Mystical Experiences of Reality
A discussion and illustration of the phenomena by a contemporary mystic.
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. His work has been influential not only in psychiatry but also in anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, and religious studies. – Wikipedia
Died: June 6, 1961, Küsnacht, Switzerland
From a mystic’s point of view the dung beetle, for instance, and human science are in the category of the micro phenomena of existence – whereas the mystical experience of Reality (MER), is the only phenomena in current human experience that is the macro category it occupies.
So the real hard question of science and mysticism is, how macro is Reality?
Does mysticism already know? If not, which one will know first, science or mysticism?
(Answer: Mystics! – Reality has been giving mystics the answer to this one for thousands of years).
Below is a link to a paper written by Dr. Markides and published in The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, in 2008 (Vol. 40, No. 2). It is entitled, “Eastern Orthodox Mysticism and Transpersonal Theory”.
As a “teaser” to the paper, this is Dr. Markides’ abstract. He writes:
“Christianity has remained relatively peripheral to the intellectual processes that shaped transpersonal theory. Eastern religions on the other hand provided the base upon which transpersonal theory was founded and developed. Spiritual traditions like Hinduism and Buddhism paved the way towards the exploration of states of consciousness beyond the rational mind.
My basic claim in this paper is that the eastern branch of Christianity, or Eastern Orthodox Christianity, has preserved and developed over the centuries a mystical theology and practice that may enrich and perhaps expand what eastern religions have contributed so far to the emergence of transpersonal theory.
This paper is an introduction to the mystical pathways of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. It is informed by seminal literature and scriptures, several years of participant observation and depth interviews of Eastern Orthodox practitioners (mystics, monks and hermits), and complemented by experiential data related to my own journey of discovery.”
Click to open Dr. Markides paper: Threefold Way-Markides (PDF)
Kyriacos C. Markides (b. 1942) is a professor of sociology at the University of Maine. He has written several books on Christian mysticism including Mountain of Silence (2001), Gifts of the Desert (2005), and Inner River (2012). Dr. Markides is a contributor to Transpersonal Psychology, a sub-field or “school” of psychology that integrates the spiritual and transcendent aspects of the human experience with the framework of modern psychology. Based on the early works of Carl Jung, William James, and Abraham Maslow, it is also possible to define Transpersonal Psychology as a “spiritual psychology”. Dr. Markides is trying to introduce Eastern Orthodox Mysticism into Western secular Psychology, something that is long overdue and desperately needed.
It doesn’t. Humans have no say in the matter in my experience.
Humans don’t have any choice. Reality doles out individual spiritual awakening, not humans.
Nor does Reality pay attention to human “spiritual priorities”. From my perspective, the notion of uncalled humans having “spiritual priorities” is an oxymoronic egoism.
Until Reality awakens individuals to the possibility of spirituality, humans aren’t aware of real spirituality. They become aware only when they’re made to …
If you’re having persistently recurring urgings to know who and what you are and what it’s all about, take comfort. That which you seek seeks you with such promptings.
Even after awakening, humans still have no spiritual choices, nor would that notion even occur to those awakened.
Reality has its own ways. Its ways are not human ways.
There is a lot to come, from before history to long after …
All is well.
Why are gurus of mysticism sometimes so enigmatic?
The older generations of gurus seem to be more enigmatic than some of the later gurus. Perhaps this was because the older generation had to be more circumspect about the hostile religious situations of their cultures. (Some wax poetic about “bread” and “wine” and “The Friend” but that’s not what they’re talking about).
Apart from that, there is also the inherent difficulty in the absence of a human language that can describe the mystic experience.
Then of course mystics are concerned about giving away too much to charlatanous wannabes.
Mainly though, being enigmatic is a strong way of making the truly called pause, focus on that moment, centre themselves, think, contemplate, meditate their way through the enigmatic challenge.
Being enigmatic sorts out the called from the merely curious.
Used deliberately by a mystic, being enigmatical is a powerful teaching entrancement, a boon to the committed Seeker.
This essay so agrees with my prejudices on the subject of spontaneous mystical experiences of Reality (MER) I just have to draw your attention to it.
My only caveat is the constant use of the word ‘God’. My experiences taught me there’s no such thing if this is a reference to the god of human religions.
I prefer the phrase “Ultimate Reality” or “Reality” with a capital R.
The human word GOD is too small to come anywhere near to describing the Reality mystics experience. The word is tainted with insistent human values and dangerously limited spiritual experience.
Apart from that, this article is an essential foray into real spiritual meaning, in my experience.
Mysticalexperiences.net 2018
Marc replied:
Thank you, Keith, for visiting our site and for reblogging the piece of spiritual writing published on this page.
