“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.
Category: HUMANS
THE GNOSTIC EXPERIENCE – ARE HUMANS RELEVANT?
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
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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.
IS EVIL EFFECTIVE?
No, evil is not effective in the sense it cannot change our ultimate destiny in Reality the mystics have experienced.
Evil is a human word for human behaviour. It is not the be-all and end-all of existence in the greater Cosmic Reality, where no such thing as even being human exists.
Evil is as temporary an evolutionary appendage as a human tail or appendix were. It doesn’t contribute. It does cause mental and physical disruption. But eventually, in Reality’s time, evil will become discarded primitive garbage.
In the meantime humanity presumably has to deal with it as it did with the average lifetime of humans being 47 years old less than 100 years ago, or the historical prevalence of polio, deathly influenza, measles, malaria, leprosy, typhoid, and plagues.
All Is Well.
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WHY I AM NOT A TEACHER
I am not an evangelist, proselytiser, or teacher. Yearly experiences of Reality from the age of about 15 to late thirties made the idea anathema to me.
Reality, in which all things exist, is only interested and active in individuals, in my experiences.
Human history shows it is pointless to compete with Reality on this question. Human history is eventually defeated when it tries, as the history of communism, socialism and religions, all such totalitarian ideologies, testify.
Individuals are what human existence is all about. Nothing in existence is equal to anything else. Everything in existence is individual and nothing is equal, as everything is singularly individual, including humans.
Rather, equality of opportunity to develop to its individual fullest is Reality’s intention and activity in human affairs.
All human wisdom, knowledge, understanding, and creativity comes from the individual.
Without freedom of individuality to be itself, express itself, nothing, including humanity, thrives.
Collectivism only works when the individuals in that collective are free to express the DNA of their own selves.
This is the absolute rule of the seminal DNA of the evolutionary process, if true mystic enlightenment is anything to go by.
Reality is undefeatable inexorable.
Evangelism, proselysation, spiritual teaching, are no match for Reality, as history eventually shows. They collapse under the weight of their own human hubris.
So why compete? I don’t try. I just hope sharing my experiences not only clarifies my experiences for me, but is also useful to you as the Reality of your DNA sees fit.
All Is Well.
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BUDDHA ETC
A follower mentioned how Buddha exhorted his disciples to enlighten mankind.
Buddha probably recognised the perennial path of evolution running deeply and largely unrecognised in humans, (or what my mystical experiencees tell me is in fact the source of everything – Reality).
However, evidently the Buddha did not know or did not realise a lesson of my (updated?) mystical experiences over 2,000 years later.
This was that only Reality can bestow Itself – that the reality of all existence is only caught by those prepared by Reality itself, not taught, not even by wisdom schools, religions, etc.
It seems to me as soon as the mystical experience enters through the individual on whom it bestowed then human organisation eventually degrades it into mere human morality and ethics.
The followers’ observation was that, “Abandonment and quiet resignation are probably the only meaningful responses!”.
I replied this overlooks the realisations to be found in the Silence. You can’t abandon your humanity but you can relegate it to its true place, replace it by going into the recesses of the experience of the Silence. This will get you through the error of giving unnecessary priority to painful worldly human mind stuff …
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HUMANITY IS MERELY TRANSIENT
To a mystic the human experience is transient, human history seems to have little effect on evolution, wallowing as human experience does in its own worldliness.
There are more important things afoot than being merely human, as going into the Silence and listening would affirm.
Some have abandoned their own and humanity’s wilful efforts and are already there …
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REALITY
QUESTION: I’ve heard you say “we’re not ‘wired’ to know the whole of Reality yet’’. I think I understand, but could you go into that a bit more?
ANSWER: What humans in general and physicists in particular regard as reality, that is, everything that’s physical, material, (as well as everything that’s physiological and psychological, eg. moral and ethical), are only transitory products of our current stage of evolution.
Our knowledge of existence is currently limited to such material properties and whatever the ages we live in dictate. They are temporary.
Some world shaking physical laws like the theories of relativity for instance, evolution and DNA are only a generation or so old. As for our morality and values they seem to change with each generation.
Q: So are you suggesting reality is always changing?
A: Human reality, yes! But the Reality the mystics know should not be seen as just changing. It’s developing. And It develops us from stage to stage.
Q: Are you suggesting what you call Reality exists independently of our will and that it’s causing us to discover it?
A: Yes, real Reality is all existence, outside and inside all creation – but No, we’re not slowly “discovering” real Reality. We’re just uncovering entropic, material and human ‘stuff’.
Reality is developing everything, including us. Reality is revealing Itself – from outside ordinary, dying human experience …
Q: So why do mystics experience this and not the rest of humanity?
