The idea of religion and mysticism being about the achievement of one’s Higher Human Self came up in a paper by a Punjabi PhD university professor recently.
(The paper also declared a preference for what he called an original Sikhism being all about the religious/spiritual superiority of animals compared to Sikh mysticism influenced by colonialism, so I didn’t take the paper too seriously).
But if my spiritual experiences of Reality can be taken seriously, the achievement of one’s higher human self may be a religious mission but it is certainly not the trancscendental purpose of mysticism.
Humanity was no part of my experiences in any way whatsoever. There was nothing human in them, not even Keith Michael Hancock eventually.
For all we know, and that Bucke and Sinetar have mentioned in their books, separated by nearly 100 years, mystics might be a separate species,
Are mystics the result of millenia of extinction of earth/cosmic species? After all, 99% of all biological/and earth growth species are extinct according to modern scientists.
Will mystics be the last trace of humans eventually? Is all remaining trace of humans eliminated after death? Is that the process we’re in – is that what it’s all about?
Whatever mysticism is here for it certainly isn’t to achieve our higher human selves whatever that is, although mystics are automatically, axiomatically, decent, honest and legal from what I can glean from my experience and readings.
Personally, all I promise humanity is I will try to be legal, decent and honest, but that’s it! Humanity will get no more from me than that. There are more important things afoot than being merely human, even than being one’s “Higher Human Self”.
Mystical Experiences of Reality 
Can’t escape being human, not yet anyway! I used to belong to a mystical organisation where it was said mystics were walking question marks. I identified as a mystic at one time, but now, I take it as being a mode of being, like all others, and I seek not to be attached to it. In line with the Buddha’s teaching, attaching to nothing. I accept I may be wrong of course.
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Spirit of the beach:
True mystics, in my experiences and awareness of the historical phenomena of mysticism, are being deliberately withdrawn from this world, processed until they die into their next phase when the human word ‘mystic’ disappears into redundancy.
As a guru reminded his pupils, “Don’t forget that while we are here we (mystics) are still part human.”
In my experiences, mankind as it is now is a seething obstruction to Reality of lust, anger, greed, attachments and ego.
Regards, Keith.
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Interesting. Thank you.
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