Experiencing God
By Brent Parisen

My experience started in 1970, when a friend told me how she and her friend had personal experiences with Jesus. They were delivered from an addiction and subsequently converted to Christianity. Then she asked me if I was saved. I replied that I didn’t even know if Jesus was real, having grown up in an agnostic household that did not attend church.

Several nights later, out of a heartfelt desire to know the truth about Jesus, I asked if he existed, feeling that if God is omniscient and all powerful, He could easily hear me and answer in a way that I would know beyond all doubt it was not my imagination. I felt that my asking needed to be totally heartfelt, wanting to sincerely know the absolute truth of the matter. Several nights later, I dreamt of Jesus with my head on His shoulder, feeling love, which was so strong that it woke me up with tears. Then, thinking about it, focusing on Jesus, the love grew stronger and stronger to the point where all I wanted to do was be with Him, and absolutely nothing else mattered. As I continued focusing on Him the love continued to grow, to be like fire, becoming more unbearable due to the intensity.

I had the impression that I was experiencing only one photon of the sun as His expression of love, which was becoming unbearable and really just the beginning. In retrospect, this makes perfect sense, since I’m finite and He’s infinite with infinite love, and it’s just not possible for the “finite” to manage the infinite in our limited form. By at the time, I felt like my nerves could handle no more, so I stopped focusing on Him and the experience stopped. My impression was that it’s impossible to carry on life in this three-dimensional world while fully sensing Him, since the experience is all consuming.

After that experience, hearing the right kind of music or devotional material would put me in a receptive state to sense Him, and I would break down in complete absorption. If I’m out in public and start to think about Him, making a good connection, I get the same heartfelt love and have to shut it off so as not to make a scene in front of other people.

Around 2001, I had a strong impression that I was now to focus on the Father. So I did and did not feel any difference in the energy; they were absolutely identical. This made me wonder if I was really focusing on the Father since there was no difference. My next thought was “what about the Holy Spirit?” I thought it would probably be the same, but I did change my attention, and to my surprise I felt a strong feminine, very demure presence. So then I returned to the Father and had a number of strong impressions:

• We need the veil to function on earth; otherwise, it’s impossible to carry out our purposes due to the all-consuming distractions, and our bodies cannot handle the intensity of the influence. There would be no desire to live.
• The intensity of love (from Him, and to Him) is like fire that is agony and ecstasy. I’ve recently read that souls in purgatory suffer due to a longing, fire of love for God that burns out their sins so they can enter Heaven.
• What I find interesting whenever I read that “God loves us” is that it is a vast under-statement, it doesn’t even begin to describe the amount of His love, which is infinite, way beyond our comprehension. As I’ve indicated, full experience of Him would burn us out.
• There is such a strong sense of life from Him that when I moved away in consciousness, there was utter emptiness, no life, absolutely no desire to live, it was truly horrible.
• Since God is everywhere, it’s not physically possible to move away from Him, only in consciousness.
• When I focused on His presence, He was truly everywhere and so strong—stronger than the physical world we live in—I wondered if the physical world is real. Truly ironic that in reality He is more real than the physical world. I had the impression that He doesn’t want to impose Himself in our lives, so he remains incognito.
• I felt that He was truly understandable, straightforward, and unchangeable; whereas mankind is a veritable hodgepodge, Gordian knot, mass of contradictions. It seemed like there is no mystery in God, only in man.
• Going to Heaven is not enough, only union with the God is enough.
• Looking at Him, there is such beauty that all I wanted to do is praise Him; I could not help it, it was involuntary.
• God has and continues to create unimaginable universes, physical and non-physical, in multi-dimensions; however, He values heart-to-heart communion with us more than anything else.

Looking back, I can see that I have to first ask Him before I can receive an answer. That way He knows I am truly ready to receive and make use of an answer, and He doesn’t want to impose on me.

I certainly appreciate the Cayce material stressing the importance of seeking God in everything, including meditation. As said, seek and ye shall find. So, the initiative is on our part, we must first seek Him. I remember Cayce saying to settle for nothing less than walking and talking with God.

Brent Parisen graduated with a BSEE degree from the University of Michigan in 1969. After college he worked at Hughes Aircraft in California, where he had his spiritual awakening while living near the beach. Later, he worked at Nortel, until his eventual retirement in 2000. He and his then-wife Barbara were active in study groups, and he has been an A.R.E. member for several years.