21st Century mysticism

[Valjean]

I've experienced several episodes of the classical mystical awareness, but I don't see the mystical insights expressed in most of the mainstream religions. Many major religions do have embarassing mystical offshoots, though, where the influence of the philosophia perennis is apparent.

 

[Sunstone]

I've experienced several episodes of the classical mystical awareness, but I don't see the mystical insights expressed in most of the mainstream religions. Many major religions do have embarassing mystical offshoots, though, where the influence of the philosophia perennis is apparent.

Sometimes I think religion is like a concrete sidewalk and mysticism is like the green living weeds that come up between the cracks.

 

[michel]

I think it is nearly impossible to go through life without having a mystical experience (if one does not consider life to be a mystical experience itself).

For me, a mystical experience is anything that affects a person so profoundly that she or he cannot imagine life as anything but meaningful.

:clap Good post! I agree with you. I'll wager that many members have gone through a mystical experience, but interpreted it another way, or brushed it away.

Two mystic experiences I have had was being at the birth of my sons.

Interesting Mich, i never really had the "am i doing bad" phase, i guess because i wasn't brought up to worship a God and so feel subservient.

Mysticism is the path that people follow when they want to experience God first hand, rather than worship Him from afar, i can't imagine God would disapprove of us wanting to know Him.

You see, that's what I find so "strange"; I worship God - not because I was taught to - but because I genuinely have a part of me that wants to do his best to please people - and that, naturally includes God.

I choose to call myself a "servant of God" because I would be proud to serve him.......

 

[doppelganger]

Sometimes I think religion is like a concrete sidewalk and mysticism is like the green living weeds that come up between the cracks.

Perhaps all of reality is the concrete sidewalk . . . and religion merely part of the slab.

 

[Sunstone]

Perhaps all of reality is the concrete sidewalk . . . and religion merely part of the slab.

I would certainly agree with that in so far as the realites we construct and the realities constructed for us by society and others often seem at odds with the mystical experience.

 

[Valjean]

:clap Good post! I agree with you. I'll wager that many members have gone through a mystical experience, but interpreted it another way, or brushed it away.

Two mystic experiences I have had was being at the birth of my sons.



You see, that's what I find so "strange"; I worship God - not because I was taught to - but because I genuinely have a part of me that wants to do his best to please people - and that, naturally includes God.

I choose to call myself a "servant of God" because I would be proud to serve him.......

I have to disagree with you a bit here, Michel, though I suspect my disagreement is rooted in a difference of definition. There are peak moments in life; moments of ecstacy, numinous beatitude, ineffable bliss; but when I talk about mystical experience I'm talking about something completely different; a complete psychotic fugue; a total transcendence of every conceivable earthly experience; an awareness beyond time and place; a waking up into an omnitemporal, omnipresent, multidimensional Reality our 3rd state consciousness cannot even begin to conceive of.

The mystical experience is to see/hear/feel/taste/be/grock every atom of everything, everywhere, everywhen. It is an absolute, perfect and simultaneous experience of everything, everywhere, that ever existed, exists, will exist, or could possibly exist anywhere in every universe that ever will exist. It is a complete, perfect, immediate awareness of every experience and sensation of every living thing that ever lived or will live, in every galaxy, in every Universe, in every dimension, in every Yuga.

Words cannot even begin to limn the absolute mind-blowingness of this experience. It is absolutely ineffable. If a flatworm in a puddle were to suddenly acquire the combined intelligence, spirituality, awareness and insight of a combined Einstein, Jesus, Newton and Pythagoras, the transformation would be completely unnoticeable compared to transmogrification effected by the mystical experience.
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[Guitar's Cry]

I have to disagree with you a bit here, Michel, though I suspect my disagreement is rooted in a difference of definition.

Or perhaps the disagreement is rooted more in our inability to truly describe an experience to another person. Your description is excellent, but I'm still sure that most people have an experience like that in their lives.

Michel's example of his children being born may have been just that.

I've had experiences that I would say come pretty close to it. My sunset over the ocean example is one.

But I can never truly know. In the end, I don't think it matters if someone has a more mindblowing example, as long as the result is the same.

 

[Sunstone]

I have to disagree with you a bit here, Michel, though I suspect my disagreement is rooted in a difference of definition. There are peak moments in life; moments of ecstacy, numinous beatitude, ineffable bliss; but when I talk about mystical experience I'm talking about something completely different; a complete psychotic fugue; a total transcendence of every conceivable earthly experience; an awareness beyond time and place; a waking up into an omnitemporal, omnipresent, multidimensional Reality our 3rd state consciousness cannot even begin to conceive of.

The mystical experience is to see/hear/feel/taste/be/grock every atom of everything, everywhere, everywhen. It is an absolute, perfect and simultaneous experience of everything, everywhere, that ever existed, exists, will exist, or could possibly exist anywhere in every universe that ever will exist. It is a complete, perfect, immediate awareness of every experience and sensation of every living thing that ever lived or will live, in every galaxy, in every Universe, in every dimension, in every Yuga.

Words cannot even begin to limn the absolute mind-blowingness of this experience. It is absolutely ineffable. If a flatworm in a puddle were to suddenly acquire the combined intelligence, spirituality, awareness and insight of a combined Einstein, Jesus, Newton and Pythagoras, the transformation would be completely unnoticeable compared to transmogrification effected by the mystical experience.
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Sey, what do you mean by a "3rd state consciousness"? Why a third state? Why not a first or second state consciousness?

 

[eudaimonia]

Sometimes I think religion is like a concrete sidewalk and mysticism is like the green living weeds that come up between the cracks.

OTOH, maybe religion is like the untended soil, and mysticism is that rare flower that grows there which would have had more difficulty growing elsewhere.

As much as religion may impede mysticism, perhaps it also provides opportunities for it as well.

Does anyone think that in the 21st Century, mysticism is, in some ways, going to receive support from science, especially neurobiology and psychology?

Do you mean like stating the obvious? "There are mystical experiences after all!"

It would be a bit like science investigating the phenomenon of falling in love, and concluding through brain research that people, in fact, fall in love. Duh! We knew this. What we would have additionally are the cat scans to show what is going on.

I myself think science is likely to "discover" what mystics have asserted for ages: That there are other states of awareness besides normal consciousness, and that these states of awareness are, at the very least, no more pathological nor delusional than normal consciousness. But that's just a hunch.

Probably true, if by ruling out pathology you mean ruling out damage to the brain as the cause. I'm not sure how "delusion" could be objectively defined. Is a dream a "delusion" just because it doesn't arise immediately from the senses?


eudaimonia,

Mark