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For Atheist Mystics

Typist

Active Member
To be clear, it is not my contention that only philosophical reflection can lead to an appreciation for the value of silence, mindfulness, and the experience we're all talking about. My contention was only that philosophical reflection can be valuable in the context of modern western culture. It may help some people to be more open to the experience. It may be of some practical usage. When I mentioned the Buddhist parable of the raft, I was trying to be clear that this value of philosophy is not absolute.

Ok, these are reasonable points, well put.

We might say the teacher, the guru, the expert, the person on the stage, puts on a sort of circus act made of explanations. If the speaker has some charisma and is handy with words then the circus act is entertaining and will attract people in to the tent to see the show.

I agree that in the real world, especially in western culture perhaps, we are very thought based and thus the circus act perhaps has to be thought intensive to earn the interest of passerby. So far, so good.

Now what?

At some point the speaker, if he is a true and sincere teacher, is going to have to wean the audience off of the colorful raft, as you and Buddhists put it.

Everybody is looking at the speaker, thinking he is where they will find what they are looking for. So at some point the speaker, if he is a true teacher, is going to have to destroy his own authority so that those in the audience will stop relating to the speaker as having, or even being, the answer to their problems.

And the explanations will sooner or later have to be burned to the ground as well, or the audience members will spend the rest of their lives traveling a road from speaker to speaker, book to book, talk to talk, and explanation to explanation, sucked in to the illusion that it is speakers and explanations that contain what they are seeking.

Jiddu Krishnamurti used to endlessly repeat "the speaker has no authority!" in a well meaning attempt to pop the hero bubble, but then he spent his entire life on stage speaking with great authority. His actions spoke louder than his words, as is usually the case.

A few years back I was on the Krishnamurti forum, and had the opportunity to chat with the lead teacher at the Ojai school in California. To my amazement, the lead teacher was convinced Krishnamurti had been something just short of a god. So no matter how many thousands of times Krishnamurti might say "the speaker has no authority!" if people want a god they are going to have one. That's the ball that starts rolling at the moment a talented speaker steps up on stage and starts offering explanations.

A key corruption source I see is a familiar factor, the addicting influence of money and power.

Once the process evolves from being just people talking together as we are here, in to a career for somebody, it seems to become near impossible to deflate the authority of the speaker, because the career depends on that authority.

And then lots of other people join the speaker's team, and they want careers too, and before long what started off as a well meaning little circus act becomes a circus corporation, that lives or dies based on it's ability to keep customers interested in the company's product line, explanations.

Point being, while I hear what you're saying about the need for explanations, we should also keep in mind that they come with a big price tag. Glamorous explanations are a highly addictive product for some, and once they are hooked on them you may never get them off. We should keep that in mind as we are waving innocent passerby in to the circus tent.
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
This isn't about the narrative. This isn't about preaching. This is about sharing notes on what has been a remarkable journey for many of us. That we can understand each other, given the unique nature of many of these arcane experiences is stunning - in and of itself. That we can converse with each other and offer each other tips and advice is staggering in its implications.
Amen, and amen. I do not sense there is a single one of us who wishes to be a guru, a holy man, some person on stage with flower garnets cast at their feet, etc. What is being demonstrated here in this thread instead by its respectful participants, is a wonderful exchange of differences of view with the majority of us listening and learning from each other in their own paths. You and I have differences in views we have discussed, but it always is in the spirit of respect. Even though I felt in previous discussions you devalued the 2nd person approaches in meditation practice, there has never been any desire to call you names, cast you as a circus act, and other such personally defaming nonsense. That would feel completely contrary to the Unitive Spirit I know you know and share in. I see it in you, and I know you see it in me. It would be a violation of that Heart to call you names because you have a difference of view than me. It would hypocritical of me to do so, claiming Peace on the one hand, while calling you a self-aggrandizing holy man jerking himself off in his threads on the other. I cannot do that, and to do so would be a sin against my own soul and injure me more than you.

