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ADVICE TO ONE OF THIS BLOG’S FOLLOWERS

I’m sorry if I was cryptic. It was against all my instincts to say anything at all (check out the description of a “silent Buddha” in the Blog).

The cryptic formula I used (as explained in the Blog somewhere) is designed to guide the recipient to their own conclusions rather than have it all spelled out as mere hearsay. So I’m pleased you’re going to persist in untangling my words until you get to the hoped for personal epiphanic arrangement …

(This exercise is profoundly more bountiful than any crossword or version of sudoku, especially for you as the hungry and thirsting Seeker I believe you to be).

As a supposed pratyeka buddha I was diffident about interfering but did so because it seems to me you are on the very edge of Realisation, and indeed, very often experience Its fringes without recognising It. This conflict ruins your inner content.

The tradition is that we do not evoke our “voice”, this incessant passion for Reality, our vocation, with all our heart and soul and strength, Reality chooses us. It will never leave us, It is now us.

So, you ask, what do I do? This is a very typical egoistic human response – to which Reality’s reply is: Nothing.

If you are truly called, have total integrity and sincerity, are a real seeker, then everything will be done for you. Reality takes over. From my own experience I can agree with the taught tradition that you will change – friends, jobs, clothes, eating habits, reading, travel, lust, anger, greed, all personal, cultural and institutional attachments and lastly, and with difficulty, ego. (I see some of these are already working on you quite vehemently!).

I did not find my processing “in the mills of God which grind slowly but infinitely finely” as I’ve heard it called, easy, though looking back I can see how silently effortless, sometimes unnoticed and unremarked the changes were in my life. I am much blessed.

So in your case I would say “simplicity” and “action”, as well as its coconmitant “non action”, are now seeded in you …

What now? In the immediate meantime it helps to go into the silence and stay there as long as you can whenever you can and let the world go by. This facility develops with repetition. It’s a very calming place to be while Reality nurtures you into full fruition. All is well.

I hope this is more helpful in rescuing you from the world. I’m very diffident about interfering in something so personal and hope I’m right in trying.

My very best wishes,

Keith.

FADING FROM THE WORLD?

By Stoic

FOREWORD: Stoic is very much like the rich man who told the biblical Jesus he wanted to follow Jesus but couldn’t just yet because he had to go home to bury his just deceased father. Jesus is said to have insisted the young man “let the dead bury their dead and follow now”, meaning that the enlightened are alive and the unenlightened are still dead, give up the world of the dead. Sadly, the young man left anyway. But Stoic isn’t leaving!

Stoic, a successful financial expert with family, friends, colleagues, intellectual and professional, family and friends’ as worldly attachments was a restless, demanding Seeker. Now he is answering the Call beginning to let go, entering the silence, giving up human clutter. He is a Follower of mysticexpriences.net. This essay from his Blog explains how his new approach to enlightenment is working in these early days for him.

FADING

I had the curious sensation of fading, being absorbed into the background, while walking along a country lane in glorious winter sunshine this afternoon.

Perhaps letting go does that to you. Perhaps the mental discipline of letting all pass returns you in a very real sense to where you came from.

It seems that once you have stopped clinging so very fervently to the things which once seemed to attract you, moth-like to the flame, your mind is freed.

I can not say that the sensation this afternoon was not accompanied by a gentle melancholy, but the feeling was not an unpleasant one.

To every thing there is a season,
A time for every purpose under the heaven.

Letting go does seem to become easier with usage. It strikes me there is a likeness in methodology to renouncing an addiction. It’s all or nothing.

I admit to having always been binary, but this time it is irreversible and I’m happy with that. It’s like Alcoholics Anonymous really: the addiction you are giving up is the world of emotion. Or rather the world of destructive emotions. And once you have admitted to it, you are in a sense free.

Happily you do not seem to have to tip out the baby with the bathwater – pleasure remains. Quiet and hidden.

Wife, son and such remaining family as I have buzz around me and I am contented to feel them nearby. Letting them happily fizz and fuss in a companionable sort of way. Letting them get on with their lives, and they mine.

