AN INTERVIEW PROPOSITION DECLINED.

Despite being told it would help circulate my book, I declined the following invitation received today, and my reply:

INVITATION: My name is Gary Cocciolillo I have a podcast called Everything Imaginable. I would love to have you as a guest. I record via Zoom with no video or we can do it over the phone. Would you be interested in being interviewed? I am booking for January. I will send you a link to schedule your interview.

“Here is a link to my podcast.
http://www.everythingimaginable2020.com“

REPLY: Thank you for your invitation. I prefer keeping to emailing as that enables me to be as thorough and thoughtful about my answers and, more importantly, enables me to focus on my mystical experiences of Reality, rather than questions that are more to do with humanity.

Much of human ‘spirituality’ is only about trying to be better humans, which in my experiences is not what Reality, in which we live and breathe, is all about. It seems to me the human race is at a very primitive period of its evolution into the eventual extinction necessary to achieve its inevitable destiny. In the meantime, my experiences assure me most dramatically that, All Is Well. So I don’t see how being interviewed would suit more than just a passing curiosity in your audience …

That’s about it! That’s the summation of what I have learned so far. I was caught, not taught. I have no other qualification to have these convictions, so am loth to evangelise them except to Seekers, those as the Christian bible says “hunger and thirst” for it (Matthew 5:6). My blog and my five star book on Amazon do that to some modest extent I hope.

All best wishes,

Keith.

NOT BEING FAMOUS

QUESTION: Why aren’t you famous?

ANSWER: In my mind, I am! LOL!

But seriously, I started this blog and published the book, MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF REALITY as a means for me to understand my many spontaneous experiences of Reality every year from about the age of 15 to my mid 30’s.

Q: Has it worked?

A: Oh yes, and still is working. I was surprised to discover the phenomena is in fact very well known to the human race. Over the last thirty years it’s spread as a serious challenge to science through very active scholarly, scientific enquiries in universities world wide. I am now in correspondence with academics, scientists, Seekers and fellow mystics in New Zealand, Australia, UK, USA, Canada, Taiwan, and India, as well as papers on the subject and related enquiries from Academia,edu every day. I even found a hidden Sufi wisdom school with millions of followers around the world and eventually became an initiate. I now know what I am rather than who I am, and have that growing gift of the spirit, contentment – a much rarer human attribute than it should be – for which I am profoundly grateful.

Q: Could all that have been achieved by you anyway?

A: As natural human growth, you mean?

Q: Yes.

A: No! Where have you seen anything comparable? Contentment lasts, hapiness comes and goes if you’re lucky.

What similarities I have are only with mystics and mystics are usually clothed in what Sufi tradition calls, ‘The Cloak Of Invisibility’. This device is an ancient way of avoiding the crucifixion, burning, murder, torture, imprisonment and genocide committed against mystics in the past. For the time being, we live in better times but mystics realise they’re nothing to do with ordinary humans, anyway. There is nothing to be gained by studying the human condition for the real spirit of Reality rather than the mere human spirit. Even basic Reality has to be experienced to be known.

Q: So, fame is irrelevant?

A: Well the blog and the book do seem to be helpful to seekers and those interested in the subject. Amazon has now given the book five stars in North America, probably all round the world, after Europe first gave it five stars. So the blog and book are probably finding their own readers.

Q: You say you stopped sending the blog to social media shortly after it started.

A: Yes, I was getting a trickle of very odd followers and comments from social media mixed in with serious responses from non social media sources, so after correspondence with the present head of the Sufi school he mentioned social media “might not be helpful” – without me telling him it was already happening – I dropped all social media memberships immediately. I noticed the difference in quality of Comments and Likes from remaining Followers immediately.

Q: What happens if an enthusiastic reader in a position to get your writings before millions of people reviews your work glowingly?

A: It could be embarrassing. Emails are the best way for me to give thorough, thoughtful answers and avoid the merely curious, ego-fed or hubristic types. I avoid impromptu discussions in person for those reasons. I don’t do personal tours, appearances, or talks, either.

Q: No photographs of you, I see.

A: No. They’re a distraction too.

Mysticexperiences.net

CRITICISED FOR USING THE TERM, ‘MERE HUMANS’

QUESTION: You have been criticised for using the term “mere humans” in your posts. Does this indicate bias, bigotry, or prejudice against humans?

ANSWER: Yes, I think it does. I suppose you want to know why?

Q: Well yes.

