Archives: Third Party Stories

Swami Abhayananda (August 14, 1938 – ), born Stanley Ross Trout, is an American mystic who, in 1966, at the age of twenty-eight, was graced by God, and experienced the unitive vision. A few years later, he met a holy man called Swami Muktananda, and he journeyed to India to live with him and to learn from him. After some time, the holy man invited Mr. Trout to join the spiritual Order of sannyasa, and gave him the name “Swami Abhayananda”, which means ‘the bliss of fearlessness.’ Mr. Trout has kept that spiritual name ever since, though he eventually parted with Swami Muktananda and his organization.

Swami Abhayananda does not belong to any church or any religion, but he does belong to that group of souls who have experienced God directly. The Swami writes that he “stand[s] as an unyielding bulwark against the current cultural trend toward an atheistic worldview. God is very certainly real. God is, in fact, the only reality.”

Since his mystical experience, Swami Abhayananda’s focus has been on God and His revelation, and his writings are a means of sharing that revelation. His many books include The History of Mysticism, The Supreme Self, and Mysticism And Science (all of the Swami’s books are generously available for free in PDF format at https://www.themysticsvision.com/read-or-download-books.html). Today, Swami Abhayananda lives “a simple, solitary life, devoted to meditation on God and the sharing of His revelation.”

Swami Abhayananda described his mystical experience on his website, www.themysticsvision.com, in a piece entitled “My Experience of God”.  Below is the account of that experience:

“I was twenty-eight when I first pledged my life to God, saying:

Thou art Love, and I shall follow all Thy ways.
I shall have no care, for Love cares only to love.
I shall have no fear, for Love is fearless;
Nor shall I frighten any,
For Love comes sweetly and meek.
I shall keep no violence within me,
Neither in thought nor in deed,
For Love comes peacefully.
I shall bear no shield or sword,
For the defense of Love is love.
I shall seek Thee in the eyes of men,
For love seeks Thee always.
I shall keep silence before Thine enemies,
And lift to them Thy countenance,
For all are powerless before Thee.
I shall keep Thee in my heart with precious care,
Lest Thy light be extinguished by the winds;
For without Thy light, I am in darkness.
I shall go free in the world with Thee—
Free of all bondage to anything but Thee;
For Thou art my God, the sole Father of my being,
The sweet breath of Love that lives in my heart;
And I shall follow Thee, and live with Thee,
And lean on Thee till the end of my days.

Later in that same year, while I was living in an isolated little cabin in California’s Santa Cruz mountains, I prayed to God: “Let me be one with Thee, not that I might glory in Thy love, but that I might speak out in Thy praise and to Thy glory for the benefit of all Thy children.” In that very moment I experienced union with God. And at the same time that this unitive experience was occurring, I was able to set down on paper what I was experiencing. As I became uplifted to union with God, my vision became His vision, my voice became His voice, I and Thou became indistinguishable. Here is the unedited text of what was written at that time:

O my God, even this body is Thine own!
Though I call to Thee and seek Thee amidst chaos,
Even I who seemed an unclean pitcher amidst Thy waters—
Even I am Thine own.

Does a wave cease to be of the ocean?
Do the mountains and the gulfs cease to be of the earth?
Or does a pebble cease to be stone?
How can I escape Thee?
Thou art even That which thinks of escape!

Even now, I speak the word, “Thou,” and create duality,
I love and create hatred.
I am in peace and am fashioning chaos,
Standing on the peak, I necessitate the depths.

But now, weeping and laughing are gone,
Night is become day.
Music and silence are heard as one,
My ears are all the universe.

All motion has ceased; everything continues.
Life and death no longer stand apart.
No I, no Thou; no now, or then.
Unless I move, there is no stillness.

Nothing to lament, nothing to vanquish,
Nothing to pride oneself on.
All is accomplished in an instant.

All may now be told without effort.
Where is there a question?
Where is the temple?
Which the Imperishable, which the abode?

I am the pulse of the turtle,
I am the clanging bells of joy.
I bring the dust of blindness,
I am the fire of song.
I am in the clouds and in the gritty soil.
In pools of clear water my image is found.

I am the dust on the feet of the wretched,
The toothless beggars of every land.
I have given sweets that decay to those that crave them,
I have given my wealth unto the poor and lonely.
My hands are open; nothing is concealed.

All things move together of one accord,
Assent is given throughout the universe to every falling grain.
The Sun stirs the waters of my heart,
And the vapor of my love flies to the four corners of the world.
The moon still me, and the cold darkness is my bed.