There are so many things I should have done today and didn’t. Nor will I, in all probability. It seemed a day rather for contemplation than busyness.

No global gladiator, I have renounced the power breakfast for replenishing the bird feeder and watching the robin play. I have left cocktail networking to others and potter through the odd domestic task I was entrusted with, as my busy little wife fidgeted off back to London. In a rather nice new BMW to which I had treated myself, but which has now been wholly absorbed by my friend. Well, I don’t like driving anyway; she is welcome.

I am reminded of the Ode to Autumn, this lazy winter’s day:

Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom friend of the maturing sun.

Lest that sound too valedictory a comparison, I must state otherwise. I am content to sit careless on a granary floor. Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep, Drowsed with the fume of poppies.

But there is still plenty to be done and having renounced life as you once knew it, it may be easier to take more beneficial pursuit. To see what is around you and who, and to give it and them the attention which they deserve.

To walk in the winter’s sun while there is still breath in your body and a pair of legs able to carry you. To spread perhaps a little of your own newly discovered “gospel”. To make the world a place of slightly less fear and slightly greater beauty.

Why speak of autumn when mid winter is upon us? Because winter is not yet in my bones and while I may, I will feast still upon the ripe rose-hips, the last of the summer’s leaves and the still warm sun.

Winter is for another day.

eBook Version of MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF REALITY

In two to three weeks the eBook version of Mystical Experience of Reality is planned to appear on the four most popular eBook retailers – Amazon’s Kindle store, Apple’s iBook store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook store, and Kobo (Canada’s popular eBook retailer), as well as BookLocker.com, the book’s publisher, where you can get the book in PDF, ePub or Kindle format.
Your comments and suggestions will be most welcome. 

TRUE ENLIGHTENMENT?

 

Q. I have a question that worries me.

A. Yes?

Q. You say ordinary study and lifestyle, different methods of achieving transcendence, reading, don’t necessarily mean you will experience the mystical experience of Reality, (MER), and that MER is the only true enlightenment?

A. Yes. True enlightenment is not human, not biological, not induced by mind or brain, It is outside human experience, directed to specific humans who apparently have no obvious qualifications to receive It.

Q. People like you?

A. Yes, people somewhat like me in their ignorance of such matters.

Q. How did this come to you then?

A. From my spontaneous, annual, multiple MERs from the age of late 14 years to 35 years of age.

Q. Spontaneously, not from any religious influence, studies, practices, methods, religions, paths?

A. Yes, only spontaneously.

Q. But what about those very educated people, professionally and academically qualified people, gurus, yogis, even scientists, who express or seem to know what you write about and write papers and books, have disciples and followers, even give courses and lectures?

A. There is a difference between intellectually realised people and experientially realised people, mystics. The better part, the fuller experience, the grace if you like, is spontaneous. MER is generally accepted in the ancient and modern mystical traditions, so far as I know, as “caught, not taught”. Experience of MER is the real beginning of knowledge and ultimate enlightenment

Q. You’re saying you can’t induce It or, presumably even influence It?

A. Yes, I am. MER is pathless.

Q. So those who you say have “a hunger and thirst” for MER can’t do anything about it?

A. No. The very fact they hunger and thirst for MER means It is already present and working in them. You may not believe in Reality but Reality believes in you. What do you think put that hunger and thirst there in the first place? It was Reality. And Reality is doing something about it. As the Christian bible says, BE STILL, AND KNOW REALITY, AND KNOW THAT REALITY IS ALL. (With apologies to King James).

Q. Be still. That’s it?

A. Yes, It’s everything. Reality is permanent. All else passes. Give it a try. You’ll see, nothing will ever be the same again … It gets easier and easier because, as you’ll discover for yourself : “That which you seek seeks you …”.

Q. Finally, what do you really think MER is all about?

A. I think MER is a process of awakening to Reality. Everything that exists will go through MER eventually, including humans.

“All Is Well”.

Mysticexperiences.net
December 2019

HUMANS ARE ONLY USEFUL TO A MYSTIC OR SEEKERS BECAUSE…

 

Humans are only useful to a mystic or seekers because they lay down warning boundaries between human impermanences such as spirituality, (religion, faith, hope and belief), politics, governance, culture, and idealogies versus the realness of the human condition as exemplified in the mystical experience of Reality (MER).

