“Spiritual crisis (also called “spiritual emergency”) is a form of identity crisis where an individual experiences drastic changes to their meaning system (i.e., their unique purposes, goals, values, attitude and beliefs, identity, and focus) typically because of a spontaneous spiritual experience”.WIKIPEDIA.
Some psychologists regard MER as a personal experience of “spiritual emergency” as if its a symptom of distress, an anomaly.
Psychology could very well have continued as the enemy of human development had it been left to the way psychology was going.
So it is good to see that a new version of younger scientists are accepting MER as a vital sign, even as an evolutionary “emergence”.
Drs Jefferey Martin, Nicki Crowley, John Hick and Marsha Sinetar, are just four names that come to mind immediately, (though Dr. Hick’s outlook was younger than his age).
Einstein said: “Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world; all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it.”
Foundations, universities and scientists around the world from many scientific fields are joining in the quest to understand MER, (mystical experience of reality) as a powerful seminal force of cosmic reality.
“The Christian of the future will either be a mystic, that is somebody who has experienced something, or be nothing at all”. Karl Rahner, S.J., was a German Jesuit priest and theologian who, alongside Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Yves Congar, is considered one of the most influential Catholic theologians of the 20th century: Wikipedia.
Is this “emergence” – rather than personal, human “emergency”? Is the Cosmos not abandoning us to our relatively insignificant human condition? Is the existence of mystics a sign of hope for mankind?
“Spiritual emergence can be seen as a natural process of human development in which an individual moves beyond normal feelings and desires of the personal ego into the transpersonal realms of increasing relatedness to a Higher Power, or God. It is an acclimatisation to more subtle levels of consciousness.” “Psychosis or Spiritual Emergence?” Dr. Nick Crowley, Royal College of Psychiatrists, UK.
Wikipedia’s idea of spiritual is limited to the human spirit, not the real, pure spirit of MER. There is no comparison.
MER, which is what this web page is all about, is not interested in the “spirit” of humans any more than it is interested in the “spirit” of beetles in relation to the vastness of Reality in which all consciousness exists.
There is no “emergency” in the pure Mystical Experience of Reality. MER is filled with an absorbing benign joy and fulfillment, awe and wonder that explains everything, everything known and unknown, then now and forever. It is the purest experience of joy, humility, and acceptance (love) humans will ever know. When it happens, you will know you are all of that.
Humanity could very well die out once done with, but in my experience as a mystic, I know that the existence that MER is revealing will go on forever, with or without us.
EMERGENCE
By Barbara Shaw, BA., (UCLA); Cert.Goethe Institut, Munich; BA, Georgetown University.
That we should be descended from all that life
to bring in the air, to rise inside, to fill our lungs
with love for all that long time, with that very
spirit and breath,
that we should live thus, in bodies
come from all that, and breathe in this gray day
damp as earth and sane as rain, that life might abide
a wee keening, as if the fact of life come down
sifted and sounding through the ages lost
were in the end the only real proof some gods
chose some laws.
But no, if left to chance what then
and not even this day to sip lightly
with every countless breath, what then?
what then?
no eyes to seek the moon, nor miss it.
Mystical Experiences of Reality 