There is a particular type of experience that I have only had a handful of times in my life. Though the circumstances beetween these incidents differ,  each event elicited the same reaction in me. The intensity of the reaction was enough for me to being able to immediately identify it as “that kind of experience”. Here is the list:

• Swimming alone thirty years ago in a cove on Malta, surrounded by rocks, playing with the sun rays being refracted and bouncing about around me in the aqua blue water.
• Being love-bombed by dozens of friends during a nine-day pilgrimage to the Black Madonna painting in Czestochowa in Poland. Also thirty years ago. 
• Walking through the loggias the first days of college in the US, realizing that the four-year full scholarship I had won by a fluke meant that I could spend the next four years doing nothing but learning things.
• Sitting in an office  lobby in Bangalore after having spent a week subjected to the almost unbearable kindness of Indian people. Approximately a year and a half ago. 

My response during each of these events was delight but also a complete feeling of bliss. By bliss I do not mean that I was pleased or happy or even extatic. The feeling of satisfaction went far beyond anything experienced on a day-to-day basis. The bliss was such that I could not feel a single need. Each and every hunger in me – physical and emotional – was quenched. Further, that state of satiation triggered the same three reactions each time:

1. In complete happiness there is no incentive to do anything. Each of these times I have become paralysed by inaction for a period of time. Sitting in the chair in the Bangalore office lobby I could not imagine taking another step in life, nor how doing anything could possibly make a difference to the already perfect state of the universe. I have a nagging suspicion that we humans are not made to be that happy all the time.
2. All compartmentalization ceases. All  boundaries inside me or between me and the world dissapear. I understand what the Dr. Bronner soap labels mean by “All-One”. 
3. My mind turns spontaneously to God. Feeling magnanimous, I forgive Him for all the crap that has accumulated in my  life and in the world at large. I thank Him and tell Him we’ll just wipe the slate clean and begin over again. I don’t even want to know the theological ramifications of forgiving God  but I hope that it comes as a pleasant surprise at least. I hope He is pleased to get the second chance.

I have experienced a similar state of bliss recently by listening to a particular blues singer. The full effect comes only when listening to him live. So God, if You are feeling the least bit guilty about some of the flooding wars and poor "2012" scenario imitations (not to forget the infinite delays in the shooting of the film "The Hobbit") lately,  mark Your calendar. An absolution is scheduled towards the end of October. Then we can start from scratch, okay?