Is Science Compatible with Mysticism?

[godnotgod]

Incorrect. I am being it, feeling, absorbing, thinking about and analyzing it all simultaneously. Such is the nature of multidimensional awareness that is ever expanding its horizons.

The shift from experience to thought about the experience is subtle and swift. We don't notice it.

You accidentally burn your finger on a hot stove. There is no thought involved in that very instant. There is only the experience, 'Ouch!'. Immediately afterward, however, one thinks: "Oh, I burned my finger", along with whatever ramifications it is associated with.

 

[darkendless]

Absolutes, whether literal or not, indicate the conviction of beliefs.

Conviction isn't always a good thing.

 

[Windwalker]

Incorrect. I am being it, feeling, absorbing, thinking about and analyzing it all simultaneously. Such is the nature of multidimensional awareness that is ever expanding its horizons.

Technically it's not simultaneous, but rather rapid shifting between them.

Now, this leads to good point. What happens with the human mind is that we first have an experience. It is unmediated, raw. What then happens as it hits our brain is it is split into two parts, object and subject. "What was that?" (object), and "What does it mean?" (subject). All this happens invisibly to us, instantly it seems. This is the essence of duality. And it defines our "normal" experience of reality.

Add this frameworks of understanding through which this process of object/subject is filtered. Our worldviews, our culture, our language, all shape how the brain filters these things. That changes as how we "see" the world changes. Reality changes for each person as part of that invisible backdrop of worldview that permeates culture and changes. The world understood as reality, even in the last 100 years has radically changed how our minds "understand" reality. I can't even begin to lay this out here, but you should be able to get the gist.

What I am referring to in the sunset analogy is a matter of degrees of suspending that process, bypassing those filters. Absorption, suspending thought, and simply being present in the moment is in fact a different experience than our normal observation mind processing. If someone doubts this, then I doubt they have ever "stopped the stream", so to speak. I refer to nature like this because this is the most common experience where we "stop the stream", and simply let the knowledge of "what is" enter our conscious awareness.

Now take this and let's talk about meditation. There it is like the moments of suspension where the busy think is slowed or set aside during moments of life such as the sunset. Except it is a concerted, focus effort to do this for prolonged periods of time. What opens is what is always there but blocked by the busy chatter. The subconscious opens to conscious awareness, rather than "talking" underneath the surface. I could go on at length here as well.

In the deepest states of meditation, there comes a complete suspension of any thoughts, rather that open and relaxed thoughts of more and more quiteness. All that is left is Awareness itself. There is no thought, just Being.

Anyway, I'll leave it there for the moment as I'm out of time....

 

[Windwalker]

BTW, I wanted to add this to the last post to illustrate my point. From the Buddha:

Wanting nothing
With all your heart
Stop the stream.

When the world dissolves
Everything becomes clear.

Go beyond
This way or that way,
To the farther shore
Where the world dissolves
And everything becomes clear.

Beyond this shore
And the father shore,
Beyond the beyond,
Where there is no beginning,
No end.

Without fear, go.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

This is a non-sequitur argument. Qualify this in terms of function. Obviously a mystical experience in an airplane will not teach you how to fly one where its pilot had a heart-attack and died. Reason is necessary in order to survive this crisis. If you are talking about finding peace of mind and spirit, then reason is not necessarily the best tool. If you are talking about existential questions of being, than reason is not the right tool.

Agreed. So, wouldn't you agree that you have said here is a bit more accurate, and compared to that, it is a bit misleading/oversimplifying/getting carried away with oneself to say things like a mystical experience "is beyond the confines of Reason"?

What qualifies something as valid is the effect it has. Is an insane persons alternative world invalid? I think that is really answered by how well he can function, isn't it? Who really defines sanity? I'm certain some would call me insane if I were to talk of my mystical experiences, yet they serve to enhance my mind and my life in extremely beneficial ways, that all my acute reasoning and logical mind cannot afford. Am I insane? Or are they?

I think a reasonable definition of insanity would be the inability or unwillingness to distinguish what goes on inside one's own mind, vs. what goes on outside of it. Of course I'm not accusing anyone of being insane but some of the things godnotgod and Willamena have said certainly amount to dipping one's toes in the water.

Reality is more than one point of view. And when it comes to reason, it operates within that one view as a tool. In order to expand beyond that one view, reason must be transcended. It's not the tool to do that on its own, but can be a tool of higher insight towards that shift in worldview. Follow?