Contemplation of this void between the mystic way and the human way is all mystics and seekers need to exercise their Calling daily.

This contemplation delivers the realisation MERs aren’t experiences, events, as some scientists suggest might be the case – in my case, Reality was me and I was Reality. My MERs were a transposition the uncalled have not yet experienced.

To assuage the hunger and thirst mystics and seekers have to achieve and remain in this state of MER, Sufis and enlightened Yogis warn of being misled, distracted from MER by “mindstuff” – emotions. MER is not an emotion.

For instance, speaking anecdotally, a Jesuit priest spoke approvingly of what he saw as my emotional understanding/feelings for religion. He gave me the impression he thought human emotion was the basic requirement of religion/spirituality.

My uncontrollable trembling and unbidden tears he witnessed were prompted by the sudden unexplainable but undeniable presence of Reality in a quotation from the Bible used in The Spiritual Exercises Of St Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, in which we were engaged. (Ironically, Ignatius suggested the revelation of mystics is, “the better part” of the religious way). What my Course Director priest saw in me was not a full blown MER but probably what some Muslims might recognise as ‘baraka’.

I think it was what the priest asked me to read from Isaiah in private that triggered the episode. It was such an astonishing personal message from a such a faraway stranger. It hit me like the kick of a mule. It almost sent me to my knees. I was rendered bloodless, speechless.

I was overwhelmed with the thought Isaiah, this raggle taggle old man of God out of the dust of history from before even the advent of the biblical Jesus should send his message so unerringy into the etherialness of the millennias to find one the old prophet knew would receive and understand it.

I tremble still at MERs’ far reaching perennial powers. MER is not new, we are.

Suchlike milder ‘events’ than MER come often but not so dramatically. I wouldn’t call that episode an organic abnormality, an emotion, any more than I would call finding myself suddenly thrust out of the comfort and warmth of indoors into a sea of freezing water an “emotional indulgence”.

Love, as another human emotion, an organic reaction, is sometimes an indulgence of lust, anger, greed, attachment and ego, whereas MER is a benign, all engulfing experience from outside any current human experience.

I felt no human or other emotions whatsoever in my main MERs, simply because ‘I’, the human body and mind, wasn’t there to have such feelings.

I did not feel like shouting my MER experiences from the rooftops like a lovelorn teenager, desperate to share such ego massaging. Instead, my human ego’s defences took over when I came back after the MERs. They shut me up, guarded me from non MER human reactions. I kept them to myself, though nowadays it’s safer for mystics to be more forthcoming, I hope.

Nevertheless there have to be boundaries between the enlightened and the as yet unenlightened who will never understand MER until they too have experienced It. The Christian bible’s parable of the pearls illustrates the point somewhat.

So it’s best for a true mystic or seeker to nod benignly in silence whenever they get into proximity with people with a passion for religions, politics, metaphysical studies, science, ideologies, ambitions and suchlike.

My spiritual ‘boundary strategy’ is to practice friendly reclusiveness, keeping my distance by writing instead of speaking about MER. If you’re a mystic or a seeker, try it. Works for me.

Mysticexperiences.net
December 2019

Mystics arise!

Beyond the Map

Through much of my life, I haven’t given much thought to the word ‘mystic’.  I used to relegate it to someone who was ‘over the edge’ in their beliefs and kind of ‘spooky’ in their deportment.

But historically, in religious circles, the title ‘mystic’, is used to describe some of our notable contemplatives.  In the last couple of thousand years, these ancient church mystics possessed a relationship, piety, and reality in God that set them apart.  Some of the more commonly known mystics includeFrancisof Assisi, Ignatius Loyola, John of the Cross, Brother Lawrence, andJeanne Guyon, just to name a few.

Religious opinion and tradition generally require that to be called a mystic, one must have had a personal transformation… or must have effected transformation in someone else.

But if you think about it, that definition should apply to any seriously devout God-person.  In Christian…

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WORK: A SPIRITUAL HUMAN DISTRACTION, A CURSE?

