A Review of an article in Psychology Today by Dr. Steve Taylor, author of the Leap: The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening.

MER’s review comments are in bold type:

What are spiritual experiences? I don’t think of them in religious terms. I see them as moments in which our awareness becomes more intense and more expansive than normal, so that the world around us becomes more real and alive, and we feel a strong sense of connection to nature and other human beings.

These attachments were not true of my experiences.

We might feel a sense of joy or inner stillness, and feel that somehow the world around us is “in harmony” or has a meaning that we find difficult to express.

Yes, but not just “the world”, everything.

If a person from a religious background has such an experience, they may well interpret it in religious terms. They might see it as a gift from God, and believe that the aliveness and harmony they perceive is a glimpse of the divine, or of heaven.

But if you’re not religious, there’s no reason to think in these terms. The experience is just a psychological one. It suggests that our normal vision of the world is limited and in some ways even aberrational.

In awakening experiences, there is a strong sense of ‘seeing more,’ of expanding beyond limits and perceiving a more authentic reality.

Yes! Very much so.

My research shows that awakening experiences are connected to certain activities and situations. They are associated with contact with nature, spiritual practices such as meditation or prayer, sporting activities (such as running and swimming), and sex. They are also strongly associated with states of intense psychological turmoil. That is, paradoxically, they often occur in the midst of stress and depression, or in relation to traumatic life events such as illness, divorce or bereavement.

None of my experiences of the mystical experience of Reality were associated with any of the activities and situations suggested here.

However, one of the most interesting things about these experiences is that they are apparently becoming more common.

In a 1962 Gallup poll, just 22 percent of Americans reported that they had “ever had a religious or mystical experience.” In 1994, 33 percent of people answered yes to the same question, while by 2009, the figure had risen to 49 percent.

Research by the Pew Research Center in the U.S. has shown a similar trend. In 2007, 52 percent of Americans reported that they regularly felt a “deep sense of spiritual peace and well-being.” In 2014, the figure stood at 59 percent. In 2007, 39 percent of Americans said that the regularly felt a “deep sense of wonder about the universe”—a figure which had increased to 46 percent in 2014.

Perhaps significantly, these increases coincided closely with a decrease in interest in organized religion.

In the U.K., the surveys of the Spiritual Experience Research Centre have had similar findings. In a 1969 survey, the question “Have you ever experienced a presence or power, whether you call it God or not, which is different from your everyday self?” was answered affirmatively by 29 percent of people.

In 1978, the figure had risen to 36 percent, and then to 48 percent in 1987. In 2000, there was a further steep rise to 75 percent—a 27 percent increase in 13 years (which was, coincidentally or not, exactly the same figure by which church attendance declined over the same period). (1)

A Collective Movement?

Why should spiritual experiences be more common now than they were a few decades ago? It could simply be that people are simply getting better at recognizing them, or are more open about discussing them.

A lot of historically known mystics had no choice but to keep quiet about their experiences or take the consequences from the brutal conventional religions of their day.

Now that there is more general awareness of spirituality in our culture, and concepts such as “spiritual peace and well-being” are a more common part of discourse, it could simply be that more people are describing their experiences in this way, when they might have described them in other terms in earlier decades.

Or perhaps it’s right to take the research at its face value. Perhaps spiritual experiences actually are becoming more common. This is the approach I take in my new book The Leap: The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening.

It is hard to tell if the good doctor is actually talking about mystics and the mystical experience of Reality that defines mystics as mystics.

I suggest that spiritual experiences are glimpses of a new state of being that is slowly becoming more normal to human beings. This is a higher-functioning state that I call “wakefulness,” in which a person feels an enhanced sense of well-being, clarity, and connection.

This is certainly a partial view of the traditional mystic experience.

They have a more intense awareness of the world around them, a greater sense of appreciation of nature, a broad global outlook, and an all-embracing sense of empathy with the whole human race. In many ways, it is a permanent, ongoing variant of the ‘awakening experience.’

Empathy with the human race is certainly not where my experiences have lead me. Humanity as a collective is at a very primitive state of Realisation (or cosmic consciousnesses).