For me, participation in these threads is about my own process, not to save others or have them "love" me or something. If others are benefitted as a side effect, I am rewarded that what is important to me, and is helping me, helps them. I see it as a path together. We can banter and disagree, and that is part of the process. But putting others down is a violation of the spirit of that intent. Putting others down is about the ego-self. That is my own shadow, when and if I have ever done that. I use it as a temperature gauge for what is going on for me at the time. I observe it happening, I observe my own behavior and then pause and look at it and then ask myself, 'what I am feeling about myself right now that is leading me to act poorly towards others'? What is going on? I use it as an opportunity for self-examination and growth. To act contrary to what my heart desires in the Unity of Spirit, is damaging to me. We all have to be humble enough to accept we are flawed and make self-corrections endlessly. Seeking to be over others is also contrary to that Spirit. I try to be ever-vigilant over myself in the hopes of moving beyond that small ego self and to mature and grow in Spirit.

My friends help as they point out my shadows I am blind to in myself, which we all have. But they know me, and I trust them. Not everyone who says something negative about you has your interest of growth in mind, however. They are not about helping you grow. For them it is just an exercise in their own shadow projections, heaping on others what they sense and don't want to look at in themselves, and we have to be grounded and wise enough to listen and know our own hearts what is true about us, and when it is about them. And if it is about them, we try our best to feel and show compassion, even if when we are wronged. That's a challenge. But compassion does not mean being a doormat forever for them, as that is not good for anyone. That can be understood as enabling.

I completely agree with you about the amazing ability for us to share with each other these wonderful experiences and insights we have gained. I cannot imagine had there been an Internet and a forum such as this set up to allow a diversity of views discussed freely like this 30 years ago when I first began this journey. It allows for a community of those who live, eat, breath, and sleep this insatiable desire to Unity to help and support each other in the spirit of that Heart.
 
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4consideration

*
Premium Member
***Mod Post***

THIS IS A DIR

That means it is for discussion of one's own thoughts/beliefs/practices, etc. No arguing, debating, etc. against someone else's. Personal comments/attacks and insults are out of line in any thread, and most especially in DIR threads.

Please keep Rule 10 in mind, (and keeping Rule 1, 2 and 3 in mind wouldn't hurt, either.) Here's a link to the rules: RF Rules | ReligiousForums.com
 

Typist

Active Member
Not everyone who says something negative about you has your interest of growth in mind, however. They are not about helping you grow.

Growth is a process of becoming. Mysticism is not about becoming, but being.

Growth is a process of accumulation. Mysticism is not about accumulating, but discarding.

Growth is about something. Mysticism is about nothing. Growth is like the planets and the stars. Mysticism is the much larger empty space between them.

The quest for growth is built upon a rejection of what is. Mysticism is the acceptance of what is.

Growth has nothing to do with mysticism, which might be why some of your mystic friends are not interested in helping you grow.
 
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Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
You think I don't agree with this? Let's be honest. We have all debated your points, we all agreed with the basic part of it. But this is not good enough for you. You make stuff up about us we don't say. You falsely cast us as New Age Holy Men and other such strawman terms that you shoot down to bolster yourself, your ego, in the eyes of everyone, creating this fictional campaign against us as frauds, for things we do not say. You are in fact an Internet Troll, deliberately goading others to respond, and then attacking them as if this somehow how proves your point about them. This is the childish, deranged antics of a schoolyard bully. You have ignored moderator requests to respect this forum. You say it is because we are afraid to fight, just like that schoolyard bully. This is not debate. It's deranged, troll-like behavior.

I suspect your time on this site is coming to a close shortly. I will not engage in any further response to you. I feel sad for you, truly. Whatever you are doing on your path is not producing what one would expect. Goodbye.
 

Jumi

Well-Known Member
So no matter how many thousands of times Krishnamurti might say "the speaker has no authority!" if people want a god they are going to have one. That's the ball that starts rolling at the moment a talented speaker steps up on stage and starts offering explanations.
Kind of like what was done to Jesus.
 

Rick O'Shez

Irishman bouncing off walls
Growth is a process of becoming. Mysticism is not about becoming, but being.
Growth is a process of accumulation. Mysticism is not about accumulating, but discarding.
Growth is about something. Mysticism is about nothing. Growth is like the planets and the stars. Mysticism is the much larger empty space between them.
The quest for growth is built upon a rejection of what is. Mysticism is the acceptance of what is.

