In 1989, he had a sudden spiritual awakening while sitting on a bench. It felt as if he woke up from a long dream and realized his everyday self was only a character, while his true identity was something far more real. His awareness expanded to the vastness of space and time, and he sensed that everything existed in one eternal moment. He experienced that all things were actually one single conscious reality—and that this One was him. He then felt a loving, omnipresent Presence watching him, whom he recognized as Father: a being of pure, warm, radiant love. Soon he understood that he and Father were the same being, and that Love was the very substance of the universe. When he asked about illusion, Father showed him a “cloud of worries” hovering over people—a field made of imagined fears and anxious thoughts. That, Father revealed, was the true Maya. As normal thoughts returned, the experience faded, but its impact stayed with him.