The supernatural comes to meet a Harvard professor

Roy Schoeman, who 'fell into heaven', filling his life with meaning and purpose

 “Thanks, but no thanks” is often the way people respond when someone offers to tell about a deeply spiritual experience they have had. Awkwardness around anything to do with the spiritual realm may be because of a lack of familiarity with the immaterial, the supernatural, the transcendent. Or maybe prayer, a spiritual act at the simplest level, is a practice that has been relegated to the past and so they just don’t want to get involved with that sphere of life anymore because they’re too busy in dealing with the complexities of the world.

But I dare you to read my summary of Roy Schoeman’s account of two spiritual encounters he had and not sense that something extraordinary did in fact occur, and that those encounters enveloped him in a deep love, a love that is available to everyone.

First, a little background and then it's over to Schoeman to recount what happened to him and why the events had such a profound effect on his life.

He was born in 1951 into a New York family and grew up in a fully Jewish environment. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - becoming an atheist in the process -  and at Harvard Business School, where he received an MBA, impressing his professors so much that he was invited to join the faculty and was offered support to complete a doctorate. That was in 1980. He taught as a professor of marketing there for a few years, moving on to consulting, which allowed him to pursue his interest in rock climbing and skiing.

Then, in 1987, he had his first astonishing experience, where he "fell into heaven", as he describes it. In this account, edited to stay just with the main features, he first sets the scene by referring to his success at joining the Harvard faculty:

Although it may sound rather surprising that's actually when the bottom fell out of my world because ever since I had been a small child I knew there has to be a real meaning and purpose to life and expected to come into the real meaning and purpose of life at some point when I got older. 

I thought it would be when I began my career but I was already more successful in a worldly career than I had ever anticipated being a professor in Harvard but there was still no meaning or purpose to life and therefore I fell into the darkest despair of my life.

I was walking in nature early one morning in a kind of nature preserve right off the ocean that was half pine trees and half sand dunes and I received the most spectacular grace in my life.

I was walking along lost in my thoughts. I had long since lost any hope, not believing that God existed or anything like that, when from one moment to the next the curtain between Earth and heaven disappeared and I found myself in the presence of God, very knowingly in the presence of God, and seeing my life as though I had died and was looking back over my life in the presence of God.

In an instant [...] I saw that we live forever; I saw that every action has a moral content that's recorded for all eternity, that everything that had ever happened to me had been the most perfect thing that could have been arranged, coming from the hands of an all-knowing, all-loving God, not only including those things that had caused the most suffering at the time that I had thought of as the greatest disasters, but especially the things that had caused [God] suffering at the time.

I saw that my two greatest regrets after I died would be, number one, all of the time and energy I had wasted worrying about not being loved when every moment of my existence I was held in an ocean of love greater than I ever imagined could exist coming from this all-knowing, all-loving God. The other great regret would be every hour I had wasted doing nothing of value in the eyes of heaven.

The most overwhelming aspect of this experience, the most transformative, was to come into the intimate and deep and certain knowledge that God himself,  the God who not only created everything that exists but created existence itself, not only knew me by name, not only cared about me, but has been watching over me, controlling everything that ever happened to me, actually knowing how I felt at every moment and caring about how I felt at every moment, such that, in a very real way, everything that made me happy, made him happy, and everything that made me sad, made him sad. Coming into the knowledge of this was really the most revolutionary, transformative aspect of this experience. 

I knew that the meaning and purpose of my life was to worship and serve my Lord and God and Master who is revealing himself to me, but I didn't know his name and I couldn't think of this as the God of the Old Testament. I couldn't think of this religion as Judaism. The picture of God that emerges from the Old Testament is certainly a picture of a God far more distant and severe and removed from ordinary mankind than this God was, so I [...] didn't know what religion to follow. 

So I prayed at the time - I was actually still walking at the time - even though I had fallen into heaven, so to speak, and could see the spiritual world. and was in this intimate communion with God, I was still also seeing the physical world around me. The physical world had become as though transparent and I could see through it into the spiritual world.

Anyway, as I was walking I prayed to know the name of my Lord and God and Master. [...] "Let me know your name. I don't mind if you're Buddha, and I have to become Buddhist; I don't mind if you're Krishna and I have to become Hindu; I don't mind if you're Apollo and I have to become a Roman pagan, as long as you're not Christ and I have to become Christian."

