With respects to Alan Watts, mystic extraordinaire who said “Universe”, not “Reality”.
Category: WISDOM
FOUR EARLY REPORTED SEMINAL DISCOVERIES OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MYSTIC PHENOMENA
One of psychologies’ earliest practitioners was Dr. William James PhD., (1842 – 1910). He established psychology’s department at Harvard and identified the following four main characteristics of mystical experiences, given here in summary:
Ineffability. Experiences beyond words. He said mystical experiences have to be experienced to be understood. This word is still in use by some modern scholars and physicists who otherwise presumbly dare not risk their reputations in outright declaration of their accceptance of the revelatory mystic phenomenon.
Noetic quality. The experiences give cosmic knowing, insights into existence. Experiencers (mystics) acquire a knowledge of infinite intelligence, as well as of an infinitely huge presence, a power of non human reality otherwise unknown to man. (And non-biological, religious or idealogical in my case).
Transiency. Mystical experiences are usually brief though their influence is permanent. (In a state of continuing development of the mystic in my experience).
Passivity. “The mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance” or “as if he were grasped and held by a superior power.” (Hence my certainty that Reality Rules!).
William James. The Varieties of Religious Experience. 1958.
Types of Mystical Experiences.
The Human Condition
Taking notice of the human condition is like being forced to watch the same water simmering, the bubbles rising and bursting one after another, everything staying the same despite all the drama; same old, same old, until it dries and dies out …
Keith.
SPIRITUAL DOUBT?
I have no doubts about the the mystic experience of Reality (MER) and all that its insight keeps giving me.
This insight tells me doubt is a primitive, leftover defensive mechanism humans have.
In me doubt isn’t even a remnant now, though I certainly had tentative uncertainties at first.
Reality imperceptibly, undeniably, irresistibly, took care of them. In the meantime Reality also imparted the spiritual gift of submission.
This special submission takes away much of the human angst of ego which so bedevils humans with things like doubt. It did mine. (Fortunately, death gives ego the final heave ho!).
Now I leave the human condition to Reality simply because Reality is in charge of human development into its extinction before it can metamorphise into Reality.
Humans are, always have been and always will be the sole concern of Reality, not us. ‘Mind your own business and do unto others what you would have them do unto you’ is still Reality’s golden rule.
All Is Well.
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.
HSIN HSIN MING
‘Faith in mind’, is a poem attributed to the Third Chinese Chán (Zen) Patriarch Jianzhi Sengcan.
It is shared here by Anthony Garner, zenothestoic.com. (Anthony is a follower of mysticexperiences.net).
The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind. When the deep meaning of things is not understood, the mind’s essential peace is disturbed to no avail.
The Way is perfect like vast space where nothing is lacking and nothing in excess. Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject that we do not see the true nature of things.
Live neither in the entanglements of outer things, nor in inner feelings of emptiness. Be serene in the oneness of things and such erroneous views will disappear by themselves.
When you try to stop activity by passivity your very effort fills you with activity. As long as you remain in one extreme or the other you will never know Oneness.
Those who do not live in the single Way fail in both activity and passivity, assertion and denial. To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality; To assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality.
The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth. Stop talking and thinking, and there is nothing you will not be able to know.
To return to the root is to find meaning, but to pursue appearances is to miss the source. At the moment of inner enlightenment there is a going beyond appearance and emptiness. The changes that appear to occur in the empty world we call real only because of our ignorance.
Do not search for the truth; only cease to cherish opinions. do not remain in the dualistic state. Avoid such pursuits carefully. If there is even a trace of this and that, of right and wrong, the mind-essence will be lost in confusion.
Although all dualities come from the One, do not be attached even to this One. When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way, nothing in the world can offend. And when a thing can no longer offend, it ceases to exist in the old way. When no discriminating thoughts arise, the old mind ceases to exist. When thought objects vanish, the thinking-subject vanishes: As when the mind vanishes, objects vanish.
Things are objects because of the subject (mind): the mind (subject) is such because of things (object). Understand the relativity of these two and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness. In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable and each contains in itself the whole world.
