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DISCUSSION: THE CASE AGAINST REALITY.

THE CASE AGAINST REALITY, 370 pages,  pub. W.W. Norton. 

By Dr Donald Hoffman, cognitive psychologist, University of California.

According to an anonymous Google Play reviewer of Dr Hoffman’s ebook version of this title, Dr Hoffman is asking if we can trust our senses to tell us the truth about reality.

I take it this only means human reality because he says his theory is based on the theory of realitivity, ie. physical evolution.

Apparently, Dr Hoffman claims human perception is not a window on truth. “Can we trust our senses to tell us the truth? he is quoted as saying.

” No!” the mystics reply. They have been telling us for thousands of years there is a Reality encompassing everything in existence, including humans. Human senses without the experience of Reality are limited to mere human preservation. MER is much more than that.

Is Dr Hoffman bringing science to the edge of a perception of this Reality (MER) mystics say is human destiny? If so, will this mean Science will be permanently reduced to only examining physical reality – a mere study of practical technology, how and why things work? Is this book the beginning of the revolutionary scientific breakthrough that will eventually change science forever?

If you have read this book already, or now intend to, please let us have your comments on Dr Hoffman’s thoughts. He is also interviewed on this subject on You Tube’s CLOSER TO TRUTH.

Let us know what you think. Thank you.

Mysticexperiences.net

Mystical Experience of Reality

The first review of this Blog’s book, MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES OF REALITY.

Weltanschauung

There are certain activities or states of mind which trigger in me what Abraham Maslow calls “peak experiences”. Reading Keith Hancock’s Mystical Experience of Reality does just that.

I have been sitting in our beautiful cottage garden in the spring sunshine. The birds have been singing and all is well. Phrases in Keith’s book take me to treasured places and I really care little if this seems a mere flight of fancy.

I am in Narnia running ever on into greater and higher levels of Eden, alongside the lion, the children and all the talking animals. I am leaving Middle Earth with the elves, from the harbor at Grey Havens, travelling with them to their mythical and otherworldly origins. I am subliming with Ian M Banks to a transcendent realm outside of physical reality.

It is odd how merely reading about such states or places can often bring on feelings…

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OFFERS TO PROMOTE THE BOOK

My Reply:

No thank you.

I’ve found my new book, MYSTIC EXPERIENCE OF REALITY, pub. BookLocker, is finding its own readers – those who are bewildered by an apparent calling they don’t understand, as well as by scientists and academics who are puzzled by the historical mystic phenomena the book is all about; and others, still secret mystics, who are comforted by the validation the contents offer. They are the ones who have moments of sudden understanding when they come across contents in the book they thought only they had experienced.

The book is not meant for the merely curious who are not called to it by their inner promptings.

I’m also seeing this happen with my blog, mysticexperiences.net.

SPIRITUAL PRACTICE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Here is an academic study that suggests to me the subject of mysticism is nearing mainstream status. If true this could produce a widely focused transformational understanding of the meaning of human evolution – as some Sufi experiences have predicted for thousands of years.

What do you think?

This excerpt, the author’s Conclusion from the end of his paper, will give you an idea of what I mean:

(Note: As readers will know however, I am not convinced the transformation can be induced by human effort. My spontanious experiences indicate the Mystic Experience of Reality (MER) is caught, not taught).

Spirituality and the Transformation of Consciousness

By Merv Dickinson, PhD

“If, as our spiritual traditions have long maintained and as current studies in transpersonal psychology seem to confirm, it is possible to develop beyond our usual level of ego-consciousness to a state described as self-transcendence, and if such transformational changes as are summarised above typically accompany this transition, then clearly there is value in exploring, from both a personal and a research point of view, whatever practices may in fact facilitate this transition – including those that for so long have comprised the heart of the world’s great spiritual traditions. At the very least, we would do well in this secular post-modern age, when so many of us are distancing ourselves from the apparent absurdities of organised religion, not to throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater, but perchance to rediscover what the spiritual Masters have for so long been trying to tell us.”

 

READ THE FULL PAPER

mysticexperiences.net

April 2020

LISTENING

Q: Do you listen to yourself?

