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Can A Mystical Experience Be Brought About?

Sunstone

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
Some say it is possible to make a mystical experience happen -- usually through some technique, such as meditation. Others say mystical experiences can no more be forced to happen than you can force a breeze to happen.

What do you think? Can mystical experiences be brought about by any means?
 
Me Myself

Me Myself

Back to my username
I think both and I´ll elaborate:

It is our thoughts and emotions that cloud our perception of the mystical reality that is all. :)

So, if one ceases to promote thoughts and emotions that cloud oneself, the mystical experience is already there. I beleive I heard buddha compare enlightment with finding water by excavating. ... The idea is that when you dig deep enough, you´ll find out the water was always there :)

Is as if saying you did not make the water come to the place, you merely moved what was in the way of an already existing element.

Well, that´s my posture on it.
 
Storm

Storm

ThrUU the Looking Glass
Sunstone said:
Some say it is possible to make a mystical experience happen -- usually through some technique, such as meditation. Others say mystical experiences can no more be forced to happen than you can force a breeze to happen.

What do you think? Can mystical experiences be brought about by any means?
Click to expand...
Mild ones can. I've done it myself.
 
sandandfoam

sandandfoam

Veteran Member
Sunstone said:
What do you think? Can mystical experiences be brought about by any means?
Click to expand...
I think so.
These are some of my routes:
  • Go to the Ocean. Preferably when it's wild.
  • Go to the mountains.
  • Play with the kids.
  • Listen to Pink Floyd. Loud.
  • Read something great. Preferably Yeats.
  • Laugh.
 
JacobEzra.

JacobEzra.

Dr. Greenthumb
Sunstone said:
Some say it is possible to make a mystical experience happen -- usually through some technique, such as meditation. Others say mystical experiences can no more be forced to happen than you can force a breeze to happen.

What do you think? Can mystical experiences be brought about by any means?
Click to expand...

Sure. Swallow a lot of shrooooooms:D
 
no-body

no-body

Well-Known Member
Storm said:
Drugs, I don't know about. Mental illness, though? When someone talks to hallucinations, is it considered a conversation?
Click to expand...

I've heard there are many similarities between schizophrenia and taking a psychedelic. But I believe there is a difference between a delusion and a hallucination. A true hallucination you always know is not real no matter how messed up you get. Delusions come from drugs that are usually reviled i.e. Jimson weed, Nutmeg, PCP, etc.

Also have heard from people with bi-polar disorder that mania and delusions of grandeur are very similar to eastern enlightenment; that feeling that everything is "one" and "right" with the world but I believe if you look closely at the details there is a difference.

I've probably said this a million times but I'll say it again you can bring about a mystical experience with short cuts like drugs but you take a risk as with using any short cut. Truly a mystical experience is worth more if it is earned. And there comes a point where you learn to be in the now and life itself becomes a mystical experience.
 
Sunstone

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
no-body said:
I've heard there are many similarities between schizophrenia and taking a psychedelic. But I believe there is a difference between a delusion and a hallucination. A true hallucination you always know is not real no matter how messed up you get. Delusions come from drugs that are usually reviled i.e. Jimson weed, Nutmeg, PCP, etc.

Also have heard from people with bi-polar disorder that mania and delusions of grandeur are very similar to eastern enlightenment; that feeling that everything is "one" and "right" with the world but I believe if you look closely at the details there is a difference.

I've probably said this a million times but I'll say it again you can bring about a mystical experience with short cuts like drugs but you take a risk as with using any short cut. Truly a mystical experience is worth more if it is earned. And there comes a point where you learn to be in the now and life itself becomes a mystical experience.
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One of the reasons I ask the question is because a friend of mine had a drug induced mystical experience when she was 16. For about four or five years, she thought it was the defining experience of her life. Then she had an experience that was not drug induced. And she says that ever since -- which has been about 30 years -- that earlier experience has seemed to her of almost no importance.
 
Kilgore Trout

Kilgore Trout

Misanthropic Humanist
Sunstone said:
Some say it is possible to make a mystical experience happen -- usually through some technique, such as meditation. Others say mystical experiences can no more be forced to happen than you can force a breeze to happen.

What do you think? Can mystical experiences be brought about by any means?
Click to expand...

Mystical experiences are always brought about. And usually, after the fact, to a large degree.
 
Storm

Storm

ThrUU the Looking Glass
no-body said:
I've probably said this a million times but I'll say it again you can bring about a mystical experience with short cuts like drugs but you take a risk as with using any short cut. Truly a mystical experience is worth more if it is earned. And there comes a point where you learn to be in the now and life itself becomes a mystical experience.
Click to expand...
Agreed.
 
