by Pierre Pradervand
Many years ago, I was attending in Ouhigouya (Burkina-Faso in the Sahel) the board meeting of the largest grass roots peasant-farmer movement in Africa, of which I was a founding member.
The last day of the meeting I contracted dysentery and as at the time I was following a path of pure spiritual healing (no medicine) I worked on it spiritually. On the plane the next day, I was still working on the issue with my spiritual texts, affirmations, prayers and the like. Next to me was an unaccompanied young boy, and the stewardess caring for him was incredibly loving. At one moment, she spoke to him with such kindness I was suddenly overwhelmed by what I can only describe as a sort of cosmic gratitude which enveloped her and everything.
And suddenly, I was projected into a space which was timeless and beyond material space where I was aware of nothing else but infinite Love. I felt in my very essence that unconditional Love was the only cause, effect, substance, power, being, reality, identity, presence in the universe, that it was literally All-in-all.
The most wonderful thing of the whole experience is that my ego had completely disappeared. I had no sense anymore that anyone called Pierre Pradervand even existed. For an indeterminate period (as I was no longer in time, not even Swiss time) the divine consciousness WAS my consciousness, which is why this was the most glorious experience of my existence: infinite love manifesting as total freedom. The human mind (intellect, mental reign) had just vanished, all was on the level of this extraordinary feeling of the divine.
And suddenly, I was back in my seat on the plane. I felt something moving in my bowels and in a matter of seconds, the dysentery had disappeared. But even that healing, however welcome, was nothing compared to the vision which brought with it a quality of knowing that human words just cannot describe – because it was far beyond normal human experience. I now feel with such a depth of certainty, of spiritual groundedness that Love is the ultimate reply to all and any problem, be it personal, social or a world issue.
And you and I are one with that Love. We are literally welded to Love and nothing will ever be able to change that, even our own doubts and fears. Love is our home, our haven, our springboard and our resting place – for ever.
Because we are literally divine Love expressing itself. NOW.
In her book THE CHOICE FOR LOVE, Barbara De Angelis, well known for her pioneering role in launching the self-help movement in the States in the eighties, an award-winning writer, speaker and media personality, shares an experience of the allness of love that is so close to mine that I feel like sharing it. In it she stresses so clearly that ultimately, all is love. She introduces it by explaining that it happened at a period of her life when she was meditating 12-15 hours per day, sometimes for six months or more, living in almost total silence.
“It was during one of those extended six-month retreats in the early 1970’s that I experienced what I consider my spiritual initiation into love…
One afternoon, I was meditating in my room, deep in a very silent and unbounded state. Suddenly I began to expand, and expand, and expand. All boundaries of time, space and reality melted, and I completely left this body, this world and this plane of existence.
Any sense of Barbara, any sense of individuality, any sense of anything but oneness did not exist. I (although there was no “I” left) was just in the great All. It wasn’t that “I” was feeling the Love. The I had melted into the Love. It was just Love. Love was everything.
In that state, there was an awareness that everything in the Universe was created out of love, and everything that didn’t look like love was still love. Everything that appeared separate from love was still love. There was nothing else, for how could there be? It was all love.
This was a knowingness, and even that knowingness was just love. It wasn’t exciting. There were no thoughts like “Wow, I am having an outrageous spiritual experience” for there was no Barbara to think the thoughts. I was love being aware of itself as love. I was in this state for what I later would come to realize was several hours, and at some point in that Infinite Love, the tiniest fluctuation emerged, the glimmer of a consciousness of “I.” I am. I exist. Slowly that “I” began to become more conscious of itself: “I am in a body living on the planet Earth. I need to return to that body now.”
Even then, the experience was of love returning to a body, love breathing, love putting back on the costume of Barbara, love taking on a form.
Eventually I found myself back inside of Barbara, in this body, sitting in my room.
When I emerged from that experience, I was permanently transformed. For the first time in my life, I knew who I was. I had experienced my true lineage, and that changed everything – I was love.
And I knew that everyone else was also love.”
Excerpt from The Choice for Love: Entering into a New, Enlightened Relationship with Yourself, Others and the World