I have read the caveat you noted down at your website, and I have no problems with it, to wit:
My only caveat is the constant use of the word ‘God’. My experiences taught me there’s no such thing if this is a reference to the god of human religions.
My use of the term “God” is a only a matter of familiar linguistic convenience andgrammatical facilitation, to enable the communication of my message to others (readers in this case). In no way does my use of the word refer to the typical “god” (or “God”) of any human religion. You are right in that regard.
The truly ineffable is beyond the label and definition of words or word constructs. It is, also, beyond mental conceptualization and comprehension by the intellectual functionality of the human mind. One can readily substitute the word “God” in the article with, say, your preferred use of “Ultimate Reality” or “Reality” with a capital R. I would not have any problem with that.
Permitting me to make light of the matter, let me say that from a mystic’s perspective, I suppose it might boil down to adopting and using a favored “pet name” for the utterly transcendent Reality. Joel Goldsmith had his: the “Infinite Invisible.” Mystics, philosophers and theologians from various cultures and traditions down through the ages have resorted to fanciful expressions such as the Absolute, the First Cause, the Prime Mover, Spirit, Brahman, Purusha, the Self, the unutterable Nameless One or “Yahweh” in the Hebraic tradition for which the Jews had to concoct the name “Adonai” just so that they could have a representative name to legitimately pronounce (seems crazy and ridiculous but there was a reason behind the seeming madness), the Tao, Nirvana, Allah, and so on and so forth; and, of course, the much ballyhooed yet still in vogue everyman’s term in the English-speaking world — God.
It would seem that not even scientists can be spared from the tendency of customarily providing some reverential, awe-inspiring nomenclature for a phenomenon beyond the immediate purview of scientific reasoning and observation. Thus, we have terms such as the “Big Bang” (why not the Big Fart?), the “Zero Point Field,” the “Singularity,” the Higgs boson “God-Particle,” Consciousness, etc. all denoting “something that’s there but not quite out there.”
Aware of this very human foible, I exercised enough prudence to raise the potential issue or problematic matter at the very beginning of this site’s substantive discourse on the subject of contemporary mysticism. It sets the tone for the discussion and for the entire site as well.
By the way, my private “pet name” for God would be “The Truly Ineffable.” It reminds me of the divine paradox that “there is this thing that is not a thing at all” — a No-Thing.
Thanks again for appreciating the post, Keith.
Cheers.
categories: MER, GOD.
Mystic experiences.net
Categories: Community, Individuality.
Strongly recommended – A must, clarifying read for those who haven’t yet come across scientist William James’ seminal introduction to mysticism and consciousness – mysticexperiences.net
https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/06/04/william-james-varieties-consciousness/
Are spiritual experiences becoming more common?
What are spiritual experiences? I don’t think of them in religious terms. I see them as moments in which our awareness becomes more intense and more expansive than normal, so that the world around us becomes more real and alive, and we feel a strong sense of connection to nature and other human beings. We might feel a sense of joy or inner stillness, and feel that somehow the world around us is “in harmony” or has a meaning that we find difficult to express.
If a person from a religious background has such an experience, they may well interpret it in religious terms. They might see it as a gift from God, and believe that the aliveness and harmony they perceive is a glimpse of the divine, or of heaven. But if you’re not religious, there’s no reason to think in these terms…
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I had spontaneous yearly experiences of mystical reunions with Reality from about 15 to 35 years of age. I kept them to myself for nearly 50 years.
They recreated me from a who to a what and gave me a sense of having existed from the beginning of all things to the end of all things; of belonging; and of “everything belonging to me” that others describe as “oneness”; an overwheming liquifying of my matter into pure joy; a profoundly thankful humility; a disappointment in not finding “God” there; a sense of knowing everything; of not existing anywhere but in the experiences; of knowing real reality of existence is the Reality I was experiencing; the frantic helplessness of desolation, of abandonment as each of the experiences ended.
As each of my experiences dissolved me back into my humanity I felt a keenness of loss, outcries of alarm, a profound, wrenching desperation of catastrophic bereavement. I scrabbled against it in futility. I felt marooned, a feeling that taints my human existence to this very second.
I was infused rather than taught or shown or guided. I remember there was nothing to see, hear, smell, physically feel, or think.
In one of my experiences a voice told me quite clearly and emphatically, ALL IS WELL. I was dumbfounded so the message was repeated three times …
The reason I was dumbfounded and deeply disappointed was I thought the message came for someone else. I looked around but there was no one else to see.
I was baffled for years over that message because I had not asked or thought of a question to which that might be the answer.
