Descriptions of union with God

[Vouthon]

What are your favourite descriptions of states whereby the individual personality experiences a union with the Godhead?

Please tell and then explain why.

Any sayings, quotations and passages from the writings of a mystic, of whatever faith, are welcome. I should add that if that mystic happens to be yourself, then please go ahead and give a personal experience of unio mystica!

For me, it has to be the Roman Catholic mystic Blessed Jan Van Ruusbroec.

From his spiritual guidebook, "The Sparkling Stone". In this work he gives this description of an unio mystica experience:

"...When love has carried us above all things, into the Divine Dark, we receive in peace the Incomprehensible Light, enfolding us and penetrating us. What is this Light, if it be not a contemplation of the Infinite, and an intuition of Eternity? We behold that which we are, and we are that which we behold; because our being, without losing anything of its own personality, is united with the Divine Truth. Therefore in this simple gazing we are one life and one spirit with God. And this I call the seeing life...Our work is the love of God. Our satisfaction lies in submission to the Divine Embrace...God in the depths of us receives God who comes to us: it is God contemplating God...My words are strange, but those who love will understand..."

- Blessed Jan Van Ruusbroec (1293 – 1381), Flemish mystic & Catholic priest

My reasons for choosing this particular description are because:


1) It emphasises the paramount nature of union with God as an embrace of love at the highest level. This is no mere impersonal fusion with a mysterious energy or force of nature but a transformative encounter with the Supreme Personal Creator God.


2) The experience is not limited to a mere interaction between two separate beings, as with two human lovers. The impersonal language of darkness and light is used. This hints at something beyond being, beyond personhood, while not excluding it either. Consider the apparent paradox: a divine dark where an incomprehensible light enfolds us. "Dark" signifies something beyond reason, dark according to our intellect, while light signifies an intuitive knowing beyond reason. And yet the light enfolds and penetrates us. Can you imagine being embraced and at peace within a light beyond all understanding? It is remarkably intimate for such impersonal language.


3) Recognising that mystical union blinds the eyes of our reason and cannot be understood rationally, with the understanding of the mind, note how Ruusbroec describes it as an intuition of eternity. It is an intuitive experience, a unknown knowing coming from deep within us, not from logic or thought.


4) Now we come to the climax of this experience. At once so personal and intimate, a union of love beyond the reach of the mind, now it is described in terms familiar to Advaita (Non-Dualism) in Indian philosophy. In the Upanishads this is encapsulated in the memorable saying Tat Tvam Asi (Thou art That). Ruusbroec is saying the same here. In the unitive state, the person attains to a union of indistinction with God in which he or she can discern no difference between themselves and the Absolute Spirit. We are what we are looking at; God is us and we are God, like staring out our own reflection in the water.

5) Ruusbroec does not end here in a state of undifferentiated monistic identity with God but rather explains that union does not destroy our distinct personality. I and Thou always remains on some level, a union of love, while being transcended on another by a feeling of utter absorption into the "Divine Truth".

6) Finally Ruusbroec tells us that to gaze with our essence into our superessence in God and experience oneness with Him, is a seeing life. It is to be awakened to a new life in the spirit. From these heights we must come back down to earth and go out with a common loving-kindness towards all creatures.

And so that's me :angel2:

Your turn!

 

[YmirGF]

I like Jan Van Ruusbroec's take on this very much. His comments are very reflective of my own inner experiences when confronted with this aspect of reality.

It certainly brings back memories, I'll say that.

Vouthon, would you be insulted if I used his comments as a springboard to my own experiences? He describes things so perfectly...

 

[Vouthon]

Vouthon, would you be insulted if I used his comments as a springboard to my own experiences? He describes things so perfectly...

Of course not!

I would be honoured Go ahead, I look forward to reading your own experience and pondering it deeply in light of Blessed Ruusbroec's.

 

[YmirGF]

1) It emphasises the paramount nature of union with God as an embrace of love at the highest level. This is no mere impersonal fusion with a mysterious energy or force of nature but a transformative encounter with the Supreme Personal Creator God.

