Mystical Experiences of Reality
A discussion and illustration of the phenomena by a contemporary mystic.
Jordan Bernt Peterson is a Canadian clinical psychologist, YouTube personality, author, and a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. He began to receive widespread attention as a public intellectual in the late 2010s for his views on cultural and political issues, often described as conservative. Wikipedia
“Although mystics sometimes retreat from the outer world to develop a deeper awareness of inner reality, mysticism itself does not require retreat. Becoming a mystic does not require an escape from the so-called “real world.” In fact, “practical mysticism” calls upon us to be very present and aware of whatever is going on in the world, without buying into its illusions.”
MYSTICISM AND MAGIC ebook by Jon Munday, PhD.
A follower wrote:
“I can quite understand your reluctance to get involved in proselytizing and marketing. Let alone the incomprehensible realm of social media. It is not an area for which I have any liking either but regrettably, as with all commerce, I guess someone has to do it. As to me, yes, it is incredibly difficult to fight lifetime’s habit of ‘doing’ things in the human world. I would say that yes, I am still having difficulty in letting go.“
I answered:
“I have a possible answer to that! My favourite MBA, a niece (!), gave me the idea of engaging a qualified financial planner, so I got a former Price Waterhouse man whose department was taken over by TD, a Canadian bank. Now, 11 years later our capital remains intact even though we dont spend all the income he and TD make for us. Being comfortably free of the human curse of having to work for a living has removed me of much of the major human burdens of attachments, duties and responsibilities that so harried my spiritual calling …
(Has the debilitatingly hard challenge of fighting a lifetime’s human inculcation been lifted – to reveal an hitherto veiled spiritual dynamic?! Are you in a position to answer that about yourself?!).
The correspondent replied:
“I must certainly put our finances in capable hands – I no longer have the skill or desire to manage money. Or indeed to manage anything in a physical human world which I find increasingly baffling and unsatisfactory.
“You have often told me to discard the distractions of humanity and this has become a compelling necessity.
” … a relative wondered whether I had said all I had to say. I said that I had certainly finished lamenting the sad state of the human world.
” … years ago … I think I probably felt anger about the shocking injustice and inequality which abounds. The violence, greed and anger we see all around us. I expressed my distaste.
“These days I realize how completely futile such an undertaking was and hence have become far more inward looking. The external physical world and in particular humanity will never change and hence the violence and greed will simply continue until the race goes mercifully extinct.
“I still suffer from great fear and anxiety and this too I must let go. Letting go – what a vital concept. I must accept that this is all that remains of my task. To let go finally and completely.”
I commiserated:
“Your journey is particularly difficult for now. Your mind is feral, a common plague.
As the world loses its power over you you’ll regain your lost true self, as well as your inherited but neglected centre of content.
You certainly wont take the world with you on exit!
“All Is Well.”
I’ve always struggled with being part human ever since my mystical experiences of Reality, (MER) that made me what humans call a mystic.
I am grateful the continuing lessons of those experiences enabled me to endure the human condition until my present comfortable life of reality was reached.
Much has been shed – acquaintances, colleagues, comrades, friends, family, neighbours, current affairs, religion, teachings, traditions, reading matter, toxic work – the detritus of present human primitiveness that still obstructs spiritual reality.
Now, for me, the Dalai Lama spells out how much might have been achieved earlier in my life.
Obviously I was not developed enough to understand it then anyway. Like a lot of other spiritual works, his words only shine now as a result of continuing mystic development.
With this personal development, my reading and understanding have become as if I’m reading spiritual works as if I had never read them several times already, over and over again, over many years … they have become as new. They validate my experiences with Reality. For me now, nothing merely human is worthwhile by comparison.
This attitude has become my main navigational tool through life – recognising when opinions and actions are merely human, mind stuff, entropy. I politely avoid them.
So for me the simple profundity of the direction of the Dalai Lama’s message shines like a beacon of Reality.
I hope it might for you too.
All Is Well.
Are these recent quotations by scientist Professor Donald Hoffman an indication of a shift in scientific acceptance of the mystic experience of Reality?
