05.19.10
Posted in articles at 8:41 pm by MPJ
Someone sent me this story not long ago. I have not interviewed him,
but I do believe his story shows the trajectory of Mystic level
development. There is the early formal literal belief in traditional
religion. Following that there was a period of questioning. Then a
move back toward religious participation, even though he does not
accept all the beliefs of his church. Note his comment: "a fair
portion of what the pastor says goes in one ear and out the other"
and he refuses to accept explanations that are contrary to his
"innate sense of what a wise and loving creator of the universe
would possibly be like."
Lance's Story:
My journey through the stages of belief has been somewhat non-linear. I
was raised in an alcoholic household (both my father and mother died of
cirrhosis, my father being a brilliant man but the most hopeless alcoholic
I've ever known). I was effectively raised as an only child since my
sister and brother were older and had left home by the time I was six. I
went to Vacation Bible School at a Baptist church down the street a
handful of times but had no religious indoctrination or pressure of any
kind at home (which I now regard as one of the great blessings of my
otherwise chaotic childhood!). I grew up in the "flying saucer" era of
the 1950's and had an intense interest in UFOs beginning at a very early
age (perhaps six or seven). I also remember checking out many library
books on ghosts, reincarnation and similar subjects as a teenager, as well
as on Buddhism, so I obviously was obviously something of a seeker.
My mother died when I was 18. When I was a sophomore in college, my
roommate was active in the fundamentalist group Campus Crusade for Christ.
One day when I was sick in bed, I read the Gospel of John and it simply
had the ring of truth to me. I "accepted Christ" and became very active
in both Campus Crusade and the Baptist Church. Nevertheless, I came to
have a strong sense that I was pretending to believe things I didn't
really believe, and I marveled at the seeming ability of others to "accept
on faith" doctrines that simply made no logical sense to me (or even
seemed repulsive to me). I used to complain that "it would be absolutely
great to be as simple as these people, but I just can't pound my round
head into these square holes." After graduation, I (and my new wife)
headed off to a Baptist seminary in the San Francisco area with the idea
of steeping myself in Serious Theology. However, it proved to be little
more than an advanced Sunday School, and I bailed out after a year.
My wife and I gravitated away from the church and mainstream Christianity
over the course of our 33-year marriage. I continued to read a lot of
Christian theology, a lot of Zen material, a lot of philosophy, a fair
amount of non-mainstream physics, and really a lot of paranormal material.
I had had quite a convincing daylight UFO experience when I was 20 and an
after-death encounter with my father that affected me profoundly when I
was 22. (My father had prayed with me to accept Christ shortly before he
died, when I was 21. I then had a series of troubling dreams in which he
was trying to deliver a message. The dreams ended when he delivered the
very simple message, "I'm dead but I'm not dead.")
My UFO studies were quite intense. I've probably owned and read close to
every significant UFO book ever published. These studies definitely kept
alive in me a sense of awe and wonder, because aspects of the UFO
phenomenon are quite "supernatural." My wife and I were also both very
excited by the publication of Life After Life by Dr. Raymond Moody in the
mid-1970's, which first brought Near-Death Experiences to the attention of
the public. I dived intensely into the study of NDEs as well, and my wife
and I both had a very strong sense that "This is it!" Although many NDE
experiencers reject mainstream Christianity, I was (and am) struck by the
close parallels.
From the age of 22 to 45, I would say that I had a strong sense of wonder
and a strong interest in what the ultimate explanation might be, but no
particular beliefs apart from a vague conviction that there is a higher
level of reality than we experience on a day-to-day basis. At about the
age of 45, I discovered the world of Internet used bookstores. Suffice it
to say that I launched on a binge of book-buying and reading that had me
devouring three or four books a week. With one book leading to another, I
became something of an expert on the history of Spiritualism (dating from
about 1840 to 1875), the heyday of psychical research (dating from about
1880 to 1920), and Dr. Ian Stevenson's reincarnation research. Most
people are completely unfamiliar with this work, but some of it is
compellingly convincing -- at least convincing enough, in combination with
my other studies and experiences, to give me and my wife a conviction that
consciousness survives bodily death.