That is precisely how it went with me. I first encountered the blinding white light experience, that was more about the nature of the self than it was about god, per se. It was a set of fresh new eyes, in some respects that allowed me to see something beyond my wildest dreams. In my case, which I glibly refer to as my "appointment with Vishnu", that vision was precipitated by this expanded focal point. I was intimately aware of the "fact" that I could not view this image of god without first being "illuminated" - and I mean that quite literally - not figuratively.

2) The experience is not limited to a mere interaction between two separate beings, as with two human lovers. The impersonal language of darkness and light is used. This hints at something beyond being, beyond personhood, while not excluding it either. Consider the apparent paradox: a divine dark where an incomprehensible light enfolds us. "Dark" signifies something beyond reason, dark according to our intellect, while light signifies an intuitive knowing beyond reason. And yet the light enfolds and penetrates us. Can you imagine being embraced and at peace within a light beyond all understanding? It is remarkably intimate for such impersonal language.

As our fellow RF member Windwalker would say, this was a non-dual experience and yet to describe said experience one must, necessarily, use dualist terms in order to convey the experience to another mortal self in time. From the first person perspective, in Oneness, one encounters another, far more advanced, who is also in Oneness. (To some this will sound like an utterly ridiculous thing to say as it seemingly breaks the very idea of Oneness by introducing an "other". It's not quite that simple however.)

For example, though I saw myself as a being of light, rather than the skinny young man seated in the Lotus position on his bed, what I beheld made my internal light seem pale - to insignificant - in contrast. There is indeed an intuitive grasp that is in play that is very hard to render into physical terms which emerges from a rapid expansion of consciousness. The most memorable aspect of this experience was the ecstatic quality that accompanied the expansion of awareness. The loving embrace is practically impossible to describe in its fullness. One has very much the feeling that they have never been separated from this incredibly pleasant sensation. In the basest of terms, it's something like the "chills" one gets at a huge public spectacle where one gets "shivers up and down the spine"... only a million times more so... In the oddest way one realizes that there is nothing you can do or say that would make this being angry with you - if indeed it is possible for it to get angry. I have my doubts.

3) Recognising that mystical union blinds the eyes of our reason and cannot be understood rationally, with the understanding of the mind, note how Ruusbroec describes it as an intuition of eternity. It is an intuitive experience, a unknown knowing coming from deep within us, not from logic or thought.

Indeed it wells up in ones being in a way that words do not express. As it occurs, it seems only natural, so much so, that one really doesn't give it much thought. In a way similar to the meeting of two lovers who have been long apart. They do not think, "Oh... I'll just run up and give this person a hug." The action is instinctive and reflexive. If it didn't seem so perfectly natural one might assume it was miraculous. Again, I use the term "intuitive grasp" which is also similar in intent to Robert Heinlein's word "grok". In many ways, it is just a feature of expanded awareness.

4) Now we come to the climax of this experience. At once so personal and intimate, a union of love beyond the reach of the mind, now it is described in terms familiar to Advaita (Non-Dualism) in Indian philosophy. In the Upanishads this is encapsulated in the memorable saying Tat Tvam Asi (Thou art That). Ruusbroec is saying the same here. In the unitive state, the person attains to a union of indistinction with God in which he or she can discern no difference between themselves and the Absolute Spirit. We are what we are looking at; God is us and we are God, like staring out our own reflection in the water.

My own experience came to a head, as it were, looking into the massive, glistening eyes of Vishnu. I saw my own reflection in those eyes and knew he saw the same. Again, the ecstatic, tangible, electrifying sensation of this was deeply moving on many levels. Then my candle fell over and began burning the dresser it fell against. (I kid you not.) Instantly, I was back in my physical body, doused the flame, looked at the burn mark and then went back into the experience. He was looking at me with the most bemused look on his face. It was priceless. There I hovered for almost 8 hours and eventually faded into unconsciousness, but was awakened by my legs screaming. I had been locked in the Lotus position the whole time. Once unlocked, I lay down on my bed and giggled like a school girl for some time, then drifted off into sleep.

5) Ruusbroec does not end here in a state of undifferentiated monistic identity with God but rather explains that union does not destroy our distinct personality. I and Thou always remains on some level, a union of love, while being transcended on another by a feeling of utter absorption into the "Divine Truth".