 

The Maniacal Laughter of the Damned: Why you can live and work in the real world without making a deal with the Devil

by Randy Vaughan

237 pages. Available from Booklocker.com

An open disputation of the myth of a so-called work ethic.

COMMENT: This ebook from Booklocker.com is recommended to all Seekers having a hard time surviving their conflict with human inconsequentialities. The following is from Booklocker’s catalogue, printed here with their permission.

About the Book

The simple fact is this:

There are two realities operating simultaneously regarding employment in this country. There are the occupations and careers requiring college education, degrees, and titles.

And then there are those for everyone else.

So what does a person who leaves high school and goes to college for four, eight, or more years and then moves into that specific field for which he has studied and trained—what does someone like that really know about working in America, really know about the hiring process, truly understand about looking for, landing, and keeping a job?

The answer to that one is easy: Nothing.

The Maniacal Laughter of the Damned: Why you can live and work in the real world without making a deal with the Devil is a non-fiction book that openly and convincingly disputes the myth of a so-called work ethic to conclude that the biggest mistake this country ever made was to confuse education for intelligence.

Contrary to conventional wisdom there is not more to life than working and making money. There is only life. In the final analysis, the only true ethical dilemma takes the form of a question made up of just seven words:

“How far are you willing to go?”

For nothing more than money and the stuff it will buy, how far are you, personally, willing to go? Are you going to live your life on your terms or someone else’s?

The Maniacal Laughter of the Damned will show you why answering that one question can and will lead to everything you would ever need or want to know about not only working, but also living, in the real world.

Anyone trying to make sense of the relationships and ensuing conflicts encountered daily in the workplace will find that this book gives words and meaning to what are often just feelings and intuitions. Readers can and will relate to the many stories told throughout the pages. Some make you laugh, others make you angry, and some leave your shaking your head in total disbelief.

So if you have ever worked for someone else as an employee, ever filled out a job application, sat through a job interview, or if there is a chance you will do this in the future, you will want this book. It tells the sometimes painful, sometimes incredulous and inane, truth that is the very stuff of working for a living.

Randy Vaughan lives in national obscurity in the Blue Ridge mountains of southwest Virginia. With some sixty employers in his past, he still has no answer for “What do you want to be when you grow up?” He fears “growing up” amounts to giving up his very personhood.

A Finger Pointing to the Moon – Weltanschauung

https://zenothestoic.com/2018/11/20/a-finger-pointing-to-the-moon/

I almost recommend this beautifully crafted essay by a Follower of this Blog wholeheartedly, because it seems to me he is on the very edge of Realisation, and indeed, very often experiences Its fringes without recognising it. He cannot let go the Siren call of the richness of his gifted human life. Or so it seems to me. You may receive his insights and intuitions differently. I can’t accept the essay wholeheartedly because of his apparently despairing flounderings into the dead end of psilocybins.

The Doors of Perception

Reposted from zenothestoic.com

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern”.

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Is it so strange that a deep interest in science should be combined with an equally deep desire for mysticism and transcendance?

I think not; the two can be seen as two sides of the same coin. Reality seen both from the intellect and from the senses. A yearning for transcendance. Some would say a desire to escape from the base reality. Which is all that is accessible to most of us in a “normal” state of mind.

Both science and mysticism offer us infinity. Infinite space and power. Infinite universes and time. Teleportation, downloading the mind into another form of matter, eternal life, time travel. Science is not ashamed to speculate on such matters. To an ancient people, we would appear as gods. In the far future, or in a distant corner of the multiverse, there exists intelligence with powers which even we would consider godlike.

The mind allows us to travel to such places and such times. To witness infinity, to feel the mind of “god”.

These days, few rational men believe in traditional religious systems. And yet through the ages the mystics have had glimpses of some alternate truth, some reality which in our ordinary minds is denied to us.

Science struggles to explain consciousness and yet some scientists tell us that consciousness is a law of nature all of its own. That consciousness “is”.

Not that consciousness is an emergent property of physical elements. But that consciousness is a law of physics itself. Universal consciousness, consciousness as the very “self” of the universe.