In connection with my studies, I joined groups such as the American
Association for Electronic Voice Phenomena, the American Society for
Psychical Research, the (British) Society for Psychical Research and the
International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS). I became very
active on the IANDS message board in my assumed role of "Pastor Lance" of
"The Church of What Lance Believes." This was an opportunity for me to
think through and articulate my own beliefs. Somewhat to my surprise, I
found myself repeatedly defending some of the core doctrines of
Christianity against the overt hostility of the NDE crowd. I even led one
guy who was dying of ALS to Christ by telling him to simply focus on the
person of Jesus and ignore the other crap. I also started keeping a log
of paranormal (or at least difficult-to-explain) events in my own life,
which now number 50+. Lastly, I happened to read an absolutely wonderful,
virtually unknown little book by Charles Ernest Essert called Secret
Splendor. Essert, who was something of a mystic, makes the point that an
awareness of the divine requires one to transcend rational, dualistic
thinking and rely on intuition. I was stunned by his wisdom. I've
probably read this book 20 times and regard it as pretty much my personal
Bible.
My wife died of breast cancer when I was 55, seven years after she had
been diagnosed. We both came to regard this as the best period of our
marriage, and we were pleased to see that our strong belief in survival
(and our ancillary NDE-type beliefs) sustained us in a way that a
house-of-cards faith built on platitudes never would have done. We talked
many times about how we had grown and evolved over the course of our
marriage, while so many people just seem to go through the motions of life
and remain locked into the same patterns of thought and action that they
were locked into as teenagers.
When my wife died, I felt that I had an "evidence based" belief that
consciousness survives bodily death and that some sort of spiritual realm
exists. I had come to believe that all paranormal phenomena, as different
as they may seem on the surface, are related and constitute (in the words
UFO scholar and computer scientist Jacques Vallee) a "control system"
imposed by a higher intelligence for the very purpose of instilling wonder
and leading us to evolve spiritually. But I also recognized that beliefs
based on knowledge and experience can take one only so far. As Essert
says, ultimately one has to rely on intuition to answer Tillich's
fundamental religious question, "Why is there anything? Why is there not
nothing at all?" As Kierkegaard said, one has to take a leap "over 70,000
fathoms of water."
I thus started trying to formulate a personal theology and again found
that my studies, experience and intuition pointed me in the direction of
Christianity. My studies, experience and intuition tell me that we live
in a universe created by a higher intelligence; that there is a genuine,
non-illusory difference between good and evil; that a loving intelligence
has watched over me and guided the course of my life, preventing me from
self-destruction in uncanny ways; that our lives and the seemingly
smallest events in them have meaning and purpose; that our world is in a
downward spiral toward destruction of precisely the sort predicted in the
Bible; and that there is some sort of accounting after we pass from
earthly life. Although my explanations don't necessarily dovetail with
mainstream Christianity, I can understand why a wise and loving creator
would have put us in precisely the circumstances of earthly life and would
have reached out to offer salvation by grace. I thus describe
Christianity as the "template" for my beliefs.
A few years after my wife died, I met a woman in Minsk, Belarus (the old
Soviet Union) through circumstances that were more than a little weird.
We are now married and both believe that we have been brought together for
a purpose. She happens to be a devout Baptist, which is quite miraculous
in itself for someone raised in the Soviet Union. So I have come
full-circle and am once again attending a Baptist Church. Although my
belief system could only marginally be called Baptist, I find that I get
much more out of church than I did 40 years ago, when I was theoretically
a "real" Baptist. I do feel a sense of spirituality and communion with
the divine, even if a fair portion of what the pastor says goes in one ear
and out the other. I also find that some of my beliefs are evolving back
toward mainstream Christianity, although I refuse to ignore the evidence
for reincarnation or to accept explanations that are contrary to my innate
sense of what a wise and loving creator of the universe could possibly be
like.
I have no idea how or why it works, but I am firmly convinced that faith
(or the capacity to believe) is a gift. While I am befuddled by those who
are content with what seem to me like simplistic doctrines that defy logic
and common sense, I am far more befuddled by those who are spiritually
dead -- who seemingly have no sense of the wonder and mystery of life and
no interest in the mass of evidence that there is something much greater
beyond the framework of materialistic scientism. I'm quite "un-mystical,"
but my own experiences are enough in themselves to tell me that there is
Something More. To not see this almost seems to me to require a willful
blindness.
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Suzan said,
June 5, 2010 at 8:16 am
Great story. Resonates with my experience.