A: After my multiple annual experiences of Reality I was strangely constantly lead away from friendships. I was friendly, but not a friend. I did not call intimates my friend and was uncomfortable when people claimed me as a friend; sometimes their best friend.

Friendship was a commitment to which I had no loyalties. In fact I have shed ‘friends’ from my schooldays to the present all over the world. They just drop like autumn leaves as my life develops. There just seems no life in them. This includes family in particular.

When I came to realise this, I lived with it then eventually came to my present conclusion that I am existentially wedded to Reality to the exclusion of anything like human reality.

Q: Alienated?

A: If that’s a technical word in the human, psychological sense then, yes, I am probably ‘alienated’.

Q: So how did this affect your human life?

A: Drastically, from a human point of view. Nothing in my schooling, human ambition or career expectations seemed relevant. Now I know, they aren’t.

Most of the people I come across are unconscious of the forces that rule their consciousness. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books, calls them ‘Muggles’, Gurus call them ‘sleepwalkers’, academics call them ‘unrealised’, ‘unauthenticated’. Some of my closest acquaintances are ‘second hand’, rely on society, tv and magazines, religions, authorities, for their values.

My closest acquaintances might be all those things but in my eyes have the redeemable quality of being thinkers. They have minds that are developed somewhat. They use them with openess to any possibilities, have an active even if weakly active, developing consciousness.

Q: One of your followers asked you if you find it difficult to deal with people as a mystic.

A: Yes. I remember babbling a forgettable reply to this person because I’m better at writing my thoughts than voicing them spontaneously. Fortunately I was rescued at about 40 years of age with small talk.

Small talk was a real blessing because before that I was a sweating, total wreck at meeting people at the general conversational level of religion, politics, relationships, marriage, babies, children, gossip, etc.; all the general inconsequentia of human life, much of which, probably all of which, is artificial.

Until then I totally avoided parties, ceremonies, formal and private social gatherings, and still do to some extent. Breakfasts, lunches or dinners of no more than eight people are alright though. I can manage those. After my sudden gift of the ability to small talk however I now have no problems if caught out having to consort with strangers occasionally.

So when I refer to “mere humans”, I refer to the presently primitive but developing condition of the human race as it is carefully cultivated by Reality to its destiny. The present dichotomy between humans and Reality is presumably closing in good order, in Reality’s time, not ours. All Is Well.

Q: Why do we have mystics then? Are they messengers, teachers?

A: Generally I have no idea. But my personal mystic experiences were quite clear – to leave humans alone, leave everything to Reality. Study Reality by all means but don’t waste time on mythomania, the artificiality of the human mind running in default … or, as the Quakers might say: Let Go And Let God.

Probably this is why I was so determinedly lead away from “friendships”, to keep me focused on my true destiny, to avoid the mystic trap of evangelising, prosyletising my version ofvthe universal phenomena of the mystic experience, avoid starting a religion or social cause, a clay footed ideology? Perhaps the sudden gift of small talk was a helpful compensatory gesture?

So to answer your question, Why Mystics?, it could well be that mystics are being groomed at a different level to fulfill their destiny after human death.

Q: Is God Reality?

A : No. Reality is much bigger. Though Reality does still include “mere humans” Reality is not a human god.

Mysticexperiences.net

WHAT ARE QUIETISTS?

Can Individuality Survive?

QUESTION: You suggest you are a ‘pratyeke’ in a buddhist meaning of your mystical experiences of Reality, then seem to leave it at that, letting your readers make of it what they can. But will you explain what you think pratyeke means in your case?

ANSWER: I read that “Quietism” is no longer fashionable in some spirituality tainted ‘social justice’ religious circles, but it does seem to describe me. I accept everything known and as yet unknown. I make no attempt to bring about change, not even renewal. I think this describes Quietism and Pratyeke. I don’t “double guess” Reality. So I am a ‘Pratyeke’, or ‘Quietest’.

Reality revealed to me that All Is Well – “In good order” as the Quakers might say about the human condition.

I therefore know it is a spiritual regression when humans attempt to interfere with the Creation and its individuals, now or ever.

Human history is littered with the devastating consequences of attempted and always failed impatient interventions, assumptions, mythomanias, taboos, and hubris, violence and violation – resulting in monumental meddling and disaster for all individuals, in whom Reality lives.

That’s why all attempts to interfere with individuals ‘for the good’ of some religious or secular mind stuff like the Inquistion for instance, or Communalism and Socialism, all eventually fail – because Reality lives in individuals, not collectives, communities or ‘societies’ that are not even based on human realities.

