Some mystics would tell us the only spiritual life worth talking about is the experiential kind, not the religious.
Why we are here is based on inner experience, gnosis, not the expectations of our country of origin, tradition, culture, teachings or habits.
Gnosis is connection to Reality. Those who have experienced it are marked by a reluctance to talk about it.
What we know of it suggests it is spontaneous, though some religious teachers claim they can induce it in their pupils by special disciplines. the Jesus of the Christian bible said his message was only for those already prepared by his God, perhaps a reference to the experience of gnosis. Bible and mystical references suggest it can’t be earned or deserved.
Anecdotal evidence suggests the experience happens to those aged between 20 and 30. Each experience brings with it a sense of departure from the body.
While it lasts, the feeling is of being infused as if anaesthetised with a profound sense of joy. Everything that exists or has ever existed belongs intensely to the one having the experience. There is no absence of time, just no such thing as time.
It is as if the subject is being observed with benign indifference, as if their existence is unremarkable, as if they are an essential part of a reality in which they exist for ever.
The experiences come with an undetectable gentleness as if from an infinite, unassailable strength. There is a sense that the even greater Reality is waiting nearby. Afterwards, some subjects conclude they are given as much of the experience as they can bear. As the experience begins to leave the loss is fought against with agitation and sadness, and a panicky sense of loss.
The experiences do not lead the subject to want to be a better human being. They can even make the subject impatient with being human at all. Being a “better”, a “good”, human being, become givens, “fruits of the spirit”. After such experiences these attributes seem axiomatic, automatic, needing no effort to achieve.
This gnosis is not anthropomorphic, human centred, not even biological.
Gnosis makes a clear distinction between the human spirit and what humans call the Holy Spirit, that which is of man, (matter, morality and ethics), and that which is Real, pure, the soul.
The soul is a part of what those who have the gnostic experience then know as their true identity, an identity which is part of a whole to which they will eventually return permanently.
The sense is that the soul is merely placed in the human mind and body in order to experience matter and when that is satisfactorily accomplished, when the soul is pure spirit, then the body is discarded and the mind is shelved as no longer required. Only souls are eternal, not humans.
All Is Well.
Mysticexperiences.net
Please feel free to reblog.
Note: This was originally posted in 2016 and is posted here again in slightly re-edited form. It is a restatement of my Mystical Experiences Of Reality, (MER) several times a year from my late 14 years to 35 years of age.