I had a calling, this is what happened, I've explained the story many times. I've had my priest on, I've had atheists on. When I explain my conversion to atheists, my personal series of events, they go, "Oh, alright."
When I was 17, I had an experience that I later learned could be called a 'mystical experience.' It was almost violent. No faces, voices, nothing like that. It is like the world burst and flamed into life all around me. That is not a great image, but it is as good as I will ever do.
I was on the verge of something numinous and profound and in one more second the universe was going to crack open and arcana would rain down on my head like grace and all the cosmic mysteries were going to be revealed.
I have seen gleams in the face and eyes of the man that have let you look into a higher country.
You looked at me then like you knew me, and I thought it really was Eden, and I couldn't take your eyes in because I was loving the hoof marks on your cheeks.
I saw the Light,saw the myriad spirits flying loose up the Tunnel towards the celestial blaze, the Tunnel perfectly round and widening as they rose and for one blessed moment, one blessed tiny instant, the songs of Heaven resounded down the tunnel as if its curves were not made of wind but of something solid that could echo these ethereal songs, and their organized rhythm, their heartbreaking beauty piercing the catastrophic suffering of this place-Lestat
The angels started singing, the clouds parted, it was a religious experience. I've never had the same reaction to a product, not in 25 years.
Then she smiled, and in that instant, if such a thing were possible, Pasquale fell in love, and he would remain in love for the rest of his life--not so much with the woman, whom he didn't even know, but with the moment.
When the vastness of God meets the restriction of our own humanity, words can't hold it. The best we can do is find the moments that rhyme with this expansive heart of God.
'Normal Heart' was my most transcendent moment as an actor.
I believe in person to person; every person is Christ for me, and since there is only one Jesus, that person is only one person in the world for me at that moment.
This was one of those special occasions when I could actually feel the inner appreciation of the beauty of the moment passing like an electric current through the brush in my hand.
A moment of grace. There rose up within me a profound sense of being loved. I felt "gathered together" and encircled by a Presence completely loving, as if I were enveloped by the music of a love song created just for me. It was not overwhelming or even emotional. Just a warm knowing that I was in God's loving embrace...centered and unified there. [Love]encounters cannot be analyzed, only shared. If you take a butterfly, Robert Frost said, and pin it down into a box, you no longer have a butterfly.
I took a day to search for God, And found Him not. But as I trod By rocky ledge, through woods untamed, Just where one scarlet lily flamed, I saw His foot print in the sod.
What I had thought of before as God, I met today in a human being.
Shirley MacLaine said, You're so funny, then gave me a hug. Everything went white. I couldn't hear, I couldn't see. I thought I was going to pass out.
Although, I admit, I desire, Occasionally, some backtalk From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain: A certain minor light may still Lean incandescent Out of kitchen table or chair As if a celestial burning took Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then --
There are moments when the elixir of life rises to such over−brimming splendor that the soul spills over. In the seraphic smile of the Madonnas the soul is seen to flood the psyche. The moon of the face becomes full; the equation is perfect. A minute, a half−minute, a second later, the miracle has passed. Something intangible , something inexplicable, was given out-and received.
Before exulatation had vanished, I felt as if I had been granted a marvellous privilege. Out of the inscrutable waters a beautiful fish had somehow leaped to show me fleetingly the life and spirit of his element.
When Mozart is playing in my room, I am in conjunction with something I can't explain... I don't need to. I know that if there's a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart.
It's hard to describe, but there are times when... you feel a surge of the Spirit. Somehow you just know: others have chosen, when talking to the Author of all creation, to lift us up - to speak to Him about us!
I love a song that will usher in the very presence of God. Then there's no Andrae; there's no fabulous band, there's no greatness of ours. I've had hundreds of concerts like that, and that's what I try to achieve.
There's a moment of recognition. It's that white-light kind of stuff that just 'works.' I love that. And you know it when it happens, whether it's a movie, music, a building, a book.
One time on a dive, I wound up drifting up in darkness surrounded by billions of photoluminescent creatures. It was a religious experience, one only a poet could do justice to.
His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.