I cannot possibly agree more. One way I describe this is how I continued to discover that there was so much behind the "I". My own "theory" of personality has mushroomed over time, eclipsing even this wonderful perception of god. Part of the reason for this was that I felt uncomfortable with proclaiming godhood, per se and settled on the much more innocent sounding, Creaturehood. With Creaturehood, I could conveniently leave aside niggly problems that are perhaps best avoided.

6) Finally Ruusbroec tells us that to gaze with our essence into our superessence in God and experience oneness with Him, is a seeing life. It is to be awakened to a new life in the spirit. From these heights we must come back down to earth and go out with a common loving-kindness towards all creatures.

Well, it doesn't make life any easier, on one level, but the assurance it provides is remarkable. There is also an almost absence of unnatural guilt as one simply accepts natural grace as the natural state of being. In the East, people say that We are all potentially divine. I have taken liberties with that and say, We are all essentially divine - even with all our warts...

And so that's me :angel2:

Thanks for the opportunity to share. What might frost your socks though is that I no longer include god in my apprehension of reality. It's almost the last set of glasses that need to be removed before clarity permanently dawns. Though - I could be wrong. I certainly have been wrong many times before.

 

[Vouthon]

Thanks for the opportunity to share. What might frost your socks though is that I no longer include god in my apprehension of reality. It's almost the last set of glasses that need to be removed before clarity permanently dawns. Though - I could be wrong. I certainly have been wrong many times before.

Dear YmirGF :angel2:

Wow! That is all I can say in reply to that. What a fantastic post. There is so much for me to take in. I would like to comment on a few parts, however my brain is too tired tonight, so I'll do so tomorrow.

I am not at all troubled by the fact that God no longer figures in your understanding of reality. In fact, in a sense - while I am obviously a theist - God is the last "idol" to be broken, the last veil to be parted or at least God as most imagine Him.

Meister Eckhart, probably the greatest metaphysician of the spirit in my tradition, opined:

"...I pray God to make me free of God [or "rid me of God"], for unconditioned Being is above God and all distinctions...When the soul enters the light that is pure, she falls so far from her own created somethingness into her nothingness that in this nothingness she can no longer return to that created somethingness by her own power..."

- Meister Eckhart (1260-1327), German Catholic mystic & Dominican priest

If I may quote another mystic from my tradition:

"...God never did exist
Nor ever will, yet aye
He was ere worlds began, and
When they're gone he'll stay.

God is a pure Nothing,
He stands not in time or place
And cannot be touched
God is an utter Nothingness,
Beyond the touch of Time and Place:
The more you grasp after Him,
The more he flees your embrace

The vengeful God
of wrath and punishment
is a mere fairytale.
It simply is the Me
that makes me fail.

God stands far above the anger,
rage and indignation
ascribed to Him by primitive imagination

Where is my dwelling place? Where I can never stand.
Where is my final goal, toward which I should ascend?
It is beyond all place. What should my quest then be?
I must, transcending God, into the desert flee...."

- Angelus Silesius (1624 – 1677), German Catholic mystic

The Catholic mystics teach that we must eventually, "Go beyond God" or rather the idea of a God we can think of and reach that stage where we enter into "the naked Desert of the Godhead"....the very Ground of our Soul where God's Eye and our Eye are one sight, one love, one heart...." (to quote Meister Eckhart).

If you have gone beyond "God" into the hidden darkness of the spiritual "desert" where all form is lost, then I can fully understand why you no longer identify that intuitive Infinite "it" with "God" as understood by most people ie

"...In order to attain perfect union, we must free ourselves of God...The common belief about God, that He is a great Taskmaster, whose function is to reward or punish, is cast out by perfect love; and in this sense the spiritual man does divest himself of God as conceived of by most people. The intellectual where is the essential unnameable nothingness. So we must call it, because we can discover no mode of being, under which to conceive it...A man may in this life reach the point at which he understands himself to be one with that which is the nothing of all the things that one can conceive, imagine or express in words. By common agreement men call this Nothing "God" and it is in itself a most essential Something. And here a person knows himself to be one with this Nothing, and this Nothing knows itself without the activity of knowing. But this is mysteriously hidden further within..."

- Blessed Henry Suso (c. 1296-1366), German Catholic mystic & Dominican priest

So I do think that the mystics in my religious tradition would understand what you mean.

 

[Quintessence]

Oh, this is easy.

