ENCOUNTER WITH GOD
Testimony of Rev. Patricia Doyle
I swear to God that the following is all true.
I had never heard of a near death experience when I had one on October 26, 1974. It changed my whole life. It changed how I look at life, and what I want to do with my life. I have no fear of death now, but instead look forward to the peace and joy it will bring — and freedom from material bondage. I don't have a death wish, however. Instead I live life much more fully.
At the time of my NDE I lived in Shaker Heights, Ohio in a three-family home. My husband and I lived on the second floor. We had tenants on the first and third floors. On the third floor, a brother and sister, Mike and Emelie (names changed), had lived there for twenty-seven years. They were in their eighties and Mike held the world's record at that time for the number of pacemakers put in one's body. About once a year Mike would have a heart attack, which would necessitate a new pacemaker.
One day while I was talking with Emelie, we heard a loud thud upstairs and quickly went up to investigate. We found Mike collapsed on the floor and he appeared to be dead. I immediately called 911 for help, and then tried to resuscitate him, but to no avail. Mike had not had a heart attack, but had died instantly of a stroke. In the weeks that followed, Emelie became very dependent on me for support and companionship.
Several months later we moved to Akron, Ohio for my husband's job, which meant selling the home in Shaker Heights. We took our time finding the right buyer, a very nice couple that was well informed of Emelie's situation and dependencies, and they were willing to help her. I set up a meeting for Emelie to meet the new owners, and when they arrived, I called her, which had been our pre-arrangement. But as soon as I identified myself and started informing her that the new owners had arrived, she hung up on me. I went to her door and knocked. When the door opened, there stood Emelie with a butcher knife raised above her head, and her eyes had a zombie-like, glazed-over look. She looked as if she was really crazy enough in that moment to plunge the knife right into my chest and face area.
All of a sudden a tremendous power came into the environment. I could feel it in me and it felt like it was all around me . . . a power so wonderful and awesome that it felt greater than anything I had ever felt. It was a loving presence so enormous it felt like all the love I had ever felt in my entire lifetime amplified by a billion . . . yet the Love that I felt from that power was greater than that. I could see that it affected Emelie as well, for the arm that held the knife began to slowly melt to her side and an expression of great calm and peace came over her. The situation was immediately transformed from threat of imminent violence to one of harmony, gentleness, oneness, and, predominantly, Love. I did not even have time to be afraid . . . it all happened in an instant. This Love transformed my very essence at the same instant.
I told the buyers of our home what had happened, and, although amazed at the experience, were not deterred from purchasing the home with Emelie upstairs.
Ecstatic experiences and revelations continued, and I felt an intense spiritual calling to communicate these experiences through visual art. My husband, a college textbook salesman, supported me in becoming a visual artist, yet could never fully understand or support my spiritual unfoldment. He couldn't understand the enthusiastic expressions of intense joy and rapture these experiences awoke in my soul. He talked me into going to a psychiatrist for evaluation, which, due to the nature of psychiatry at that time, had no diagnostic code for "spiritual or religious problems". According to an article in the Fall 1994 issue of the Washington Post entitled "The Spiritual Crisis Mode", this changed in May of 1994, clarifying for the first time in the profession of psychiatry that spiritual or religious problems are not necessarily symptomatic of a mental disorder. Psychiatrist Stanislav Grof, author of Spiritual Emergency: When Transformation Becomes a Crisis and The Stormy Search for the Self: A Guide to Personal Growth through Transformational Crisis, states in the Washington Post article: "We became aware that some of the experiences we've labeled as psychotic have been stages of transformation instead." Psychologist Emma Bragdon, author of A Source Book for Helping People With Spiritual Problems, states, however, that few therapists have any education or experience in recognizing or dealing with spiritual emergencies. Bragdon writes:
The extreme looks very much like psychotic breakdown....They seem to have manic behavior as well. Certainly there have been many people who have been misdiagnosed and treated inappropriately — which means they've been medicated or hospitalized, which obstructs what the spiritual emergence is all about.
This sounds almost identical to my own experience! The psychiatrist my husband arranged diagnosed me as having a psychotic breakdown with a manic condition. He recommended hospitalization for a few days of "rest", but when we got to the hospital, fortunately, there were no beds available. I was given an injection of Haldol, which, by the time we arrived home, was already beginning to cause intense muscle spasms in my back, arms, shoulders, neck and face, causing tremendous pain for hours, because I had been given a drug for a condition I did not have.
Although traumatized by this response to my spiritual emergence, my constant prayers and daily testing of the validity of my experiences left me with the realization that I felt more exuberant about life, love and being an educated, creative person than ever before. Above all this, I also felt a growing relationship with God and Jesus and an unshakeable faith in that Higher Love, which was so magical. I quickly left the psychiatrist in the dust, leaving him to figure out how to count past 1,000, so to speak. I didn't think we needed to be paying $75/hour for me to teach him about what was really happening to me. I knew my connection with God was good and healthy for me. It gave my whole life a purpose, meaning and happiness I had never known.
Following the calling to be an artist, I went back to college at Kent State University. I also continued to have numerous and varied spiritual experiences, inspirations and “visitations”, many of which have been channeled into artworks. These experiences, always accompanied by God's Love, have included impressions and visions regarding Jesus and a new version of the Bible or a separate new testament that would be directly inspired or written by Jesus. I know this sounds incredible, but in November of 1976, Jesus himself impressed me with these thoughts and called me to discipleship, and, however odd it may sound, to the ministry of the Foundation Church of the New Birth, even though I did not even know of its existence.
In March of 1980 my cousin, a chiropractic doctor in Encinitas, California, invited me for a visit. During my stay I felt a welcoming acceptance and understanding within my cousin's circle of friends and in the community at large regarding spiritual emergence. Feeling more and more drawn to this community and its supportive atmosphere, I told my husband of my decision to move there, inviting his participation. He declined. Sadly, yet amicably, we parted ways, ending what all who knew us considered a good, solid marriage, over spiritual and religious differences.
Three thousand miles away in Washington D.C., a young man named Jonathan Sperry had a spiritual experience guiding him to move to Encinitas, California in the same month and year. We kept crossing paths in powerful, magical and mysterious ways, and found out that we even lived on the same street. One day we decided to sit down and get to know each other, and as we each shared our spiritual journeys and experiences it became apparent we needed to talk further. The next time we met, Jonathan said he wanted to share a book with me that had been part of the culmination of his own spiritual journey, The True Gospel Revealed Anew by Jesus, giving me one of four volumes of automatic writings received by Esq. James E. Padgett. Having experienced the living spirit of Jesus to the limited degree that I had, I instantly recognized the writings as genuine, brought them to my heart, prayed to God in gratitude, received an inflowing of His Love, and then felt the spirit of Jesus with us, whose presence I had not felt since November 1976.
With this background, I have come, through my soul's perceptions and experiences of God's Love, to embrace The True Gospel Revealed Anew by Jesus, published and disseminated by the Foundation Church of the New Birth, Inc. I study the four volumes as most people study the Bible. I believe in the living Jesus, who's ready to come at any time, any minute, any hour, any day to any one, and has done so many times since his death.