He was told by a member of the Oxford group a kind of list of the steps but he didn't actually work them at the time this happened - except for step one.
"In December of 1934 Bill Wilson was in Towns Hospital off Central Park in NYC for what would be his last detoxification. During this hospitalization Bill had a dramatic “spiritual experience.” Bill describes this dramatic experience in his history of A.A. (1957, p.63):
“My depression deepened unbearably and finally it seemed to me as though I were at the bottom of the pit. I still gagged badly on the notion of a Power greater than myself, but finally, just for the moment, the last vestige of my proud obstinacy was crushed. All at once I found myself crying out, ‘If there is a God, let Him show Himself! I am ready to do anything, anything!’
Suddenly the room lit up with a great white light. I was caught up into an ecstasy which there are no words to describe. It seemed to me, in my mind’s eye, that I was on a mountain and that a wind not of air but of spirit was blowing. And then it burst upon me that I was a free man. Slowly the ecstasy subsided. I lay on the bed, but now for a time I was in another world, a new world of consciousness. All about me and through me there was a wonderful feeling of Presence, and I thought to myself, ‘So this is the God of the preachers!’ A great peace stole over me and I thought, ‘No matter how wrong things seem to be, they are still all right. Things are all right with God and His world.’”
And yet in "How it works" it says, "having had a spiritual experience as the results of these steps"! They clearly make it seem as if you have to do all the steps to get a spiritual experience when this is not what happened to Bill W.
What funny is if you read Eckhart Tolle's story he had a similar experience even down the the full blown depression beforehand.
Here is the link: http://dubgrp.com/content/william-james-bill-wilson-and-development-alcoholics-anonymous-aa
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