Sex.

And writing it out spoils it.

(Bit of trivia: the gods "raping" mortals in Greek mythos was usually symbolic of being seized and enraptured by mystical experiences with the gods, not literal rape.)

 

[Vinayaka]

Merging with Siva, The Self God

 

[Iti oj]

I feel closest to god when i feel closest to man

 

[Sunstone]

I feel closest to god when i feel closest to man

By "the man", do you mean the police?

 

[Open_Minded]

The Catholic mystics teach that we must eventually, "Go beyond God" or rather the idea of a God we can think of and reach that stage where we enter into "the naked Desert of the Godhead"....the very Ground of our Soul where God's Eye and our Eye are one sight, one love, one heart...." (to quote Meister Eckhart).

If you have gone beyond "God" into the hidden darkness of the spiritual "desert" where all form is lost, then I can fully understand why not longer identify that intuitive Infinite "it" with "God" as understood by most people ie

So I do think that the mystics in my religious tradition would understand what you mean.

Vouthon - it is fantastic to run into another Christian Mystic. Like you - I fully understand one going beyond "God".

And the paradox is that God understands it as well

I don't describe my experiences too often. Sometimes I think applying words to the experience diminishes it. Don't get me wrong - there is value in the use of language. We learn from each other through language and discussion. And most mystics I know understand the limitations of words and symbols.

I will say this - the most intense experience I ever had was filled with paradoxes of:

God - not God
Emptiness - Fullness

It was the classic "Is - not Is" And to experience all those paradoxes within the same reality was overwhelming and mundane all at the same time. The paradox of God - not God still remains with me somewhat, although it has diminished over time - there is a lasting remnant. When I calm myself and settle the remnant rises up into clearer "view".

 

[Vouthon]

Dear Open :bow:

Vouthon - it is fantastic to run into another Christian Mystic. Like you - I fully understand one going beyond "God".

As it is with you my friend! May I ask, what mystics are you most familiar with yourself? Do you have any luminaries amongst the family of mystics that you identify with most?

And the paradox is that God understands it as well

I don't describe my experiences too often. Sometimes I think applying words to the experience diminishes it. Don't get me wrong - there is value in the use of language. We learn from each other through language and discussion. And most mystics I know understand the limitations of words and symbols.

Yes, there is definitely a limit to what one's expression can convey. There are states one will never understand alone with the rational human intellect however one can experience it as much as is possible in this life through the gift of infused contemplation.

"...You and I do not meet on one branch or in one place. You make your way along one path and I along another. Your questions arise from human thinking, and I respond from a knowledge that is far beyond all human comprehension. You must give up human understanding if you want to reach the goal, because the truth is known by not knowing...This is the highest goal and the 'where' beyond boundaries. In this the spirituality of all spirits ends. Here to lose oneself forever is eternal happiness...Here in this region beyond thought the human spirit actively soars...In this wild mountain region of the 'where' beyond God there is an abyss full of play and feeling for all pure spirits...It is hidden for everything that is not God, except for those with whom he wants to share Himself...In a detached person nothing merely temporal is born in possesiveness. His eyes are opened. He becomes fully aware and, receiving his blessed existence and life, is one with Him; for all things are here one in the One...No one can explain this to another just with words. One knows it by experiencing it..."

- Blessed Henry Suso (c. 1296-1366), German Catholic mystic & Dominican priest

"...Wouldst thou know my meaning?
Lie down in the Fire
See and taste the Flowing
Godhead through thy being;
Feel the Holy Spirit
Moving and compelling
Thee within the Flowing
Fire and Light of God..."

- Saint Mechthild of Magdeburg (c. 1207 – c.1294), German Catholic mystic

 

[methylatedghosts]

That is precisely how it went with me. I first encountered the blinding white light experience, that was more about the nature of the self than it was about god, per se. It was a set of fresh new eyes, in some respects that allowed me to see something beyond my wildest dreams. In my case, which I glibly refer to as my "appointment with Vishnu", that vision was precipitated by this expanded focal point. I was intimately aware of the "fact" that I could not view this image of god without first being "illuminated" - and I mean that quite literally - not figuratively.