I like that.
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I know I've covered this before, but it bears repeating for others to clarify an unjustifiable conclusion there is a conflation of the two when I speak of mysticism and growth. They can be related, but they are not the same thing. It is true mysticism per se is not about growth. It is about letting go. It is about allowing what is to be seen and experienced and known by letting go of all our self-identifications. But the result of this process can in fact lead to growth of the individual in the world. Mysticism is not about seeking growth, which is in fact true, but it can directly result in that very thing happening and it does in many cases. Here's how and why it does.

At any given stage of our development as humans, we identify as a certain set of ideas that are invisible to us as they are the set of eyes through which we look out at the world and self-reflexively back upon ourselves through. They are the subject of who we are at that level. We identify with how we think and perceive. We don't see them. They are just there, completely invisible to us because we identify as them. We don't see it at all because it is the set of eyes we are looking through. It is "us" for all intents and purposes. It is our thought processes, perceptions, etc, that is the subject of the self looking out through them. As we see the world, we never consider the lens we are looking through as other than us because it is our own set of eyes. We don't see the eyes we look through.

Now here's is a what defines in a nutshell what happens in meditation in mystical experience. We see all of that now. Meditation allows that subject to become an object. It moves from being the subject because it is not longer the one seeing, but the one seen. The subject becomes an object. And what happens when the subject becomes an object? We let go of our exclusive identification with that subject and release our attachments to it, allowing us to see beyond that as the new, higher subject. So the saying goes, "The subject of one level becomes the object of the subject of the next." What this means is our perception has transcended the previous plane of reality to include that as an object of our awareness in the next. This process of letting the subject become an object is exactly what meditation and mystical states of consciousness allows to happen. And this "transcend and include" process is in fact growth. It is by definition exactly what development is and how it happens. It negates exclusive identification with one stage, as it includes it into itself in the next higher stage.

Now here's where it gets a little technical, but is worth laying out for the sake of clarification for those who care to read this. There are stages within these mystical state experiences, and there are stages of development within our structures of consciousness we are embedded within as humans in our daily lives. In mystical state experiences there are deeper and higher states we move through as we futher and further disidentify with what arises in the field of our awareness within those states. As we have spent time seeing what arises within that field of awareness as objects of our awareness, we begin to let them go and something new arises. What is arising are those things that were embedded within us as the subjects of our awareness, from the deep subconscious mind, being exposed one layer at a time.

What is also being exposed are the deep potentials within us there from the foundations of the world. It is this that is the unfolding potentials being exposed as we peel back the layers of that onion, by letting go of all we self-identify with buried within the psyche and the subconsciousness mind by turning them into objects of our awareness through this process. Our identification with those objects results in a clinging to them and a self-contraction which disallows the higher potentials, the subtle and causal levels of our identity to be masked and hidden from us. So there are two actions that are happening in this. The process of letting go opens us to the process of letting in. We cannot allow water into the glass while we are holding our hand over its mouth.

That's what happens in mystical state experiences as the subconscious mind lets go and illumination is let in. Aurobindo speaks of these two actions in a process of three actions, which I fully agree with, as an inward movement, an upward movement, and an outward movement. That's what's going on in this. Now outside the inwards and upward, there are structures of consciousness which are what happen as we live in the world, interacting in society, communicating with language, going to work, having relationships, and so forth. There are actual stages of development within those structure of consciousness which happen naturally without the need of meditation or mystical state experiences. They happen over long periods of time, from early childhood up into adulthood, and continuing all the way through adulthood to higher and higher and more sophisticated modes of conscious awareness. These are not mystical states.

They are the "normal" stage of developments which define that set of eyes, the subject of that stage of development. They shape the mind within its social and cultural constructs which creates filters which both allow and disallow certain perspectives on reality to occur. There are numerous stages of development that individual can potentially growth through naturally, some staying at a particular stage and others continuing to the next, or the next beyond that. What defines something as "higher", is simply because it passes through the earlier stages, and transcends and includes them into the next. There is no bypassing allowed. Higher structures are built upon lower foundational structures. Everything is built upon what came before it. This is a natural growth hierarchy. This is the stuff of developmental psychology. Again, this is not mysticism.

