Personal Openings to the Golden World

Reynolds Price, a true artist, describes the Golden World experience in his latest book, Letter To A Man in the Fire: Does God Exist and Does He Care? I attach a relevant excerpt in hopes that seekers find their way to this eloquent work. (You may purchase it by clicking on the book title in one of our earlier posts in June, Books We are Reading and Recommend. To see earlier posts, just click the small arrow next to "June" under Blog Archive in the box to the right. Entries are organized by month)

"Those moments, which recurred at unpredictable and widely spaced intervals till some thirteen years ago, still seem to me undeniable manifestations of the Creator's benign, or patiently watchful, interest in particular stretches of my life, though perhaps not all of it. And each of the moments - never lasting for more than seconds but seeming, in retrospect, hours long - has taken the form of sudden and entirely unsought breakings-in upon my consciousness of a demonstration that all of visible and invisible nature (myself included) is a single reality, a single thought from a central mind...

"There've been no shows of light, no gleaming illusory messengers, almost no words; and the music that underlies each moment is silent but felt in every cell like a grander pulse beneath my own. Always simultaneously, I've been assured that this reality is launched on a history that's immensely longer than any life span I can hope to have and that it's designed to end in some form of transformation...

"Still, the experiences were as real as any carwreck. They've proved overwhelming in their unanswerability, and their power has meant that I've literally never had to make the touted 'leap of faith' into sudden belief...

"The scarcity of what I've called personal openings is one of the reasons I've taken them seriously. If they'd come with any frequency, I'd suspect myself of brain damage or unconscious fraud - or a sancity that is patently unavailable to me...

"I'm always shocked to be reminded how many people choose, quite early in their lives, to begin their deaths - and death is by no means always a mere cessation of heart and brain activity. Anyone who's taught college, as I have for four decades, well knows that a number of people choose lifelong mental and spiritual death in late adolescence if not sooner, the curse of surrender to the backwash of time and the all but irreparable friction of trifling or too demanding human interactions..."