By challenging the seminal state of individuality, misguided people are challenging Creation, Reality. No wonder ancient and contemporary histories reveal the inevitable failure of all such attempts.

All of which of course makes it easier to understand why Quietists or Pratyeke mystics are not called upon to get involved with humans, except with Seekers. Reality is in charge, Pratyeke’s and Quietists will certainly survive. Individuals not so much by the looks of humanity today …

All Is Well. Reality prevails, as always.

Mysticexperiences.net

QUESTION: How Do You Know Your Mystical Experiences Of Reality Are True?

QUESTION: How do you know your mystical experiences of Reality are true?

ANSWER: Because of the ineffable but undeniable, implacable, benign power that revealed my true existence as an eternal non human being since the beginning of all things, Its revelation of my inclusion of belonging then, now and forever. It was literally stunning to feel so accepted, loved, freed. This was my destiny, my reality. I was and am always Reality and Reality was and is always me.

I never wondered about any of this. I had no idea of the existence of such an experience. It was entirely unthought of, beyond anything I had ever experienced, or ever expected anyone to experience, totally spontanious, assuring.

Q: How could you live as a human after that!

A: With lasting difficulty. I kept these experiences to myself for 60 years. I had them several times a year from about 15 years of age into my 30’s.

Q: You never wanted to shout them from the housetops as the saying goes?

A: Never.

Q: Why not?

A: I never understood them.

Q: So what made you ‘come out’ when you did.

A: I came across a book of yoga that seemed to hint at my experiences. I began to wonder if the phenomena might be known after all. The book, by Paul Brunton, didn’t make me feel any urge to take it further though.

Some time later, in my fifties I came across an older couple at a house of a group of friends who spoke with familiarity about what I thought were my exclusive experiences. I was astounded.

The couple subsequently introduced me to what has been called a little known school of Sufism that teaches millions of its world wide adherents what only I thought I knew – my experiences.

That eventually lead to my “coming out” to the then Master of the School. Later, after preparation, I was finally initiated.

The School impressed me by inviting its adherents to stay in its growing new town in India for free for three months every year in modern western style accommodation in the cool season. We were never asked for money, even told not to send postage for the Master’s replies to any letters he encouraged us to write to him about our progress. He said, “adequate funds are provided.”

It was here I first learned about mystics. Much later, from outside the School, I came across the Buddhist reference to pratyeka buddhas, which leads me to believe that’s what I am, but not a buddha. A pratyeka buddha has personal experiences of Reality like me, and does not teach, preach, evangelise or prosyletise from these experiences either.

Q: Quite a journey. Why are you here do you think?

A: I think mystics like me could be part of some purpose of developing consciousness. I’m not sure yet.

Q: Human consciousness?

A: No, not human consciousness! Ultimate consciousness, of which human consciousness could be a part on some level.

Q: You’re not curious?

A: No, I’m not curious. I’m content. I’m in good hands. All Is Well.

Q: Can other ordinary humans have these mystical experiences?

A: If they “hunger and thirst” for Reality as the Christian bible suggests, then they are already called. I was just one of those that didn’t hunger and thirst, but “That which you seek seeks you” the Sufi Master told us. People who do hunger and thirst are in good hands too. “Seek and ye shall find”, also from the Christian bible, is another truism that rings as authentic to me. Again I didn’t seek, but once found, I knew Reality.

As I say, whatever your way, All Is Well. “There are no failures” I’m told.

Mysticexperiences.net

BEING

By Anthony Garner, zenothestoic.com (on Weltanchauung):

Sitting in the garden listening to the rain.

There may be no more to be said than that. Call it a koan if you will, or a haiku perhaps. But do not be entangled by words or definitions.

If you must subscribe to any line of thinking, let it be Eastern. I am Zen. Doing nothing.

I am the Tao. I am the Hsin Hsin Ming.

And so are we all, did we but know it.

In the quiet, I have seen my origins. I have witnessed my past and my future. In me as in all of us, there are a million, million years of history.

In meditation, it is not too fanciful to speak to your long deceased father. Or mother. Or any of the millions of things you have been in the past, or will become in the future.

I sense a life in the woods, way back in time. I witnessed my consciousness emerge from all those eons of experienced time. And somewhere a monastery, in more modern times. Always a monastery.

And I saw the way it must end. Or rather, not end. Continue.

