Category: WISDOM

DEFINING MYSTICISM, A SURVEY OF MAIN DEFINITIONS

By Saeed Zarrabizadeh, University of Erfurt, Germany

Abstract:

Since the beginning of the modern studies about mysticism in the second half of the nineteenth century, defining the term !mysticism” has remained one of the controversial issues in this field, and different authors have been using the term to refer to different subjects.

Studying some major effective sources in the field of mysticism, this article surveys the modern definitions of mysticism and evaluates them according to their comprehensiveness. It also tries to clarify the different classifications of mysticism by using the dimensional definition of the term.

No word in our language, not even ‘Socialism’, has been employed more loosely than ‘Mysticism.’

Sometimes it is used as an equivalent for  symbolism or allegorism, sometimes for theosophy or occult science; and  sometimes it merely suggests the mental state of a dreamer, or vague and  fantastic opinions about God and the world:

(William Ralph Inge, 1899)
There are almost as many definitions of the term ‘mysticism’ as there are writers on the subject.

(Gershom G. Scholem, 1941)
Mysticism continues to elude easy definition, and its nature and significance remain the subject of intense debate. The terms ‘mysticm’, ‘mystical, and ‘mysticism’ have been used in an astonishing variety of ways by different authors in different eras.

(Steven Payne, 1998)
Even if we suppose Scholem’s statement about the quantity of definitions of ‘mysticism’ as an exaggeration, we can’t disagree with the fact that mysticism continues to escape a definition unanimously accepted by at least the majority of scholars.

Read full paper at www.Academia.edu

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.

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.

HUMAN CLUTTER VERSUS ULTIMATE REALITY

 

A Follower who feels he is a mystic has sent me emails on how Ultimate Reality is made up by humans. He quotes biblical references that make him sound religious.

This apparent confusion made me think of stories how “The Devil”, (or what nowadays I see is called, “The Negative Principle”), insinuates into and pollutes the truth of Reality’s existence…

This is how the correspondence developed:

ME: My experiences direct me and my Blog to serious Seekers, mystics, scientists and academics who are examining the phenomena of spiritual awakening to Ultimate Reality, not to people just wanting to be better humans.

Consequently, I avoid anything that identifies with mere human experience which, in my view, is not worth studying, including mythomanic human constructs such as religions. I avoid expressions of merely human experiences like “super hero” or “alter ego” (words that the Follower used).

I realise this might be provocative, even challenging to present day humans, so when a Master advised me to ignore social media when distributing the Blog I did so immediately. The consequent dissipation of such spiritually fatuous social media distractions has been dramatically purifying …

FOLLOWER: But you are still a human, right?

Not for long, just temporarily. As a mystic my experiences of Reality indicate I am in progress. I have duties and responsibilities as a human while I’m here but they are spiritually insignificant attachments that will disappear with the mind and body as the human experience dies and evolves into pure Ultimate Reality.

FOLLOWER: Mystics must embody the human experience too, or it seems they have excluded a part of the Whole, the One. They say that Jesus was fully divine AND fully human, not either-or (hypostatic union). He was fully both, as are you and me.

ME: The Jesus Conference of international metaphysicians, scientists, academics, theologians, religionists have frequently met and published their findings, studies and experiments. They have arrived at the conclusion the biblical Jesus left only a dozen or so words attributable to him, and no spiritual teachings, only human morality and ethics.

Bishop Spong, an attendee, says the spiritual is more important than the religious.

FOLLOWER: God or Ultimate Reality incarnates itself as human, as us, in all of our broken and suffering humanity.

ME: No. My experiences of Reality delivered no evidence of any God or gods or any religious teachings whatsoever. Humans seem to have little or no significance in the infinitely, ineffable, bigger picture of Ultimate Reality. I could be wrong about my use of the word, “little”.

FOLLOWER: … we are both human AND divine, we are both a part and the One, simultaneously. We can’t ignore or dismiss this embodied manifestation, it seems to me, or we’ve missed a critical part of the totality, the very expression of Reality on Earth and in this particular finite embodied body-mind.

ME: Reality is not an expression of anything. It IS absolutely all things in Itself, unique, of which humans are merely a part; in my experiences of Ultimate Reality.

FOLLOWER: I would go so far as to say, as Eckhart does, that God or Ultimate Reality doesn’t exist apart from our embodied nature in any manifest way.

