Meeting Jesus Christ Face To Face
by Bob Peterson
Let me just start out by saying that I do not consider myself a Christian, nor do I subscribe to any religion or religious organization. I consider myself "Spiritual" rather than religious. In my opinion, "religion" is the belief in someone else's experiences, and "spirituality" is the belief in one's own direct experience. Experience trumps faith.
One of my facebook friends recently read an earlier blog article ("Are OBEs Against Christianity?") in which I wrote:
"The bottom line is: If you're a Christian, with OBEs, you don't need to merely pray to, or worship Jesus Christ, you can actually meet the man face to face. Is there precedence for that? Absolutely. Some people, myself included, have gone out-of-body and stood in the presence of Jesus Christ."So he asked me: "I'm interested to know where in the astral it was? And what he said to you."
I wrote about some of my more religious OBEs in my second book, Lessons Out of the Body in a chapter titled "Chasing God". So far, only one of my religious experiences involved Jesus Christ. It was in May, 1996. Here's what I wrote about it in the book:
"When I went to bed, I was wide awake and couldn't sleep at first. At home, I was lying on my right side on the waterbed. For no particular reason, I started thinking about Jesus Christ and God, and wondering about Christ's relationship to God. It was probably because I had started reading a book that deals with this topic. As I was lying there immobile, I started focusing my mind in OBE fashion, but instead of visualizing an ordinary image, I held the image of Christ in my mind, plus an icon that I used to represent God. The image of Christ was on the left side of my visual field, and the icon of God was on the right side. As my mind focused into the OBE state, I had the passing thought, “No, Jesus should be at the right hand of the Father.” Then I realized that “right” and “left” are relative to “forward” and “backward,” and since I believed that God was everywhere, comprising all that is, God didn't have a forward or backward. I decided it didn't matter if Christ was to the left or right of my icon of God."
"As I pulled myself down into the OBE state, my image of Christ seemed to become very real, and so did the icon or idea of God. It seemed as if I actually felt the presence of Jesus Christ, and through Jesus, a connection with God. Now, I'm not a very religious man outwardly, so this is very much out of the ordinary for me. It seemed as if Christ was helping me, sending me his love."
"I started to swing my consciousness forward and backward in my usual fashion, and tried to maintain that crucial state of single-minded focus, but as I rocked, I could feel the presence of Christ, and that distracted my mind. I tried to swing away from my body in a forceful motion, but I didn't have enough momentum built up yet; therefore I swung back and hit the body, which made me go back to the normal in-the-body state." (Lessons Out of the Body, pp. 96-97)So there you have it. It wasn't in any particular part of the astral plane, and he didn't really say anything to me. In fact, the OBE lasted just a few seconds. Jesus's presence was just too distracting to maintain my focus.
Although it's very rare in the OBE literature, other people have had much "better" encounters with Jesus, where they've seen him preaching to a crowd of people, etc.
My encounter was just enough to affirm to me that OBEs are not against Christianity and that people who seek to know Jesus can do so through OBEs.
For the record: I think Jesus Christ is one of the most misunderstood and enigmatic figures in human history. I wish more people would use OBEs to learn more about him and other historical religious figures. Maybe the more we can learn about all our religions, the less we (as a society) will fight and kill in their names.
Bob Peterson
08 December 2015
