Do you think a mystical experience has any value?

[Wannabe Yogi]

I will argue the opposite then most others on this site. Mystic experiences are not all that important. They are only signs on the road that you are going in the right direction. This is true if the goal is profound peace of mind that is realized in liberation. If the goal is different then Nirvaṇa then I guess it could be important. -But what do I know anyway.

 

[roger1440]

I will argue the opposite then most others on this site. Mystic experiences are not all that important. They are only signs on the road that you are going in the right direction. This is true if the goal is profound peace of mind that is realized in liberation. If the goal is different then Nirvaṇa then I guess it could be important. -But what do I know anyway.

Without "signs" most of us would be lost. The trick is not to be blinded by the signs so we travel aimlessly but to use the signs to clear our vision along our path. Gee, I love metaphors, LOL

 

[YmirGF]

But what do I know anyway.

Ditto. I know nothing; but I do know it very well.

 

[NIX]

It's more about being within an eternal present.

I really like that yes. You can tell people that time melts away on you-
you lose all grasp of time, etc
but what you have said is far more accurate.
(Though maybe less understandable to one who has not experienced it)

 

[Windwalker]

It's more about being within an eternal present

I agree with this. When someone first experiences this it's sensed as stepping outside of time or time standing still. That's simply how it's perceived knowing nothing but being embedded within time. After continued exposure of this in our experience it is time that is seen as an illusion.

By their very nature, the myriad of mystical experiences will practically compel the recipient to attempt to broadcast their experience - in some way. Often, it is best to let many years pass before opening ones mouth, as to do so at the onset, could have unexpected consequences.

What I mean by that is that when the novice feels the need to express this wonderful, profound thing they have discovered, they are, more often than not, unable to clearly express themselves and will all too often bolster their comments with religious dogma. If they would let the experience continue and hopefully deepen, they would quickly understand that very few could follow their thinking. Eventually they will hit a stage, wherein the "new" states have become the normative state. It is at this point that the voyager can begin to express their experience in more meaningful ways. Just my 2 cents...

I'm not sure I agree with this. There are two distinct things going on here; states and stages (to borrow from the works of others). The state is a temporary experience of a higher stage of development. You can call these peak experiences - the random and seemingly arbitrary mystical experience we are talking about in this thread. There are multiple stages of development that everyone must pass through as they grow, and being a mythic-literal thinker, the religious dogma as absolute truth stage, is one of those stages.

Someone can have a satori experience at any stage of their development, and what will always happen is that they then will take that experience and attempt to integrate it at the current stages of development they are at. And doing so is important to do towards growth to the next higher stage. The peak experience helps punch a hole in the ceiling which eventually draws them to move to the next floor in that building when the language used for the current stage becomes increasingly inadequate to help translate that experience. And my point is the only way that will happen is if they try to take that higher state experience and find how they are currently talking about it fails to translate.

What I think I'm saying is that its perfectly fine for them to go on and on about how they met an actual saint or Bodhisattva in a vision, because they are going about trying to integrate this peak experience in their lives at their present stage of development. Eventually, as they mature through the myriad and complex processes of growth, then this experience which has become deeply a part of themselves helps force them to open up into a new understanding and greater awareness of the world. Suddenly this God they met which they saw as "the clouds smiling on me" (a description an 8 year old used to talk about it), becomes the same thing, the same high-level experience, yet now understood or translated as the spiritual fabric of the universe itself opening within themselves and projected in symbolic form as the smiling cloud.

Talking about it is part of the growth.

 

[no-body]

As with everything mystical it is a paradox problem; mystical experiences have great value but you only know that when you realize they have no value whatsoever.

 

[Madhuri]

To the OP: hell yes!

Mystical experience is what has held me to the path for this long. To me it is the practical aspect of the religion. It is also the evidence of religion. Without it, there would be words and blind belief.

 

[Kemble]

To the OP: hell yes!

Mystical experience is what has held me to the path for this long. To me it is the practical aspect of the religion. It is also the evidence of religion. Without it, there would be words and blind belief.

I just really wish more folks would have the courage to dispute their motivated reasoning but it probably ain't gonna happen.