ME: Eckhart is wrong about Ultimate Reality but right about “God”, if my experiences mean anything. God is a human construct. Reality is not. Reality is not God in the general, cultural accepted sense. Reality is outside humanity. Reality is enough. It cannot be taught or learned, only caught, experienced. The experience of Ultimate Reality is the beginning of all wisdom.

FOLLOWER: If we did not exist, Reality would not exist, it would only be unmanifest formless potential.

ME: No! Absolutely not. I would be astonished to hear an experienced mystic say that.

Reality is not manmade, in my experiences. It’s the other way round. Humans could not exist without Reality, nothing can. Reality is enough, It existed long before and will after humanity’s existence. It is beyond infinite, beyond even mere alpha or omega …

FOLLOWER: … Reality finds actuality, in my view. This body is Reality’s actualized form.

ME: No; nowhere near the case, in my experience. Reality is ineffable – completely beyond human understanding or imagination.

FOLLOWER: When we know our divinity fully we also know our humanity fully. We realize the Anthropos (fully “Human One”, or “Son of Man”).

ME: No. When we eventually know Reality fully then humanity ceases, is fufilled.

I agreed when the Follower said we disagree! However, my experiences are of Reality, not human “ideas” or experiences as the Follower suggests. I am guided not to clutter my experiences of Ultimate Reality with temporary human distractions, what one Sufi school calls “manmukh”.

Ultimate Reality is very pure, perhaps what the bible meant when it said, “I am a jealous God”, (Exodus 20:5; Dueteronomy 5:9; 2Corinthians 6:15; 2Corinthians 11.2).

FOLLOWER: I think the reason that we speak and write such “ideas” about our “experiences” is that Reality wants to express itself, it wants to guide humans to it, to knowing it as it is, and it does so through us. I agree that none of these “ideas” is pure Ultimate Reality as it is in itself, as it is experienced directly, but this is rather all a pointer, a symbol, a metaphor, a relative truth that points to that Reality.

ME: I don’t think you can reduce Reality to being a penitent. My experience is that Reality doesn’t need our help. I was made helpless when Reality called. Aren’t all mystics?

Reality does it’s own work. Human attachments and ego get in the way. Just look at the human practice of “spirituality”, its history. (“The Negative Principle” at work again?). Some ancient, we could say perennial, mystery schools have millions of followers but keep themselves safely hidden from human effects, the spiritual tourists, the curious and spiritually uncalled, those unprepared by Reality. Reality happens when we’re utterly still.

FOLLOWER: All that we say is human “ideas.” Every word, yours and mine.

ME: Not if you’re a mystic.

FOLLOWER: Why have a blog if you don’t want to clutter the experience with such human distractions?

ME: Good point. I resisted the uncalled for, long delayed promptings to start a blog on my experiences for a long time, then, giving in to what seemed the inevitable, the penny dropped and I began. It’s been an eye opener, a serendipity of spiritual profusion and validation. Truly, All Is Well.

So I was determined not to tell readers what to think, as the religions do, but lay out my Mystical Experiences of Reality for those who were already seeking, who to some extent understood as much as what was said as unsaid, whose discrimination was already under Reality’s will. Only consciousness can understand consciousness, (as Deepak Chopra has obviously experienced, and expressed publicly, (though he was referring to the limits of science).

My determination was somewhat achieved eventually by “unqualifying” social media followers as well as those whose hunger and thirst are still deeply entangled at a non spiritual level.

Some find the process of the Blog helpful, easily assimilated, natural – others difficult. Few seem to give up its personal challenges once committed to having it sent regularly to their email.

However, I wouldn’t presume to put a value on the work. Suffice it to say the spiritual processing I get as a result of publishing it has been beyond understanding, immensely humbling, benign and ineffably loving. I could not have been changed, or shown what I have been shown, without Reality. Sharing the Blog is simply obeying and communicating what I know of the Reality I have been shown, come what may …

Here are just some of the conclusions I have drawn from my experiences. They have already been published in the Blog.

Mysticexperiences.net

WHY THIS BLOG?

Q: What does Mysticexperiences.net bring to this age’s understanding of mysticism?

A: The Blog started as an aid to help me understand my experiences of what I thereby discovered were Mystical Experiences of Reality.

My exploratory writing alone was hugely validating, So were all the helpful Comments  Likes, Followers and emails the Blog prompted from around the world from Seekers, writers, professionals, academics – from over 70 countries.

Q: So it worked?

A:  Yes. It still is working.

After hiding my experiences for nearly 60 years, by starting this web site, I discovered I am a mystic and that the subject is studied in universities around the world with vigour and enthusiasm by physicists, theologians, philosophers, psychologists and students.