A: I don’t think anyone knows. I was certainly not qualified by any standards known to humanity at the age of 15 when I first started having what I have come to know as mystical experiences of Reality, (MERs).
Q: A psychologist once said you are hundreds of years ahead of the rest of us!
A: Yes, but I don’t know if that’s true. I haven’t noticed particularly. The question is more of a human concern anyway.
It could be this particular psychologist thought she recognised traditional spiritual descriptions of the mystic phenomenon that she surmised described me. Her father was Brahmin.
Q: In other words she was saying you, all mystics, are ‘wired’ to know more about existence than the rest of us?
A: I can’t speak for her, but yes! mystics are ‘wired’ to know more about existence than the rest of us.
Q: So are mystics what we are going to be?
A: Yes! Mystics are at a more developed stage of evolution. They are more ‘wired’.
All. Is. Well.
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The Human Condition
Taking notice of the human condition is like being forced to watch the same water simmering, the bubbles rising and bursting one after another, everything staying the same despite all the drama; same old, same old, until it dries and dies out …
Keith.
PROFOUND NOTHINGNESS
After reading his Blog’s “About” section by Old Chinaman*, I wrote him a Comment, as follows:
“One of my last mystic experiences after 15 years of them every year was of observing the human ‘me’s’ back as it stood unperturbed at the edge of a profound nothingness. All was well.
“From the traditions you quote I wonder if this observer was ‘my’ real identity revealed after casting off its human chrysalis? I don’t know if that’s idle conjecture or more enlightenment.”
Old Chinaman replied:
“I’ve been following your blog for a while now and waited for an opportunity to share some notes so to speak.
“The main thing that intrigued me is why did you have to experience your MER so many times, every year from when you were 15 till 35?
“Going through your blog site, I’ve got the impression that you are still facing a similar dilemma as I had many years ago, namely how to reconcile our mystical heart and our critical mind. On your blog home page, you wrote: “This is a BLOG for Seekers and those who have had the mystical experience of Reality (MER) and are humbly, joyfully dedicated to it – bringing their remaining personal humanity to terms with it.”
“… it seems to me that you have reached what Zen Buddhists and non-dualists are trying to achieve with their meditation, the pure awareness of the void/emptiness.
“In The Ultimate Unification Theory, it is symbolized by the second symbol, the Circle with a Centre point – The Source becomes aware of IT-SELF. Yet, you also see your human body, which indicates the question nagging to be answered: “What am I doing here ‘marooned’ in this human body”.
“In the Javanese Mystical Tradition, we believe that we are eternal being inseparable, (be ONE) with The Source/GOD (manunggaling kawula lan gusti) and metaphorically consider our incarnation on this planet as just a short visit for a cup of tea (sangkan paraning dumadi) and we do it many many times through reincarnations.
“When We (Ingsun – the spark of The Source/God) are born, we are dressed with the four elements of this planet. Four represents our physical body (Earth/Solid, Water/Liquids, Air/Gaseous, and Fire/Heat/blood) and three represents our non-physical body (our individual mind, our genetic/ancestral/racial mind and the human/planetary mind or our collective unconsciousness).
“Every time we incarnate, we are wearing those seven elements, and our mission is to refine those elements through our refined thoughts and actions.
“In time, with many incarnations, we are slowly assisting Gaia (planetary consciousness) to evolve. (ngracut busananing manugsa / weaving the human dress/body).
“Best regards,
Bambang / Old China Man”
I replied, (with additional thoughts now added) :
“So far as I know, this is the first analysis of my mystic state. Thank you.
“You seem to have discerned the repetitive theme of my experiences of alienation from the human condition, which I hadn’t paid any attention to..
“I’m now compelled to distinguish this recurring theme as fundamental to those experiences. It seems from what you say that other cultures have already noted this condition as part of the mystic way. This is a welcome serendipity I shall address with interest.
“You also reported the question, “how to reconcile our mystical heart and our critical mind.”
“To me, mind is at the heart of humanity’s problems. It is an impenetrable impediment to reconciliation with Reality. In some traditions it is considered as the heart of all evil. In my experiences however the experience of Reality limits the negative effects of mind,
“You also suggest our mission is to refine elements of being human through our thoughts and actions.
“That is not my experience! Human thoughts and actions are of no consequence to Reality in Its vastly infinite scheme of things. Any ‘progress’ towards human destiny is in being successfully rid of all humaness to merge more fully into spiritual Reality, in my spiritual understanding.
“You particularly asked ‘why did you have to experience your MER so many times, every year from when you were 15 till 35?’