So listen to how the mystics describe their experiences.

Meister Eckhart:

“To the quiet mind all things are possible. What is a quiet mind? A quiet mind is one which nothing weighs on, nothing worries, which, free from ties and from all self-seeking, is wholly merged into the will of God and dead to its own.”

Alan Watts:

“What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.”

Siddhartha:

“The mind is everything. What you think you become.”

Both science and contemplation seek knowledge. Self knowledge, truths, the “truth”.

Science uses instruments and machinery and conducts experiments. Science seeks truth through the intellect.

The quiet mind seeks experience directly. To feel the truth, to experience it.

Neither should be disparaged. Both should be embraced. Neither is complete without the other.

HUMAN CLUTTER VERSUS ULTIMATE REALITY

 

A Follower who feels he is a mystic has sent me emails on how Ultimate Reality is made up by humans. He quotes biblical references that make him sound religious.

This apparent confusion made me think of stories how “The Devil”, (or what nowadays I see is called, “The Negative Principle”), insinuates into and pollutes the truth of Reality’s existence…

This is how the correspondence developed:

ME: My experiences direct me and my Blog to serious Seekers, mystics, scientists and academics who are examining the phenomena of spiritual awakening to Ultimate Reality, not to people just wanting to be better humans.

Consequently, I avoid anything that identifies with mere human experience which, in my view, is not worth studying, including mythomanic human constructs such as religions. I avoid expressions of merely human experiences like “super hero” or “alter ego” (words that the Follower used).

I realise this might be provocative, even challenging to present day humans, so when a Master advised me to ignore social media when distributing the Blog I did so immediately. The consequent dissipation of such spiritually fatuous social media distractions has been dramatically purifying …

FOLLOWER: But you are still a human, right?

Not for long, just temporarily. As a mystic my experiences of Reality indicate I am in progress. I have duties and responsibilities as a human while I’m here but they are spiritually insignificant attachments that will disappear with the mind and body as the human experience dies and evolves into pure Ultimate Reality.

FOLLOWER: Mystics must embody the human experience too, or it seems they have excluded a part of the Whole, the One. They say that Jesus was fully divine AND fully human, not either-or (hypostatic union). He was fully both, as are you and me.

ME: The Jesus Conference of international metaphysicians, scientists, academics, theologians, religionists have frequently met and published their findings, studies and experiments. They have arrived at the conclusion the biblical Jesus left only a dozen or so words attributable to him, and no spiritual teachings, only human morality and ethics.

Bishop Spong, an attendee, says the spiritual is more important than the religious.

FOLLOWER: God or Ultimate Reality incarnates itself as human, as us, in all of our broken and suffering humanity.

ME: No. My experiences of Reality delivered no evidence of any God or gods or any religious teachings whatsoever. Humans seem to have little or no significance in the infinitely, ineffable, bigger picture of Ultimate Reality. I could be wrong about my use of the word, “little”.

FOLLOWER: … we are both human AND divine, we are both a part and the One, simultaneously. We can’t ignore or dismiss this embodied manifestation, it seems to me, or we’ve missed a critical part of the totality, the very expression of Reality on Earth and in this particular finite embodied body-mind.

ME: Reality is not an expression of anything. It IS absolutely all things in Itself, unique, of which humans are merely a part; in my experiences of Ultimate Reality.

FOLLOWER: I would go so far as to say, as Eckhart does, that God or Ultimate Reality doesn’t exist apart from our embodied nature in any manifest way.

ME: Eckhart is wrong about Ultimate Reality but right about “God”, if my experiences mean anything. God is a human construct. Reality is not. Reality is not God in the general, cultural accepted sense. Reality is outside humanity. Reality is enough. It cannot be taught or learned, only caught, experienced. The experience of Ultimate Reality is the beginning of all wisdom.

FOLLOWER: If we did not exist, Reality would not exist, it would only be unmanifest formless potential.

ME: No! Absolutely not. I would be astonished to hear an experienced mystic say that.