They almost make you wonder if he is repeating what he’s read here! (which, I hasten to add, I’m sure he hasn’t) :
Consciousness is “subjective”, “individual”;
Consciousness “is not made up by the brain”;
There are … “no experiments that prove consciousness is made up by the brain”;
“Everything is consciousness”;
“Consciousness is ultimately fundamental to the universe”.
Donald David Hoffman is an American cognitive psychologist and popular science author. He is a professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, with joint appointments in the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, and the School of Computer Science. (Wikipedia).
He was being interviewed on Closer To Truth on UTube by Robert Lawrence Kuhn who is a public intellectual, international corporate strategist and investment banker. He has a doctorate in neuroscience and is the author and editor of over 25 books. (Wikipedia).
Being everything I’m meant to be and nothing of what I’m not.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
This quote is very true.
My late Sufi Master said, “There are no failures.”
As someone who through no fault of his own experienced the joyous rebirth of the experience of Reality many times a year for over 15 years, I can verify this truth.
We are not body or brain. We are more.
Humanity’s destiny is to eventually shed body and brain like a chrysalis to become individually truly fulfllled in the fullness of Reality.
Each individual aspect of existence goes through this, not just humans.
All Is Well – no matter what humans get up to.
This Blog’s book, “Mystical Experience of Reality” is now live on the Google Play Bookstore.
Apparently it will now reach a wider audience of 2.5 billion people worldwide who own an Android device through their access to the Google Play store – more than even Amazon reaches:
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=bH13EAAAQBAJ
mysticalexperience.net
After his recent inner experiences a follower wrote to me, “Somehow something of the ‘I’ had to remain to be influenced, to grow myself and maybe those I encounter.”
My experiences are entirely different.
My reply was that in my experiences ‘I’ gets in the way of spiritual development. ‘I’ clutters spiritual progress.
‘I’, being human, and particularly the mind with its cultural accretions, have nothing whatsoever to do with human development. They are attachments.
All human lust, anger, greed, attachments and ego get in the way. Fortunately they wither under Reality’s influence.
But the followers’, “‘I’ had to remain to be influenced, to grow myself and maybe those I encounter”, particularly worries me.
As I have shared many times, Reality is caught, not taught. We can’t do Reality’s work for it!
As human history shows, we, including mystics, can’t evangelise, teach or prosyletise, the mystic experience of Reality, (MER). The experience is ineffable, not explainable. Only Reality can gift it.
Even scholars and scientists admit to MERs absolute ineffability.
So ‘I’ certainly doesn’t “have to remain”. But not to worry. If the follower is under Reality’s influence ‘I’s eventual disappearance will become joyfully apparent in Reality’s own good time …
All Is Well.
Please feel free to republish this post.
Did I have what Christians would call a new Revelation?
I was reading this quotation by Ron Krumpos in his new paperback of, ‘The Greatest Achievement In Life’:
“The (mystical) experience itself is felt to be sufficient and complete. It does not come in fragmentary or truncated form demanding completion by something else. It does not look beyond itself for meaning or validity.” Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, former President of India
It gave me a sudden, startling, serendipitous reminder of my mystical experiences, plunged me into that joyful state of knowing my true self in what I have come to know as Reality.
Reality engulfed me again; joyfully, humbly, irresistibly. I shook.
Later, I wondered if this was the answer to a persistent urge to know even more of the Reality of my experiences.
The ‘answer’ seemed to be that difficult to explain but impossible to ignore feeling to, Just be. Be just what Reality is creating.
I had been feeling for some time that, we are given what we are ready to absorb, as much as our capabilities can bear! No one is first, no one is last.
It also confirmed what a Sufi master once told his initiates, there really are no failures.
All Is Well.
Please feel free to pass posts on …
In all the confusion of human attention to the perennialist view of the world versus the view that the only explanation of existence is the physical, material world, the mystic experience of Reality MER tends to get lost.
The materialist view is that Reality is what we experience by touch, sight, hearing, and a brain/ mind limited to experiment, logic and reason, not personal experience.
Materialism rejects subjectivity, ‘feelings’ and emotions as pathological, twisting things from the truth.
