First Person God Experience

The God Connection
Future Time


"So what happened?" said MV. "How did you go from a third person to a
first person God experience?"

"Like I've already said," I replied, "it was a Gestalt thing. In one
instant I was thinking about the X/Y form, and in the next, I was
inside the X/Y form. From inside the X/Y form, all past history identifying me as
David Heyl became a first person God experience. Obviously,
that was an emotional event for me, an extremely shocking emotional event!"

"After you left the library," responded MV, "what did you do?"

"Leaving the library was not an option for me, at least at first," I
replied, "I was in too much shock. Instead, I had to talk to
somebody, and the only person I could turn to was Mary, the Professor
I was doing my independent study with. On the phone, her husband told
me she was out of town. That was disappointing news. I was exploding
inside, and I had nobody to talk to. Then I remembered a book I had
read once, and in that book was a description of an experience that was
very similar to what I was feeling. I went to the shelf and removed
the book. As soon as I found the part I was looking for, I began to read:

"'She brought me my hat, and I knew I was going out into the warm
sunshine. This thought, if a wordless sensation may be called a
thought, made me hop and skip with pleasure.

We walked down the path to the well house, attracted by the fragrance
of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Some one was drawing
water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool
stream gushed over my hand she spelled into the other the word water,
first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed
upon the motion of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness
as of something forgotten—a thrill of returning thought; and somehow
the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r
meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That
living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!
There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that in time could
be swept away.

I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each
name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every
object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I
saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me' (Helen
Keller, 1936, p. 23).

"Reading through that passage made me feel better. It was Helen
Keller's description of her first experience with language. She was,
like me, alone with her revelation, and she remained that way until,
in her autobiographical account of her life, she was able to put that
experience into words, something that I am still unable to do with
my own awakening experience."