It must be true that God exists. Part 2

It must be true that God exists

Part 2: It’s all about the quality of the experience

Well, if we put to one side for the moment the whole concept of God, as interesting but unproven (despite the assumptions that I made as a teenager) what firm evidence do we have? Well, what we’re able to say with complete certainty is this:-

• There is an experience of transcendence where we “see through” our ordinary perception of reality and appear to break through to a deeper, more profound experience.
• This experience includes immense feelings of peace and joy.
• It includes a sense of being one with the universe and, somehow, making contact with the ultimate – ultimate truth, reality, meaning and purpose.
• This experience has at its core a sense of being completely and utterly loved, and this seems, for the duration of the experience, to give the person “the answers to all their deepest longings”. It resolves all conflicts, doubts, pain and fear and leaves the recipient with the most profound sense that all is well and nothing can ever shake this.
• This latter experience is so at odds with our normal experience of how the world works that it is a truly mind-blowing phenomenon. Nature seems to work on the principle of the ruthless exercise of power to obtain whatever you want in a completely amoral universe. The experience of suffering is ubiquitous and we are well-used to the selfishness, greed, hatred and anger caused by other human beings and in which we sometimes participate. Yet the experience of God – though we are for the time being ruling out consideration of God and so working from the human end of the equation – so the experience of humanity, when we are having this particular religious experience, is an experience of being completely and utterly loved.