Experience of God

I have always been struck by a remarkable quote from William McNamara's book, The Human Adventure in which he contrasts a religious experience as having tell-tale "hearings" about God, and the direct experience of God. Here is the quote:

What then is the difference between a religious experience and a mystical experience? An example occurs to me. One day some friends came to my house looking for me. I hid in the closet. They happened to hear the noise I made climbing inside. Although they didn't see me, they knew I was there (figuring it had to be me!). We were all present in the same little house together. And so with joyful excitement and heightened anticipation mingled with fearful trepidation, they began to seek out my exact whereabouts. To them, the most real thing, certainly the most influential at the moment, was my unseen presence. Well, that is what a religious experience is like. Finally they opened the closet door, saw me standing there, and even though they knew what they were going to find, when they saw me with their own eyes, came into direct contact with my actual bodily presence which was until that moment merely a suggested presence, a haunting, telltale noise in the room, they stood still and screamed. That is what mystical (direct) experience is like (146).

Humans are meant to have direct experience of God, for as Yeshua says, "Blessed are those with clarity of heart, they shall see God."