Another time, I was levitated out of my body. It happened without me noticing. When I did notice it seemed quite natural. I was overjoyed that God was ridding me of my body to take me up. Then I was bitterly betrayed on looking down to see my body still there about 15 feet below.
My conclusion now is there seems to be a Process into which I have been drawn, rather than “God”. This Process is nowhere near as limited as the human word “God” implies. It is benign, caring of all creation, guarding, guiding, aiding and comforting, a constant seemingly natural state of unending contentment, peace, tranquility, humility, gratitude, awe and joy. But it is not about making me a better human, though that, I think I can presume, is automatic, axiomatic. We are all more than merely human.
My sense of personality, character, body, mind, intelligence, intellect, did not exist in my MERs, nor did I miss them, expect them or need them.
I came away with the impression human bodies and brains die, but their spiritual knowingness become absorbed, added into this non-material Process of Reality beyond infinity that never dies. Reality seeks, but does not seek body, brain or mind it seems.
After MER, humans have no need of the anthropmorphic falsehoods of faith, hope or belief – after MER they KNOW. They are one with the Process, no longer needing gods or “God”. The experiences are fulfilling and keep being fulfilling after they’ve gone.
I was never given to believe humanity or individuals can invoke or influence this Process of Reality, either. In fact, being only human might be the reason so many humans have not yet had the experience of MER. Human attachment and egos are two strong deterrents among the many human attributes that come between us and this fulfillment.
The experiences were fulfilling beyond all ordinary human experience, imagining or knowledge. Reality seems to be the alpha and omega of everything, all knowing, a fundamental existential of being that just is, a given that can be taken for granted, does not need to be named. In Reality there are no names: everything just is and all is well. And I was and am that.
Between these experiences I toiled privately at the agony of being partly human despite the experiences’ development and continued effect on me – the continuingly joyous but alienating illumination of Reality and my true nature.
The stress of this growing alienation from “manmukh” – all things human – affected me severely.
The energy of the world, of the human spirit, is not compatible with the development of the spirituality of the ultimate reality of the Mystical Experience of Reality, (MER), in my experiences.
This struggle ruined my life, thankfully …
Now if I’m asked what I have especially taken away from my experiences I would say: Reality is a process. It is in charge. It never fails and is utterly benign …
Neverthless, at times the process got so desperate I developed and finalised the following secret plea to be rescued.
(At the time, I didn’t know how serious the act of writing can be, I just thought I was writing a poem. Later, the answer to this plea came by writing too and is also recorded here):
Divinity’s insouciant servants of the Light
Fly beneath my fears, over my plight,
Indifferent to my day as to my night.
Marooned in the humanity of my time,
Tired by glimpses of the divine,
Save me soon Lord, make me thine.
Marooned to solitude is your story;
Its contemplation leads you to my glory.
Love, understanding and compassion
Are the lessons of your life, your grace, your passion.
From the other side of Night,
I am your glory, your rescue Light …
1985.
(Nowadays I wouldn’t use the words “God”, “divine”, “faith”, “Divinity” or “Lord”. And I would call “the light” Reality, such a Light being a unique part of Reality.
(PS: The word “faith” has been bothering me. It signifies lack of real spiritual experience. So as I returned to this poem with my doubt about the rightness of the word the real word arrived. So I have deleted “faith” and as you will see, have inserted the more meaningful word “grace”).
An email reply to a friend/Follower:
Thanks, Barb.
“You are not your body, you are not your mind” is a mantra that came up in the last three years of my blog. Can’t remember its provenance.
Some science seems to be coming to the conclusion human evolution will certainly dump body and mind eventually. That is a Sufi tradition too. It’s certainly validated for me by my own experiences.
Humans and their minds have always been a spiritually poisonous distraction in the mystical experience of Reality. Just look at how the human mind created the diversion of religions from the purity of MER (Mystical Experience of Reality).
Our understanding of brain, mind, intellect and consciousness, especially MER, has undergone a considerable worldwide development since the days of Leibniz’s metaphysics I think.
Thanks again, Barb, you always stimulate …
In MER, Mystical Experience of Reality, there are no rules. In Reality all is as it should be. There, mystics are safe. In fact, they’ve probably merged into Reality so no longer exist. Reality doesn’t know what a mystic is. Mystic is a human word.
However, in the mystic’s human state, there are observances a mystic might find useful:
Basically, just escaping into contemplative remembrance of your MER(s) until you regain your mystic equilibrium will meet most of the problems of your developing calling whilst here.
Keep heart, you’ll never again be as far from Reality as you are now …
Onwards and upwards. All Is Well.
FOLLOWER: Did you see God?
ANSWER: I wouldn’t call it God.
