I am a mystic, a contemplative and a quietist. I had spontaneous experiences of what I call “Ultimate Reality” from the age of about 15 to 35. I have been absorbing the subject by osmosis ever since, as well as by prodigious reading on as many known aspects of the subject as I have been able to find.
Before that I was a hapless members of the Church of England. Afterwards, I was a deliberate Quaker for many years, then passing a year’s observances, was initiated into a Sufi Knowledge School.
Consequently, though I am of no religion I was accepted and dubbed a “Contemplative” after a tailored personal version of the long and rigorous Jesuit course on “The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola” under a strict Father Director. Ever since, I have lived a life of conflict between this Calling and the duties and responsibilities of earning a living, marrying, and being a father in a demanding human environment, despite being alienated from humanity to some extent.
So what this Blog is about is reaching out to those who have been taken through the obscuring veils of normal human experience into the Reality of Existence, also to scholars, and those who are studying the phenomenon seriously.
I also hope this will reassure those who are keeping their heads down as suggested in Dr Marsha Sinetar’s book, Ordinary People as Mystics and Monks, that they are not alone, not psychotic, and might be precursors of what the human race is going to be.
So join in with your comments. Don’t use your real name if you’re diffident about coming out. Those who share the Experience will recognize your authenticity.
Keith Hancock
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Mystical Experiences of Reality 
Why do you think you haven’t experienced another “reality” since you were 35?
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I have no idea. It was noted by the 19th century psychologist Bucke that this seemed to be the average period in which these experiences occurred. I haven’t read his tome Cosmic Consciousness for a long time, but I remember feeling a little suspect of how many subjects he studied to come to this conclusion. Dr Marsha Sinetar didn’t mention how often the events took place in her more recent book, Ordinary People as Monks and Mystics, that I recall. Maybe I needed that many shots … LOL.
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I was going to ask the same question as above. Perhaps between 15 and 35, you were more open to
free association thoughts, but were later too embroiled in a multi-faceted, demanding lifestyle. Could
you describe a couple of your “realities” or realizations?
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With me, the experienced basically asserted there is a different reality to existence, one that does not take the human experience much into account. For some reason the choice of recipient for this experience not even revealed to theologians, psychologists, philosophers, and physicists, though it is well documented in history ti have happened to humans who have no discernible qualification to recieve such a powerful revelation. The experience cannot be transferred either, not transmitted, evangeilised or proselytised. As the post “Have You Had The Experience?”, below, states, my general understanding taken from this Experience is:
All is well, whether this is understood or not;
Everything that exists now has existed and will exist forever, in different forms;
Everything that exists, including individual humans, belongs in its essential elements and cannot be made extinct.
This everlasting Experience is pure engulfing joy in an all pervasive sense that cannot be fully described in human terms.
The Experience brings growing, lasting knowledge of all existence, wisdom and discernment.
The incidents are fleeting.
When they leave, they leave those experiencing it with a profound sense of loss.
Some of the lives of the humans who experience this are then challenged by an increasingly developing inner life and an outward human life that now seems to them to be a dead end.
So to sum up, there is no discernible advantage in the Experience for the human race, though some Sufis and even contemporary philosophers, suggest it may be a new step in the evolution of man to becoming pure spirit. Are there more important things afoot in Reality than merely being human?
Keith Hancock.
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