in hell because he didn’t. For that matter, I have never been comfortable with heaven and hell, much less certain about their residents. The stories of my modern-day mystics were like a crowbar prying open my faith. I had opened a Pandora’s box.
The Cost of Transformation
These spiritual experiences, it seems to me, have the air of high-priced interior decorators on reality television shows: they arrive (unbidden), and immediately begin punching through walls and removing countertops. They haul away most of the furniture, including your favorite red leather chair, and what they deign to leave, they put in the basement. These experiences don’t ask, they simply move in, insisting you’ll love it when they’re done, and then with a brisk clap of the hands, they’re gone, leaving you stunned, panting, and utterly transformed.
I could hear all of that in Susan Garren’s voice.
In the summer of 2004, Susan was thirty-seven years old and living in Asheville, North Carolina. She had started her own real estate appraisal business, which was flourishing, and she had begun dating a handsome young doctor named Vince Gilmer. On July 5, the police arrested her beau for the murder of his father. (He was later convicted of first-degree murder.)
Susan considered herself self-reliant: she managed her business and owned a house. She ran in a sophisticated circle of friends. A nervous breakdown was not in her makeup. But after Gilmer’s arrest, she retreated to her bed, traumatized.
As she lay there, she said, one by one, her senses ceased to operate.
“All of a sudden I realized I wasn’t able to see anymore.Then I couldn’t hear anything. But I could sense . And I heard a voice—well, I didn’t technically hear it. It was some sort of communication that I could understand. And it was just reassuring me that everything was okay. I felt very calm, very safe. The more I relaxed into it, the safer I felt.”
“How would you define this voice or this experience?” I interrupted. “Is it God? Is it the universe? Is there a personality to it? Is it infinite mind?”
“I call it the Source,” she said.“It’s the Source of all that is, and everything that encompasses it. It wasn’t the old man with a beard; it was some very powerful force able to communicate in extrasensory ways. But it was very loving, very comforting. Every time I think about it I begin to tear up. It’s absolutely the most powerful feeling I’ve ever experienced.”
“How did it end?”
“I came out the same way that I went into it. The first thing I could remember is I could hear the birds chirping in my yard. And then I was back in this consciousness, and I lay there for however long, thinking, Holy shit, what just happened? ”
She laughed, and then her tone grew serious. “I’ve changed on a cellular level,” she said. “I literally feel that I’m being rewired. I used to be quite the party girl. I was out all the time. I used to date for sport. And since that happened, I suddenly had no desire to live a superficial lifestyle. It was night and day—this sudden, absolute, quick change. Now a great day for me is playing in the yard, or having a great conversation with my friends at my house, or reading a great book. It completely changed my lifestyle.”
Susan had always thought of herself as a spiritual seeker, interested in alternate beliefs.But she never pursued them much past flipping through a New Age magazine. Since that moment, however, she has been obsessed with quantum physics. “Where I thought about it before, now I’m pretty much consumed with it.”
“Why does quantum physics interest you?” I asked.
“Quantum physics tells me that we’re much more connected than we realize.” I thought of Arjun’s connection with the grass.
“What did your friends think of these changes?”
“Well,” she drawled,“the friends I’ve known for fifteen, twenty years enjoy this deeper aspect. People who knew me only four or
The Cost of Transformation
These spiritual experiences, it seems to me, have the air of high-priced interior decorators on reality television shows: they arrive (unbidden), and immediately begin punching through walls and removing countertops. They haul away most of the furniture, including your favorite red leather chair, and what they deign to leave, they put in the basement. These experiences don’t ask, they simply move in, insisting you’ll love it when they’re done, and then with a brisk clap of the hands, they’re gone, leaving you stunned, panting, and utterly transformed.
I could hear all of that in Susan Garren’s voice.
In the summer of 2004, Susan was thirty-seven years old and living in Asheville, North Carolina. She had started her own real estate appraisal business, which was flourishing, and she had begun dating a handsome young doctor named Vince Gilmer. On July 5, the police arrested her beau for the murder of his father. (He was later convicted of first-degree murder.)
Susan considered herself self-reliant: she managed her business and owned a house. She ran in a sophisticated circle of friends. A nervous breakdown was not in her makeup. But after Gilmer’s arrest, she retreated to her bed, traumatized.
As she lay there, she said, one by one, her senses ceased to operate.
“All of a sudden I realized I wasn’t able to see anymore.Then I couldn’t hear anything. But I could sense . And I heard a voice—well, I didn’t technically hear it. It was some sort of communication that I could understand. And it was just reassuring me that everything was okay. I felt very calm, very safe. The more I relaxed into it, the safer I felt.”
“How would you define this voice or this experience?” I interrupted. “Is it God? Is it the universe? Is there a personality to it? Is it infinite mind?”
“I call it the Source,” she said.“It’s the Source of all that is, and everything that encompasses it. It wasn’t the old man with a beard; it was some very powerful force able to communicate in extrasensory ways. But it was very loving, very comforting. Every time I think about it I begin to tear up. It’s absolutely the most powerful feeling I’ve ever experienced.”
“How did it end?”
“I came out the same way that I went into it. The first thing I could remember is I could hear the birds chirping in my yard. And then I was back in this consciousness, and I lay there for however long, thinking, Holy shit, what just happened? ”
She laughed, and then her tone grew serious. “I’ve changed on a cellular level,” she said. “I literally feel that I’m being rewired. I used to be quite the party girl. I was out all the time. I used to date for sport. And since that happened, I suddenly had no desire to live a superficial lifestyle. It was night and day—this sudden, absolute, quick change. Now a great day for me is playing in the yard, or having a great conversation with my friends at my house, or reading a great book. It completely changed my lifestyle.”
Susan had always thought of herself as a spiritual seeker, interested in alternate beliefs.But she never pursued them much past flipping through a New Age magazine. Since that moment, however, she has been obsessed with quantum physics. “Where I thought about it before, now I’m pretty much consumed with it.”
“Why does quantum physics interest you?” I asked.
“Quantum physics tells me that we’re much more connected than we realize.” I thought of Arjun’s connection with the grass.
“What did your friends think of these changes?”
“Well,” she drawled,“the friends I’ve known for fifteen, twenty years enjoy this deeper aspect. People who knew me only four or
Similar Books
