Wikipedia defines "mysticism" as "the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, or levels of being, or aspects of reality, beyond normal human perception, including experience of and even communion with a supreme being."
I had my first mystical experience when I was a 16-year-old secular atheist. I was sitting up late one night having a conversation about nothing in particular with my mother when suddenly, a most unexpected event occurred: the "doors of perception" swung wide open and I found myself in a dramatically altered state of consciousness. Even though I could see the four walls of the room in which I was sitting, inwardly, my conscious experience was one of no boundaries whatsoever. I felt like I was swirling in an infinite ocean of my own and everyone else's Being, the nature of which seemed to have no beginning and no end. The presence of ecstasy was overwhelming and even unbearable at times. In the profundity of this beginninglessness and endlessness, it became apparent that death was an illusion and that everything that exists and does not exist -- the seen and the unseen, the known and the unknown -- is all inseparable from this one inconceivable mystery. The majesty and glory of those few moments are impossible to describe in words -- it was like the whole universe suddenly became conscious of itself in me.
The transformative power of mystical experiences is that they can convey to us, in a way that our rational faculties can never grasp, that no matter what happens to our bodies and personalities in the world of time and space, mysteriously, at some other level, in another dimension of our own being, beyond the mind, everything is always OK.
The lightness of being that flows from the heart and mind of the mystic is very different than the sometimes disconcerting absolute self-confidence of the religious believer. The believer is convinced beyond any doubt of the incontrovertible nature of the apparently unique truth espoused by his or her particular mythic tradition -- whether it be Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist. Of course, in all of these traditions, there are many extraordinary men and women who are transformed in the most important ways by the liberating power of their faith alone. But the mystic has seen beyond the truth of any particular tradition because she has directly experienced at least what seems like a depth-dimension of reality that transcends all personal, religious, political and cultural differences -- whether she is a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist. This is because she has access to a truly transcendent knowing of the substratum of reality that remains unseen and unfelt by most. Mystical certainty spontaneously arises from the lightness of being that is the emotional resonance of the deepest dimension of the self.
The path of mysticism is one of transcendence, of going beyond: beyond the mind, beyond time, beyond the whole world. When the mind is transcended, awareness of the passing of time fades away. And when time disappears, awareness of the world also disappears. All the greatest mystics from the world's religious traditions have made the same unexpected and liberating discovery: When awareness of the world and everything in it, including ones own bodily shape and form, disappears, the most intimately felt sense of "I" still remains. Except now, "I" is all there is -- beginningless, endless. When the historical Buddha awakened to this depth dimension, he called it "the Unborn," "the Deathless" or "the Uncreated."
Before time and space, before the universe was born, you didn't have any problems and the world was not in crisis. That is the reason why lightness of being is the emotional resonance not only of the deepest dimension of the self, but also of the deepest dimension of reality itself. If we can find access to that Unborn, Uncreated, timeless domain of our own being, then we can know here and now, just like the greatest mystics throughout the ages, that everything is always OK.
Why is that so important? Because in a world that's more interconnected than it ever has been, when we're only hearing the bad news more times a day than we may be able to bear, knowing that, deeply, everything's always OK is more important than ever. It doesn't mean we are living in denial of the very real and complex problems we are facing. But the ever-new and always-liberating truth of mystical insight spiritually empowers us so that we won't become discouraged, even on really bad days. And most importantly, in a truly challenged world that needs our whole-hearted participation more than ever, being awake to our own infinite depths empowers us to fight the good fight with all the courage in the world.
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This article was originally posted on Andrew Cohen's BigThink.com blog, 'The Evolution of Enlightenment.' Photo credit here.
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What fight and what struggle?
Put down your weapons!
Forget these myths of valor.
And let the dead bury their heroes.
The demons of despair vanish
when none have ever existed.
And likewise the grasp of ego
had never a hold on you.
The world needs us?
What space and what time
In whose era when time circles about
And the great gyre will turn
oblivious to our striving?.
What it will teach you is that scientific materialism is as belief centered and subject to paradigm paralysis just as much as any religion.
It would be like having a debate with a evangel christian on the lack of logic that someone had to die on a cross so they could get to heaven.
Once we become a true believer we will stop at almost nothing to protect our cherished beliefs. the paradigm effect is that powerful.
Think about what a materialist has to protect. one unexplained phenomenon and their entire system of beliefs comes crashing down. that is a strong incentive to maintain the status quo.
It is all about commitment to the beloved.
Or as one of my favorite authors states: everything is perfectly imperfect.
Because we judge by appearances we often see everything not as ok but as chaos sin and evil.
