@Alan McDougall,
(sorry, i should have included the quote from xris)
interesting...i have found past historical spiritual experiences and current ones to be strikingly similar. every time i read one i am amazed at the exactness of the experience yet the refreshingly various ways it is described. they show differences in degrees of intensity and length of duration, the people who receive them have to work hard to be able to assimilate them into their lives and worldview-but they have always been the same. only the human beings who receive them differ somewhat in their level of understanding.
even though you are addressing alan, i would like to give my answers to the same questions. i hope both you and he will excuse me for speaking up if out of place.
the reason so few are privy to these experiences is that the physical configuration of the brain is not suited to receive them in most people, but it is fast becoming prevalent as the species evolves. thus the increasing frequency of the phenomena. i also would hazard a guess that the newer generations include many who have been born already pre-wired and ready to function in ways that have not yet been possible. that is part of the reason for their unrest and confusion and what appears to me as a sort of holding position in their attitude towards life, the hesitation to choose a course and follow it. (it is starting in the west, this transformation)
the purpose it serves is to increase knowledge, wisdom and understanding by allowing individuals to make full use of their faculties, which has not yet been possible.
i do not ask or answer questions regarding a creator-in my interpretation of the source of the reality we are sharing, there is an awareness, which is constantly evolving. i cannot fathom whether or not it makes decisions. maybe someone else can...
my own personal opinion about whoever you choose to call evil is this: there is no evil in the soul of man, only in his physical manifestation. we are warped and crippled both emotionally and mentally by the aspects of our condition on the physical plane, by our imagined separation from the/our source. that is the cause of what you call evil. once we return to the source it doesnt matter any more. the soul remains intact, unsoiled, unhurt, innocent, but with something added to its sense of awareness by the physical experience which couldnt have been gleaned in its original pristine condition.
to answer your predictable rebuttal to my last statement, commonly listeners will say 'then you can do anything you want, you are immoral.' no, i have definite ideas on what is moral or immoral to follow while entrapped in this predicament or temporary condition along with you and everyone else. that is to say now i do-before this particular event in my life, i was quite a despicable, selfish, greedy, normal human being. furthermore, it is more common than otherwise that those people who undergo this experience often completely change their lives and personalities-and they always, without exception so far as i have ever heard or read, change towards a condition of being that has as its goal selflessness, unity, love and a wish to help others whom they perceive as part of the same awareness.