How do you draw near God?

In Letters from a Living Dead Man, Letter XX, The Man Who Found God, invisible author, X,  writes to his visible medium, Elsa Barker, that there seemed to be no way in which he could better teach the reader of these letters about life on the other side than by telling his experiences and conversations with men and women there.

X tells Elsa about a man who seemed to be a genuine saint. Yes, there are little saints and great saints, as there are little sinners and great sinners.

One day, while walking on a mountaintop, “walking,” for it seemed about the same, though it took little energy to walk here.

On the mountaintop, X saw a man standing alone. The man was looking out and far away but X could not see what he was looking at. The man was abstracted and communing with himself or with some presence of which X was unaware.

X waited for some time. At last, drawing a long breath, for spirit-souls breathe here, the man turned his eyes to X, and said, with a kind smile—

“Can I do anything for you, brother?”

X was embarrassed for a moment, feeling that he might have intruded upon some sweet communion.

“If I am not too bold in asking,” he said, “would you tell me what you were thinking as you stood there looking into space?”

X was conscious of his presumption, but being so determined to learn what could be known if sometimes he was too bold in making inquiries, he felt that his very earnestness might win for him the forgiveness of those he questioned.

This man had a beautiful beardless face and young-looking eyes, but his garments were the ordinary garments of one who thinks little or nothing of his appearance. That very unconsciousness of the outer form may sometimes give it a peculiar majesty.

The man looked at X in silence for a moment; then he said—

“I was trying to draw near God.”

“And what is God?” X asked. “And where is God?”

The man smiled. X had never seen a smile like his, as he answered—

“God is everywhere. God is.”

“What is he?” X persisted, and again the man repeated, but with a different emphasis—

“God is.”

“What do you mean?” X asked.

“God is, God is,” he said.

X did not know how his meaning was conveyed to him, perhaps by sympathy, but it suddenly flashed into his mind that when he said, “God is,” he expressed the completest realisation of God, which is possible to the spirit, and when he said, “God is,” he meant X to understand that there was no being, nothing that is, except God.

There must have been in X's face a reflection of what he felt, for the saint then said to him—

“Do you not also know that He is and that all that is, is He?”

“I am beginning to feel what you mean,” X answered, “though I doubtless feel but a little of it.”

He smiled and made no reply but X's mind was full of questions.

“When you were on earth,” X said, “did you think much about God?”

“Always. I thought of little else. I sought Him everywhere but seemed only at times to get flashes of consciousness as to what He really was. Sometimes, when praying, for I prayed much, there would come to me suddenly the question, “To what are you praying?” And I would answer aloud, “To God, to God!” But though I prayed to Him every day for years, only occasionally did I get a flash of that true consciousness of God. Finally, one day when I was alone in the woods, there came the great revelation. It came not in any form of words, but rather in a wordless and formless wonder, too vast for the limitation of thought. I fell upon the ground and must have lost consciousness, for, after a while, I awoke and got up and looked about me. Then, gradually, I remembered the experience, which had been too big for me while I was feeling it.

“I could put, into the form of words, the realisation, which had been too much for my mortality to bear, and the words I used to myself were, ‘All that is, is God.’ It seemed very simple, yet it was far from simple. ‘All that is, is God.’ That must include me and all my fellow beings, human and animal; even the trees and the birds and the rivers must be a part of God if God were all that is.

“From that moment, life assumed a new meaning for me. I could not see a human face without remembering the revelation—that the human being I saw was a part of God. When my dog looked at me, I said to him aloud, ‘You are a part of God.’ When I stood beside a river and listened to the sound of its waters, I said to myself, ‘I am listening to the voice of God.’ When a fellow being was angry with me, I asked myself, ‘In what way have I offended God?’ When one spoke lovingly to me, I said, ‘God is loving me now,' and the realisation nearly took my breath away. Life became unbelievably beautiful.

“Theretofore, I had been so absorbed in God, in trying to find God, that I had not given much thought to my fellow beings and had even neglected those nearest me. But from that day, I began to mingle with my human brethren. I found that as more and more I sought God in them, more and more God responded to me through them. And life became still more wonderful.

“Sometimes, I tried to tell others what I felt, but they did not always understand me. It was thus I began to realise that God has purposely, for some reason of His own, covered Himself in veils. Was it that He might have pleasure in tearing them away? If so, I would help Him all I could. So I tried to make other men grasp the knowledge of God, which I myself had attained. For years, I taught men. At first, I wanted to teach everybody, but soon I came to see that that was impossible, and so I selected a few who called themselves my disciples. They did not always tell the world that they were my disciples because I asked them not to do so. But I urged each of them to give to someone as much as possible of the knowledge that I had given to him. And so I think that many have come to feel a little of the wonder, which was revealed to me that day alone in the woods, when I awoke to the knowledge that God is, God is.

Elsa Barker, Letters from a Living Dead Man, 1914, Mitchell Kennerley, New York, Letter XX, The Man Who Found God, 78-83