Ask Sunstone Anything About His Views On Mysticism

[Random]

The question is amusing. I'm not sure where you get the impression I'm an atheist. Or, for that matter, where anyone would get the impression I'm not one. But to address the meat of your question, Conor, I have yet to find even one definitive authority on mysticism -- whether an atheist or theist -- in the 30 years I've been on and off interested in the topic. Moreover, I have every reason to believe there will never be such a bird as a definitive authority on mysticism. I hope this helps.

Nice, thanks.

 

[YmirGF]

The question is amusing. I'm not sure where you get the impression I'm an atheist. Or, for that matter, where anyone would get the impression I'm not one. But to address the meat of your question, Conor, I have yet to find even one definitive authority on mysticism -- whether an atheist or theist -- in the 30 years I've been on and off interested in the topic. Moreover, I have every reason to believe there will never be such a bird as a definitive authority on mysticism. I hope this helps.

Actually I agree 100% Sunstone. It is only reasonable that we would have different takes on mysticism. Again, a very good thread. Kudo's to you for starting it.

That being said... *giggles*

Can you describe:

1. Three of thinkers/mystics who have most influenced your thinking the most.
2. Any particular mystical experience you have had that stands out (from others you may have had).
3. (You may have covered this elsewhere, but I am too lazy to check)
Do you see any end to mystical experiences? It there an "end point" for example, beyond which, nothing else exists?
4. What are your thoughts on the Buddhist concept of non-being?

 

[Sunstone]

to extend the .lava's questions, would you say that Jewish, Islamic and Hindu mysticism is just mysticism based in the different assumptions about objective reality that you talked about being advantageous in your 2nd post?

Near as I've been able to find out, Mike, the mystical experience itself is both ubiquitous and yet transcends all symbolism -- whether Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, or any other symbolism.

It is only when the individual who has the experience begins to interpret it that he or she has the opportunity to impose upon the experience a symbolic description or explanation of it based on his or her cultural heritage.

Thus, someone from one culture might believe her experience was of a creator deity separate from its creation because that is what her culture has taught her to believe must be the case. And someone from another culture might believe his experience was of an all inclusive deity that is inseparable from everything in the universe because that is what his culture has taught him to believe must be the case.

 

[Storm]

If mystical awareness is the base from which conscious awareness evolved, why is theophany not more common? Why is it so difficult to learn to self-induce trance states?

 

[Storm]

What do you think of entheogens? Can a true mystical experience be drug-induced? Why?

 

[Sunstone]

Can a true mystical experience be drug-induced?

That is a very good question, Storm. Before answering it, I would like to address the notion of a "true" mystical experience.

So far as I know, there are many kinds of mystical experiences, and I am unaware of any sound basis for claiming that one or more kinds of mystical experience are somehow truer than any other kind. Accordingly, the only false mystical experience I can think of would be a mystical experience that didn't happen, but which someone nevertheless claimed to have happened.

In this thread, I have focused on only one kind of mystical experience -- the kind of experience in which any perception of a divide between subject and object ceases. However, I would not label that experience the true one and then call all the others false.

The short answer to your question, then, is that it is certain that at least some kinds of mystical experiences have been induced by drugs, and therefore true or genuine mystical experiences have been induced by drugs.

I am not sure whether using drugs to induce mystical experiences has much long term value, however. The people I've known who have used drugs in that way seem to have ended up somewhat self-centered and egotistical. But there may be people I haven't met of which that is not true.

 

[Sunstone]

If mystical awareness is the base from which conscious awareness evolved, why is theophany not more common?

I'm not sure I entirely understand your question, Storm, but I will attempt to answer it to the extent that I think I might understand it.

First, though, he's the part I'm sure I don't understand: You seem to be implying that "if mystical awareness is the base from which conscious awareness evolved" theophany should be more common than it is. Yet, I don't understand why you or anyone else would suppose that. If you have the time, would you explain?

As for the general question of how common theophanies are, I'm strongly inclined to believe that while the experience can still be thought of as rare, it is likely that up to millions of people around the world have at one time or another during their lives had the sort of mystical experience that involves an interruption in subject/object perception. Furthermore, I'm sure some of those experiences were interpreted by the individuals who had them as theophanies.