I learned that Oxford University alone archived 6,000 case studies. This archive is now growing and being studied and added to under a Templeton Foundation grant at Wales University.

One of the Blog’s Followers, a Philosophy Master, questioned universities on a technical question about mysticism and got personal correspondence from published professors in 58 universities.

As a result, I learned I was not alone, nor mad … So I could have “come out” of hiding as a mystic years ago with no one raising an eyebrow; at least in learned circles.  Among my friends, not so much …

Friends’ reactions have ranged from politely ignoring the subject to one sideways muttered suggestion my MERs were psychotic. Others have become Followers of the Blog.

Also, I was warned by a Sufi school I was eventually initiated into that my friends, colleagues, acquaintances, that even my reading matter and lifestyle would change dramatically. They did, almost without me noticing. I am now a friendly recluse.

I feel uncomfortable with most humans, particularly with the unrealised ones (see prophecy 15 below …).  However, I do seem to have developed empathy, tolerance and patience with Seekers. I avoid the merely curious.

I also feel the web page joins the challenge of updating the limited understanding of previous generations. And it is meeting the questions by Seekers bewildered by their unbidden, unremitting passion to know the truth of existence.

Little do some Seekers know )they seek the Reality experienced by the mystics, or that Reality planted their passion in them and is drawing them to Itself. Seekers are different to the commonality of humans; emerging.

Their destiny is assured and more immediate than most, bearing in mind the focus they need to respond to their calling.

Bearing all this in mind, here is what I know so far:

  1. Reality contains everything known and unknown. Nothing exists outside It, including humans;
  2. It is not human;
  3. The experience of Reality is caught, not taught.
  4. It is knowable by direct individual experience within the parameters of the individual’s development. (Eg: as humanity developed it reached the ability to go from seeing in black and white to the qualia of seeing colour; so mystics seem to be chosen in like manner, without obvious qualifications;
  5. It is Consciousness emerging;
  6. It is benign, totally accepting (ie: inexpressibly loving);
  7. It is constantly creating and developing;
  8. It does not allow anything to interfere in Its purpose, (including humans);
  9. It is everything in Reality; it provides, guards, guides, nourishes, replenishes, aids, observes, asserts its purpose;
  10. It is all powerful; destroys, rebuilds, recreates;
  11. Reality’s form is non material; non human, though everything shares Its ingredients as It shares ours. We are It;
  12. It has given humans all they need and rarely if ever reacts to human wants;
  13. It gives, never wants;
  14. Reality is only interested in individuals;
  15. Humans are at a very primitive, early stage of existence;
  16. Prophecies can arise from the mystical experience, but such prophecies rarely get their timing right, (ie: “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” …).
  17. However modern mystics can prophesy that religions, ideologies, lust, anger, greed, nations, isolated and isolating cultures, tribes, families, dependencies, attachments to anything but the development of the individual, are withering and dying in the timely fashion Reality has of asserting Itself.  Human ego will also disappear as a disposable appendage. It will be tamed and anyway doomed to permanent death with the disposable brain and body.
  18. If some eastern schools of mysticism are to be believed, Reality develops Itself, absorbing everything into It, including humans, to become pure spirit like Itself. I certainly was not human in my experiences. I resisted desperately every time I was returned from my experiences into being human again. Now, I hope with all my body, mind and strength that being with Reality is my destiny after death.
  19. All who experience Reality will come to know ineffably that All Is Well. We’re under better stewardship than we can provide.

Mysticexperiences.net

THE TRUE MEANING OF WISDOM – Deepak Chopra

By Deepak Chopra

“Wisdom has grown scarce for the simple reason that it follows no model. Socrates made the point, and it got him into a great deal of trouble, that wisdom cannot be taught. You can teach data collection, the amassing of facts, and many branches of knowledge, but wisdom stands apart. True wisdom leads to such things as insight, intuition, depth of experience, self-awareness, and humility before mysteries that will never be fully comprehended.

“Because wisdom contradicts the certainty that models try to give us, it has had a hard time in society, as the death of Socrates shows. Society defends its favored and cherished models (which can be mythical, religious, animistic, scientific, and so on) with ferocity; certainty is not to be flouted.

“Wisdom calls for a totally different way of looking at reality. I will argue in the next post for taking the road back to wisdom. It is the only way to fulfill the infinite potential that human beings possess, and on a global scale, it is the only way we will reach desperately needed solutions.”