“I have no idea. Perhaps I needed the repetition? The experiences became much more profound, focused, with time …
“I’ve also come to realise the acquisition of infinite awareness and knowledge that Reality brings into creating mystics is continuously at work in mystics’ lives after their awakening. I have experienced much greater understanding and knowledge.
“I also realise now while the actual fundamentals of the experience of Reality are the same in all true mystics the individual lifelong outcomes are not.
“As a result, I have had the thought/intuition that the simple existence of mystics is to influence humans throughout their evolutionary destiny into spirit, not to meddle in the changing world of human affairs, none of which are permanent and will disappear eventually anyway.”
*After High School Old Chinaman attended university in Germany where he attained a degree in electrical engineering. He reports personal mystical experiences. Later, he presented his paper, “The Ultimate Unification Theory” (The unification of Science and Mysticism) at The Fifth International Conference on THINKING at James Cook University, Townsville, Australia.
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IS THIS WHAT HUMANITY IS ALL ABOUT?
This blog is a first hand account of a modern mystic’s personal lifetime development that resulted from multiple, spontaneous, yearly experiences of Ultimate Reality.
After four years of writing the blog, my conclusions about this phenomena were summarised in the blog and on the back cover and page 402 of the Amazon five star book, Mystical Experiences Of Reality that I wrote.
Now I think that summary might be usefully repeated here for new readers. However, before that I would like to give my answer to the question, ‘Were my mystical experiences of Reality real or merely a product of my mind or brain?’
The experiences were more emphatically real than anything I have ever experienced before and after they started and continued every year from the age of about 15 until my late thirties.
My intuition is that my brain was not the creator but the conduit for these experiences and the lifetime development they brought.
As for my mind, it never played a part. It wasn’t and still isn’t in the same league as the Reality I experienced, all of which was completely outside anything I have experienced since. This mystical experience of Reality is a phenomena traceable back 12,000 years.
Here are my conclusions again:
There is an Ultimate Reality over all existence, over everything known and unknown.
Humans exist as part of it.
Nothing exists outside it, including humans.
It is not biological.
It is outside general current human experience.
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, giving an ineffable joy.
It is indifferent to human constructs such as family, culture, country or creed, or any social organisation.
Humans 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?
All Is Well.
MYSTICISM LEADS TO APATHY?
QUESTION: If, as you infer throughout your blog and book, Reality rules, do you mean to say we’re puppets without free will?
ANSWER: We only have free will within the limits of our present humaness, just as beetles, for instance, have all the freewill they can handle within their beetleness. It’s the same in all existence – in matter, spirit, nature – throughout creation. That’s my understanding. (‘A place for everything and everything in its place’?).
According to mystic experience, the above describes the human state in its evolutionary development into Ultimate Reality, whether we know it or not, like it or not.
Q: So you mystics, are not concerned with freewill, then; self improvement?
A: What could be described as Reality’s definition of ‘self improvement’ is very different to any merely human version.
As has been said, Reality’s ways are not our ways and our ways are not Reality’s.
Q: So human effort is useless? If that’s the case why don’t we slip into apathy, leave it to Reality, not care about anything?
A: Because Reality rules otherwise.
Q: Oh yes?! So what is this so called ‘otherwise’ your Reality ‘rules’?
A: It’s the simple realisation persisting throughout mystic experience that our ultimate existence serves some unknown purpose, as illustrated by mystic realisation that we are given all we need to exist. So what else should we want? Why would we interfere and interrupt our progress in Reality?
However indiscernible to some, progress in Reality is ineradicable and in Reality’s time, not our time. Our being true to our real selves fills this purpose.
This profoundly fundamental existential lesson teaches that apathy is yet another word for a merely human experience that has no meaning in Reality. Accordingly, apathy has no relevance to mystics, who have experienced Reality.
Consequently, Mystics, Seekers, the wise and the thoughtful, find themselves recognising their full potential and destiny in living with a core of simple contentment; (as much as their efforts allow them in their times).
Mystics become uncluttered by the ultimately extinct ever-changing mentality, ideas and distractions of the short lived human condition of their times.
Q: What do you mean, ‘short lived human condition’?
A: If my mystical experiences of Reality are anything to go by, humans are at a very primitive, early stage of evolution.
Humans are on their way to extinction into their full meaning in Reality. According to scientists we only have a shelf life of 120 years in a cosmos billions of years old.
(Are mystics, seekers, the wise and the thoughtful, survivors of the human race’s final evolution? Burke and Sinetar suggested this in their books when they wondered if mystics, for instance, might be a different species).
Q: So mysticism leads to what psychiatry calls alienation?
A: What is psychiatry’s definition?
