Otto F. Walter

“I do not believe that I am an atheist. Let me tell you of an experience I had. I was nineteen years old at the time, I guess. I was traveling by train to Lucerne; it was afternoon, the light and moving shadows were signaling a thunderstorm, sun and shadow played on the fields. I was alone in the car, I opened the window and just stared in amazement at this landscape. I was completely overcome and could have shouted for joy. I wept and had the feeling: This is God. That is what lives and what ought to he. It was an image of peace and of harmony of everything with everything. I had the feeling that I was part of it; I felt the rhythmic movements of recurrence in their infinite multiformity within me. It was a mystical, a kind of pantheistic experience, that is, the experience of God in nature. When I am asked to speak on the level of theory about religion and God, it is that experience that rises up unforgettably before my eyes. It has prevented me from intellectually coming to the point where nothing is left of God. Mystics have called such an experience of the divine "the little spark.”
― Otto F. Walter