On the other hand, the full perennial explanation is that Reality is everything and we are a part of That – everything directly experienced but also everything material, physical, personal, biological, botanic or anything else. We are part of a Reality that rules everything. Reality is beyond infinite.
Nevertheless, many perennialists lose the way by assuming perennialism is obviously all about the human condition. It’s not.
The rarely acknowleged actual direct personal experience of Reality that mystics encounter, (MER), encompasses both perennialism and materialism/matter, as well as all things beyond present ordinary human comprehension or experience.
Are mystics part of a cosmic evolution, a direct, personal growing consciousness of Reality beyond present ordinary human or perennialist and materialist ability to comprehend?
If the Pareto principle that only 10 per cent effort produces 90 outcome can be applied here, then if seekers and mystics are 10 per cent of the world’s population, are there possibly millions of living humans called to be, or who already are mystics?
Is consciousness growing through seekers and mystics, (with or without mainstream human cognition)?
Is real infinite cosmic consciousness only revealed to individuals selected for reasons yet unknown who are seekers and mystics?
If so, is the argument between perennialists and materialists utterly inconsequential to Reality’s purpose?
All Is Well.
This post can be forwarded if you wish.
“There is a huge silence inside each of us that beckons us unto itself, and the recovery of our silence can begin to teach us the language of heaven.” Meister Eckhart
Comment: In my experiences, this is the very portal of the heart of Reality.
“What is amiss even in the best philosophy … is an undue emphasis on man as compared with the universe.”
Bertrand Russell, in his book, History of Western Philosophy.
Taken with permission from Ron Krumpos’ book, The Greatest Achievement In Life. This free ebook has been downloaded over 70,000 times and is being republished as a printed book.
Ron has degrees in philosophy from Northwestern University, Lucknow University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a long time follower of this Blog:
Many contemporary mystics are laypeople who seldom speak about religion, although most are quite religious. Mysticism, for them, is considered a mode of being, not a question of their faith.
These people are not trying to convince you or asking you to agree with what they say. They are merely attempting to explain their own direct awareness. They have no desire to describe their mystical experiences. Application to living is far more important. It is all-embracing discernment.
Almost every person feels that their life is lacking in some way, although they are seldom able to define it. There always seems to be something missing. True mystics feel wholeness often. It is not a temporary absorption in divine union. Rather, it is identifying with the divine essence everywhere. Living, for them, usually expands beyond their own immediate sentiments, thoughts and sensing.
“Just let it be.” Many mystics today have said that, in various ways. We frequently do try to control our lives. To some extent that is possible. Much of what happens, however, is beyond our control. Acceptance is a positive spin on surrender. We must accept what is, or actively change it to something better. Mark Twain said “the worst things in my life never happened,” yet caused needless worry. Conversely, the best things in life often occur without any planning or expectations. Dealing with what is should be our priority. We must live in the present, rather than dwell on the past or the future.
Existence is not just a mental exercise, despite what some Eastern schools of mysticism may seem to imply. There are emotional and physical factors of equal importance, which might be stressed too much in the West. For mystics, mind and body, and their emotive interaction, are less significant than the spiritual essence underlying them. A mind without spirit would be lethargic; a body without spirit would be ailing; lacking spirit in both can actually cause physical death. Life is not only becoming, it is being here and now.
Rebirth is conceived as being born in another body, after death in this life. For “born again” Christians, it is reaffirmation of their faith while still alive. Contemporary mystics sometimes speak of being born again. After absorption in oneness, they view existence from a broader perspective. The universal essence, which had engulfed them, is later felt as background to everything they experience. Living has greater purpose*, even if they cannot explain it in words. Realizing eternal life is present currently, they do not fear death.
Religions today usually concentrate on earthly being, within the confines of space and time. They seldom mention either mysticism or eternity. Many books about Judaism, Christianity and Islam omit their mystical tradition. Much current literature by Buddhists only touch on the Dharmakaya or Nirvana. The mystical quest for unity is still a vital part of Hindu movements, but most people in modern India are now more concerned with secular interests.