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists.

Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers.

His latest books are The Healing Self co-authored with Rudy Tanzi, Ph.D. and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine.

 

CUTTING-EDGE SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE OF TRANSCENDENCE, ENLIGHTENMENT

 

Go to Closertotruth.com then choose ARE ENLIGHTENMENT & TRANSCENDENCE ALTERED STATES?

Then choose Dr. Roger Walsh.

WARNING: Those without experience of a mind under enough disciplined control to unburden themselves of themselves will not discern the spiritual fruit hanging in full view in these two seminal interviews.

Roger Walsh MD., PhD is an Australian professor of Psychiatry, Philosophy and Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, within UCI’s College of Medicine.

Mysticexperiences.net 2019.

PERSONAL QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Message of the Mystics.

A Consuming Passion.

Its meaning.

 

Q: Refined to its very basic premise, what is the message of the mystics?

A: It’s not clear that mystics are messengers if my experiences and readings are anything to go by. What mystics experience is exclusively for them, however similar the experiences seem.

Q: Well, if you will allow me to be personal, how would you as a mystic advise someone like me?

A: Someone like you? What is that someone like you?

Q: To use a phrase of yours, ‘Through no fault of my own’ I am a passionate Seeker. I have been all my life.

A: How does this affect you?

Q: I guess it seems to consume my life to the exclusion of everything else almost.

A: It’s your only passion?

Q: Yes, underneath everything else, it’s come to define me, isolate me, alienate me … I seem to have been born with a persistent ache to know what it’s all about. I feel worn out by it all, even though I sculpt, write, paint, play the piano, but my heart’s not in any of it really, though it is relaxing and time consuming.

A: It sounds as if it might be appropriate to share my own conclusion about the purpose of life. It might be helpful. You seem ripe for the experience, ready for the demands it makes.

The purpose of human life if my experiences are anything to go by, is to examine what you can of the Process of existence.

Do this by relaxing and watching, letting go, accepting how things unfold, grow and change, how they are veiled behind the inconsequential hullaballoo of being human.

This will be much like the early days of learning a musical instrument, how to sculpt, paint, and develop your writing to express the inexpressible. (Bearing in mind all these things by the way are art, artifice, not the real thing …).

Let discovering this Process channel your Seeker passion.

The growing knowledge of the Process of existence will reveal itself in ways profoundly new to you. Eventually it will take you beyond all human understanding, give you profound peace and contentment.

I see tears! You’re puzzled. Big sighs too! These are a good sign. They could mean the task has already taken, that it’s already working on you. Take a deep breath. That’s a good smile. Well done.

What I’ve told you isn’t meant for everyone. You had to be ready and I think you are. This advice may take you on a short journey or a long one, but there will be more help than you know working on you as you work on knowing this Process.

Eventual discovery of the meaning of what I have said will tell you more than everything, not just about your purpose in life.

This eventual discovery is like a captivation perpetrated on me in a different way in one of my MER’s (Mystical Experiences of Reality). It sharpened my awareness too. It baffled me at the time as I had not asked a question, and could not have asked anything to justify such an answer. Over time however, 50 years in my case, that mystifying, apparently meaningless message of captivation has revealed a continuing abundance of meanings and certainties.

Q: May I ask what your specific ‘captivation’ was that took you on, what it said?

A: Yes. It said:

“All Is Well”.

This was repeated three times.

Q: What have you concluded about it’s meaning after all these years?

A: That ALL, everything known and unknown, everywhere, on all levels, is well, in good order, as it is meant to be. Humans don’t have the answers. Nothing human is of much spiritual consequence. My probing into all the meanings arising from this enigmatical assertion sensitised me to all manner of truths and revealed why humans did such evil things to mystics and why mystics have historically learned to keep their revelations to themselves and how humanity is in such a primitive state of existence. Reality is all there is. Reality is enough.

Experience of it is the beginning of wisdom.

All is well.

Mysticexperiences.net

INNER DETACHMENT AND ISOLATION

“The feeling of inner detachment and isolation is not in itself an abnormal phenomenon but is normal in the sense that consciousness has withdrawn from the phenomenal world and got outside time and space.

“The development … is the meaning and purpose of all life’s wisdom to go along with natural developments that spring from the functioning of the whole personality.”

– From Carl Jung by lewislafontaine

Mysticexperiences.net

SELF-HELP GURUS?

 

Oh boy! This reblog could be contentious.