YmirGF

YmirGF

Bodhisattva in Recovery
Sunstone said:
Some say it is possible to make a mystical experience happen -- usually through some technique, such as meditation. Others say mystical experiences can no more be forced to happen than you can force a breeze to happen.

What do you think? Can mystical experiences be brought about by any means?
Click to expand...
"Mystical" is the difficulty here, Phil. It is possible to force altered states of consciousness, but how "mystical" those states may end up being is up to debate. You can lead an Obama to the table, but you can't make him ink.
 
A

Acim

Revelation all the time
Sunstone said:
Some say it is possible to make a mystical experience happen -- usually through some technique, such as meditation. Others say mystical experiences can no more be forced to happen than you can force a breeze to happen.

What do you think? Can mystical experiences be brought about by any means?
Click to expand...

Agree with what stephenw is getting at.

My addition: meditation is underlying experience to other mindful actions and/or techniques. All about 'being in the zone' or 'finding a groove' or 'experiencing Grace.'

Way back in the day, I would get this in a profound way at a Grateful Dead concert. While music all around is great, the Dead very much had a mystical quality that unless you've been at a concert and understand the unity dynamic, it just doesn't match up well with intellectual analysis.

Years later, and essentially where I am now is realizing it is about undoing or removing perceived blocks. The things we tell ourselves about why we can't always experience great joy, perfect healing / health, etc. There is the 'obvious' stuff we tell ourselves, and then there are things that are there, but are essentially unexamined, often held in place by fear.

All this can be (inevitably will be) unblocked. In many ways it is almost just psychological exercise(s) to remove the blocks. In ways that matter most, it is spiritual because you can realize, there are 'beings' who's sole purpose (or maybe it is soul purpose) is to assist in removing blocks, where that sort of permission has consciously been given.

If we keep telling the universe (really inner consciousness) that we don't need any 'imaginary help' that will be the experience that is granted. When one receives the Assistance that is available, this then becomes mystical. And it can be on spectrum that is great joy, or plausibly great confusion even aspect of fear (to think it isn't just 'me' inside of my consciousness). Yet, when blocks are removed and channels are flowing smoothly, the mystical experience is like nothing this world can offer.

Best way I can describe it is exponentially growing joy, where consciousness welcomes each experience with glee and confidence. Relying only on inner (white) magic and awareness of self as connected to Life that isn't remotely visible through physical eyes (thank God).
 
Child of Stardust

Child of Stardust

Member
I think you can do things that help encourage them (like turning the sails in the direction where the wind is blowing, though the wind still needs to be blowing for the boat to move), but I've never tried to have a mystical experience consciously, personally. I can't make one come. When they've happened to me, they have always been unexpected and totally unpredicted, though looking back on them never random or at an insignificant time. But I could see some people being better at bringing them on. The worry, I think, is that too much of that would cheapen it...would make it no mystical experience at all.

A mystical experience isn't feeling for the sake of feeling, though it's an experience many of us (me included!) would want to feel for the sake of it. But that would take away from what a mystical experience is. The word "feel" I'm using doesn't really do the phenomenon justice. There is feeling - very intense feeling - as a part of it, to be sure. But I don't see it as the same thing as a heightened ordinary emotion...even calling it an emotion seems to belittle it somehow, just to me, since there is this added sense of intuitive realization to it. An apotheosis that is all at once intuitive, even mental after a fashion (though not logical) and yet one with the emotional aspect of it. Needless to say, it's not like listening to a piece of music, which you could do because you want to feel a particular emotion (like how I and many other people put on a little bit of feel good disco when we want to fight depression). It has to have more of a sense of meaning, and by its nature that needs to come when you need to experience it. But perhaps that's just me.

I've never tried "serious" drugs and don't feel I need to have mystical experiences. Maybe it's true it makes having them easier. Maybe it's still genuine with them...like the drugs are just pointing your sails in the direction of the wind. But to me that's not enough to justify any potential health risks. I'd rather "earn" them, as another poster said. I think they are more significant that way, truer to the highest potential of what they can be.
 
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roger1440

roger1440

I do stuff
Sunstone said:
What do you think? Can mystical experiences be brought about by any means?
Click to expand...



No, it cannot be brought about. It’s a contradiction. Can someone wish not to wish? Can someone desire not to desire. I’m in agreement with Saint John of the Cross with this one. A mystical union as he refers to it is a gift. A gift is not earned. It is freely given. This brings another question to mind. Why is it freely given to some and not others? The answer is very simple. Few of us are content with just God.
 
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