I have but breathed, and everything is rearranged
And set in order once again.
A million worlds begin and end in every breath,
And in this breathing, all things are sustained.”

Additional information about the conditions and circumstances of Swami Abhayananda’s mystical experience can be found in his book, The Supreme Self, at https://www.themysticsvision.com/read-or-download-books.html. Swami Abhayananda’s books and articles, which he wrote after his revelation, are his ongoing attempt to explain to others about his mystical experience. The Swami explains that his books are “written in praise of God and to His glory in order to benefit you, His children.” 12 different books, plus articles, are available free of charge in PDF format at the above-referenced link.

Quoted from https://www.themysticsvision.com/biography.html, as written by Swami Abhayananda.

Photo Credit:  Swami Abhayananda (2012) from www.themysticsvision.com/biography.html.

Flora Courtois (1916 – 2000) seemed to have a self-described “magic communion” with the natural world that began during her childhood.  While a college student in the 1940s, she had an enlightenment experience after months of deeply pondering the question, “What is Reality?”.  She described this experience (and others) in her 1986 book, An Experience of Enlightenment.  Courtois was a founding member of the Zen Center of Los Angeles, which opened in 1967 and aims to help foster “an enlightened world free of suffering, in which all beings live in harmony with each other and the earth, everyone has enough, deep wisdom is realized and compassion flows unhindered.”

Courtois described her enlightenment experience (mystical experience) as follows:

“It was as if, before all this occurred, “I” had been a fixed point inside my head looking out at the world out there, a separate and comparatively flat world.  The periphery of awareness had now come to light, yet neither fixed periphery nor center existed as such.  A paradoxical quality seemed to permeate all existence. Feeling myself centered as never before, at the same time I knew the whole universe to be centered at every point.  Having plunged to the center of emptiness, having lost all purposefulness in the old sense, I had never felt so one-pointed, so clear and decisive.  Freed from separateness, feeling one with the universe, everything including myself had become at once unique and equal.  If God was the word for this Presence in which I was absorbed, then everything was either holy or nothing; no distinction was possible.  All was meaningful, complete as it was, each bird, bud, midge, mole, atom, crystal, of total importance in itself.  As in the notes of a great symphony, nothing was large or small, nothing of more or less importance to the whole.  I now saw that wholeness and holiness are one.”

Quoted from Flora Courtois’ An Experience of Enlightenment in The Hazy Moon of Enlightenment by Taizen Maezumi and Bernard Glassman.

James Allen (1864 – 1912) was a British philosophical writer known for his inspirational, self-help works. As a Man Thinketh is perhaps his best-known work; that literary essay builds upon the aphorism, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”  James explained that with the right direction of thought, an individual can enjoy a higher existence – financially, physically, emotionally, and spiritually – and obtain the “knowledge of himself which is Understanding, Wisdom, Power.”

James wrote the following about his search for spiritual understanding:

“I looked around upon the world, and saw that it was shadowed by sorrow and scorched by the fierce fires of suffering.  And I looked for the cause.  I looked around, but I could not find it; I looked in books, but I could not find it; I looked within, and found there both the cause and the self-made nature of that cause.  I looked again, and deeper, and found the remedy.  I found one Law, the Law of love; one life, the life of adjustment to that Law; one Truth, the Truth of a conquered mind and a quiet and obedient heart.”

James further described love as “the moulding, sustaining, protecting, and perfecting Power immanent in all things animate and inanimate.”  He wrote of the mystical freedom that can be enjoyed through love and purity of heart:

“When I am pure
I shall have solved the mystery of life,
I shall be sure
(When I am free from hatred, lust and strife)
I am in truth, and Truth abides in me.
I shall be safe and sane and wholly free
When I am pure.”

Quoted from Mind is the Master: The Complete James Allen Treasury (2009).

C.G. Price was a man who lived in the U.K. during the 20^th century and who, at one time, ran a small farm.  It appears that little other information is available about his background.  The information detailed below is primarily from Nona Coxhead’s 1985 book, The Relevance of Bliss, which provides an account of Price’s experience.

C.G. Price’s mystical experience occurred during a period when his farm was going through a time of great financial strain.  Price was very worried and angry about the prospect of having to sell his farm and the animals on it, and he felt that God was not pulling his weight on Price’s behalf.  And then his mystical experience occurred:

“With thoughts of self-pity such as these in my mind, one Sunday morning in February 1968, dreading the start of a new week with the possibility of more bad news and so on, I set about the task of bedding my cows down with straw.  Shaking up bales of straw is not very demanding on the intellect, and I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular that I can remember.  I don’t even remember the feeling creeping up on me, but suddenly…

I seemed to be enveloped in a cocoon of golden light that actually felt warm, and which radiated a feeling of Love so intense that it was almost tangible.  One felt that one could grasp handfuls of it, and fill one’s pockets.