It’s somewhat bigoted and prejudiced in my view. I cannot accept whopping generalisations, though in this case the author does provide some light provenance for his assertions.

As the article is a needed heads-up on the subject though, it’s re-posted here for you to decide:

SELF-HELP GURUS

by Zeno The Stoic April 12, 2018

Self help gurus are guaranteed fakes. So are all other self anointed gurus. Avoid them – run for your life and keep your purse locked.

I have parked this article under the category “health”, since I find self help gurus the most insidious but you will find this species of pariah in every walk of life and every area of commerce.

I first noticed them in finance: such people are a huge danger to your wealth. They promise you will make millions in up and down markets by buying their absurd courses. It is likely they have never traded in the financial markets and that if they have the exercise was a failure.

It is all about money: getting yours.

The Dalai Lama doesn’t need to peddle books, nor does the Archbishop of Canterbury. They may be worth listening to, they may not. But at least they are not looking for you to finance their expensive lifestyles. Much the same can be said for qualified doctors or therapists. At least they have (usually!) had a rigorous training in a recognised discipline.

The real con artists are those who sell books, courses and seminars telling YOU how to achieve happiness and contentment when THEY have singularly failed to achieve any measure of well being and are as far removed from nirvana as it is possible to be.

READ MORE

Reblogged on Mysticexperiences.net

INNER DETACHMENT AND ISOLATION The mystic in a nutshell?    

“The feeling of inner detachment and isolation is not in itself an abnormal phenomenon but is normal in the sense that consciousness has withdrawn from the phenomenal world and got outside time and space.

“The development … is the meaning and purpose of all life’s wisdom to go along with natural developments that spring from the functioning of the whole personality.”

From Carl Jung by lewislafontaine

Mysticalexperiences.net

THE INTERNET CHRISTIAN v. “ME”!

That dratted word, “my”.

A Christian on the Internet objects to the use of “my” – as in when I say, “in my experiences” – when I draw on the spontaneous annual mystical experiences of Reality (MER) I had from about 15 to 35 years of age, to make posts on this web site.

He says my use of the word shows ego. Ego, he says, is not found “on the mystical plane”. He asks who am I to offer myself as an authority.

But my use of the pronoun is to say, “this is only my experience”. I use “me” as a qualifier to caution readers as to the identity of the source of my anecdotal, personal experiences. My experiences are the only authority I offer.

Another reason I use the word “we” is because I have to use a human language historically developed to express experience of the material world. But MER cannot be explained or experienced in terms of the material world.

I am trying to share experiences of a spiritual phenomena that cannot be explained by materialism. MER does not exist materially. It has no body or brain, it just is everything and everything is it. It has no need of language or explanation. MER can only be experienced, caught not taught.

So I am just sharing my mystical experiences to help me get as full a comparative understanding of them from others’ experiences, comments, writings, likes and emails – as I now do from among 68 countries including scientific sources around the world I had no idea were taking mysticism so seriously.

For instance, if I had not started this web site I may not have come across the likelihood of being a pratyekabuddha. (Coincidence? I’m not sure).

Apparently a pratyekabuddha, or paccekabuddha, is the so-called “silent buddha” who does not try to share his or her realization with the world.

Pratyekabuddhas are said to achieve enlightenment on their own, without the use of teachers or guides, by “dependent origination”, (spontaneity?).

Traditionally, Paccekabuddhas give moral teachings but not enlightenment. (See unedited descriptions in Wikipedia).

I certainly do not give “moral teachings”, or ethical ones for that matter as they’re man made, not to be found in Reality – according to my experiences.

Nor can I or anyone else so far as I am aware “give” enlightenment. Enlightenment is, as I say above, caught not taught.

Nor do I feel called to be a master, teacher or “authority” on enlightenment or Reality!

Many mystics who felt otherwise and presumably engaged in human affairs because that’s what they thought they were called to do, failed. The material world brought them to very bad ends.

Modern mystics, of which there are said to be many more than there used to be, seem to know better. They keep to themselves.

So the Internet Christian’s misunderstanding I reported in the first sentence above is a reminder to me of the advice I got from a Master with millions of non monetarised followers around the world who few humans even know about.

He cautioned me about posting my experiences to spiritually unqualfied Internet social sites like Facebook etc. So that’s why mysticexperiences.net is not posted to those sites now. Yet the blog grows organically almost daily.

Obviously I shall have to be even more circumspect. Mysticism is clearly only for those who have ears to hear as the ancient saying goes …

Mysticexperiences.net