If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine you will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion. To live in the Great Way is neither easy nor difficult. But those with limited views are fearful and irresolute: the faster they hurry, the slower they go.
And clinging (attachment) cannot be limited: Even to be attached to the idea of enlightenment is to go astray. Just let things be in their own way and there will be neither coming nor going. Obey the nature of things (your own nature) and you will walk freely and undisturbed. When the thought is in bondage the truth is hidden for everything is murky and unclear. And the burdensome practice of judging brings annoyance and weariness. What benefit can be derived from distinctions and separations? If you wish to move in the One Way do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas. Indeed, to accept them fully is identical with enlightenment.
The wise man strives to no goals but the foolish man fetters himself. There is one Dharma, not many. Distinctions arise from the clinging needs of the ignorant. To seek Mind with the (discriminating) mind is the greatest of all mistakes. Rest and unrest derive from illusion; with enlightenment there is no liking and disliking. All dualities come from ignorant inference. They are like dreams or flowers in air – foolish to try to grasp them.
Gain and loss, right and wrong, such thoughts must finally be abolished at once. If the eye never sleeps, all dreams will naturally cease. If the mind makes no discriminations, the ten thousand things are as they are, of single essence. To understand the mystery of this One-essence is to be released from all entanglements. When all things are seen equally the timeless Self-essence is reached, No comparisons or analogies are possible in this causeless, relationless state. Consider movement stationary and the stationary in motion, both movement and rest disappear. When such dualities cease to exist Oneness itself cannot exist. To this ultimate finality no law or description applies.
For the unified mind in accord with the way all self-centered striving ceases. Doubts and irresolutions vanish and life in true faith is possible. With a single stroke we are freed from bondage: Nothing clings to us and we hold to nothing. All is empty, clear, self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind’s power. Here thought, feeling, knowledge and imagination are of no value. In this world of suchness there is neither self nor other-than-self.
To come directly into harmony with this reality just say when doubt rises “not two”. In this “not two” nothing is separate, nothing is excluded. No matter when or where, enlightenment means entering this truth. And this truth is beyond extension or diminution in time and space: In it a single thought is ten thousand years.
Emptiness here, emptiness there, but the infinite universe stands always before your eyes. Infinitely large and infinitely small; no difference, for definitions have vanished and no boundaries are seen. So too with Being and non-Being. Don’t waste time in doubts and arguments That have nothing to do with this. One thing, all things, move among and intermingle without distinction. To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection. To live in this faith is the road to non-duality, because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind.
Words! The Way is beyond language, for in it there is no yesterday no tomorrow no today.
MER NOTE: Some schools caution that mind is the enemy of realising Reality.
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.
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:
- Reality contains everything known and unknown. Nothing exists outside It, including humans;
- It is not human;
- The experience of Reality is caught, not taught.
- 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;
- It is Consciousness emerging;
- It is benign, totally accepting (ie: inexpressibly loving);
- It is constantly creating and developing;
- It does not allow anything to interfere in Its purpose, (including humans);
- It is everything in Reality; it provides, guards, guides, nourishes, replenishes, aids, observes, asserts its purpose;
- It is all powerful; destroys, rebuilds, recreates;
- Reality’s form is non material; non human, though everything shares Its ingredients as It shares ours. We are It;
- It has given humans all they need and rarely if ever reacts to human wants;
- It gives, never wants;
- Reality is only interested in individuals;
- Humans are at a very primitive, early stage of existence;
- Prophecies can arise from the mystical experience, but such prophecies rarely get their timing right, (ie: “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” …).
- 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.
- 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.
- All who experience Reality will come to know ineffably that All Is Well. We’re under better stewardship than we can provide.
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.
NOT FOR YOU?
“What are some areas in your life where you are too much focused on the end result rather than on the process? If you can’t find enjoyment and meaning in the path itself, is it possible that this path is not for you?“
— Happy growing, Giovanni Dienstmann
giovanni@liveanddare.com
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.
Mystical Experiences of Reality 