Sure, I follow. I agree with your premise that reality is more than one point of view. But I would say that it is Reason (or let's say Science) which transcends one view and enables a higher insight into reality. Mysticism, OTOH, is a tool which operates within one view--namely the view of the individual person, or at best, the view of our particular species. After all, mystical experiences are not the same in every person--just look at the very different opinions among mystics in this thread. To the extent they appear to be the same, that is mostly (I submit) not because they are all truly the same but because they are all truly vague. Finally, even considering the subset of mystical experiences which are truly the same in all functioning human brains, does that tell us something about reality or just the part of reality confined to the human mind? Perhaps an alien race on another planet has a completely different experience. Maybe they have a thread on Alpha Centauri where their mystics write posts saying "All is Five, the universe is not Absolute" etc. Mystical experiences can't address these questions about themselves, in the context of a much larger reality. You can only answer such questions by going beyond these experiences and entering the objective realm of Science. In that sense, while a person can be both a mystic and a scientist, it is Science which surpasses mysticism, not the other way around. Science, in contrast to mysticism, is able to transcend not only individual differences of experience, but it can even transcend, to some extent, the limitations of the human mind. Our limited ape-brains struggle to comprehend many truths about reality (quantum mechanics, Einstein's relativity), which we could only discover as truths by going "beyond" or "surpassing" the confines of one human being's uncritiqued mental experience. To the extent mystics claimed to know such truths about the physical universe before Science arrived at them, they had confidence and speculation and vagueness only; not actual knowledge or understanding, which only Science could provide.

Having said all that, mysticism may still be a useful tool as you have described it--it may give you peace and happiness, improve your focus/attention, tell you things about your mind, etc. But the fact that it does these things is itself subsumed by Science. For example, we couldn't even be sure that mysticism gives people peace and happiness without Science (i.e. by investigating the effects of mysticism on people, using the methods of the psychologist, neuroscientist, social scientist, journalist, etc.)

So, putting all that together, I would say it is mysticism which operates within one view as a tool, whereas Science is the overarching thing encompassing many views, which is doing the "transcending" towards "higher insights" into reality beyond one view.

Except for one problem. No mystic would say this. And only those without mystical experience do. I know reason, and I know it's power, place, and limits. I also know mystical experience and its power, place, and limits. The reason, on a vertical scale, its experienced as "higher" is because it transcends and includes reason. If it was below reason, it could not include it. It's really that simple. It would be prerational, not transrational.

If reason is higher, than you have a full command of mystical experience? You would have surpassed it, but and to do so, would have to sufficiently have mastered it first. You cannot bypass stages.

(1) No I don't have a full command of the mystical experience. I also don't have full command of the schizophrenic or glossolalia experience. Can I surpass those experiences without mastering them first?

(2) Even the insane often "include" reason in their worldviews. Do the insane transcend reason in such cases?

(3) You say mystical experience is experienced as "higher". I take your word for it. The question is, is it actually higher in the sense some mystics want it to be.

 

[Willamena]

It's both actually. It technically was not delusion when you were using it. It is "stage appropriate". What happens though is as our context grows, the mode of thinking becomes inappropriate and needs to be transformed into something that does work in that lager context. It's not that it was broken when it was useful and needed to be fixed (which of course there is actual fixing that needs to happen at certain developmental stages, such as healing that which is repressed). But as you grow into a new, larger context, those modes of thought need to be abandoned and moved beyond. They are now, in the new context seen as "seeing through a glass darkly", so to speak.

Make sense?

For what you said, it does.

 

[Willamena]

Agreed, Straw Dog. My 2 cents is that it is incumbent on us to be as clear and as honest as possible. In my view, stating something like, "This is my distortion of reality" simply underscores the nature of the oily marble in play. At least the reader is reminded, from the get go, in no uncertain terms, that what I am saying is often not meant literally. When I mean something literally, I say so. For me, clarity is integrity, as it were.

But every statement is "This is my distortion of reality." If we're to avoid that, we might as well just get up and walk away from our computers.

 

[Windwalker]

Agreed. So, wouldn't you agree that you have said here is a bit more accurate, and compared to that, it is a bit misleading/oversimplifying/getting carried away with oneself to say things like a mystical experience "is beyond the confines of Reason"?

No. If you are stuck in a certain mode of perception because reason operates within that mode, then it seems accurate to say that the mystical experience is beyond the confines of reason. Literally, it deconstructs ones notions of what is truth and opens you to new perceptions.

Really, seriously, I can say this stuff all day to you. I can speak of reason easily because I use it extensively and have more than a fairly strong command of it, in both my private and professional life. But you are speaking of mystical experience from pure speculation with no experience you can cite, and unsurprisingly miss the mark again and again in whatever criticisms you feel compelled raise. Wouldn't it seem logical and reasonable that to have a conversation about this, you need to have some experience with it?