As our fellow RF member Windwalker would say, this was a non-dual experience and yet to describe said experience one must, necessarily, use dualist terms in order to convey the experience to another mortal self in time. From the first person perspective, in Oneness, one encounters another, far more advanced, who is also in Oneness. (To some this will sound like an utterly ridiculous thing to say as it seemingly breaks the very idea of Oneness by introducing an "other". It's not quite that simple however.)

For example, though I saw myself as a being of light, rather than the skinny young man seated in the Lotus position on his bed, what I beheld made my internal light seem pale - to insignificant - in contrast. There is indeed an intuitive grasp that is in play that is very hard to render into physical terms which emerges from a rapid expansion of consciousness. The most memorable aspect of this experience was the ecstatic quality that accompanied the expansion of awareness. The loving embrace is practically impossible to describe in its fullness. One has very much the feeling that they have never been separated from this incredibly pleasant sensation. In the basest of terms, it's something like the "chills" one gets at a huge public spectacle where one gets "shivers up and down the spine"... only a million times more so... In the oddest way one realizes that there is nothing you can do or say that would make this being angry with you - if indeed it is possible for it to get angry. I have my doubts.

Indeed it wells up in ones being in a way that words do not express. As it occurs, it seems only natural, so much so, that one really doesn't give it much thought. In a way similar to the meeting of two lovers who have been long apart. They do not think, "Oh... I'll just run up and give this person a hug." The action is instinctive and reflexive. If it didn't seem so perfectly natural one might assume it was miraculous. Again, I use the term "intuitive grasp" which is also similar in intent to Robert Heinlein's word "grok". In many ways, it is just a feature of expanded awareness. [/SIZE][/FONT]

My own experience came to a head, as it were, looking into the massive, glistening eyes of Vishnu. I saw my own reflection in those eyes and knew he saw the same. Again, the ecstatic, tangible, electrifying sensation of this was deeply moving on many levels. [/SIZE][/SIZE][/FONT][/SIZE]Then my candle fell over and began burning the dresser it fell against. (I kid you not.) Instantly, I was back in my physical body, doused the flame, looked at the burn mark and then went back into the experience. He was looking at me with the most bemused look on his face. It was priceless. There I hovered for almost 8 hours and eventually faded into unconsciousness, but was awakened by my legs screaming. I had been locked in the Lotus position the whole time. Once unlocked, I lay down on my bed and giggled like a school girl for some time, then drifted off into sleep.

I cannot possibly agree more. One way I describe this is how I continued to discover that there was so much behind the "I". My own "theory" of personality has mushroomed over time, eclipsing even this wonderful perception of god. Part of the reason for this was that I felt uncomfortable with proclaiming godhood, per se and settled on the much more innocent sounding, Creaturehood. With Creaturehood, I could conveniently leave aside niggly problems that are perhaps best avoided.

[/B]Well, it doesn't make life any easier, on one level, but the assurance it provides is remarkable. There is also an almost absence of unnatural guilt as one simply accepts natural grace as the natural state of being. In the East, people say that We are all potentially divine. I have taken liberties with that and say, We are all essentially divine - even with all our warts...


Thanks for the opportunity to share. What might frost your socks though is that I no longer include god in my apprehension of reality. It's almost the last set of glasses that need to be removed before clarity permanently dawns. Though - I could be wrong. I certainly have been wrong many times before.

Thank you.

I have seen (had to pause, delete and rewrite"seen" because "Seth" mysteriously appeared from the keyboard output...), heard and read an unusually large number of messages that all seem to point me in the same direction, though I barely seem to be doing anything to invite them, other than watching curiously. I'm finding connections between things - little ones, like a sentence in a conversation drifting to my ears, or reading a phrase somewhere. It's kind of a game. To catch them as they flit around the edge of your vision. For a while, I was looking for them intently, that something would suddenly tell me what I should be doing. A while after that, I gave up that. Now I feel like they're coming on faster. I feel like the trick is not to be looking, while at the same time observing.

Woops, got a little sidetracked there. What I'm trying to say, is that your post is the latest of those messages, only this one's considerably less flitty.

 

[AlisonRose222]

The New Message from God, which I follow, has many things to say about relationship with God. Primarily God is described as the sum of all relationships. Here are a few:

"God is so close to you, and yet so vast and magnificent and incomprehensible. Your connection to God is at the very center of your being, but you live your life at the surface of the mind, held there by your fascination and fear of the world."