Many mystics disassociate themselves from orthodox beliefs and practices, which is resented by many of their religion’s members. Some reinterpret the scriptures and prophesies of their faith, which upsets some of its leaders. The priorities of mystical traditions are frequently at odds with the mainstream of their institutional faith. They concentrate on the eternal here and now, partially manifested in space and time, yet also transcendent to each and both.
“What about eternal life?” Most people who even consider it may regard it as after passing on. It can, however, be realized both consciously and presently. What we call this life might be just like watching and performing in a play on stage. The concluded acts we call the past. The following acts, termed the future, have yet to be presented. For true mystics, here…now…this moment is Reality. It is not merely an intermission. It is truly boundless and endless.
Many of these essays use symbolic terms, as did most quotations of mystics. “How do they relate to everyday living?” If you looked at a movie film (not digital), frame by frame, you would not grasp the meaning of the complete picture. When you look at this life, hour by hour, day by day, you cannot see it in its whole context. Even if you could review one mortal life in its entirety, its greater spiritual significance would be missing. Life is all of existence.
“How can one person possibly relate to all of existence, let alone to the spiritual essence which underlies it?” That is what mystics are conscious of, sometimes momentarily and, rarely, throughout every day. “Can you believe in a personal God and be a mystic?” Most of them do. “Can you be an atheist and a mystic?” A few are. God is the supreme concept of that essence which is God beyond God.
“God is a concept and not a reality?” God is as real as you want God to be. The divine essence is Reality, even if you do not believe in God. It is another mystical paradox. “Why can’t it be simple?” It is simple…it simply is. It is our minds which add the complexity.
*Their feeling, thinking and actions become for the soul, the whole and all, not for “I, me” and “my.” Their sense of being reaches beyond limited personal concerns.
Some mystics would tell us the only spiritual life worth talking about is the experiential kind, not the religious.
Why we are here is based on inner experience, gnosis, not the expectations of our country of origin, tradition, culture, teachings or habits.
Gnosis is connection to Reality. Those who have experienced it are marked by a reluctance to talk about it.
What we know of it suggests it is spontaneous, though some religious teachers claim they can induce it in their pupils by special disciplines. the Jesus of the Christian bible said his message was only for those already prepared by his God, perhaps a reference to the experience of gnosis. Bible and mystical references suggest it can’t be earned or deserved.
Anecdotal evidence suggests the experience happens to those aged between 20 and 30. Each experience brings with it a sense of departure from the body.
While it lasts, the feeling is of being infused as if anaesthetised with a profound sense of joy. Everything that exists or has ever existed belongs intensely to the one having the experience. There is no absence of time, just no such thing as time.
It is as if the subject is being observed with benign indifference, as if their existence is unremarkable, as if they are an essential part of a reality in which they exist for ever.
The experiences come with an undetectable gentleness as if from an infinite, unassailable strength. There is a sense that the even greater Reality is waiting nearby. Afterwards, some subjects conclude they are given as much of the experience as they can bear. As the experience begins to leave the loss is fought against with agitation and sadness, and a panicky sense of loss.
The experiences do not lead the subject to want to be a better human being. They can even make the subject impatient with being human at all. Being a “better”, a “good”, human being, become givens, “fruits of the spirit”. After such experiences these attributes seem axiomatic, automatic, needing no effort to achieve.
This gnosis is not anthropomorphic, human centred, not even biological.
Gnosis makes a clear distinction between the human spirit and what humans call the Holy Spirit, that which is of man, (matter, morality and ethics), and that which is Real, pure, the soul.
The soul is a part of what those who have the gnostic experience then know as their true identity, an identity which is part of a whole to which they will eventually return permanently.
The sense is that the soul is merely placed in the human mind and body in order to experience matter and when that is satisfactorily accomplished, when the soul is pure spirit, then the body is discarded and the mind is shelved as no longer required. Only souls are eternal, not humans.
All Is Well.
Mysticexperiences.net
Please feel free to reblog.
Note: This was originally posted in 2016 and is posted here again in slightly re-edited form. It is a restatement of my Mystical Experiences Of Reality, (MER) several times a year from my late 14 years to 35 years of age.
Mystical Experiences of Reality 