According to the witness of the New Testament itself,
"No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God remains in us, and His love is perfected in us." (1 John 4:12), he dwells
"in light unapproachable; whom no man hath seen, nor can see" (1 Timothy 6:16) and we are moreover told how,
"Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him" (1 Corinthians 2:9).
In the Old Testament, the experience of God was actively sought by a wandering school of prophets who induced, or passively fell into, what the Hebrew refers to as an "
ecstasy" or trance-like state of mind:
Thereupon the spirit of God gripped him, and he spoke in ecstasy among them. When all who knew him previously saw him speaking in ecstasy together with the prophets, the people said to one another, “What’s happened to the son of Kish? Is Saul too among the prophets?" (1 Samuel 10:9-13)
Back in the New Testament, St. Paul revealed that he was the recipient of a religious ecstasy in which he lost his ordinary conscious state and could not tell if he had, or did not have, a body:
"
I know a man in Christ [Paul himself] who fourteen years ago was caught away to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— was caught away to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell." (
2 Corinthians 12:2–4)
The emphasis upon the "inexpressibility" of the experience in human language is classical, staple evidence of a mystical state.
See this article from the
Holman Bible Dictionary:
Ecstasy (in the Bible) - Dictionary definition of Ecstasy (in the Bible) | Encyclopedia.com: FREE online dictionary
Etymologically and literally the word ecstasy (from the Gr. ἔκστασις) indicates a displacement; in the sense here intended it means a psychic displacement and designates a state in which some normal functions are suspended and in which the consciousness is absorbed in emotional or mystic experience.
The noun ἔκστασις is derived from the verb ἐξίστημι, to displace, drive one out of one's senses, lose one's senses. Both the verb and the noun occur in both the Septuagint translation of the OT and in the NT...
It would seem that in many of the OT examples the trancelike state is induced, at least partially, through natural means, such as the rhythm of liturgical dancing and singing. Thus, the group of prophets that Saul met coming down from a high place (where worship was offered in those early days) and in whose company he fell into a trance were carrying several kinds of musical instruments (1 Sm 10.5); it is said quite explicitly that Elisae (Elisha) employed a minstrel to bring on a prophetic trance (2 Kgs 3.15). False prophets are accused of using intoxicants to induce ecstasy (Is 28.7; see also Mi 2.11)...
In the NT, Jesus is depicted as experiencing a kind of ecstasy at key moments such as his baptism (Mk1.9–11) and his transfiguration (Mk 9.2–8). Ecstatic visions or trances befall Zechariah (Lk 1.67–69), Stephen (Acts 7.55), Peter (Acts 10.10; 11.5), and John (Rev1.10). At Pentecost the gathered disciples are dramatically possessed by the Holy Spirit (Acts 2.2–4).
The most important NT ecstatic figure, however, is Paul. Luke clearly presents Paul's conversion and other key events in his life as ecstatic (Acts 9.3–19; 16.9–10; 18.9–10;22.17–21; 26.12–19). Most importantly, Paul's description in 2 Cor 12.1–4 of a man "caught up to the third heaven" where he "heard things that cannot be told" almost certainly refers to himself.
In the latter text and elsewhere, Paul employs imagery and language strongly reminiscent of the depiction of "heavenly journeys" in the Jewish mysticism and apocalypticism of his time. This suggests that he may not have been innocent of training in practices that encouraged ecstasy
So to answer the first part of your question:
no, it does not appear that God has ever been experienced during ordinary consciousness by means of sense-awareness or perception.
An altered state of consciousness has been the norm since the first shamans in the Paleolithic, who used red ochre to paint mystical visions they had received while allegedly "
out-of-body" in the spirit world or domain of the ancestors and the Bible attests to this.
Basically, we are talking about a mystical state of consciousness here.
Jesus contended that one of the most important pre-conditions for gaining the kingdom of God is the honing of a pure, childlike state of mind (
Matt 18:3; Mark 10:15; Luke 18:17; John 1:12; 3:3; Thomas 22). Jesus belabors the point further by stating: "
Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it." So we have a very affirmative statement to the effect that if a person doesn't "
receive the kingdom of God" as a "
little child" then it will be impossible for the individual to attain it, no matter how much they might aspire.
According to the New Testament, the kingdom of God is a "
secret hidden wisdom" (
1 Corinthians 2:7) or understanding found within people who are living in a state of grace: described as a "
treasure" that "
surpasses" human knowledge, sense-perceptions and sense-impressions because it is the highest experience of God that believers in Christ are called to experience in this life, in which we still "
see through a glass darkly" (
1 Corinthians 13:12), as a foretaste of our full beatitude in heaven, where we will "
enjoy the same perfect happiness wherewith God is happy, seeing Him in the way which He sees Himself" (
St. Thomas Aquinas,
Summa Contra Gentes) with perfect clarity.
For this, one must be single-minded and clear focused in their heart, not divided and blurred/distorted by sinful passions/cravings (to use Jesus' words, "
choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life" (
Luke 8:14) and "
having hearts weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life" (
Luke 21:34)), which St. Paul refers to as having "
the eyes of your heart enlightened" (
Ephesians 1:18).
This can only be achieved by people who become like infants in their mindset and attitudes to life, since in Jesus' own words God has "
hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and revealed them to infants" (
Luke 10:21). It means that we must be born again through a transformative encounter with God in which we "
crucify the flesh with its passions and desires” (
Galatians 5.24) such that "
it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (
Galatians 2:20) because "
we have [attained] the mind of Christ" (
1 Corinthians 2:16).
This should (in accordance with Jesus' parable of the hidden treasure) make the person completely re-asses what they used to believe was important in life, such that they'd be willing to "
sell everything they have" if necessary and relinquish all their attachments just to attain this treasure.
Ultimately, one discovers through this a "
peace" beyond all understanding in which the individual is "
filled with all the fullness of God" (
Ephesians 3:14-21) described later on by the early desert fathers through the use of the words
apatheia (state of imperturbable calm) and
theosis (deification/union with God). The person who dies in this state of perfect union with God, attains heaven immediately, without needing to go through purgatory according to Catholic doctrine.
Here is how a later Catholic mystic Blessed Henry Suso described it:
"...Essential reward, however, consists in the contemplative union of the soul with the naked Godhead, because it never rests until it is led beyond all its powers and capacities and is directed into the natural substance of the Persons and into the simple nakedness of Being. Face to face with this it then finds fulfilment and eternal happiness. The more the soul freely goes out of itself in detachment, the freer is its ascent; and the freer its ascent, the farther it enters into the wild wasteland and the deep abyss of the pathless Godhead into which it plummets, where it is swept along, and to which it is so united that it cannot want otherwise than what God wants. And this is the same Being God is: They become blessed by grace as He is blessed by nature..."
- Blessed Henry Suso (1300 – 1366), The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom