Returning to the Source: The Way to the Experience of God - Hardcover

Van Dusen, Wilson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0911226362 ISBN 13: 9780911226362

Publisher: Real People Pr, 1996

Synopsis

(From the Introduction) This book revolves around a simple observation. Some people find their way into the joys of mystical or transcendent experiences--the direct experience of God. The elements in human experience that can lead into this direct experience of God are relatively common, and are easily available to the agnostic and atheist as well as the believer. I hope to describe the mystical experience until you begin to understand so many aspects of it that you will be able to recognize it and discover it in your own experience. The experience of God is not rare and difficult to obtain. It is our understanding of it that needs great improvement.

I am a lifelong and natural mystic. I have known the direct experience of God countless times. What is it like to be a mystic in this world? In part, it is sad. Mystics can go through a long period in which they have experiences of God, but they remain unsure. Once after I gave a talk in a church an old woman waited until the crowd of people who came up to me afterward cleared. I saw that she was not long for this world. Acting very circumspectly, she recited a short dream in which a golden sun came to her, and asked if it was God. I first thought of my standard reply, "We need to get into the dream, and to see what is in it." But then I was struck by the total emotional impact of the larger situation. This old woman is dying, and it matters very much to her if she met God even once in this life. I said, "Yes, it was God," and we both broke into tears. But how sad. She had the marks of a very spiritual person, whose life was embedded in God. And yet she asks desperately if once she met Him. To me she represents most of mankind. She is already well on her way, but she does not recognize the signs.

Some people want some thunderbolt out of heaven to knock them down. In my experience such thunderbolts occur, but are rare. Most mystical experience is very direct and simple, like the soft glance of a lover that says it all. U.S. television reflects a culture that craves the big sensation--great explosions and car smash-ups, and death. If you translate this attitude into the mystical realm we would expect God to do it big, and put on a grand show for us. I once approached God in somewhat this attitude, wanting a Big Sign. By direct knowing, without words, I was led to reflect on the scope of the known universe in all its complexity and immensity, and was asked, "Is this not enough sign?" I felt taken aback. If one is not satisfied with the entire created universe as a sign, then nothing much else will do either! To a mystic, the opening of a flower is quite enough sign.

One thing that will surprise some readers is that I concentrate on the smallest signs. They can't get too small to notice. The finest way into the direct experience of God is to learn to recognize the little signs you already have, here and now, in the commonplace. God is in all the little, ever-present signs we are missing. All have known this kind of experience, countless times, and yet it is rarely recognized for what it is.

There is a fairly classical mystical experience which I believe every human being on earth has enjoyed at some time: the beauty of nature. You are in a beautiful setting, perhaps with a sunset. You are relaxed and simply taking in all the natural beauty. The mood is one of patience and a relaxed perception of what is there. You suddenly and unaccountably feel as though you are a part of the immense, living, creative life before you. There is just awesome wonder in which you are immersed and a part of it all. There is peace and harmony, and the experience feels therapeutic, as though balance is restored. You may have little sense of time passing, or how long you were in awe.

There are even small experiences which are like the raptu

About this title

From the Publisher:

(Foreword, by Steve Andreas) Jean Giono's wonderful story "The Man Who Planted Trees" begins with this statement:

"For a human character to reveal truly exceptional qualities, one must have the good fortune to be able to observe its performance over many years. If this performance is devoid of all egoism, if its guiding motive is unparalleled generosity, if it is absolutely certain that there is no thought of recompense and that, in addition, it has left its visible mark upon the earth, then there can be no mistake." I feel fortunate to have known the author of this book for over thirty years. It is quite extraordinary to be in his presence, because he has no "agenda," no criticism, judgment or wanting you to be different in any way. Instead there is an immense respect and curiosity, and an interest in why God has brought this person into his life and what is to be experienced and learned through this meeting. I have always been interested in the larger questions of ultimate meaning, and have sought out a wide variety of psychological/spiritual teachers over the last half-century. Although I have learned much from many, all too often the teachers I found did not live what they taught: the judgmental teacher of openness and acceptance, the grim teacher of joy, the promiscuous teacher of abstinence, the vegetarian who snuck away from the ashram for a pepperoni pizza, and on and on. Often these teachers not only had feet of clay, but brains of butter--sloppy thinking or dishonest argumentation or evasion, and they often had great difficulty dealing with the practical tasks of day-to-day living. In contrast, the author of this book fully lives what he teaches, his thinking is honest and straightforward, and he is immensely capable in the practical world. All of this makes me much more interested in what he has to say about spiritual realms. He has had a sea career and holds a US license as Second Mate, Oceans unlimited, and under the Panamanian flag, Master, Oceans Unlimited. He taught for many years and now voluntarily teaches Coast Guard officers eleven courses. He also wrote the course and trains candidates for a knighthood. He holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and worked for many years with the most serious cases of mental illness. But his life is not all serious. He is a precision target shooter who reloads his own bullets. In his back yard he has a wild bird sanctuary complete with a bird hospital. He zips around town on a motorcycle. One day a week he can be found putting away books in the county library children's room "like a giant in the Kingdom of Lilliput." Many of his friends don't know he has written seven books and knows something of the experience of God. He is now retired in a small town. His wife is a fiber artist and they enjoy all the arts together. In his late years he has begun to set down the side of his life few even knew existed. Because he had profound mystic experiences as a small child, long before learning about religion and doctrine, his approach to it is fresh, experiential, and undoctrinaire, leaving all the mystification out of mysticism. For him, a mystic is simply someone who sees and feels the larger whole, one who makes wonder, awe, and beauty into the central focus of his life. By treasuring and cultivating these experiences, they come to blossom more fully and more frequently, opening the small ego to more universal experience. In many ways this is a practical book, providing both ways of thinking and ways of doing that can lead us toward the experience of enlightenment. But it is also a meditative book, to be read leisurely, a small portion at a time, and repeatedly, allowing meanings to emerge more fully and sink more deeply into our experience. Like a meaningful prayer or a treasured memory, what is presented here is a gentle reminder of what many of us have forgotten, to be returned to as a sanctuary from the hectic and distracting pace of day-to-day living. Each time I have edited a section of this book, I have felt nourished, quieted, lightened, cleansed, and refreshed. Whenever I have put these ideas into practice, my life has become easier and more interesting and enjoyable in a quiet and fundamental way. Whether or not what is presented here is true, in any ultimate sense, or in a life beyond this short journey we are all on, I have found it to be true in my life, now in the present moment. That is truth enough for me.

About the Author:

In the past some great religious figures have had some notable events surrounding their birth. Wilson Van Dusen has minor qualifications. He was conceived on Christmas Day and his birth was attended by a rare full eclipse of the sun in San Francisco, California in 1923. His grandmother was a spiritualist minister, and with a slight grandmotherly bias, found the signs auspicious. But he was born into a totally unreligious family.

At the age of one he had an ecstatic experience of God while lying in a crib, an experience he remembers some seventy years later. He had many mystical experiences in his youth. By adolescence he set about to understand how this happens, so that he could return to it at will. At this time he first connected this experience to the only formal religion he encountered, in radio sermons. Formal religions seemed lost in comparison.

He had just completed high school when World War II started. He served in the U.S. Merchant Marine, ending the war as a Second Mate. Nearly every ship he sailed on had explosive cargoes, and in this delicate state they met three enemy subs and thirty-nine bombing raids. After the war he raced through university getting a B.A. and M.A. in three and one half years and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology in two more years. His middle years were taken up with raising a family and dealing with every form of madness as a clinical psychologist. In his later years he became a real scholar of the mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. He discovered that his grandmother had willed him her Swedenborg collection when he was seven, and his parents "protected him" by throwing it out. Grandmother won in the end.

It is as though his direct experience of God became a hidden occupation. Most of his friends don't know of his knowledge and expertise in this area. He has studied the mystics of various traditions, and considers himself a living representative of this universal tradition. He finds that the more widely one explores in this area the more apparent is a universal consensus on the nature of things, transcending individual religious traditions. One mystical friend remarked that he seems to have a knowledge tree that grows new understandings. He says that whatever he has really wanted to know in this area the Lord has graciously shown him.

We have here an unusual representative of the experience of God. He regards this experience as essentially simple and quite available to everyone, in or out of any religious tradition. It is the ultimate answer to everything. He helps make this wisdom available to others in this book.

He is also the author of The Natural Depth in Man, The Presence of Other Worlds, and The Country of Spirit.

About this edition

• Publisher: Real People Pr
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0911226362
• ISBN 13: 9780911226362
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 280