As I sense my father in me, my son, if he cared to think about it, would sense me in him. And his mother.

A seeker eventually finds. I have found. The truth, the way, reality – call it what you will.

It is devastatingly simple and of incredible complexity.

The simple part is to be. To feel the waters and flow of time around you and to go, to drift with the gentle current.

There is no more to it than that. If you seek contentment and meaning, then accept the river, the flow and do not try to go against the stream.

If you seek complexity, you will certainly find it, but it will avail you little.

Complexity is to be found in your body and the millions of working parts which make you what you are.

Complexity is to be found in the society and economy we have created.

Let it all pass. It will do so of its own accord in time. All is change, there are no constants.

Being, that is all there is to it. Sitting in the garden and listening to the rain.

_____________________

Comment by Keith:

“Your beautifully expressed experiences are very gratifying to witness. Your voice’s interpretation and communication are perfect for me. Quite an experience.

“If the Hsin Hsin Ming (mind) referred to is consciousness it echoes one of the last experiences I had in MER when I was mystified by observing the back of the body of Keith Hancock from a distance as it stood before an endless void of greyness as if about to make a final movement into it.

“I identified totally with the invisible observer of this scene and often wondered what the observer was in which the ‘I’ was so absorbed, separated from Keith Hancock. I came to recognise this observer as mind despite that conflicting with my experience the human mind as I understood it then does not exist after human death. Now I know it as consciousness. I am beginning to realise this consciousness is what exists in Reality for ever. It becomes clearer to me that consciousness is what the human journey is all about. It never ‘dies’.

“Kindest regards,

“Keith.”

Reply by Anthony Garner:

“I am astounded by the similarities between what you describe and what I felt the other day. Although I did not express it, I too felt that day that death was illusory. I too witnessed my own body, not from a physical distance as such but as separate from my mind and, in a sense, irrelevant. I recognized that it was not “me”, that I was different and in a sense, immortal. I seemed also to sense the end of my body, its death. Some sort of premonition perhaps, or maybe a realization that the body is irrelevant.

“And my consciousness seemed to extend back endlessly in time; I seemed to witness it’s past ands its constituents. Almost a past life (lives) experience. I am not sure where my “beliefs” now lie. What I do know is that I feel a very different person.

“Thank you for sharing that with me Keith. It is gratifying to know that others have experienced similar and equally strange visions of what is or what may be.

“Best

“A”

SEE OTHER COMMENTS ON this post on zenothestoic.com (on Weltanchauung) for very interesting comments by other Anthony’s followers (including two of ours!).

SCIENCE AND THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY?

Problem: Will Science finally unearth the workings of Reality?

Answer: Not unless it changes its scientific values to the point of extinguishing itself, making what is called Science today extinct.

Question: So no, is the answer by today’s scientific disciplines?

Answer: Yes. Science is just mind stuff, human curiosity, mental masturbation into space, (ie. unproductive self indulgence except for collateral science effects on technology, health care and medications) But there is another answer:

By the time Science gets anywhere near the truth of existence, human existence will have died anyway – human consciousness will likely have developed and left the human mind and body, become converted into the Ultimate Reality experienced by mystics.

Question: So in the long term Science has no future!

Answer: True. As the remnants of humanity disappear into something beyond Scientific thought or proof, only the scientific remnants of Technology will reign briefly then go the same way, or even continue in material relics, minus humanity and humanity’s Science, like lumps of matter sticking out of the sands of existence for other beings to ponder.

Question: … So no more Science, no more humanity as such!

Answer: None.

Question: So what now?

Answer: All Is Well and proceeding in good order by Reality’s standards, not ours … Being human is not the be-all and end-all of existence.

Mysticexperiences.net

AN UNANSWERED CORRESPONDENCE

CORRESPONDENT:

“It sounds as though you have reached a plateau of tranquility where life’s many vagaries are neatly pigeonholed away. Well done you!

“For myself I am still riding life’s dodgems but enjoying the experience very greatly.”

COMMENT:

“Life’s many vagaries” have not been “pigeonholed away”. There is nothing to pigeon hole as any thoughtful examination of one’s personal attachments will attest.

Human vagaries are artificial, mind stuff, unreal, harmless unless taken seriously like Nazism was, for instance, by the young men mostly in their twenties, mostly educated and professionals, who managed Nazi atrocities from Himmler’s headquarters in Albrecht Strasse for instance.