A: Not myself, no! I do a lot of listening through writing though. Writing shows me the realities of existence. 

So listening to others is growingly relegated to unavoidable small talk about unreal things. It’s what the majority of humans practice so I go with it, largely unnoticed.

It’s a skill. Sufis call it ‘the cloak of invisibility’, Christians might say it’s a ‘fruit of the Spirit’.

Mysticexperiences.net  April 2020.

A Road Less Traveled

Weltanschauung

If we seek reality, I am told that we look in the wrong direction by obsessing over the human condition. I think that is right.

Curiously, it is also partly to my endless dalliance on the perimeters of science that I owe an appreciation of this insight. Always fascinated by the natural world, I missed my calling as a young teenager when I failed to appreciate mathematics and its importance in the scientific endeavor. No matter, while even the lower reaches of mathematics remain largely a mystery to me, I have made great strides over the years in acquiring enough skill to master and code algorithms. And to at least begin to appreciate their deeper meaning. All life seems to depend on simple rules, repeated infinitely and fed back on each other. Such is complexity. Such perhaps is sentience. An infinitely complex weave, a beautiful rug.

And science also…

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QUIETISM AS A PRACTICE?

No!

On the matter of quietism, what I know is that nothing a mystic does is a “practice” if my experiences are anything to go by. 

I was infused with quietism spontaneously in the same way mystcism infused and enveloped me. Quietism is not a sought after deliberate discipline or “practice”.

Could quietism be what some Christians call one of the many “fruits of the Spirit”? Is it a step upwards. Is it to help maintain the balance mystics require whilst being partly human?

I was similarly infused with the ability to ‘small talk’ in human company in my early 40’s. That brought much peace, ease and comfort to the separating tumult of my inner calling without admitting to my experiences. Was that a ‘fruit’ too?

Religions stunt any hope of experiencing spirituaity by decrying it because they have filled their collective minds with the disciplines and dogmas of such things as human mythomanias, good works, morality, ethics, emotionalism, mindstuff, and collectivism in lieu of the first hand experience their founders probably had of the Mystical Experience of Reality, (MER).

Science still isolates itself from truth with insistence on pedestrian logic and reason as if we’re still in the witch dunking, rumour and gossip,  stake burning days from which science brought about our escape. Now Science languishes in the dead-end insistence on the primary relevance of matter. A hard question indeed.

So, if you’re a Seeker with strong impulses and intuitions about quietism, congratulations. Its happening to yiu whether you know it or not, like it or not. Don’t fidget at it, relax, embrace it. Wonder at it. You can’t do anything about it. No need for ‘practice’ for you. Resistance really is futile in your case!

If you’re a mystic I’m gratified you’ve bothered to read this far. Humble greetings, and thank you.

If you are a ‘Muggle’, don’t fret either. You are where you’re supposed to be. You are known. You are progessing. Change is always changing, however imperceptibly, like it or not. All is well.

Mysticexperiences.net  April 2020

ART

From the point of view of a mystic or Seeker art is a human artifice, not the real thing – artificial, distractions filled with human values such as emotions, intellect, qualia, lust, anger, greed, attachments and ego (hubris) for instance … The mystic experience is we are not our bodies, brains or minds.

mysticexperiences.net

April 2020

HINT TO SEEKERS

The mysticism that was revealed to me in my multiple, spontaneous experiences of Reality (MER) does not seek or find expression in any human constructs. It is and of itself. It is everything. Humans are a mere part of It.

Keith Michael Hancock, mysticalexperiencesof reality.net April 2020.

Hearing the Logos

Weltanschauung

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Or was it a song or a vibration perhaps? If there has been one abiding and constant thread to my life it has been a yearning for mystical experience. To see the face of god, to touch it. To witness the very essence of reality.

You do not need to be conventionally religious to have your spine tingle, to feel the hairs rising from the back of your neck when you hear those words. You certainly do not have to subscribe to dogma – Eastern or Western.

Perhaps my earliest conscious exposure to the concept  was from the Magician’s Nephew. I can not count how many times I thrilled to that song in the dark, calling life and existence to a barren and empty world.

I have become tired these past few…

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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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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.