 

[SageTree]

I just really wish more folks would have the courage to dispute their motivated reasoning but it probably ain't gonna happen.

Pray say more about this, if you would/could?

 

[nazz]

It certainly did mine. That said the details are profoundly personal, and I have no inclination to share them with you.

that speaks for me as well

 

[nevermore]

If you genuinely both believe and feel at the sensory level that nothing has independence, everything is wholly conditioned and therefore what is defined ordinarily as "you", as a bunch of physical processes playing a crucial role in the whole, is just as responsible for everything that happens as the person who happens to be at the place in space and time WHERE it happens, that is a deterministic view, and therefore angry desires for revenge or punishment simply go away. Lots of people believe in determinism intellectually without it making much difference to their behaviour (including me, from at least the age of five or six, maybe younger). The one thing I was able to do without feeling my intellectual position, was argue for a justice system based on biologically preventing antisocial personalities from developing (e.g. wiping out the many known brain damaging agents that some people are exposed to and genetically vulnerable to more than others; wiping out the already identified antisocial genes from the gene pool), and treating criminally antisocial patterns of behaviour as medical conditions, even if incurable ones, in secure mental hospitals instead of setting out to make anyone suffer because of it. However, outside of such abstract, academic debate, I did not conduct myself in say, everyday arguments, as a determinist logically should, without harsh value judgments of others, and this can't do much for the credibility of the philosophical position. Not to mention human relationships. Every determinist I've seen talk about its effects of their interactions has reported the same. We seem to be wired up primitively not to be determinists, so the irrational, emotional parts of our brain tend to respond incongruously to the rational thought processes. The mystical experience could change the world for the better because it seems to get around this problem. The loss of the illusion of a separate ego allows you to FEEL the logical position that nobody deserves your wrath, and this transforms behaviour. When that wrath returns, I know my "small self" illusion is back.

 

[mystic64]

I'll rephrase the question. Can a mystical experience change a person's outlook on life? If so, please explain.

General Characteristics of Mystical Experience


Mystical experiences are marked by all or some of the following feelings/insights.

• A sense of unity or totality
• A sense of timelessness
• A sense of having encountered ultimate reality
• A sense of sacredness
• A sense that one can not adequately describe the richness of this experience

• A sense that one can not adequately describe the richness of this experience

The true mystic experience is not for the "weak need". Usually one's first mystic experience is really cool and really defines reality in an amazing way and one wants more. From there they go into the poetry parable stage and they write beautiful poetry and profound parables as they attempt to share what they have experienced with others. Then from there they enter into the second stage, I love this part, "the valley of death" or "the dark night of the soul" stage. And this stage can last a long time if you carry a lot of psychological baggage. Most folks reach this dark night of the soul stage and say to themselves, "This is not what I signed up for!" and they quit. Some folks get stepped into that reality when they take LSD and they flat quit taking it. If one makes it through the second stage, they then enter the third stage. The third stage is full of cool stuff and cool knowledge that can actually, for the most part, be explained, and you thank the "powers that be" daily for the gift of being a mystic.

"Does the mystic experience have any value in one's life?" If you make it into the third stage, the mystic experience is priceless and of enormous value to your life. john

 

[roger1440]

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[/list]The true mystic experience is not for the "weak need". Usually one's first mystic experience is really cool and really defines reality in an amazing way and one wants more. From there they go into the poetry parable stage and they write beautiful poetry and profound parables as they attempt to share what they have experienced with others. Then from there they enter into the second stage, I love this part, "the valley of death" or "the dark night of the soul" stage. And this stage can last a long time if you carry a lot of psychological baggage. Most folks reach this dark night of the soul stage and say to themselves, "This is not what I signed up for!" and they quit. Some folks get stepped into that reality when they take LSD and they flat quit taking it. If one makes it through the second stage, they then enter the third stage. The third stage is full of cool stuff and cool knowledge that can actually, for the most part, be explained, and you thank the "powers that be" daily for the gift of being a mystic.

