almost impossible to stay in it: We almost immediately jump into the past (memories) or future (plans, daydreams). But with time spent in sacred time, the Now grows larger, until we fit comfortably in it. (And then it becomes a kingdom inside, and a universe, but that’s how these things go.)

So Christmas, for instance, is not simply a day off from work, to relax. It is a day to relux, to get our spiritual bearings under the clear, open skies of eternity. This is why the Christmases past, present and future converge on this holy night.

For those unfamiliar with the structure of sacred time, the result may become a jumble and a nightmare: Psychologists say that Christmas is a time when childhood trauma resurfaces, causing many crises and a modest number of actual deaths each year. That was not how it was meant to be. Christmas was made for man, not man for Christmas. Read the instruction manual before applying high voltage to your holiday, please.

This great space, in what form was it created?

When we believers talk about “grace”, it is probably just a sound to the outsider, a word devoid of meaning. Traditionally we understand grace with the heart. But as I discussed the topic with my Invisible Friend on the bus today (silently, for the benefit of my fellow passengers), I think we found a partial aspect of grace that can be understood mostly with the head, without too much heavy lifting by the heart. Here we go.

You may perhaps have heard about the “Omega Point”, a concept associated with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a point at the end of time and the collapse of space where everything will be accomplished. But my topic today is the opposite “Alpha Point” at the very beginning, where time and space explode out of an unimaginably small particle that contained all that would ever exist. At this point, everything was literally one: Not just in the same point of space in the same point of time, but of the same nature. There was no difference between energy and matter, nor between the tree that falls in the forest and the ear that doesn’t hear it, nor us and the farthest star. Yet everything we see, everything we are, everything that has been and will ever be, was contained in that moment.

This was the first moment of everything we know and much we don’t, for according to the most respected theories today, energy and mass barely make up 5% of the universe, the rest being dark matter (of which we know nothing) and dark energy (of which we know less – it should not really exists by all we otherwise know). It is as if the whole visible universe with even the most remote galaxies, billions and billions of them, is just The Sims running in windowed mode on a cosmic computer mostly dedicated to something unfathomable. The reality we inhabit, of matter and energy in all their forms, is not even a particularly significant part of this one universe, the only one we can even hope to know anything about.

All this, the known and the unknown and the unknowable, were contained in that tiny point, far smaller than a mustard seed, at the first moment of time, beyond which we cannot ever see, anymore than we can go further inward than to the center of a sphere. It is not that there is nothing beyond there, there is no “there” beyond there.  And yet, from that arises everything, in a singular moment.

This is a breathtaking moment even if you are a goddamning atheist. Or perhaps especially then. For the moment we mention “God”, unbidden jumps to the modern mind the cartoon image of some jolly white-bearded fellow, and this seriously spoils the magnificent image we just had. It is not for nothing that Judaism and Islam prohibit religious imagery, very strongly, ranking the practice alongside idolatry and blasphemy. I think they have a point, although I officially oppose the practice of beheading everyone who practices it. I do understand the sentiment though, for the damage these cartoonists have done to the modern soul is horrifying. To teach religion in the west today has become similar to trying to convince people to accept Spiderman as their personal savior. Most will laugh at you, and those who don’t are the ones you should worry about.

That said, there still live people who have met the Living God, the personification of the Supreme Being if you will, and have some kind of personal relationship to this. I have no problem with that either, seeing how that was pretty much all I had for the first decades of my spiritual adventures, and I would probably have thought that anyone not having roughly the same experience would be doomed to a very sad life in this world and the next. But that is beside today’s topic. Today’s topic is how to understand a particular aspect of grace.

What we need to zoom in on is the possibility, the overwhelming energy that is, at the moment of the Alpha Point, quite ready to in an instant bring into being anything and everything, although some of those anythings would take 13.7 billion years to unpack into their particular form.

This readiness to make the impossible come true is one of the key elements of grace, as perceived by us believers. Even if some of us express it as  a kind and loving father (of which there are some) giving us something reasonably useful, it is really the same thing. The overwhelming creative force utterly unfazed by the sheer impossibility of what lies ahead. The bringing about of that which was not and could not be without it.

Another important element when we talk about grace is that it is really a one-way thing. The universe could for obvious reasons not ask to come into being, and neither could any of us. It is the same with what we call grace: It already exists in its full form. It does not come into existence due to our asking, rather what we can ask for is to become able to attune to it, to perceive it, to find it and to latch on to it. A human can no more produce grace than the universe can produce its own Big Bang. This is the lesson of the Alpha Point.

To believe in grace is voluntary, and requires at least a minimal exertion of the heart. As such I cannot, and probably should not if I could, convince you. But I hope the brightness of the first mystery of the universe will remain with you for a while even if you choose the path of oblivion, as is your right.