In addition to those who experienced an interruption in subject/object perception and interpreted their experience as a theophany, there might be many more people who did not experience an interruption in subject/object perception, but who nonetheless had an experience that struck them as being a theophany.

So, while theophanies aren't by any means a dime a dozen, they seem to me more common than we might at first suspect.

Why is it so difficult to learn to self-induce trance states?

Unfortunately, I don't know what you mean by a trance. Are you referring to a condition in which someone's awareness of their environment is dulled even though their thoughts and feelings may be the focus of their attention? Or, by chance, are you referring to a condition of all around heightened awareness and feeling in which, say, colors and sounds are extraordinarily vivid and thoughts can at times "shake like thunder"? Or, are you referring to something else?

 

[sandandfoam]

Is feeling at one with nature when you forget yourself a mystical experience ? I imagine nearly everyone knows this experience.
To rationalise that experience as theophany seems reasonable to me. I wonder is it not pretty common ?

 

[Valjean]

Research suggests that drug-induced mystical experiences are essentially indistinguishable from those induced by meditation, sensory deprivation, metabolic disturbance, trauma, psychosis, &c.

There appear to be distinct "levels" of mystical experience. Descriptions are consistent regardless of etiology. Ego-anihilation, subject-object merger or mind expansion to a 'universal consciousness' is the hallmark of profound mysticism.

The usage of hallucinogenic pharmaceuticals in religious practice has always been widespread, and I'm not aware of any general socially deleretious effects among serious users.
Unfortunately, recreational (ab)usage of psychoactive drugs has become widespread. Their extraordinary potential has been lost among the rash of delinquents, ravers and assorted wackos that have taken them up and made investigation of their psychic effects politically unsavory.

 

[Sunstone]

Can you describe: Any particular mystical experience you have had that stands out (from others you may have had).

I think your question indirectly raises an important issue, Paul. Do mystical experiences which stand out in our memory have more importance than those which do not?

Of course, that depends on what one thinks of as important. For instance: If it is for some reason important to us to remember our mystical experiences, then yes, those that stand out will obviously be more important to us than those which don't stand out. But is that also true if recalling our mystical experiences is not all that important to us? What if mystical experiences are important to us for some reason that has little or nothing to do with remembering them?

It seems to me that we might have a mystical experience which is vivid in our memory, but which is not radically transformative. That is, it doesn't much change us. While, on the other hand, we might have a mystical experience we scarcely remember but which was radically transformative. So, is that a paradox?

I don't think it's a real paradox. Most of us have some vivid memories of non-mystical experiences that didn't much change us. And most us have some weak memories of non-mystical experiences that changed us in ways significant to us. For instance, we might vividly recall an accident we had when we were eight years old, and which left us with a strong memory of it, but didn't much change us. While, on the other hand, we might be unable to recall much at all about our schooling that year, and yet know that what we learned in that year laid a crucial foundation for our later education. So, even concerning non-mystical experiences, there does not seem to be a strong correlation between how well we recall something and how important it is to us.

It would be a mistake obvious to most of us if someone told us that in order to read we needed to recall every lesson we had that taught us to read. But for some reason, it might not be as plainly obvious to most of us that we need not recall a mystical experience that radically transformed us in order for us to have been radically transformed. Instead, some people, at least, seem to cultivate or nurse memories of their mystical experiences. But I don't understand of what value that is to them. Does recalling the expression on your third grade teacher's face the day she taught you how to recognize and spell the word "significant" make you a better reader today? Do you even need to recall her spelling the word for the first time to recognize that word today? Similarly, why do you need to recall a mystical experience?

There are some folks who believe that our memory of a mystical experience can hinder or even preclude our having another mystical experience. If that is the case, then anyone interested in further mystical experiences would be well advised to forget the ones they've had.

 

[Sunstone]

Research suggests that drug-induced mystical experiences are essentially indistinguishable from those induced by meditation, sensory deprivation, metabolic disturbance, trauma, psychosis, &c.

There appear to be distinct "levels" of mystical experience. Descriptions are consistent regardless of etiology. Ego-anihilation, subject-object merger or mind expansion to a 'universal consciousness' is the hallmark of profound mysticism.

The usage of hallucinogenic pharmaceuticals in religious practice has always been widespread, and I'm not aware of any general socially deleretious effects among serious users.
Unfortunately, recreational (ab)usage of psychoactive drugs has become widespread. Their extraordinary potential has been lost among the rash of delinquents, ravers and assorted wackos that have taken them up and made investigation of their psychic effects politically unsavory.

