Brian with his wife Theresa and Susie, our rescued Lhasa Apso dog (is she a heartmelter or what? and that's just Susie!)

In 1965 I was brought into contact, by synchronicity, with an elderly Yorkshire lady, Olga, who had had a lifetime of mystical experiences, including manifestations of and speaking with, Jesus.

Olga spoke so matter-of-factly to me about Jesus as being a real, living, ‘today,’ personal, presence in her life; how his love, wisdom, guiding and understanding was so uplifting, restoring, inspiring.

She had a prayer sanctuary and at the end of each visit I went to it with her for prayers.

One night in the Autumn of 1966, at her sanctuary prayer table before home-time, Olga said to me ‘The Master is here and he is speaking to me a message for you. I will repeat it to you and you can speak with him direct. Any reply he gives, I will relay it to you. He is saying to you “What is your desire?” ‘

I said, very hesitatingly, ‘To serve you, according to your will,’ or words to that effect.

His reply was very surprising: ‘That is not the purpose of your life and being on Earth. You have come into this world bringing with you potential for accomplishing various things. My purpose is to assist you and guide you in discovering what is your potential so that it might be outworked and fulfilled in your Earthly life. Consider this carefully, my son, so that you may become aware of this and grow in your understanding of it, that in the fullness of time you may bear much fruit according to that inward desire and potential.’

Olga’s speaking about Jesus cultivated in me a desire to experience his livingness as she experienced it. Every night I would kneel at my bedside and open my heart to him; tell him of my love for him, my yearning desire to experience his livingness in my life; close, tender, loving, guiding, whatever, but real; not just read or hear about someone else’s experience of him.

This must have gone on night after night for months; I do not recall now how long but I do recall very clearly the aching in my heart and soul for this and how it grew until it was almost beyond endurance. Then, on January 24th 1967, after my nightly outpouring, I stood and made ready to prepare for bed. As I stood in the middle of the room, suddenly he was there, in the corner, manifested, superimposed in the place where stood a Beechwood chest of drawers with a mirror on top.

He was in the midst of an aura of golden, living sunlight which radiated out from him more than an arm’s length in all directions. He was about fifteen feet from me. As I became aware of his presence he began to move toward me. It was not a walking movement. He seemed to be above the floor a few inches and he glided. The movement was relatively slow, certainly unhurried but as he drew nearer he began to speak. I heard him with my ears, I experienced his speaking with my soul, with my heart; every cell in my body and every fibre of my being experienced his speaking. There was no part of my being that did not hear him. And every part of my being understood with a total certainty the meaning at a ‘soul-knowing’ level rather than an intellectual-knowing level of understanding what was the true, mystical meaning of those words. The words that he spoke were, I discovered later, from Revelation chapter 3 vs. 20: ‘Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.’

To the best of my knowledge I had not read or heard those words before – so I discovered later – but at that moment they were a timeless part of my being and I knew exactly what they meant because his giving to me of the words also imparted to my understanding the meaning of them; his meaning of them. By the time he had finished imparting the words to me he had reached perhaps 2 feet from where I was standing. His aura of golden, living sunlight had enveloped me and the feeling of love – of Agapé - to my being was so intense, so powerful so uplifting to my spirit that I felt as if my heart had grown to the size of a football and was going to burst out of my chest cavity. The feeling of love, not just throughout my body but through my entire aura was an orgasm of the soul but intensified immeasurably more than any such physical experience. I was half blinded by a waterfall of joyful tears and every part of me was alive, electrified as never before.

He was tall, his individual presence visible in the midst of the light of his aura, which was at least as bright as the sun but did not hurt my eyes at all. At about 2-feet distance from me, with me now fully enveloped by his aura, he stopped. His eyes were radiating the all-knowing wisdom of the ages and love; personal love as well as universal, unconditional love. I knew he loved me personally, in a way and with a love that is utterly beyond any love I had ever known, heard about or experienced in this world. He embraced me; not with his ‘physical’ arms but with every part of his being; with his total, unconditional, intimate love. I was a quivering jelly. Not from fear – how could fear be part of such an exquisitely beautiful, magnificent encounter? - but from being overwhelmed by the power of his love. The moment of this embrace seemed to be timeless but was probably a few seconds in Earth-time terms. I remember reading at some later date, in the book of Revelation, chapter 1 vs. 16, ‘…and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength,’ and saying to myself, ‘That is an exact and perfect description of his appearance.’

Then the manifestation gradually withdrew and disappeared from my sight. But the power and sense of his presence that was left with me, in me, lasted for at least an hour, probably 2. I have never taken any form of hallucinogenic or consciousness-expanding drug but I have no shred of doubt that this feeling was a ‘high’ beyond that capable of being induced by any such substance. I had to physically restrain myself from rushing – more like flying – upstairs, outside, onto the rooftops and calling to all the world, ‘He’s REAL! He’s really REAL!’ even though by this time it was well after midnight.

That was the beginning of decades of mystical experiences of his livingness, loving guidance, wise counsel and revelation of the ‘mysteries’ of the universe. I have written of all this in a freely available (by e-mail) book entitled "Synchronicity, for Goodness' Sake." Anybody who would like it, please e-mail me at honest2goodness@blueyonder.co.uk