If you will notice, I don't have major disagreements with those in this thread who are mystics themselves. The points we may differ on are not the substance of the experience, but merely understandings or way in which we may choose to describe or model these things. I'm more than open to changing how I talk about this and listen to and entertain how they understand it. I don't hear anyone saying its radically different in substance, nor making any arguments that sound like yours. Those are simply not issues or questions.

Nonetheless, I'll continue....

I think a reasonable definition of insanity would be the inability or unwillingness to distinguish what goes on inside one's own mind, vs. what goes on outside of it.

Well you thought gognotgod referring to the average mode consciousness as illusion or delusion was offensive, but I suppose based on your description about you could call that insanity too. I think that describes the illusion of reality in most peoples minds. They think how they perceive a thing is not "just in their heads", and that it somehow is reality outside it.

I'm fond of how the Dr. Charles Tart calls it, "Consensus Trance". We think we are seeing reality.

Of course I'm not accusing anyone of being insane but some of the things godnotgod and Willamena have said certainly amount to dipping one's toes in the water.

Not that I've heard. It's funny how if they border on insane, then we all are insane then since what they are saying makes perfect sense to me. Could it have to do with our mutual insanity, or maybe our sane context that you are presently lacking, and through that lack of context you must try to fit it somehow into reality for you and call it "nuts"?

Sure, I follow. I agree with your premise that reality is more than one point of view. But I would say that it is Reason (or let's say Science) which transcends one view and enables a higher insight into reality. Mysticism, OTOH, is a tool which operates within one view--namely the view of the individual person, or at best, the view of our particular species. After all, mystical experiences are not the same in every person--just look at the very different opinions among mystics in this thread.

You worship science beyond its capabilities. I find it enjoyable how you try to see such gulfs of disagreements between our opinions in this thread. Oddly, I don't see those as you do.

The agreements you find in science it seems like you are projecting those to all human potentials as capable of solving the worlds woes. This is that outdated notion of Positivism, and the arguments you make on this have been around for the last 300 years. Most scientists don't make such religious proclamations anymore, though there is a growing popularity in the general population with this silly notion. Science becomes Scientism.

I'm not sure where to begin to repeat these debates of the last 300 years.

To the extent they appear to be the same, that is mostly (I submit) not because they are all truly the same but because they are all truly vague.

Not from my perception. In fact Clarity is the name of the game in mystical experience. You see them as vague because they don't fit into your mental models of reality. I don't think the vast majority of us finds ourselves that unclear what we are all saying. I know I don't have that problem.

Finally, even considering the subset of mystical experiences which are truly the same in all functioning human brains, does that tell us something about reality or just the part of reality confined to the human mind?

Oh good golly! You want me to speculate about the experience of a dolphin or a dragonfly? I sure could if you like, but I think you're already in beyond what you can deal with just speaking of the human experience. Suffice to say, we are all woven into that same seamless cloth. How I see as a human, is how a human experiences that. The mystical experience simply allows you to see that cloth, rather than just the patterns embroidered on it. Science see the patterns.

Perhaps an alien race on another planet has a completely different experience.

You're really stretching to "debunk" this, aren't you? Honestly, the alien no doubt sees the world differently. But since we're all part of that same seamless cloth, I would say if they could somehow see beyond their grey little sacks of skin they call themselves, I'm sure they'd see what we do when we are able to do that.

Do you think they look in the sky and see cotton candy popcorn, or do they see stars and galaxies like us, considering they are in the same universe? This is silly.

You can only answer such questions by going beyond these experiences and entering the objective realm of Science.

You honestly believe you or any human is capable of being objective? You believe science is your savior from this somehow? That the scientific method eliminates any and all bents of perception and bias? That's idealism, not reality. Science itself has shown that can't be overcome.

Science, in contrast to mysticism, is able to transcend not only individual differences of experience, but it can even transcend, to some extent, the limitations of the human mind.

True. So does mysticism. But science is only looking at the material world, not the world of mind, and certainly not the world of spirit.

(1) No I don't have a full command of the mystical experience. I also don't have full command of the schizophrenic or glossolalia experience. Can I surpass those experiences without mastering them first?

Now you are showing the weakness of your position very boldly here but this sort of innuendo. Always slip into insults when you feel your position slipping away.

Honestly, I think you've tipped your hand here and you have nothing in it.

 

[godnotgod]

(1) No I don't have a full command of the mystical experience. I also don't have full command of the schizophrenic or glossolalia experience. Can I surpass those experiences without mastering them first?

