Transcendent Experience

When I was driving around on my various errands this morning I heard a very strange story on the radio. It was the story of an Englishman who ran a pub in the English countryside who, following the death of his newborn son, Ben, had a dream of angelic music. After the dream he was driven to get the music recorded. That lead him to leave his wife and children, live homeless on the streets of London for years, until:

One day while sleeping rough outside the BBC’s Television Centre he met jazz musician Anthony Wade, who offered him a place to stay and helped transcribe the music.

Wade told him that to realize his dream he’d need a million pounds. So he went out and made a million pounds. Then he got his “symphony” transcribed. Then he got it played and recorded by the London Philharmonia.

This is the story I listened to:

Here’s a short clip from the “Angeli Symphony”:

I don’t know whether Stuart Sharp is insane or a genius or a huckster or maybe a little of all three but let’s take his story at face value. If everything happened as he said it did, his story sounds familiar. He had a genuinely transcendent experience. Like Moses, Paul of Tarsus, and Mohammed. He had the experience, it overwhelmed him, and, despite a lack of any training or professional experience, he felt compelled to put that experience into a form in which it could be shared with others.

I don’t know whether he was touched by the hand of God or not but I’m not sure we have a better way to describe it.

3 comments… add one
  • jan Link

    Western society bases it’s truth on what is tangible, concrete, and can basically be empirically proven by scientific data. Other cultures, though, shelter beliefs that enter different thought streams, altogether.

    Last week, for instance, we had a house guest from the small country of Sikkim, located next door to Nepal in the Himalayas. Our conversations were centered around Buddhism and how a person’s beliefs ultimately form their own reality. Such a philosophy might offer one explanation as to Stuart Sharp’s uniquely implausible fall and rise in life that was featured in that radio broadcast.

    I also believe that deep grief can crater a person’s ego leading to what can be described as a transcendent experience.

  • I would characterize that rather as a “transformative experience”. By contrast with what I’m talking about those are rather common. Indeed, in small ways I think they happen every day.

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