In this warm cocoon of golden light I sensed a presence which I could not actually see but knew was there.  My mind became crystal clear, and in an instant of time I suddenly knew, without any doubts, that I was part of a “Whole”.  Not an isolated part, but an integral part. I felt a sense of “One-ment”.  I knew that I belonged and that nothing could change that.  The loss of my farm and livelihood didn’t matter any more.  I was an important part of the “Wholeness” of things, and transient ambitions were secondary.

How long the experience lasted, I really don’t know, probably only a few seconds, because when I “came to” again, I was still shaking up straw.  There was, however, a sort of afterglow that lingered on for days, and even now, as I re-live the experience, that feeling of one-ness is as strong as ever.”

Although Price was, in time, forced to sell his farm, his mystical experience left him with a sense of contentment, despite his troubles.  After his farm was sold, Price stated that, “I have greater inner content now than I ever thought possible, and an enhancement of what I can only describe as a quality of living.  Things fall into perspective much more easily…”

Quoted from The Relevance of Bliss by Nona Coxhead.

Vivien Gibson’s mystical experience account is featured in The Relevance of Bliss by Nona Coxhead (1985).  Publicly available information about Gibson appears limited; however, Coxhead explained that, at the time of Gibson’s experience, Gibson was a “young widow” who “experienced a profoundly altered state of consciousness as an after-effect of taking, for therapeutic purposes, a large dose of insulin”.

The account of Gibson’s mystical experience is as follows:

“It began with an overwhelming awareness that I understood everything about everything, and that the Universe wasn’t complex at all, but beautifully, exquisitely simple – although not, of course, describable in any terms that we know.  I laughed in sheer joy at the absolute “rightness” of it.  No doubt you know the jubilantly satisfying “click” one experiences when one finds the solution to, for instance, a complicated mathematical problem.  Well, the experience I had was of a similar kind, but carried to the ultimate.  A king-size, super hyper-Click!!!  And with the feeling that I had “come home”.  It included the blissful awareness of unity, of being in all, all being in me.  All this – I say “all” but really it was a single experience merged into an intense and buoyant feeling of “Love”:  I felt as though I were breathing love and had love coursing through my veins; and this persisted for some time after regaining full consciousness.  Every person I saw seemed to be very precious to me and I’d gladly have been of service to them in any way I could.  It flashed into my mind that this, of course, was what is meant by “God is love”, not “God is loving”, or “God loves”, but “GOD IS LOVE”.  (Not that I personally think in terms of “God”, the nearest I can get is “Essence”, essence which we block by concentration on our conception of “self”).

Quoted from The Relevance of Bliss by Nona Coxhead.

Forrest Reid (1875 – 1947) was a Northern Irish novelist and critic.  Reid was born in Belfast and was the youngest son of a twelve-child Protestant family in which only six of the children survived.  Reid is most well-known for his charming novels about boyhood and adolescence.  He is also known for his 1926 autobiography, Apostate, and his 1940 autobiography, Private Road, the companion volume to Apostate, in which Reid continues his “chronicle of a prolonged personal adventure…”

Forrest Reid described his mystical experience in his 1912 book, Following Darkness, as follows:

“It was as if I had never realized before how lovely the world was.  I lay down on my back in the warm, dry moss and listened to the skylark singing as it mounted up from the fields near the sea into the dark clear sky.  No other music ever gave me the same pleasure as that passionately joyous singing.  It was a kind of leaping, exultant ecstasy, a bright, flame-like sound, rejoicing in itself.  And then a curious experience befell me.  It was as if everything that had seemed to be external and around me were suddenly within me. The whole world seemed to be within me.  It was within me that the trees waved their green branches, it was within me that the skylark was singing, it was within me that the hot sun shone, and that the shade was cool.  A cloud rose in the sky, and passed in a light shower that pattered on the leaves, and I felt its freshness dropping into my soul, and I felt in all my being the delicious fragrance of the earth and the grass and the plants and the rich brown soil.  I could have sobbed with joy.”

Quoted from Reid’s Following Darkness in Josh Baran’s Mindfulness, Day by Day: How to Find Peace in the Present Moment.

Photo Credit: Forrest Reid from www.goodreads.com.

