Although I pretty much kept it under raps, I was a rather angry young man. A loner in those days, I was painfully introverted, reclusive, over-weight and bordered on anti-social. “Rebel Without a Cause,” the title of a 50’s movie, perfectly characterized my frame of mind as a teenager. Dad, probably quite accurately, said the military or my wife had saved me from myself. He really believed I was only one step removed from heading to San Francisco and becoming, horror of horrors, a hippy -- a concern I did not discourage

It was a crazy time with Vietnam, the counter-culture, free love, which I somehow missed, and the like; but I was too much a child of the 50’s to be anything but a “straight arrow.” Although brought up Christian, I had placed God on the “back burner” as not particularly relevant to my struggles with life unless they reached crisis proportions. Even so, I did manage to take God to Vietnam with me in the form of Psalms 91:7 (“A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.”) -- a verse that became a prayer God answered more times than I care to remember.

Prior to Vietnam service in 1970, I was rather proud of surviving at least four near-death experiences. Of those, laying down a motorcycle in front of a car during a wide turn, attempting to roll clear and ending up with my head under a bumper, six inches from the right front wheel, was, by far, the most “stimulating” of those experiences. Today, I see those “mini-near deaths” as progressively louder “wake-up calls” in which God’s clear message was, “Awake thou that sleepeth, arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light” (Eph. 5:14).

Well, I followed these up with the “mother of all wake-up calls” during an emergency bailout from an AC-119K Gunship in Vietnam in June of 1970. A wide-awake “near death experience” I have often refer to as a “divine wake-up call. Or, perhaps, getting hit between the eyes with a “cosmic two by four” -- something God is sometimes forced to use to get our full and undivided attention. Take my word for it, if God can’t get your attention with a “carrot,” He will use a “stick” (or a “super-sized” club) if need be.

The bailout itself involved four classic aspects of near death experiences, although remaining fully conscious and present during the process is probably unusual. I won’t go into great detail at this point, but the altered states of awareness I experienced included: time standing still; me watching me (an in body out-of-body), total life recall, and a conscious choice to live or die. All of which involved states of mind and consciousness considerably more vital, real and alive than anything I had experienced before or since.

By conservative estimate I should have died at least five times that night. From that, genius that I am, I concluded I had used up at least nine lives already and had better use the grace I had been give to figure out who I was and what life was about. "What on earth am I here for?,” the subtitle of The Purpose Driven Life, really catches the spirit my subsequent search for Truth. The way I saw it, there were only two real possibilities: (1) life either had some ultimate meaning beyond my understanding; or (2), as Shakespeare so eloquently put it, “life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” In this regard, I readily concluded the former, for concluding the latter would itself be part of the nonsense so concluded. Besides, I had pretty much been living according to the second assumption and only had an increasing number of near death experiences to show for it.

The result of all this was a very long search which, to a certain extent, still goes on today; not as a search for Truth Itself, but a fuller understanding of the Truth I had been blessed to find. In this regard, I proceeded under the hypothesis that the Truth I sought must be the "Common Thread" expressed, to a greater or lesser degree, depending on their racial, psychological, cultural or social perspective, in world philosophies, psychologies, theologies and ideologies that had stood the test of time. More poetically, I sought the Truth as the Light of Wisdom and Understanding embedded in any and all such conceptual expressions and, therefore, reflected, with varying degrees of fidelity (some dimmer and some brighter) in, as and through all created existence. More Biblically speaking, I was actually seeking the Truth of Christ as “…all, and in all.” (Col. 3:11).

Well, 10 years or so into my search, I was reading the Bible one day and inspired to ask God (Mt. 7:8) to show me the Truth I had sought for so long, that I might share it with others. The result was what I would call an "epiphany.” Others might call it a mystical experience, a change of heart, or a sense of “at-one-ment with all.” By whatever name, it was a state of consciousness in which I was lifted high enough, or stepped back far enough, to see the full length and breadth of my own Being. Quite literally, the intellectual light I had been seeking dawned, the mental veil of carnal mind was momentarily rent asunder, and I saw the Truth directly; not in part, as in a glass darkly or self-reflectively, but face to face, even as I am known (2 Co. 13:12).

I, quite literally, saw the Truth of God I had prayed for; the Truth that exists beyond the mental screen of words and thoughts that normally veil our eyes to Its all-glorious Light. Since that day, more than twenty-seven years ago, I have been in the process of “growing up” (Eph. 4:15) into that Truth, that Light; the Truth that I asked God for and was graced and blessed to receive that day. For that revelation was not the end, but the beginning of a very intellectual walk home. For, as I soon discovered, seeing the truth and being true are not the same thing -- that seeing is one thing and being quite another.

Put in it’s most precise Christian form, the Truth I experienced as a direct revelation in 1978 was “…the mystery which hath been hid from ages…which is Christ in You, the Hope of Glory” (Co. 1:26,27). More specifically, the Truth is Christ, as the Son of God, as the Anointed One, as the Light of the World, as the One I AM that spoke to Moses from the Burning Bush, as the Word or Logos of God made flesh; as a “Pilot Light” (Jn. 1:4) in the heart of man, which can burst into full flame, become a Light unto the world and a Lamp unto the feet of all those around him (Ps. 119:105); a Light that can come fully to life in, as and through man and, ultimately, become his primary sense of being, and identity (or self), if and when he will simply “Let It Be!”

Theologically speaking, what this means is that all men, by virtue of the Spirit God breathed into them through Adam in the Garden (Gen. 2:7), have a “Divine Seed, Spark or Pilot Light” that gives them the potential to "grow up into Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ” (Eph. 4:15), if they will simply realize this in their heads, know it in their hearts, and do the things that Jesus advised would set us free. That is, if they will love God with all their hearts, minds and souls, and their neighbors as themselves (Mt. 22: 37-40); if they will deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow Him (Mt.16:24); if they will die daily (1 Co. 15:31) to themselves as they presently think they are -- as a thought and sense of being separate and apart from God and others -- as Paul did; if they will die to self-thought and follow the Light of God in their own hearts, follow Christ, they will some day be able to declare with overwhelming joy, as Paul did, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).

As for me, I am, always have been, and probably always will be a lover of Truth with a capital "T." Ultimately, this Truth, which I so love and that I still seek to know (more than 3000 books and 40 years later) more perfectly, is nothing more than an intellectual's name for God. And it is that Ultimate Truth of Being that fully Manifest, Personified, or Incarnated -- you pick the word -- more than 2000 years ago, in, of, as and through the Man known today as Jesus Christ. The same Truth of God that is now directly accessible to all men as a “face to face” experience; as a direct, heartfelt apprehension of Christ as Holy One I AM, the Truth of All Being, the Lord God of All who declared in the Old Testament,"...I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee..."(Hos. 11:9) and in the New Testament, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (Jn. 14:6). Amen!

Yours I Am/We Are All One In Christ…Rich Hay

PS: “Thy words were found and I did eat them and Thy Word was unto me the joy and the rejoicing of mine heart, for I Am called by Thy Name O Lord God of Hosts” (Jer. 15:16).


© 2005 RFHay