I have found many examples of people who shift into this higher-functioning state in the midst of intense psychological turmoil – for example, bereavement, serious illness, or alcoholism—I describe some of these examples in The Leap.

If true, such descriptions would make their “experiences” suspect, very anthropological, not mystical experiences of Reality at all.

This shift is quite common, and can be seen as a variation of “post-traumatic growth”—I sometimes refer to it as “post-traumatic transformation.”

There are also hundreds of millions of people around the world who are gradually cultivating wakefulness by following spiritual practices such as meditation and service, or spiritual paths such as Buddhism, Yoga, or the Kabbalah.

The mystical experience of Reality cannot be evangelised or experienced from books or religions. The ancient and modern records of the phenomena of MER suggests the experience is caught, not taught. That’s certainly my experience.

A constantly increasing interest in self-development, spiritual practices, and traditions is one of the most significant cultural trends of our time.

Beware of such cultural “trends”. Reality is not interested in human “culture” if my experiences are anything to go by.

It seems to me that there is a collective moment towards awakening, which is manifesting itself in a variety of ways—one of which may be the increasing frequency of spiritual experiences.

(1) I am grateful to my fellow author Jules Evans for bringing my attention to this research.

Steve Taylor PhD is a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University, UK. He is the author of The Leap: The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening.
Source: Psychology Today

The Chinese sage Lao Tsu is said to have warned, “Those who know don’t talk, those who talk don’t know.”

He was talking about MER, the mystical experience of Reality – the Tao. As a generalisation I think he was right. But as in most generalisations, there are exceptions.
But why blog about mysticism anyway?
Because as E.M.Foster, the English man-of-letters and many other writers have said in similar words – ‘How do I know what I know until I write it?’
My own mystical experiences were frightening, debilitating and inexplicable until I started writing about them 60 years later.
Writing about a subject can lead writers into vast areas of reading and research, into empirical facts they didn’t know existed – as well as into awareness of personal attributes like concentration, patience, passion, intuition, ‘knowing’, contemplation, meditation, transcendence, epiphany, certainty – these are all or just some of the multiple abilities writing can reveal.
The deeper their understanding, focus, integrity, truthfulness, precision and their prose develops in writers on mysticism the more their personal paths are revealed.
Finding and creating words that stick into readers’ hearts and minds like benign burrs, creates a serendipitious ripple of meaning for others too.
The more such writers lift veils, ignite unseeing stares of mindful enchantment in their readers, the more they sometimes wonder if they are doing the writing themselves or if something else is. (Always say yes when you’re prompted to write something – you never know what serendipities await your development).
So when I read a Follower’s web post asking Why Blog? I found myself prompted to write the following haiku, of all things:

WHY WRITE?

Encore! Encore! to
Deepening stillnesses:

To Ultimate Word?

Are those who attempt to express the inexpressible the Called Ones? Are they the exceptions to Master Lao Tsu’s rule?

Mysticexperiences.net 2018

“MANY ARE CALLED, BUT FEW ARE CHOSEN”.

By Lewis Lafontaine, Depthpsychologysite.blog

Publisher’s note: I don’t know where Dr Jung got this insight, but it validates my own mystical experiences of Reality about the supreme importance of the individual over mere social conventionality in the development of existence:

“The words “many are called, but few are chosen” are singularly appropriate here, for the development of personality from the germ-state to full consciousness is at once a charisma and a curse, because its first fruit is the conscious and unavoidable segregation of the single individual from the undifferentiated and unconscious herd. This means isolation, and there is no more comforting word for it. Neither family nor society nor position can save him from this fate, nor yet the most successful adaptation to his environment, however smoothly he fits in. The development of personality is a favor that must be paid for dearly. But the people who talk most loudly about developing their personalities are the very ones who are least mindful of the results, which are such as to frighten away all weaker spirits.

“Yet the development of personality means more than just hatching forth monsters, or of isolation. It also means fidelity to the law of one’s own being.

“For the word “fidelity” I should prefer, in this context, the Greek word used in the New Testament, nioris, which is erroneously translated “faith.” It really means “trust,” “trustful loyalty.” Fidelity to the law of one’s own being is a trust in this law, a loyal perseverance and a confident hope; in short, an attitude such as a religious man should have towards God. It can now be seen how portentous is the dilemma that emerges from behind our problem: personality can never develop unless the individual chooses his own way, consciously and with moral deliberation. Not only the casual motive – necessity – but conscious moral decision must lend its strength to the process of building the personality.