"God is the experience of total relationship."

“God has a Mind, a Will and a Purpose. In its totality, this is incomprehensible to you now, for you cannot stand apart from this Mind, this Will and this Purpose and be able to discern their meaning. You can only join with them, and the extent to which you can join with them will be the extent to which you will experience their reality, their value and their immediate necessity in your life.”

 

[NobodyYouKnow]

The first thing I became aware of was a deep love, unlike that I have ever felt/known before with another human. Totally consuming every atom of my being.

I felt such a deep connection and interconnection with everything, I was reduced to a crying, babbling mess in full prostration on the floor...wallowing in a pool of my own tears.

The next thing, nothing else mattered! Everything that was going on with me and in my life just didn't matter anymore....it all just paled by comparison, then totally faded into insignificance.

Then, I became unwavering and resolute in my experience...in that love. People would abuse me and I wouldn't feel hurt anymore....how could I when I felt like this?

It's just so beautiful...so totally amazing!

 

[DreadFish]

All the experiences I have read about all point to about the same thing I experienced too.

I was laying in bed doing the usual meditating to sleep thing and was suddenly seized by a terrifying feeling that I was about to "lose myself" (something which I had been afraid of at the time due to reading about "enlightenment" and what it entailed). I decided this was it, no point in holding on anymore, so I let go and immediately was cascaded by the greatest feeling of love I had ever felt; complete peace and relief. The cascade of love was accompanied by being pulled up into an indescribable golden-like light. I had lost my idea of who I was but, still felt a subjective feeling compared to the object which I experienced as a full entity which I was eminently connected to, no more separation, anywhere, period. At the time, I considered it God. Then, I saw everything I thought about everything dissolve into that aforementioned "emptiness/fullness" which was in every way, shape and form, indescribable. It was the most relieving thing to realize that my whole "world" was basically imagined; big things like people and the world to little things like a lamp, all just ideas that didnt exist in reality.

I dont know what happened next, I guess I just went into unconsciousness because I dont remember anything else until I woke up the next morning.

 

[Vouthon]

All the experiences I have read about all point to about the same thing I experienced too.

I was laying in bed doing the usual meditating to sleep thing and was suddenly seized by a terrifying feeling that I was about to "lose myself" (something which I had been afraid of at the time due to reading about "enlightenment" and what it entailed). I decided this was it, no point in holding on anymore, so I let go and immediately was cascaded by the greatest feeling of love I had ever felt; complete peace and relief. The cascade of love was accompanied by being pulled up into an indescribable golden-like light. I had lost my idea of who I was but, still felt a subjective feeling compared to the object which I experienced as a full entity which I was eminently connected to, no more separation, anywhere, period. At the time, I considered it God. Then, I saw everything I thought about everything dissolve into that aforementioned "emptiness/fullness" which was in every way, shape and form, indescribable. It was the most relieving thing to realize that my whole "world" was basically imagined; big things like people and the world to little things like a lamp, all just ideas that didnt exist in reality.

I dont know what happened next, I guess I just went into unconsciousness because I dont remember anything else until I woke up the next morning.

Dear Deadfish

I am surprised by how similar your experience was too one that I had years ago. Like you it was a case of me "praying" and lying down on my bed in the dark in such a calm, peaceful state of mind. What occurred next left a deep impression on me. Here is how I described it on another forum over a year ago:

I had experienced a very intense prayer session and went to have a lie down, because it was late at night, with that feeling of breathlessness still in my chest. I remember feeling initially so light, free and at peace. A warmth had come through my body. I had this tingling feeling throughout my body. And this time, I had the strange sensation of being "pulled". Almost as if into a whirlpool. It is difficult to explain but I had the definite feeling that I was being pulled. I saw visually - whether in a dream-like state induced by my ecstasy or awake - a kind of whirling vortex that was dragging me (my mind, my soul I don't know) away from my body, into the very heart of something. It reminded me of a tunnel but as indescribably different. It was dark, I think, but there were concentric circles made of very thin threads of different colours - blue, purple, green, gold, red, pink - all around me like a top, and sides and bottom; whirling, whirling and whirling in a cylinder formation. I kept going deeper and deeper, and then I got terribly afraid. It seemed to genuinely be taking control of me. I felt as if I had no power over this movement, deeper and deeper into the whirl. I couldn't go as far as God, the force, the pull or whatever you call it, wanted me to go. I was too afraid that I was going to die, that the experience was so powerful that I would literally be torn away from my body and become utterly destroyed and reduced to nothing.