Thanks, Sey! Drug use isn't an area of which I feel I have much knowledge.

 

[Storm]

So far as I know, there are many kinds of mystical experiences, and I am unaware of any sound basis for claiming that one or more kinds of mystical experience are somehow truer than any other kind. Accordingly, the only false mystical experience I can think of would be a mystical experience that didn't happen, but which someone nevertheless claimed to have happened.

How, then, does one distinguish mystical experience from schizophrenia, for example?

 

[doppelganger]

Brendan, please allow me to address that statement in more detail now.

In common usage, the word "mystical" covers any number of different experiences. Yet, as you can see, I have in this thread singled out one -- and only one -- of those many different experiences to focus on. The mystical experience I refer to in this thread is strictly the experience which occurs when subject/object perception abruptly ends while the continuum of experiencing remains.

Of course, that too is an interpretation - an "aftertaste" if you will. But I think you say as much later in your post.

Is it possible through rigorous practice to make transcendence of the "subject/object divide" as habitual as recognizing it? Or is mystical experience always a reflection of the habitualization of things experienced?

By "habitualization" I mean something along the lines of what Viktor Shklovsky describes:

As perception becomes habitual, it becomes automatic . . . in this process, ideally realized in algebra, things are replaced by symbols . . . Habitualization devours works, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war.

So mysticism might be described as peeking beyond the thingliness of symbolic reality, perhaps. Sort of like the sun shining in through a crack in our prison cell wall. We want to imagine what the sun looks like, but we can only feel and see ever so slightly the few rays that penetrate the darkness of the symbolic prison the self builds for its protection. Those walls create the distinctions between "subject" and "object" and "me" and "you", but they also disrupt perfect communication, manifest in a hysteria about non-being, and by limiting the experience of the Divine, help facilitate fantasies about "the Cause" of that little bit of glowing warmth we can experience in our conscious awareness.

And, of the many other experiences, some actually seem to be hindrances to enlightenment, and still others I cannot make a reasonable guess about.

This is the trap of art, and the reason I asked about the mode of "teaching" to someone who is not presently equipped to embrace any sort of mysticism that isn't carefully bounded by symbols and dogma. As the philosopher-poet Novalis wrote about Romanticism: "It makes the strange familiar and the familiar strange." I think that's the nature of all art (including the art of creative mythmaking, from which all the Gods and demons are born). But having made the familiar strange, it can quite quickly become the familiar again. So the idea of "conversion" experiences, touchstones of a new reality like "being born again", and "being" of a certain religious system are a renewed habitualization of reality. And perhaps one in which the filters to recognize the role of perspective and symbolic language play in then reality I experience are deliberately disabled.

Is there a means to habitually live unhabitually? Put another way, how can one live artisitically? It seems like the way to enter into artistic expressions of the Divine is to be a creator of artistic expressions of the Divine for one's self. But onotological faiths - symbolic systems that point outward for their meaning instead of inward (and I include much more than what generally is recognized as "religion" in that) generally have strict prohibitions on living artistically. Yet each of these systems (including the ones that fall under the category of "science") have their birth in the creative, artistic realities of visionary mystics, living artistically, and at least somewhat unbounded by the symbolic systems they've been given.

Instead of "being born again" as an historical event in one's narrative, can one engage in the process of continual re-birth?

Now to return, let me suggest that accompanying the end to subject/object perception is an end to conscious awareness. One hallmark of conscious awareness is that pesky perception of a divide between subject and object. So, when that perception ceases, so does anything I am willing to call "conscious awareness". That's to say, an awareness remains, but it is no longer conscious awareness.

Is that necessary, or can one remain in a state of self/no-self having a conscious awareness, but at the same time not vesting it with a "absolute" reality and thereby remaining attuned to hear the many notes in the song of life - letting them drift into and out of one's conscious awareness as one listens to a symphony?

I'll have more follow up questions in a while. But here's a little more from Shklovsky's "Art as Technique":

Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life, it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar', to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged . . . Art removes objects from the automatism of perception.

Thanks.

 

[Quiddity]

Zen in the Art of Archery is a classic.

Thanks.