Karl Joel (1864 – 1934) was a German philosopher and a professor at the University of Basel. He opposed physicalism and claims of “objectivity” in the study of reality, as he believed natural materialism ignores spirituality’s subjective and emotional components, which are part of the fullness of reality.

In Joel’s book, Soul and World, he described his “primal experience” (mystical experience) as follows:

“I lay on the seashore, the shining waters glittering in my dreamy eyes, at a great distance fluttered the soft breeze, throbbing, shimmering, stirring, lulling to sleep comes the wave beat to the shore – or to the car?  I know not.  Distance and nearness become blurred into one; without and within glide into each other.  Nearer and nearer, dearer and more homelike sounds the beating of the waves, now, like a thundering pulse in my head it strikes, and now it beats over my soul, devours it, embraces it, while it itself at the same time floats out like the blue waste of waters.  Yes, without and within are one Glistening and foaming, flowing and fanning and roaring, the entire symphony of the stimuli experienced sounds in one tone, all thought becomes one thought, which becomes one with feeling, the world exhales in the soul and the soul dissolves in the world.  Our small life is encircled by a great sleep – the sleep of our cradle, the sleep of our grave, the sleep of our home, from which we go forth in the morning, to which we again return in the evening, our life but the short Journey, the interval between the emergence from the original oneness and the sinking back into it!  Blue shimmers the infinite sea, wherein dreams the jelly fish of the primitive life, toward which without ceasing our thoughts hark back dimly through eons of existence.  For every happening entails a change and a guarantee of the unity of life.  At that moment when they are no longer blended together, in that instant man lifts his head, blind and dripping, from the depths of the stream of experience, from the oneness with the experience, at that moment of parting when the unity of life in startled surprise detaches the Change and holds it away from itself as something alien, at this moment of alienation the aspects of the experience have been substantialized into subject and object, and in that moment consciousness is born.”

Quoted from Karl Joel’s book, Soul and World, in Psychology of the Unconscious by Carl Jung.

Photo Credit: Karl Joel from www.geni.com.

Bill Wilson (1895 – 1971) was the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.).  A.A. describes itself as “an international fellowship of men and women who have had a drinking problem. It is nonprofessional, self-supporting, multiracial, apolitical, and available almost everywhere. There are no age or education requirements.  Membership is open to anyone who wants to do something about his or her drinking problem.” In a 2016 report on addiction, The United States Surgeon General stated that, “Well-supported scientific evidence demonstrates the effectiveness of twelve-step mutual aid groups focused on alcohol and twelve-step facilitation interventions.”

A 1995 article in “The New Yorker”, “A.A. AT THE CROSSROADS”, described Bill Wilson’s situation just before his experience:  “It was in the detox hospital in 1934 that Bill first arrived at [the] difficult knowledge [that alcoholics shut themselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit]. The epiphany came as his doctors were putting him through the usual regimen: sedating him with belladonna and purging him with castor oil. (Medicine had – and has – made little progress in treating alcoholism since the eighteenth century, when the pioneer physician Benjamin Rush treated a man “habitually fond of ardent spirits” by mixing tarter emetic with his rum.) Left to endure the craving and the cramps in a room that had been cleared of potential suicide instruments, Bill had the experience that broke the cycle:

“My depression deepened unbearably and finally it seemed to me as though I were at the bottom of the pit. I still gagged badly on the notion of a Power greater than myself, but finally, just for the moment, the last vestige of my proud obstinacy was crushed. All at once I found myself crying out, “If there is a God, let Him show Himself! I am ready to do anything, anything!”

Suddenly the room lit up with a great white light. I was caught up into an ecstasy which there are no words to describe. It seemed to me, in the mind’s eye, that I was on a mountain and that a wind not of air but of spirit was blowing. And then it burst upon me that I was a free man. Slowly the ecstasy subsided. I was in another world, a new world of consciousness. All about me and through me there was a wonderful feeling of Presence, and I thought to myself, “So this is the God of the preachers!”

Quoted from “A.A. AT THE CROSSROADS”, “The New Yorker”, March 20, 1995 Issue, by Andrew Delbanco and Thomas Delbanco.

Photo Credit:  Bill Wilson (1958) by “Mel B.” of Toledo, Ohio, from www.wilsonhouse.org.

Albert Hoffmann, Ph.D. (1906 – 2008) was a Swiss scientist most well-known for being the first known person to synthesize, ingest, and learn of the psychedelic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD).  He was also the first person to identify psilocybin and psilocin in psychedelic mushrooms.  Hoffman was the author of over 100 scientific articles and many books, including LSD: My Problem Child.

