The point is though at the start of my journey the bible is an incomprehensible meaningless quaint old book as loved by nutters and at my conversion moment a profound work inspired and illuminated by a very real mind and God.
I well remember my conversion to the supposed supreme significance of the Bible. I was eleven. As a good boy I had been previously sent regularly to Methodist sunday school and occasional visits to C of E. The Christian message didn't percolate very deep, though Jesus seemed an admirable guy (still does).
However, I got talking to a school friend who was a Jehovah's Witness, whose family lived in my village. I talked with them all regularly, and learned their explanation of the Bible as an unfolding drama from creation, interspersed with Christ's teaching, death and resurrection, and ending with the last judgment. As this gradually sank in, I did indeed see the Bible as "a profound [indeed, inerrant] work inspired and illuminated by a very real mind and God". The heavens truly opened to me - I seemed to view the whole panorama of human history, and was amazed that I might play some little part in it, and that I was loved. Three years later, I realised that this was a load of shite. The Bible is not inerrant and Jesus was mistaken if he ever believed he was God's Son (let alone God incarnate - of course not a JW belief). Subsequent experience of Christian cultural stuff (esp music) and reading a number of Christian commentators, has never brought me back to any kind of belief in the spiritual claims of Christianity, whether Trinitarian, Arian or anything else.
Still, I seemed to have a strong desire for 'spiritual illumination'. This took me 'eastwards'. One day, whilst I was meditating, and quietly repeating OM to myself, all perception of my surroundings dissolved, and I was pierced through with rays of light, indeed seemed to be just a part of those rays of light. I don't know how long the experience lasted, but when I came to myself in the room, there were tears pouring down my cheeks.
The difficulty with understanding such an experience comes when you think "WTF do I do now - go to an ashram in India?" No doubt the experience gave some direction to my life at the time, but it did increasingly seem to have little to do with my everyday life.
I maintained an interest in things mystical though, and became quite an adept in out-of-the-body experiences. These were very colourful. Visions of swimming freely underwater in pellucid rivers, and seeing mile-high cathedrals formed from coloured lights. One experience I remember vividly occurred during a long period of intense physical pain. I seemed to leave my body, but get stuck in a dreary attic! However, with an effort of will, I burst through the roof and soon was soaring freely over a glorious landscape of mountains and forests.
A very mundane experience of this kind occurred when I was in a toilet on a train. I'd been running to catch the train, got to the toilet, at which point the train started with a jolt, and my upright consciousness became separated from my body, which I saw collapsing over the wash basin. I came to on the floor, as my whole perceptions disintegrated in a kaleidoscope of colours. It was some time before I was "reintegrated".
But - all in the mind, my dear Watson, all in the mind.
This is a fascinating thread, though. You can probably see why I'm very sympathetic towards the views of Horsethorn (great to see him back again, btw) Rhiannon and wiggi - even though I no longer place any spiritual explanation on these phenomena.