It is interesting that the scientific materialists and the religious are very much alike at judging by appearances. the mystic has moments of greater awareness and the religious and the materialist fail to see or understand these moments because we judge others by our own levels of awareness.
The popular term personal responsibility is nothing more than the human ego's desire for culpability. ie see look at me I am a separate person from all others.
In religious terms "God" sees all ignorance as innocence, and sin and evil as misguided desires longing for the bliss of Oneness, and chaos as simply a perfectly imperfect process that creates every soul as a unique expression of That That Is.
see that was simple. :-)
http://thinkunity.com
Are you debating that the path to a deeper existence is not in everyone. I feel we are in the midst of all zones and there is a way for everyone, some choose to venture into it and some do not.
If one ventures into the deep, it is still connected to all zones because they are all in the same pool of consciousness, the shallow and the deep zones are connected if you are in the deep water and in the shallow water, but one is not aware of it, therefore it requires no departure from modern life.
What is difficult is to align one's speaking with one's actions.
http://www.enlightennixt.com/
Caveat emptor!
I love this ending! The word is in a crisis, so much "bad news", we need religion/spiritual/mysticism to save us! How will it save us? By giving us hope! By reminding us everything is going to be OK! Well, that's funny, I'm not a mystic, I tend not to have these experiences, and yet I am pretty optimistic that we will address our current problems and challenges. So, will mysticism do anything else to save us? Tell us the secret to better health care in the US or for dealing with the Euro? Nope, it is just going to give us hope. Secular public policy and good old intellectual study of the problem will save us instead.
Some hero mysticism is.
Listen, I am sure people have these experiences. I don't doubt that they experience consciousness differently from how they do in everyday life. I have no doubt that they are transformation. If you want to write poetry about it, whatever. But, people, get real. You aren't having supernatural human perception. You aren't experiencing something "beyond the mind, beyond time, beyond the whole world". This is just a natural phenomenon, occurring within our universe's time-space.
Admittedly an idealistic take on evolution and co, but no supernatural claims-despite that many of the figures he studied were within religious traditions. But in the last 225-50 years or so these experiences have been common enough OUTSIDE of any religious tradition, esp in the Anglophone world. The experience itself is just that experience.The question is, what does it lead to-or as James would say, what is its "practical cash value"? Sometimes very good things. E.g., Whitman's poetry.
I would concede that it is a different experience of consciousness from the everyday experience of consciousness. But I don't quite agree with the implication that it is not normal. In the sense that you are suggesting of what is normally experienced most of the time, then sure it is different from that. But the experience is perfectly normal, lots of people have these experiences. I completely reject the suggestion the experience is "beyond" everyday experience. I don't know how you are comparing these experiences to say one is beyond the other, they are just different experiences, the brain functioning differently. No one way of the brain functioning is in my view better than or "beyond" the other. I think it is merely a different experience of consciousness, a different functioning of my brain, that what I am experiencing say right now.
"It does not have to imply anything supernatural."
I agree completely. I wish people would talk about the subject in that way and choose a vocabulary to discuss the experience that reflected that this implies nothing supernatural.
"Indeed, he found one of the perennial elements was something like the feeling-"everything is always OK"."
Well, that's fine. That's an interesting aspect of the experience. Neuroscientists should study that. That doesn't mean the experience is beyond any other experience or that mysticism will save the world.
I agree completely. Yes, exactly. You couldn't describe my view of things any better. I'm not denying the experience. But it is just another experience. I wish people would talk about it as just another experience and stop trying to make more of it than it is with talk of it being supernatural or beyond stuff or saving the world or anything like that.
"The question is, what does it lead to-or as James would say, what is its "practical cash value"?"
Why is that the question? I thought actually understanding the experiences and the neurobiology of the experiences and anything else that might explain where the experiences are coming from is far more interesting. Unless you mean say the evolutionary "cash value", that is interesting. But I don't see why we need to make a big deal of this, why we it must have a practical cash value and that is the most important question to ask about it.
My concern is that, even having stripped away the supernatural element, you are privileging the experience as something extraordinary and to be revered. It's just another experience. It's a psychological event of your brain functioning differently. I never make such as big a deal as optical illusions or any other psychological events, why privilege this experience?
Standing over my parents’ stones,
I place flowers.
The gods circle overhead lifting
souls from their coffins and chambers.
The souls lift over the mountain
in calls of departure.
The gods of today
call down to the mountains,
the rocks and bones rise.
The gods of today fly together
lifting all dead things high,
carrying them away to the place
where nothing is lost.