In an interview just before his 100^th birthday (in 2006), Hoffman said LSD is “medicine for the soul” and explained his frustration over LSD’s worldwide prohibition. He noted that although the drug is potentially dangerous and had been misused during the counterculture era of the 1960s, LSD had been used “very successfully for ten years in psychoanalysis”.

In recent years, substantial academic interest in research into the medicinal value of psychedelics has returned. One significant example is the 2019 opening of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research (see https://hopkinspsychedelic.org).  According to the Center’s website (as of 6/2020), since 2000, Johns Hopkins’ scientists “have published… groundbreaking studies in more than 60 peer-reviewed articles in respected scientific journals,” and the Center is continuing with a range of new studies.

In the preface to Hoffman’s book, LSD: My Problem Child, Hoffman described his childhood mystical experience as follows:

“There are experiences that most of us are hesitant to speak about, because they do not conform to everyday reality and defy rational explanation. These are not particular external occurrences, but rather events of our inner lives, which are generally dismissed as figments of the imagination and barred from our memory. Suddenly, the familiar view of our surroundings is transformed in a strange, delightful, or alarming way: it appears to us in a new light, takes on a special meaning. Such an experience can be as light and fleeting as a breath of air, or it can imprint itself deeply upon our minds.

One enchantment of that kind, which I experienced in childhood, has remained remarkably vivid in my memory ever since. It happened on a May morning—I have forgotten the year—but I can still point to the exact spot where it occurred, on a forest path on Martinsberg above Baden, Switzerland. As I strolled through the freshly greened woods filled with bird song and lit up by the morning sun, all at once everything appeared in an uncommonly clear light. Was this something I had simply failed to notice before? Was I suddenly discovering the spring forest as it actually looked? It shone with the most beautiful radiance, speaking to the heart, as though it wanted to encompass me in its majesty. I was filled with an indescribable sensation of joy, oneness, and blissful security.

I have no idea how long I stood there spellbound. But I recall the anxious concern I felt as the radiance slowly dissolved and I hiked on: how could a vision that was so real and convincing, so directly and deeply felt—how could it end so soon? And how could I tell anyone about it, as my overflowing joy compelled me to do, since I knew there were no words to describe what I had seen? It seemed strange that I, as a child, had seen something so marvelous, something that adults obviously did not perceive – for I had never heard them mention it.

While still a child, I experienced several more of these deeply euphoric moments on my rambles through forest and meadow. It was these experiences that shaped the main outlines of my world view and convinced me of the existence of a miraculous, powerful, unfathomable reality that was hidden from everyday sight.

I was often troubled in those days, wondering if I would ever, as an adult, be able to communicate these experiences; whether I would have the chance to depict my visions in poetry or paintings. But knowing that I was not cut out to be a poet or artist, I assumed I would have to keep these experiences to myself, important as they were to me.

Unexpectedly—though scarcely by chance—much later, in middle age, a link was established between my profession and these visionary experiences from childhood.

Because I wanted to gain insight into the structure and essence of matter, I became a research chemist. Intrigued by the plant world since early childhood, I chose to specialize in research on the constituents of medicinal plants. In the course of this career I was led to the psychoactive, hallucination-causing substances, which under certain conditions can evoke visionary states similar to the spontaneous experiences just described. The most important of these hallucinogenic substances has come to be known as LSD.”

Quoted from Albert Hoffman’s book, LSD: My Problem Child.

Photo Credit:  Albert Hoffman (2006) by Stefan Pangritz.

Saint John of Egypt, (305 – 394), also known as John of Lycopolis, was a hermit of the Nitrian Desert of northwestern Egypt.  He initially worked as a carpenter before becoming a Christian monk and living a life of solitude starting at the age of twenty-five.  John ate only after sunset and lived on a vegan diet (dried fruits and vegetables) for fifty years.

Saint John of Egypt used an analogy of iron and fire to describe (presumably his) mystical experience as follows:

“As, when ire ore is placed in fire, and the fire passes into it and becomes one substance with it, the iron partakes of the fire, and assumes its likeness and color, and no longer appears as it formerly did, but takes on the aspect of the fire, because it has become absorbed in the fire, and so they become one; so when the love of Christ comes into the soul as a living force which consumes the seeds of sin from the soul, it becomes of one substance with Him, and he with it… from the likeness of its own nature it is changed into the likeness of God… and it is absorbed in his love for all men.”

Quoted by Margaret Smith in Studies in Early Mysticism in the Near and Middle East.