It is very personal, but I've shared it online before. To just quote myself, I'll paste it here so as not to have to retype everything. Tell me if this doesn't sound similar to JS. I'll explain more in detail after just sharing this:
I fully believe you experienced that. I've experienced something very similar. A point in my life of great crisis; an event that took me to the edge of death; a cry of desperation for help out into the utter darkness; white light suddenly appearing everywhere, in an instant driving everything else out that tormented me; a complete cessation of time; infinite peace, infinite love, infinite knowledge, infinite awareness, infinite power, infinite grace and compassion, all in only a sliver of an inconceivable infinity that lay beyond that; and then a gentle voice of infinite compassion and awareness speaking only my name, conveying my life's story before my eyes in an instant of utter timelessness with the knowledge spoken without words to my mind that I was never alone, that was loved beyond all knowledge. Shall I continue?
Rising from this vision I felt all the pain of my heart come gushing out of the deepest part of my soul in a torrent of tears, being both afraid and amazed at what had just happened. Two days later, I began what began my lifelong search for understanding of this. Being raised in a Christian culture, seeking out a minister seemed the most appropriate beginning. I openly shared my experience with wonder and puzzlement in my voice, to the stolid looks of the minister who gave little response. The following day I spoke to another, this time a Catholic priest, who likewise sat with a blank stare and his offering what I learned later to be the typical Catholic response of asking if I had anything to confess.
I left feeling discouraged, lost, and confused, yet with this knowledge in my heart. Suddenly, without any warning or indication, the entire Universe opened to me before my eyes, as if a great curtain opened in an instant. I suddenly saw for the first time in my life - color. The world was full of color, with vibrant greens and blues everywhere! The World was full of light and love and color, and permeated everything as a sort of living joy that surrounded me, moved through me, and began flowing out of the most unimaginably deepest part of my being out into the world in a sort of song, as can only be described as utter, living love. I saw people walking by me, and rather than feeling darkness and shame in my heart and averting my eyes away as in my past, instead I felt pure love and joy. No thoughts of darkness were in me anywhere at that moment, and I felt truly alive for the first time in my life.
Ok, so what you see above corresponds with JS's experience, which also corresponds with a lot of people's peak experiences like this. These are not uncommon. Allow me to do a side by side comparison of what he said, with what I experienced:
JS: " immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction."
Me: I had slipped into the state of deep sleep where I became consciously aware my life was slipping away. I saw blackness everywhere crushing down on me, snuffing out my very existence. I KNEW I was going to die, that everything was being lost and I would become no more. Fear seized me so I could not move or speak or wake myself from this terror.
JS: "But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction- not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being- just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me."
Me: In that moment of absolute terror that blackness was swallowing my life into death, I put forth everything within in in one last hope and cried out with everything within me, "God help me!". At the instant, everything ceased. There was infinite White Light that came down in an instant from above and filled every space to where I had no other awareness save for that which enveloped me in Infinite Love, Infinite Compassion, Infinite Peace, Infinite Awareness in but a sliver of an infinity beyond itself, which was infinite in itself. Time did not exist.
JS: "It not sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said , pointing to the other-This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!"
Me: There was nothing but this Infinite Love, and Infinite Mind looking down upon me, as it were, with such Grace that it was greater than the power of the whole universe, yet held in Infinite Compassion. I heard my name spoken in a pure voice in a single word to my mind, then saw my life from my childhood on, with the knowledge that this Infinite Power, this Infinite Being was always there, and I with it despite my own unawareness.
So, now that we have established that I too have had what is pretty parallel to the description given by Joseph Smith, up to the point he goes off into a theological quibble with the established religions of his day and believes he is called to start of new religion, you can see that the experience is the same, but how these are understood are matters of the person's individual interpretations. I will happily go down that road of discussion with you. These sorts of experiences are not uncommon. They are very similar. But how people interpret them, what they do with them, will differ of course.
But be assured, my experience happened as described by me, and that description does not begin to come close to truly describing what is beyond description. And, as a mystic now today, I find my home back in the arms of this every time in meditation, there is Knowledge there to be had, but I do not interpret this to go start a new religion. I look forward to your thoughts, and I share them with you because you impress me as a thoughtful person, otherwise I wouldn't.