Anyway, history shows human empires only last 250 years before slumping into material, moral and religious decadence if Sir John Glubb is to be believed in his essay, THE FATE OF EMPIRES and SEARCH FOR SURVIVAL.

But the Reality of the mystical experience of Reality is known even from human records to be at least 12,000 years old. According to the Reality of the mystic experience of Reality (MER), Reality created everything, everything known and unknown. Reality created history. Accordingly, Reality is far more reliable, trustworthy, and loving than anything human by comparison.

Mind stuff is easily dismissed personally (not so easily socially!). It is seen to be non existent upon close and persistent examination unless one is attached to it.

According to the mystic experience, there is much more to being human than the myths upon which transient human life exists, much more to existence than being merely human.

As for, “I am still riding life’s dodgems but enjoying the experience very greatly” – is that a sad admission of a lost soul’s commitment to a lifetime of nothing but empty pleasure, hedonism?

Mysticexperiences.net

SOCIAL UNREST – A MYSTIC VIEW

A lot of the unrest among all classes of underperformers in all races and cultures comes from the mistaken belief we’re all equal when manifestly we’re not.

What needs to be supplied in practical abundance is equality of opportunity for all to see. A real application of this principle of equality of opportunity for all, regardless of race, culture or religion will soon spread the obvious realisation we are not all capable of equality.

At present, when found to be practically untrue this myth of equality enrages the ego, hubris, envy and greed. Then logic and reason are discarded for anarchy, violation of logic and reason, and violence.

This is a historical state of human affairs. It’s not new. We can only wait for Darwin’s evolutionary processes to dispense with this lust, anger, greed, attachments and ego, as the mystics say is already happening, or use now available DNA surgery to rid ourselves of our primitive stages quicker than Nature is allowing!

Such social eruptions as epitomised by the failures of mankind’s attempts to correct the situation have only resulted in the failures of Ananias and Sephira of the Bible and the liberalism, socialism and communism of our day – all of which eventually fell or are falling under the weight of their own evil.

The human hierarchy adjusts itself according to its seminal individual merits, not anything racial, cultural or collective – as we saw and still see in various stages in the old USSR, China, Vietnam, Cuba, and Venezuela. All is well.

In the meantime, is the answer simply to observe and endure, control our outrage and collect enough passports to keep out of the worst – as the developed families of the middle and far east have done for generations – while democracy and capitalism, perhaps tweaked, continue to pour out our grasping wants with our necessary needs?

Mysticexperiences.net

THINGS THAT ‘NEED’ TO BE DONE.

Despite most minds insisting on doing everything that ‘needs’ doing, not everything does.

On the contrary, simplification to the barest of necessities is the essence of the Mystical Experience of Reality, (MER). Even ordinary lives are enhanced by simplicity.

Being enthralled by being human is not what life is about. Mystics don’t have bucket lists. Nor are their minds on default.

Humans dream up ‘things’ that ‘need’ to be done, keep them busy, entertained, that on examination aren’t necessary to human existence, contentment or even happiness. They’re mind stuff; disappointments, clutter, distractions and blockages.

Sadly, they operate on such mythomanic self destructive behaviour 99.00%-recurring of the short time they’re human while the bliss of human self fulfillment is in the other direction – not entrapping themselves with such habitual, invasive behaviour.

So while most humans automatically copy what other humans are doing, bear in mind this Blog is addressed to those others – mystics, seekers, academics and scientists burrowing into what they call, “the hard question” of scientific experiment versus mystic experience. Their minds are independent, ready and open to simplification and focus on the profundities of existence.

Therefore, some of what appears here, including this post, will not ‘speak to the condition’ of everyone, as Quakers might say, while others will find their lives simplified, their “cups running over” with increasing fulfillment, their “hunger and thirst” quenched.

As we are not all equal so some won’t achieve their fulfillment in MER because they are addicted to busyness, distractions, self indulgences – “doing everything that needs to be done”.

mysticexperiences.net

ALL IS WELL but …

Once you begin not taking human behaviour seriously you’ll be amazed how it wont make any discernible difference to human reality but will make you feel lighter than air.

If the old saying is true that angels are lighter than air because they have no worries, is this because they have the mystic insight that All Is Well?

Does that mean once you get that mystic insight too you get your halo? (LOL).

Or is there anything else from which you still need to be detached?

Sadly, that’d be like taking a delicately floating silk scarf from thorns without damaging it, oh soooo patiently …

mysticexperiences.net

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.

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

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.

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