My understanding is that glossolaia, for example, is a spontaneously-generated experience, just as the mystical experience is. You don't command it, as it commands you, so to speak. Not sure about schiz. The mystical experience can happen to anyone at any time. No one actually knows why, though some life events can trigger it.

The mystic must still live in the everyday world built on Reason and Logic, but because of his transformed view, he sees the everyday world in a different context than does the ordinary man. The fact is that we are our original nature to begin with. The cultivation of the rational mind comes afterwards, and for the most part, has become the primary modus operandi of human beings. His life via impulse and spontaneity is no longer operational, to a large degree. He lives a more structured life via the clock and social indoctrination. In fact, impulse is even punished in our society. We tend to see it as chaotic, undesirable behavior. But we showcase it in our sitcoms as outrageously funny behavior. Our awakened nature is not a chaotic untamed beast, as some think, with Reason being the civilized guiding light. It is, instead, a superior kind of intelligence that naturally and intuitively knows how to act, knows what to do. But the man of the intellect, the man of control, does not trust it. He sees it as dark and unpredictable, a force that needs to be brought under control. But most of his efforts to do so to date have created nothing but chaos and suffering in the world, the exact opposite of the intent. Man fails to understand why, so he ends up exerting aggressive force, thereby exacerbating the situation. The key word that the mystical experience affords access to is freedom. It is only the mind that is free that can see Reality as it actually is, rather than how the conditioned and controlled mind says it is.

(2) Even the insane often "include" reason in their worldviews. Do the insane transcend reason in such cases?

No, they cling to it as a device to rationalize their insane behavior, just as people we consider 'sane' and 'normal' do even more outrageously insane things under the guise of 'Reason' and 'civilized' behavior. Neither are capable of real transcendence. They need 'reason' to continue their insane behavior under the guise of sanity. The mystic, because his view is intuitively-based, sees the pitfalls of Reason, and makes efforts to transcend.

(3) You say mystical experience is experienced as "higher". I take your word for it. The question is, is it actually higher in the sense some mystics want it to be.

In a nutshell, 'yes', as it is like the difference between black/white and color tv, but even that is a poor analogy. There is really nothing that can compare. Most men's lives are fiction because they live an imitation of life based on conceptual models.

 

[crossfire]

Earlier I wrote about those who insist that you can only be in the mundane or the mystic, while others will walk simultaneously in both at one. Perhaps this quote might be helpful:

A master says: "Before a man studies Zen, mountains are mountains to him, and waters are waters. But when he obtains a glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains, nor waters are no longer waters. Later, however, when he has really reached the place of Rest, mountains are again mountains, and waters are waters."​

I might not agree with the term, "the place of rest," however, as it might lead to thinking that one may then just rest on ones laurels, so to speak. :/

 

[Mr Spinkles]

No. If you are stuck in a certain mode of perception because reason operates within that mode, then it seems accurate to say that the mystical experience is beyond the confines of reason. Literally, it deconstructs ones notions of what is truth and opens you to new perceptions.

So can literature, cinema, art, poetry, prayer, music, drugs, brainwashing, neurological disorders ... I wouldn't say such experiences are beyond the confines of reason, with all the misleading baggage godnotgod and others want to imply by that. I would simply and honestly say that suspending reason has the potential to be an extremely valuable and enriching experience. But suspending the mystical, and using reason, can also be enriching and "deconstruct one's notions of what is truth and opens you to new perceptions." Just look at what Einstein and Darwin did. Your arguments don't demonstrate the clear-cut hierarchy of human experiences with mysticism placed firmly above reason. If your personal favorite experience is the mystical over all others, no problem ... but I thought you were claiming more.

Wouldn't it seem logical and reasonable that to have a conversation about this, you need to have some experience with it?

A fair question, which deserves a fair reply. I'm sure it would help to have some experience with mysticism--I think I may have, actually, but I don't expect people on this thread to accept it, and don't feel it's necessary. Because, as I've said, I don't question the experience itself. Whatever you say it feels like, I take your word for it. I think I'm being fair here. (Tangentially, I notice godnotgod's experiences differ from YmirGF's.)

But whatever it feels like to the experiencer, this is not enough information to settle many controversies in this thread, namely: whether the experience is mediated by anything, or not; whether it gives us direct access to all of reality, or only part of reality; whether it is related in a meaningful way to the universe, quantum physics, the nature of matter, etc. or not.

As soon as you start raising such issues, as godnotgod did at the very beginning, we are no longer "doing" mysticism. Now we are reasoning about mysticism. Now people like me can join in, because one needn't experience mysticism firsthand, any more than one needs to have near-death experiences, divine revelations, or observations through a telescope firsthand, to reason about those experiences in the context of all human experiences, including the scientific.