Reality is not manmade, in my experiences. It’s the other way round. Humans could not exist without Reality, nothing can. Reality is enough, It existed long before and will after humanity’s existence. It is beyond infinite, beyond even mere alpha or omega …

FOLLOWER: … Reality finds actuality, in my view. This body is Reality’s actualized form.

ME: No; nowhere near the case, in my experience. Reality is ineffable – completely beyond human understanding or imagination.

FOLLOWER: When we know our divinity fully we also know our humanity fully. We realize the Anthropos (fully “Human One”, or “Son of Man”).

ME: No. When we eventually know Reality fully then humanity ceases, is fufilled.

I agreed when the Follower said we disagree! However, my experiences are of Reality, not human “ideas” or experiences as the Follower suggests. I am guided not to clutter my experiences of Ultimate Reality with temporary human distractions, what one Sufi school calls “manmukh”.

Ultimate Reality is very pure, perhaps what the bible meant when it said, “I am a jealous God”, (Exodus 20:5; Dueteronomy 5:9; 2Corinthians 6:15; 2Corinthians 11.2).

FOLLOWER: I think the reason that we speak and write such “ideas” about our “experiences” is that Reality wants to express itself, it wants to guide humans to it, to knowing it as it is, and it does so through us. I agree that none of these “ideas” is pure Ultimate Reality as it is in itself, as it is experienced directly, but this is rather all a pointer, a symbol, a metaphor, a relative truth that points to that Reality.

ME: I don’t think you can reduce Reality to being a penitent. My experience is that Reality doesn’t need our help. I was made helpless when Reality called. Aren’t all mystics?

Reality does it’s own work. Human attachments and ego get in the way. Just look at the human practice of “spirituality”, its history. (“The Negative Principle” at work again?). Some ancient, we could say perennial, mystery schools have millions of followers but keep themselves safely hidden from human effects, the spiritual tourists, the curious and spiritually uncalled, those unprepared by Reality. Reality happens when we’re utterly still.

FOLLOWER: All that we say is human “ideas.” Every word, yours and mine.

ME: Not if you’re a mystic.

FOLLOWER: Why have a blog if you don’t want to clutter the experience with such human distractions?

ME: Good point. I resisted the uncalled for, long delayed promptings to start a blog on my experiences for a long time, then, giving in to what seemed the inevitable, the penny dropped and I began. It’s been an eye opener, a serendipity of spiritual profusion and validation. Truly, All Is Well.

So I was determined not to tell readers what to think, as the religions do, but lay out my Mystical Experiences of Reality for those who were already seeking, who to some extent understood as much as what was said as unsaid, whose discrimination was already under Reality’s will. Only consciousness can understand consciousness, (as Deepak Chopra has obviously experienced, and expressed publicly, (though he was referring to the limits of science).

My determination was somewhat achieved eventually by “unqualifying” social media followers as well as those whose hunger and thirst are still deeply entangled at a non spiritual level.

Some find the process of the Blog helpful, easily assimilated, natural – others difficult. Few seem to give up its personal challenges once committed to having it sent regularly to their email.

However, I wouldn’t presume to put a value on the work. Suffice it to say the spiritual processing I get as a result of publishing it has been beyond understanding, immensely humbling, benign and ineffably loving. I could not have been changed, or shown what I have been shown, without Reality. Sharing the Blog is simply obeying and communicating what I know of the Reality I have been shown, come what may …

Here are just some of the conclusions I have drawn from my experiences. They have already been published in the Blog.

Mysticexperiences.net

AFTER MER!?

Alan Watts suggested that after the mystical experience one could commit suicide or hang about to see what happens …

Alan Watts was a profound student of the historical experience of spiritual transcendence, a humorous, prolific author and public speaker on the subject as well as on Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Sufism, Zen and Buddhism. He was a Zen Master and Buddhist. Born in Chislehurst, England, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began his Zen training in New York.

Mysticexperiences.net

SUMMARY Of BLOG’S CONCLUSIONS SO FAR

This Blog is a summation of a lifetime’s experiences and personal development as the result of multiple, spontaneous yearly experiences of Ultimate Reality.