“If the first is lacking, then the alleged development is a mere acrobatics of the will: If the second, it will get stuck in unconscious automatism. But a a man can make a conscious decision to go his own way only if he holds that way to be the best. If any other way were held to be better, then he would live and develop that other personality instead of his own. The other ways are conventionalities of a moral, social, political, philosophical, or religious nature. The fact that the conventions always flourish in one form or another only proves that the vast majority of mankind do not choose their own way, but convention, and consequently develop not themselves but a method and a mode of life at the cost of their own wholeness.”Carl Jung; The Development of Personality.

Reblogged by Mystic experiences 2018

https://wp.me/p14it7-dDw

This essay so agrees with my prejudices on the subject of spontaneous mystical experiences of Reality (MER) I just have to draw your attention to it.

My only caveat is the constant use of the word ‘God’. My experiences taught me there’s no such thing if this is a reference to the god of human religions.

I prefer the phrase “Ultimate Reality” or “Reality” with a capital R.

The human word GOD is too small to come anywhere near to describing the Reality mystics experience. The word is tainted with insistent human values and dangerously limited spiritual experience.

Apart from that, this article is an essential foray into real spiritual meaning, in my experience.

Mysticalexperiences.net 2018

Marc replied:

Thank you, Keith, for visiting our site and for reblogging the piece of spiritual writing published on this page.

I have read the caveat you noted down at your website, and I have no problems with it, to wit:

My only caveat is the constant use of the word ‘God’. My experiences taught me there’s no such thing if this is a reference to the god of human religions.

My use of the term “God” is a only a matter of familiar linguistic convenience andgrammatical facilitation, to enable the communication of my message to others (readers in this case). In no way does my use of the word refer to the typical “god” (or “God”) of any human religion. You are right in that regard.

The truly ineffable is beyond the label and definition of words or word constructs. It is, also, beyond mental conceptualization and comprehension by the intellectual functionality of the human mind. One can readily substitute the word “God” in the article with, say, your preferred use of “Ultimate Reality” or “Reality” with a capital R. I would not have any problem with that.

Permitting me to make light of the matter, let me say that from a mystic’s perspective, I suppose it might boil down to adopting and using a favored “pet name” for the utterly transcendent Reality. Joel Goldsmith had his: the “Infinite Invisible.” Mystics, philosophers and theologians from various cultures and traditions down through the ages have resorted to fanciful expressions such as the Absolute, the First Cause, the Prime Mover, Spirit, Brahman, Purusha, the Self, the unutterable Nameless One or “Yahweh” in the Hebraic tradition for which the Jews had to concoct the name “Adonai” just so that they could have a representative name to legitimately pronounce (seems crazy and ridiculous but there was a reason behind the seeming madness), the Tao, Nirvana, Allah, and so on and so forth; and, of course, the much ballyhooed yet still in vogue everyman’s term in the English-speaking world — God.

It would seem that not even scientists can be spared from the tendency of customarily providing some reverential, awe-inspiring nomenclature for a phenomenon beyond the immediate purview of scientific reasoning and observation. Thus, we have terms such as the “Big Bang” (why not the Big Fart?), the “Zero Point Field,” the “Singularity,” the Higgs boson “God-Particle,” Consciousness, etc. all denoting “something that’s there but not quite out there.”

Aware of this very human foible, I exercised enough prudence to raise the potential issue or problematic matter at the very beginning of this site’s substantive discourse on the subject of contemporary mysticism. It sets the tone for the discussion and for the entire site as well.

By the way, my private “pet name” for God would be “The Truly Ineffable.” It reminds me of the divine paradox that “there is this thing that is not a thing at all” — a No-Thing.

Thanks again for appreciating the post, Keith.

Cheers.

categories: MER, GOD.

Strongly recommended – A must, clarifying read for those who haven’t yet come across scientist William James’ seminal introduction to mysticism and consciousness  – mysticexperiences.net

https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/06/04/william-james-varieties-consciousness/