Think about epiphanic experiences. When did you feel close to Me or most spiritually open?
“I can only remember the two experiences. The first was the I-Thou with a drop of water.”
Yes, that is very significant. What did you understand from that experience?
“I understood the subjectivity of all things … but I’m not sure that is quite right. I did not imagine the drop of water looking out at me or having feelings or the like. I just encountered the ‘suchness’ of it, its full independent integrity, my respect for it, that we were in some kind of relationship …”
That was an encounter with Me. I was in the drop of water—
Why not? Where else would I be? I am in everything. You suddenly became open to My presence in that drop of water. You did not think of it that way, and you were right. It is not that I as a great mystical being somehow inhabited this tiny object, but you rightly experienced the drop for what it was, and that is precisely how I am “in” things. As you can tell, I am in each thing “fully.”
That is a very significant experience, on a par with the great mystics and seers. You have had that sense of reality ever since. That was the foundation, or at least part of it, for your sense of piety with regard to the universe.
“Yes, I have always had the sense that somehow, even with all the suffering, everything is basically alright with the universe. Piety is respect or gratitude for the sources of one’s being. I felt that.”
Its suchness is its rightness, its integrity, its being what it is, and that is also what I am.
I want you to come back to this experience from time to time. It has much to tell you. That is enough for now.
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Listen to this on God: An Autobiography, The Podcast– the dramatic adaptation and continuing discussion of the book God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin.
He was a lifelong agnostic, but one day he had an occasion to pray. To his vast surprise, God answered- in words. Being a philosopher, he had a lot of questions, and God had a lot to tell him.
Aldo Del Olmo August 2, 2013
Hello Jerry, I have been reading your book and I feel a sense of significance in this. A sense of truth that I cannot ignore. In this chapter, I have come to terms with an experience similar to yours. I was in a college course, one of cell biology, and we were going over the details of cellular life. There was a slide with a picture of a cell, and surrounding it was the matrix – or the environment – and that’s when it hit me. I wish I could describe the feeling and its utter significance in my life, and how it has changed me and allowed me to grow as an individual – a seeker. It was an epiphany, if I can use that word, that has led me to the conclusion that I must pay close attention to detail. That is it. That’s what I just got out of reading this chapter and writing this very message. Thank you.