After four years of writing about these experiences on the web page, mysticexperiences.net, I can summarise my conclusions as follows:

  • There is an Ultimate Reality over all existence, over everything known and unknown.
  • Humans exist as part of it.
  • Nothing exists outside it.
  • It is outside general current human experience.
  • It is not biological
  • It only manifests to individuals, for reasons yet unknown.
  • It is not created or influenced by humans.
  • Humans have no control of it whatsoever.
  • Nothing human affects that Ultimate Reality.
  • With human individuals it is benign, accepting, nurturing, gives ineffable joy.
  • It is indifferent to human constructs such as family, culture, or social organisations national or otherwise.
  • Human evolution could be absorbing into this Ultimate Reality, eventually making these temporary human bodies and minds extinct for something ethereal. Is this what human beings are all about?

mysticexperiences.net 

RELIGIONS – AGAIN!

A long time follower of my Blog said, “You are getting too dogmatic. It is either your way or it is wrong. There are many paths to the same goal, whether that is MER or any other objective in life.”

It was not the first time the follower had expressed disquiet about my witness to the absence of religion in any of my experiences of Ultimate Reality.

But experience of that absence seems an important prompting for the spiritually engaged  – it seems worth sharing that religions are not the way, and certainly not the goal of existence, human or otherwise.

But I agree. I had mentioned my concern to others that my posts were getting didactic.

 I’m afraid there’s no remedy that immediately suggests itself to my dogmatism because I determined right from the start of sharing my experiences I would not allow non-MER influences to veil, obscure, or impose on what I am given. It is not in my gift. I describe what I can then it’s up readers to make up their own minds about their destiny if they can.

Some readers will find my experiences and those of other mystics meet their spiritual condition of awareness and seeking. Others will not, especially if they’re not ready.

When I say people who are not ready, I mean they will be like those who when Dr Stephen Hawking likens the mind to being the programmer of the brain, then the “not readies” will be as humans running just on one outdated app. They will be mired in others’ old, secondhand, religious truths about human destiny, unmoved by their own unique promptings.

It should be remembered that though a religion sprung up after the biblical Jesus’s death, this Jesus did not leave any spiritual teachings. Even what the bible purports to reveal of his mystical experiences of Reality are hidden, veiled from everyone except those who have had those experiences too.

I have experienced religions in their various forms. The only kind way I can describe them positively is to suggest they are sincerely wrong and very often the words sincere, truth and integrity collide violently in them all.

Tao and Buddhism are not religions but are increasingly impurified by aspects of that enemy of Ultimate Reality, the human mind.

On the other hand I have experienced MER, which I found to be pure, incomparable, incompatible with religions. It gives on all levels of  existence, even human existence – never takes. As the Bible says:

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth”. 1 Corinthians 13 1

Paul was describing aspects of the mystical experience of Reality not human mind stuff like religions.

Experience is truly the beginning of wisdom and truth. MER is “The Greatest Achievement in Life” as Ron Krumpos has titled his widely read book on mysticism. I agree. I cannot betray my MERs, however dogmatic I might seem.

However, the blog Follower does have a point. I agree I’ve probably written enough on MER’s promptings on religions versus spirituality.

Anyway, as MER seems to be the primal factor in the evolution of all existence, religions on the other hand seem to be a dwindling consideration in pondering the human condition. Is this a sign of humanity growing up?

As for mystics and their different paths, I agree again. “No two mystics are alike,” says the Follower. “That is also true of any two physicians, financial advisors, physicists, or any other function.”

Seen through a human lens that makes sense. But mystics are a different lens. Actually, they don’t even need a lens to experience a conception of Ultimate Reality that is beyond current human comprehension. Their paths are significantly beyond ordinary human reach and their paths are not religious.

Ultimate Reality’s ways are not human ways, and human ways are not Ultimate Reality’s.

All Is Well.

mysticexperiences.net

MYSTICISM versus THE INNOCENCE OF EVIL?

 

Contemplatives from eight different religious traditions—Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Islamic, Native American, Russian Orthodox, Protestant, and Roman Catholic—met at St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, to define their experience of Ultimate Reality as mystics.

