The experience of god. Or what one interprets as
that?
It would be what one interprets as God, or something which is equally as transcendent and absolute which cannot truly be named. People call that God because that word avails itself to describe something so utterly beyond comparison. Not everyone uses that word, but the descriptions of the experience are closely related.
We read about how native americans would do such
as to fast and chant, by themselves on some hilltop.
Spirit quest.
Such practices can assist in opening oneself up to that, but the experience is not a product of that. It can happen spontaneously, without any sort of ritual assists, trainings, practices, etc. In my own first experience, it was before I knew anything about religious beliefs and practices. It literally was like a bolt of lightning in the middle of the day, prior to any religious teachings or practices, such as meditation.
Eventually, guaranteed, they are going to hallucinate.
My own experiences of the Divine Reality (a better word than "God", which carries with it the baggage of a particular anthropomorphic deity form from our cultural mythologies), cannot be equated with an hallucination. The experience of an hallucination is recognized after the fact that you were on some sort of drug-induced trip, seeing fantastical things, having your understanding of your world bent and distorted, which can lead someone to the realization that truth is not what we necessarily assume in our normal everyday thoughts and perceptions about it. While that can be spiritually powerful insights, it's not the same thing as the direct experience of God, or Divine Reality.
The experience of a hallucination is recognized as an hallucination after the fact. The experience of "God" on the other hand is typically described as more real than what we call reality. It is unmistakably recognized as Absolute Reality, Ultimate Truth, Reality laid bare, etc. The effects of that is that one's entire life is shaken to the core and forever no longer the same. Hence why I loved and quoted her saying, "hitting a mirror with a rock shatters the mirror", as that pretty much describes it. A hallucination is a passing experience. The experience of the Divine indelibly leaves its imprint upon you, and is never doubted as to its authenticity. Every other belief I've had about it over the years has been doubted, but never that what I experienced was real and no hallucination.
One does not spend 40 years of their life trying to find their way back to that Source of All That Is, because they had a hallucination in a sweat lodge or taking some LSD. One does not make the central core of their life having another drug trip. That would be too easy. Just drop another hit of whatever you took. While those can be useful aids as part of a spiritual quest in order to assist in one letting go of enough of the distractions of normal life in order to be opened to it, to get themselves to allow it in themselves, they do not produce it. It is rather a natural condition,inside of all of us, like riding a bicycle under your own inner sense of balance, versus the "assists" of training wheels teaching you how to find your own balance.
Or, more mundane, on a stroll across campus
with another girl, a pretty autumn leaf fluttered
down at our feet. She picked it up, and exclaimed-
"Oh, look, God has sent us a Sign! See the three parts?
It represents the Holy Trinity!
"So why does it have these two smaller parts?"
I asked.
She had an explanation for that, the pentarch or
whatever.
Haha! I love it.
Yes, that's just magical thinking. It's trying to see patterns and evidences of some overarching, meta-truth to the mysteries of life through a curious mind. That's sort of a baby step, dabbling in the deeper questions of what is the nature of this Mystery we call life. But it is using the mind to "think" its way through it, using clumsy trying to find signs, envisioning the Divine as a sort of projection of a super-being, like a really, really big "guy in the sky" sort of external thing, or object, or entity.
Those are not the direct experience of the Divine. They are not transcendent experiences. Now, if that some girl who was moments ago was using the wings of her imagination to try to realize the Divine Reality through that, were to abruptly and suddenly have an actual experience of "God", then she would instantly realize that that was an illusion of her mind, as was everything else she ever thought was real or true about herself, others, or the reality of the world she lived in. She would never be the same again, and would never once again need to look for "signs". What would be the point, when you already have tasted Reality, swallowing the entire Ocean in a single gulp? She would be like, "Signs? Don't be ridiculous."
It's a little more complex and nuanced than all that, but it does capture the stark differences. One imagines God or the Divine to be outside of oneself, and then you end up with all these beliefs and practices to move from point A to a supposed point Z. But a better visualization is to realize that point A and Z, and all points in between are all on the same spot we are standing, and you don't move anywhere. It's like a warp drive engine which bends space, and all you do is just step off point A and you are already at point Z. It's never been anywhere other that where you are, and who, and what you, and everything else, already fully is.
Looking for signs, is just a devise of the mind, trying to get you to recognize the Truth you already are. But it seems such a distance, when you believe A is the truth of your reality, and Z a faith glow on the horizon, or just madness if you've concluded it "doesn't exist".