It seems to me your perception is to some extent on the mark, Victor. However, the things you've outlined -- compartmentalization, etc. -- are more likely intrinsic to conscious awareness rather than to human nature as a whole. And if you were to look at these things like a mystic, then the issue isn't usually a matter of denying human nature. Rather, it's more a matter of exploring certain aspects of human nature most of us neglect to one extent or another.

I don't understand what meaning it brings to talk about human nature outside of our awareness? It seems you are stuck doing the very thing you are trying to get away from no? This is where I always get confused too.

If I say human nature is "X" and you respond with "No, that's only our "conscious awareness", then wouldn't your opinion on it be that as well?

 

[Valjean]

How, then, does one distinguish mystical experience from schizophrenia, for example?

A perspicaceous question, Storm
They have many overlapping features. Both are profound alterations in perception and processing.

One of the defining features of psychopathology, though, is dysfunctionality. In schizophrenia this is profound. Schizophrenics tend to be disorganized, obsessive, socially dysfunctional and dyshedonistic. The Enlightened are none of these, though they may be socially withdrawn.

"Mystical experience" can be a somewhat ambiguous term. It usually refers to a transient Unity (4th state consciousness), such as can be induced by hallucinogens, AKA 'psychotomimetics' -- "psychosis imitators."

There are those rare individuals, though, that live with an expanded awareness 24/7, whose perception and understanding of the world makes our own compared to that of a flatworm seem practically indistinguishable. These are also mystics, though perhaps not in the usual sense of the word.

 

[Valjean]

Phil, if you're really interested in this subject, may I suggest a read? I don't know if it's still in print, but there's a really excellent collection of essays/studies published as Altered States of Consciousness, Edited by Charles T. Tart. Anchor Books. Doubleday & Co, inc.

If you can't find it I could lend you a somewhat motheaten copy if you PM me your address.

 

[sandandfoam]

Is mysticism buddhism for the western mind ?

 

[sandandfoam]

Sorry Phil. I've another question,prompted by the post on hallucinogenic drugs. You know the way hallucinogens make everything seem more vivid?
I was out on my bike this morning, the sun was shining, the morning had a bit of warmth about it, not much traffic and everything just 'clicked', riding along and just being there in the most vivid way, it was wonderful.
What differentiates such an experience from a mystical one ?

 

[John_672]

I hope this gives you something to go on for your article.

Speaking of which... I posted my article on mysticism without superstition on Tuesday. Thank you for letting me quote you in my article, Paul!

http://www.thepagelessbook.com/2008/04/01/mysticism-without-superstition/

 

[autonomous1one1]

I'm not promising I'll answer immediately. I might not know an answer. So I'll go look for one in that case. But don't be bashful -- ask away!

Greetings Sunstone. Thank you for sharing your views on Mysticism. Your quality posts are always enjoyable to read.

Feel you have expressed much wisdom too, Sunstone, but I particularly wish to bow :bow: to the following statements of wisdom from Seyorni because they raise questions on the heart of the Enlightenment type of experience.

...There appear to be distinct "levels" of mystical experience. Descriptions are consistent regardless of etiology. Ego-anihilation, subject-object merger or mind expansion to a 'universal consciousness' is the hallmark of profound mysticism.....

Thanks, Sey! This isn't an area of which I feel I have much knowledge.

Your comment here surprised [EDIT: OK, not a problem. I should have known better.] me Sunstone since Seyorni put forward this as "hallmark" for mysticism and you have been writing about subject/object and egolessness. (Or were you referring only to the 'drug' part?) You referred to a key imho briefly in passing in one of your earlier posts - "...radically change our notions of who we are..." Q -What is your view on the key to the type of mystical experience to which you refer in this thread - the change in who we think we are (in self-identity) or the subject/object merger that you have put forward? Incidentally, related to this key, you had on your web site some time ago that you believed all such mystics had an interpretation of the experience that was incorrect and you implied that mystics are not what they conclude about self-identity - i.e., one. Q - Is this still your view?

..There are those rare individuals, though, that live with an expanded awareness 24/7, whose perception and understanding of the world makes our own compared to that of a flatworm seem practically indistinguishable. These are also mystics, though perhaps not in the usual sense of the word.

Q- My experience and readings are consistent with this and wish to ask what are your views on this, Sunstone?

Regards,
a..1