People are as close to God as they want to be. Most people actually don't want to be very close to Him. Many live only in the shallowest reaches of their minds. This is because the closer you get to Him, the more you have to identify with Him and His Truth. It is much easier to identify with your own past image of self and its delusional relationship to reality, than to repudiate these things.

Yet the repudiation of these things is necessary to truly get close to God.

God is each person's innermost truth, who that person truly is. Consciousness is merely the mask that god wears

Each person exists in a more or less stressed mental state, depending on how thoroughly this truth is suppressed in his mind. Where it is less suppressed, the person tends to be under more stress, because their relationship to their world seems less satisfying to them; to be more false. This causes them to examine and question that relationship, and their mind, more persistently than most people.

Most 'direct experiences of God' then, tend to be relatively shallow, and not very transformative. Deeper ones are more transformative, and the deeper you go, into your own unconscious, the closer to God you get.

Be warned. The only real truth is obtained with identification with God. Anything less will just present you with a form of the image you were brought up believing. That is why these images are so varied, and also why they tend to be culturally determined. Although the experience of that image of God may be very emotional and satisfying, it is nevertheless a form of idolatry. It is the deepest part of your own mind, looking back at you in your conscious awareness.

These words, of course, just point at the process of the discovery of your true self, which is God. And the essence of the experience and the being is more than just the name.