After sharing their conclusions with other contemplatives and mystics they issued what became known as, “The Snowmass Conference Eight Points of Agreement”, as follows:

1. The world religions bear witness to the experience of Ultimate Reality, to which they give various names.

Comment: No, religions do not, as the slightest examination of some religions will show how mysticism is ostracised if not worse, derided, punished and far from accepted as mainstream or even allowable.

2. Ultimate Reality cannot be limited by any name or concept.

Comment: True!

3. Ultimate Reality is the ground of infinite potentiality and actualization.

Comment: For Reality, yes. If the implication is humans can attain it under their own volition, No! There is no evidence humans can achieve this enlightenment on their own. Reading and deep stud might bring humans to a realisation of Ultimate Reality, even a sympathy and empathy, but not the actual experience of this Reality.

4. Faith is opening, accepting, and responding to Ultimate Reality. Faith in this sense precedes every belief system.

Comment: Faith, hope and belief are for those who have not had the mystical experience of Reality. Those who have had the experience, (mystics), have no need of faith, hope nor belief because they KNOW. They do not need to “Fake It To Make it”.

Belief systems may be invented around the experience but with the actual experience these systems will eventuality fall under the weight of their lack of real foundation, as we see today.

5. The potential for human wholeness—or, in other frames of reference, enlightenment, salvation, transcendence, transformation, blessedness—is present in every human being.

Comment: The “potential for human wholeness” is a gift of Reality, comes only by the will of Reality (“grace”?). We are limited by human attributes, abilities, and species evolution in a reality created and nurtured by Reality alone.

6. Ultimate Reality may be experienced not only through religious practices but also through nature, art, human relationships, and service to others.

Comment: There is no “religious practice” nor “human service” or involvement that can create the experience of Reality. It cannot be experienced through artifice, ie., “art”, “nature”, animism “human relationships” or “service to others”.

The experience is caught, not taught. It cannot be evangelised, prosyletised or politicised.

The experience It is not abandoned by Reality to the vagaries of human stewardship, gifting, human effort, or human qualification. It is uniquely spontaneous and non human.

7. As long as the human condition is experienced as separate from Ultimate Reality, it is subject to ignorance and illusion, weakness and suffering.

Comment: Yes. But Reality is taking care of all that. Reality’s expectations are not yet our expectations, nor our current expectations Reality’s. Reality is in overall charge, not us.

8. Disciplined practice is essential to the spiritual life.

Comment: No it isn’t. It is essential for the religious life – concocted however sincerely by humans – but is not a requirement of experiencing Ultimate Reality. That, evidently, has been too important to Ultimate Reality to be left to humans.

… spiritual attainment is not the result of one’s own efforts, but the result of the experience of oneness with Ultimate Reality.

That’s right.

Number 8 seems to contradict itself. There’s muddle.

Summary of Comments

I’m puzzled by the idea these eight contemplative results of the experience of Reality are being associated with the idea religions can now take charge of some implied need for “religious practices”, for “faith”, for the need to worship nature and love each other etc, when the very experience of Reality expunges all need for suchlike human preoccupations.

The mystical experience of Reality (MER) makes it axiomatic we become better human beings while we are human but there is more afoot than being merely human, as MER primarily attests. If we don’t get this we don’t get MER.

The fruits of the experience of Ultimate Reality are not mere human mind stuff, emotion, mythomania or meme. As part of human evolution into Reality, MER rids us of these old, materialistic human rigidities.

The message of Ultimate Reality is that Ultimate Reality is in charge of creation, which includes the human condition, and that humans have been given no stewardship of this reality whatsoever.

Yet I see the same assertive human distortions, (power grabbing?), in some of the eight points that also misled the biblical Jesus and lead to the failure of his mission.

It is sad to see such spiritual hubris persisting to this day by way of religions. It brings to mind the C.S. Lewis tale of the elder Satan comforting the younger Satan for letting his pupil have feelings for “God”. The elder Satan counselled the young Satan to divert his pupil into Christianity.

While these eight points are a welcome demonstration of the human condition emerging from its chrysalis to awareness of its spiritual identity, it’s sad to see it’s still being stifled by the demands of human mindsets like religions. Is this the innocence of evil at work?

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