Q: According to Google, it is:
“… a state of depersonalization or loss of identity in which the self seems unreal, thought to be caused by difficulties in relating to society and the resulting prolonged inhibition of emotion.”
A: Absolutely right about ‘difficulties in relating to society’! Tell me about it! But the psychiatrists are wrong. It’s society that causes apathy. Apathy is a product of spiritual ignorance. Eighty percent of the population is prone to it, among other human weaknesses.
Narcissistic, hubristic human emotion such as ‘apathy’ are irrelevant in Reality where all humanity is finally extinguished in the knowing, infinite belonging and joy of Reality in which we live, breath and have our temporary human existence.
Personally, I would describe my own “difficulties in relating to society” not as apathy but as a feeling of being marooned here, as expressed in my poem, MAROONED* (below) that I posted in the blog some time ago.
I don’t know what I did to deserve my maroonment but I’m coping. Solitude helps … (Laughs loudly).
(Shakes his head). I sometimes wonder if earth is a cosmic penitentiary we inmates have to endure until we get it right … (Laughs longer).
All Is Well. Reality rules.
Here’s the poem:
*MAROONED
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, make me thine.
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DEAD END SCIENCE?
So far as David Deutsche’s book The Fabric of Reality is concerned, it adds to my conviction scientists are inexplicably addicted to the spiritually irrelevant human attachment of curiosity – intellectual tourism – the human spirit rather than spirituality.
Deutsche seems to confirm this when he says right at the end of this book that all scientists are doing is looking for explanations about the world.
Are scientists blindly addicted to worldliness? If so, science is a dead end so fas as the mystic experience of Reality is concerned. Mystics don’t know the how of Reality either, but they have experienced It and do understand the evolutionary spiritual content in which this world and its humans temporarily exist.
Scientists have knowledge whereas mystics have understanding. This is another difference between the human spirit and Real spirituality – quite an abyss.
All Is Well.
ARTIFICAL MERs v. REAL MERs!
I think the differences between the genuine mystical experience of Reality, (MER), and other induced or merely posited experiences claiming to be the real thing are twofold.
First, in my experience, you can’t induce the genuine mystical experience, (MER) by any means known to mankind. Such human experiences are the mere product of artificial interference with the brain’s real, created functions. These results are limited by the human condition to the human condition.
Secondly, genuine mystical experiences are not concerned with the human condition. For some unfathomable reason they prepare some human recipients for something else, something unknown, something ineffable and humanly indescribable, something the human brain simply isn’t ‘wired’ to know, create or communicate on it’s own.
(I’ve often speculated the brain is only spiritually engaged by MER as an inert conduit at best).
All Is Well. Reality Rules.
REALITY MANIPULATIBLE?
“The subconscious mind motivates almost all actions, behaviors, thoughts, emotions, and the choices that you think you are making in your lives — it is the key to transformation.” Richard Haight, richardhaight.net
Is Richard suggesting it’s the subconscious mind that produces what I call the mystical experience of Reality (MER), that people can transform themselves into being better human beings?
The existence of an independent ‘sub conscious’ mind is an unproven human suggestion.
All we can be sure of is that the brain works on an as yet not fully understood practical complex of hydraulic, hydrodynamic, electric, synaptic and chemical levels. But little else can be assumed with any certainty. All we understand about the brain is that it services and maintains the body’s functions. So far as we know, that’s it; nothing spiritual available for human manipulation that has yet been discerned about the brain.
I certainly never got the impression I had anything I could do about my MERs. I was helpless and incredibly joyous about them; humbly so. They were completely spontanious and inexplicable. So much so I have a strong instinct the stewardship of existence has deliberately excluded any interference by our comparatively new human race. MER is caught, not taught. Reality Rules.
As my multiple experiences of MER attested, these experiences are not meant to ‘improve’ humans but to aid the process of advancing us beyond mere human existence.
All Is Well.
ARE ENLIGHTENMENT AND TRANSCENDENCE ALTERED STATES?
This is the title of an interview on Closer To Truth on YouTube.
I didn’t watch the interview for the following reasons:
‘Enlightenment’, ‘Transcendence’ and ‘Altered States’ are only words, just laden with mere human experience, susceptible as all words are to supposition, prejudice or even bigotry. These words have no mystical meaning.
While the words express human attempts to define mystical experiences, they are empty of the actual experience.
This is because the mystic experience Itself is the only way to know MER. It cannot be described in words. It is ineffable.
Why some experience MER and others don’t has never been explained to humans or even mystics. Experience seems to be the barrier without which we cannot know what cosmic existence and our place in it is all about. There seems to be no other access. Words are not enough.
Mystical Experiences of Reality 