"Does the mystic experience have any value in one's life?" If you make it into the third stage, the mystic experience is priceless and of enormous value to your life. john

Would you agree, in order to progress along these stages, the experiencer must value spiritual pursuits right from the get go? There are cases where some people who suffer from deep depression had a mystical experience. Some may have thought they got ahold of some bad mushrooms, LOL. To put it another way, if a person has put themselves on a spiritual path, the experience may give the person more momentum along there road to their quest. I’m not sure if “The Dark Night of the Soul” is a prerequisite along the way, but then again, we usually know how bright something is by comparing it to its polar opposite.

 

[Windwalker]

Would you agree, in order to progress along these stages, the experiencer must value spiritual pursuits right from the get go? There are cases where some people who suffer from deep depression had a mystical experience.

I don't think it's necessary to have been on a spiritual path on a conscious level to have mystical experience. I wasn't, for one. People have mystical experiences all the time, but they either simply ignore them, dismiss them, or they have great impact for them because of where they are at in their lives. It kind of follows that Zen proverb, "Where there is great doubt, there will be great awakening; small doubt, small awakening; no doubt, no awakening."

If someone is in a place of existential crisis, then a mystical experience will have a tremendous impact on them. They may them pursue this exposing themselves more and more to the inner world. But the process he describes of the dark night of the soul, really is a part of taking one to the edge of death where nothing but a full release into that death of self and moving beyond that face of fear into release can someone realize that freedom. It isn't simply basking in the light of bliss of mystical experience, but passing through death's door into God.

 

[TomD]

I would say 'yes'.

But I suppose the answer hinges on the nature of the 'experience'. Denys Tanner argues (in The Darkness of God) from pseudoDionysius, The Cloud of Unknowing, Eckhart and others that their mystical experience was a transcendent, 'non-experiential' knowing — a profound apophatism. Eckhart, for example, never speaks of a personal mystic experience, and his writings are, for that reason, regarded as 'speculative mysticism' — that is not to devalue them, but simply adverts to the fact that he speaks of that which transcends 'experience' — indeed, its axiomatic that, at this level, the self is part of the illusion.

I view the 'experience' as a sensory reaction to a fundamentally meta-experience. This can take many forms — all of which can be explained away as hallucination — voices, visions and the like. Each must be judged on its merits as to whether it's an hallucination, or a psychosomatic 'reaction'. St Paul's 'blindness' can be seen as a psychic as well as psychosomatic reaction. In Galatians, by his own account he withdrew to Arabia for some time (perhaps as long as 14 years), before continuing to be received into the Christian community in Damascus. Similar 'reactions' are recorded in both Scripture and Tradition. The prophet Ezekiel, for example, would go into a catatonic state, and many of the Church's mystics suffered epilepsy, for example. The question then remains, was the mystical experience a result of the epilepsy, or vice versa?

According to the mystic St Katherine of Sienna, Christ spoke to her and said "I am He Who Is, you are she who is not." A profoundly apophatic statement, but if she experienced the reality of these words (and how can one not, when spoken by Christ?), then it would be hard, I imagine, to experience, let alone explain, such a 'not-being-ness'.

 

[psychoslice]

If you have never had a mystical experience, then the question will always be there.

 

[roger1440]

If you have never had a mystical experience, then the question will always be there.

Not necessarily. There are those who have had a mystical experience and just wrote it off as an illusion. Some mental illnesses can bring on such an experience.

 

[Windwalker]

Not necessarily. There are those who have had a mystical experience and just wrote it off as an illusion. Some mental illnesses can bring on such an experience.

That actually is true. The average person has no room for something which shatters their version of reality. "Shut up God, this isn't the way things are supposed to be!".

 

[psychoslice]

Not necessarily. There are those who have had a mystical experience and just wrote it off as an illusion. Some mental illnesses can bring on such an experience.

The mystical experience that I am referring to is Enlightenment, which is beyond the mind, once you have experienced it there is no more questions, its all been answered in that experience.

 

[roger1440]

The mystical experience that I am referring to is Enlightenment, which is beyond the mind, once you have experienced it there is no more questions, its all been answered in that experience.

If a person is not enlightened after the experience what term should be used?