That desire for God not to be Christ was because I didn't want to become Christian. [This] came from my being Jewish and I didn't want to kind of go over to what I saw as the enemy side. And he respected that, and he did not reveal his name to me, so I returned home happier than I had ever been in my life.

[...] Since this had been a mystical experience I turned in that direction to find out more about it, which was a very imprudent thing to do, and I looked into some rather foolish new-agey kinds of directions, but I also did something which brought great fruit, which was every night I would say a short prayer that I had made up to know the name of my Lord and God and Master who had revealed himself to me.

Those are the circumstances of the "mystical experience" that gave Schoeman an awareness that he was in the presence of God. Exactly one year later he had his second transformative spiritual experience. He describes that night this way:

 I thought I was awoken by a hand gently on my shoulder and [was...] alone with the most beautiful young woman I could ever imagine, and I knew without being told that it was the Blessed Virgin Mary. When I found myself in her presence all I wanted to do was was honor her appropriately.. [...] She offered to answer any questions I might have for her. [...] 

I asked her what her favorite prayer to her was. [...] Her first response was, "I love all prayers", but I was a bit pushy and I said, "But you must love some prayers more than others?" and she recited a prayer [...] in Portuguese.  I didn't know any Portuguese so all I could do was try to remember the first few syllables phonetically and the next morning as soon as I woke up I wrote them down phonetically. [...] Later, after speaking to a Portuguese Catholic woman and asking her to recite all of the prayers to Mary in Portuguese, I identified the prayer as, Oh Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

When I went to sleep that night I knew virtually nothing about the Blessed Virgin Mary. All I knew was from Christmas carols, mostly from Silent Night and from having seen Christmas creches in public places. I had never touched, much less opened a New Testament. I knew none of what she revealed to me in this experience.

The other thing that I want to say is that although she was perfectly beautiful to look at, indescribably beautiful, even more profoundly affecting was the beauty of her voice. [...] The only way I can describe it is it was composed of that which makes music music. When she spoke, and when the beauty of her voice flowed through me, carrying with it her love, it lifted me up into a state of ecstasy greater than I ever imagined could exist. So most of my questions actually flowed out of my being absolutely overwhelmed by who she was and by her grandeur.

I'll mention a couple of the questions - they were actually more exclamations than they were actually questions. For instance, at one point I kind of [stammered out], "How is it possible, how can it be that you're so glorious, that you're so magnificent, that you're so exalted, how can it be?' Her response was just to look down at me almost with pity and shake her head gently and say, "Oh no, you don't understand. I'm nothing. I'm a creature. I'm a created thing. He's everything!" 

Then, again out of this desire to somehow honor her appropriately, I asked what title she liked best for herself and her response was "I am the beloved daughter of the Father, mother of the Son and spouse of the Spirit."

 I asked her several other questions of somewhat less significance and she spoke to me for another 10 or 15 minutes. She said she had something she wanted to tell me and after that the audience was over and I went back to sleep.

The next morning when I woke up I was hopelessly in love with the Blessed Virgin Mary and I wanted nothing other than to be as fully and completely Christian as possible. I obviously knew from this experience that the God who revealed himself to me a year earlier had been Christ.

In the experience of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I thought I was awake and my memory represents it as that I had been awake, and I remembered with an absolute word-for-word clarity. I actually even remember thinking about other questions that I had decided not to ask, and so forth.

However, I now understand that if there had been a camera in the room it would have shown me asleep in bed throughout that experience. 

Watch the full video where Schoeman expands on this summary. Go here. 

So what impact on Schoeman's life have these extraordinary experiences had? "By their fruits you shall know them." In 1992, he was baptised and since then he has remained unmarried, devoting his life to enabling people to know God as intimately as he does. He has written several books, teaches, and speaks whenever asked, as well as producing and hosting a Catholic TV talk show. He has a special calling to help his fellow Jews so that "their pride in being Jewish will draw them towards, rather than away from, the Catholic Church."   

Such a life witness confirms a high level of plausibility for truthfulness and accuracy of these accounts of the supernatural breaking through into the material world.