It was not sleep too me but rather a literal change of location from my bedroom to this tunnel or vortex or whirlpool [the room faded away as if actually breaking up, like a mist and reappeared later on in the same fashion after the experience]...

And so I pulled back. 'I' seemed to return and stop this experience and this interjection ended it. I pleaded in my head, 'No, I can't go any further, please'. I pulled and forced myself to resist. I actually remember saying mentally, 'I can't do this, I can't go any further'. I resisted and pulled and pleaded and was basically in a state of absolute panic and terror. And before I knew it, I felt myself moving backwards, [up the tunnel?] and eventually I was back in my bedroom again.

The similarities are stark to me (apart from the fact that you describe the reality of it far better than me).

I instantly nodded when I read your post. The general outline was familiar to me.

The difference was that, with me back then, I never had the strength to "let go". I was too afraid. I was only 14 and didn't understand what was happening.

 

[Straw Dog]

If I may take liberty with using the term "God" ...

Most mystical experiences are fairly mundane. Whenever I can become completely absorbed in performing an action is where I most often feel engaged with the natural rhythms of the cosmic sea. Applying any skill set to an appropriate challenge helps establish this psychological/mystical flow in which consciousness no longer distinguishes between the subject and total system.

 

[Vouthon]

If I may take liberty with using the term "God" ...

You may indeed Even in my tradition it is an ambiguous "term" ie

"...A man may in this life reach the point at which he understands himself to be one with that which is the nothing of all the things that one can conceive, imagine or express in words. By common agreement men call this Nothing "God" and it is in itself a most essential Something. And here a person knows himself to be one with this Nothing, and this Nothing knows itself without the activity of knowing. But this is mysteriously hidden further within..."

- Blessed Henry Suso (c. 1296-1366), German Catholic mystic & Dominican priest

 

[Straw Dog]

On the more profound end of things, a few of my deeper meditations and contemplations have yielded some interesting experiences and insight. Abiding with non-attachment and impartial observation revealed that living forms are not seperate from each other or the total system. Life is a microcosm brought into harmony by the fundamental forces of nature and composed by molecules, cells, neurons, and other complex dynamic processes into a sophisticated symphony.

 

[Windwalker]

I don't know where to begin to describe what this Union is. What came to mind to offer as far as a description is from my personal journal I write in often following my daily meditation. This one in particular came to mind, though I could offer a thousand other thoughts.

I have sought to control fears, to control anxieties. But I am doing so within myself, of my own energies summoned from my own resources. This is not control through Grace. The still mind is the channel of Grace within us. It is through Grace I control all the body. Fears are calmed, like a masterful mother calms the child by her touch through pure mind. It is Grace who calms the world. In stillness, in absolute control Grace diffuses and dispels all poisons of the mind and soul. It is in finding our Peace within Her that we become master of ourselves.

I sat within a field of snow. White and pure, it surrounded me as I meditated within it. Purity and freshness surrounded me. I filled a healing bowl with the waters of Life and held it before the Divine. I drank of it within myself and its waters poured over me and rose to heaven and rained down in gentle snows upon the world. I was filled with purity of mind and soul. Grace. Purity is the door through which we enter into God, and Grace guides us within to stand before That and enter into its infinite mind and presence. I have no enemies. I am Grace.

I am at Peace. I am grateful, my heart full of thanksgiving and joy. Pure waters, as snow live within me. My mind is clean and effortless in Awareness. I breathe and feel the breath move into and out of my body, connected to the world around me. The world enters me and I into the world in each breath. It is a relationship of life, of radiant energy in every living thing to everything; each breath reaches to and touches each other, in body, in mind, and spirit. We all exist within the body of the divine, we its eyes, its mind, in embrace of Spirit. I am the divine, the divine is me, is all things. There is nothing separated from it as the world slumbers in its body. I am that Life. I am Truth.​

In a word, what describes this Unity, is Truth.