In my present state of development plus what I was given in my various instances of MERs (Mystical Experiences of Reality), I’m at the conclusion there seems to be a Process into which I have been drawn, rather than “God”.
At the beginning I was disappointed not to find God as I had hoped. Instead, I found this Process, which is nowhere near as limited as the human word “God”, implies.
QUESTIONER: So MER is not GOD?
ANSWER: My MERs showed no human attributes in the Process I experienced if that’s what you mean.
Nor does the Process exist just for or engage with the human condition. It does not issue human moralities, ethics, rules of behaviour, laws, taboos, ideologies, threats or talk of vengeance or favouritism. There is no coerciveness, heaven or hell.
The Process is benign, caring of all creation, guarding, guiding, aiding and comforting. It is a constant, a seemingly natural state of unending contentment, peace, tranquility, humility, gratitude, awe and joy.
My own sense of personality, character, body, mind, intelligence, intellect, seeing, smelling, hearing or tasting, did not exist in my MERs, nor did I miss them, expect them or need them.
The experience is fulfilling beyond all ordinary human experience, imagining or knowledge. It seems to be the alpha and omega of everything, all knowing, with what humans would call ultimate virtue, an existential fundament of being that just is, and is a given that can be taken for granted, does not need to be named. In Reality there are no names: everything just is and all is well.
As each of my experiences dissolved me back into my humanity I felt a keenness of loss, outcries of alarm, a profound, wrenching desperation of catastrophic bereavement. I scrabbled against it in futility. I felt marooned, a feeling that taints my human existence to this very second.
I was never given to believe humanity or individuals can invoke or influence this Process of Reality, either. In fact, being human might be the reason so many humans have not yet had the experience.
I came away with the impression human bodies and brains die, but their spiritual ingredients become absorbed, added into this non-material Process of Reality beyond infinity that never dies.
After MER, humans have no need of the anthropmorphic falsehoods of faith, hope or belief – after MER they KNOW. They are one with the Process, no longer needing gods or “God”.
Q: None of this sounds Christian or Islamic.
A: When you’re spiritually ready, dig deeply and sensitively enough and you’ll find the reality of existence and meaning buried inside the clutter of human veils in yourself, in all individuals, in Christianity, Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism.
After that you won’t use the word “God” ever again. You might even wonder if the “God” you’ve been worshiping is in fact the “Devil” obscuring you from Reality.
Historically, mystics had no choice but to be in a religion – or else! Even so, they were tortured, incarcerated, banished, excommunicated and/or killed.
Today’s true mystics have no such restraints. Even so, they avoid religious distractions, even other mystics. Some Sufi schools even strongly advise meditating alone, not even to dally after satsangs/meetings to socialise, eat or drink.
Two contemporary Sufi schools, and a published Sufi master, distance themselves from Islam publically because they say the mystical experience is significantly further along the spiritual path, much purer; that religions are spiritually ignorant, man-made distractions to the truly called. One Sufi school says real, pure Sufism existed before religions anyway.
(Did the religions become the obscuring weeds of the original and ever present spiritual flower?).
An Internet guru ignores spiritual books in case his personal experience of Reality becomes adulterated.
MER, the Mystical Experience of Reality, is enough.
It has to be noted Jesus did not leave any spiritual instructions for enlightenment. His alleged biblical teachings were all anthropological – moral and ethical, not spiritual.
(What he imparted in the personal, face to face oral tradition of teachers with their pupils of his time however, a tradition still widely followed today, might have been purely mystical, but will we ever know?).
The Jesus Conference of world-wide scholars and scientists says only about a dozen of the words ascribed to Jesus in the Bible can be verified as his. Not one of those words is a mystical teaching.
The other religions are in the same category – manmade constructions simply teaching current human moralities and ethics.
Still, one Sufi school admonishes its followers not to interfere with the religious as many religionists are called. They are finding their way. They will succeed ultimately – there are no failures in the universal mystical experience of Reality.
It has to be emphasised that the essence of the mystic experience is that it comes for individuals, not social collectives, countries, ideologies, political “isms”, theologies, philosophies, religions, or even mankind. It comes for you.
MER has its own agenda. MER is independent of all influences yet known to mankind. As the biblical Jesus is quoted as saying, it comes like the wind, from where and to where no one knows.
So all a mystic can truthfully suggest is, if you’re a religionist, carry on in your chosen religion until you can’t. Just don’t let religion become a danger to you or anyone else.
Seeking Reality is an individual calling, a singular voice for you only, for our ways are not Reality’s ways. Ultimately, Reality is the only way.
As for the rest, including human destiny, all is enfolding in good order as the night the day. All is well.
From The Greatest Achievement in Life by Ron. D. Krompos, free pdf ebook, suprarational.org.