Where mysticism can potentially affect stages of growth in human development is this. This process of disidentification in mystical practice, in state experiences, where the subject of one's identity become the object of one's awareness, can potentially accelerate growth in the natural stages of development. It can accelerate growth by years, if not decades. It is not a guarantee this will happen, as there are other factors involved. First, how it can happen is that because this disidentification with the subject into an object of awareness happens in meditation, when we move out into our daily lives our perspective on ourselves has changed. This changed perspective then moves out into the world of interpretive structures available to us. All mystical experience is always, after the fact, interpreted within this structures of development available to us. This is an important paragraph to follow. All mystical state experiences have an interpretive element to them. As we move out into the world, we think about them. Our basic perceptual awareness has been jarred loose to a degree, and now we have to try to understand them with the contexts of our interpretive structures. Stages of human development are in fact these interpretive structures that allows integration into the world. They are unavoidable.

So where accelerated growth may occur is when this shift in perception enters into the world it is going to trying to find structures of interpretation in order to hang these experiences on! If all that is available to them, for instance, are mythic structures, then the mystical experience will be hung on mythic structures. They literally experienced the Lord Krishna appearing before them. He has blessed their tribe by coming to them. And so forth. A modernist structure will interpret mystical experience within those structures. A postmodernist structure within those structures. An integral structure within that, and so forth. So where the potential for accelerated growth comes in is that as these higher structures are available to them, and they have the freedom to find a support community within them, they will move what opened to them in their mystical state experiences into these higher developmental structures, if and when they are able to find a better supporting language within them and a community to help support this integration. If all one has available to them in their world and society is the mythic structure, changes are it will only solidify that structure for them as nothing else was available and they have now been touched by God Himself in their state experience, confirming their interpretive structure for them as the highest truth. This is the Ultimate Reality for them, hung upon their mythic structures, unaware of any other possible structure that is out there. So as I said, it's not a guarantee.

So in all the details of the above, there is no confusion between what mystical states of experiences in regards to human growth, no conflation in my mind. At the same token there does in fact stand the potential of influence, as opposed to a strict separation of the two, a sort of non-overlapping magisterium. There is most definitely overlap, and even the mystic cannot escape this dual-reality we live within. I hope this helps some understanding of what has been misrepresented previously.
 
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mystic64

nolonger active
Growth is a process of becoming. Mysticism is not about becoming, but being.

Growth is a process of accumulation. Mysticism is not about accumulating, but discarding.

Growth is about something. Mysticism is about nothing. Growth is like the planets and the stars. Mysticism is the much larger empty space between them.

The quest for growth is built upon a rejection of what is. Mysticism is the acceptance of what is.

Growth has nothing to do with mysticism, which might be why some of your mystic friends are not interested in helping you grow.

Hi Typist my friend, I see we are back up and running again and in my opinion management has done very well :) !

Typist where do you come up with this stuff :) ? "Mysticism is not about accumulating, but discarding." Typist it is about both. It is about discarding the limiting old and accumulating the non limiting new. "Growth is about something. Mysticism is about nothing. Growth is like the planets and the stars. Mysticism is the much larger empty space between them." Mysticism is about the relationship between the planets and stars (all matter) and the larger empty spaces between them. There is a dynamic balance between everything and this dynamic balance is what the mystic explores. "Growth has nothing to do with mysticism, which might be why some of your mystic friends are not interested in helping you grow." Growth does not have to have anything to do with mysticism, but you can not be a successful mystic without growth. And growth as a mystic is a personal experience that is not done under the guidance of one's friends.

"The quest for growth is built upon a rejection of what is. Mysticism is the acceptance of what is." Typist, mysticism is both and growth is both :) . There is no mysticism without the rejection of what is and the acceptance of what is and there is no growth without the rejection of what is and the acceptance of what is. One has to understand and be at peace with both sides of the "what is" to achieve growth as both a mystic and as a non mystic that is experiencing the growth experience.
 
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