As confirmatory evidence of this, I note that there are people who have had mystical experiences who agree with my arguments on this thread. YmirGF, dust1n, and Straw Dog claim to have had mystical experiences. Two of the three have quite explicitly and enthusiastically supported what I have said throughout. You yourself agreed with many points, though not all (it seems to me you sometimes just object to the way I say it ... you admit the mystic can't see the color of my shirt or intuit Penumbra's name, but you still want to be able to say "the mystics sees reality directly" instead of "the mystic sees part of reality directly"). And I've read books by Sam Harris, a practitioner of mysticism and meditation who claims:

"I've met with great mystics, I've met great meditation masters who have spent 20 years in caves perfecting the kinds of meditative experiences you [Deepak Chopra] would advocate."​

Sam Harris went on to criticize Deepak Chopra for bringing in quantum physics as if it has something to do with mysticism. Check out this video; skip to 16:00 minutes:
[youtube]wi2IC6e5DUY[/youtube]
Does God Have a Future? NightLine DEBATE FULL - YouTube

Harris' point is more or less what I criticized godnotgod for doing at the beginning of this thread, where he quoted both Deepak Chopra and quantum physicists.

So, taking all that together, I think it's fair to say the subset self-described mystics represented by yourself does not have a monopoly on truth about mysticism in the context of the rest of human experience, particularly science--and that is the topic of this thread. Therefore, it is not unreasonable for one to find the reasoning of some firsthand witnesses (YmirGF, Sam Harris) more plausible than the reasoning from other firsthand witnesses (godnotgod, Windwalker). This is the modus operandi of scientists and any good reasoner; we don't doubt the physicist experienced what she says she experienced, but we don't need (or expect) ALL other physicists repeat her experiment themselves, and barring that, accept whatever she claims without question.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

..continued...

If you will notice, I don't have major disagreements with those in this thread who are mystics themselves. The points we may differ on are not the substance of the experience, but merely understandings or way in which we may choose to describe or model these things. I'm more than open to changing how I talk about this and listen to and entertain how they understand it. I don't hear anyone saying its radically different in substance, nor making any arguments that sound like yours.

(1) I don't know what you mean by "substance" but, for the umpteenth time, I don't question the experience itself; only the understanding or way of describing or modeling it--particularly in relation to other experiences such as science, which is the topic of this thread. (2) YmirGF is a mystic himself (is he not?) and he totally agrees with me.

Well you thought gognotgod referring to the average mode consciousness as illusion or delusion was offensive, but I suppose based on your description about you could call that insanity too. I think that describes the illusion of reality in most peoples minds. They think how they perceive a thing is not "just in their heads", and that it somehow is reality outside it.

To be precise, I didn't find godnotgod's claims offensive I found them implausible. Contrary to what godnotgod has said, a good scientist is quite aware that our perceptions are inside our minds. Especially scientists like Sam Harris, Stephen Pinker, etc. who study the mind. We all know that an observation, a model, a theory, is not reality itself. This is not a profound insight which dropped out of mysticism, it's a trivially obvious and well-known fact of science. But like a map of some territory, our perceptions may represent reality outside our minds more accurately, or less accurately. You and godnotgod seem incapable of acknowledging anything other than 0% or 100% accuracy; for you guys, everything must be either reality itself or a mere outward appearance and total illusion, there can be no in-between. This is a false dichotomy and it reduces to absurdity, since it would imply that my magical pink elephant ride in my sleep last night, was no less accurate about the world outside my mind, than my observation that it was raining yesterday while I was fully awake. This absurdity gets us nowhere closer to reality and reminds me of the arguments used to support faith over reason/science.

The question for those interested in reality outside one's own mind is, how do we tune our perceptions to more accurately represent that reality? And how do we test our perceptions against our imperfect, but more-or-less accurate understanding of that reality? I submit that mysticism, like a microscope, is but one tool within this quest, tuning the accuracy of our perceptions to an interesting but incomplete part of reality. You and godnotgod and Willamena functionally agree with this every time you admit that we can't use mysticism to guide a plane, intuit Penumbra's name, etc. When pressed you admit these things but you don't like it when others call it what it is.

You worship science ... This is that outdated notion of Positivism, and the arguments you make on this have been around for the last 300 years. Most scientists don't make such religious proclamations anymore, though there is a growing popularity in the general population with this silly notion. Science becomes Scientism.

For the record, I am a humanist and a scientist, not a scientism-ist. I am an admirer of meditation, intuition, spontaneity, and all the wonderful things godnotgod mentioned in his last post.

You're really stretching to "debunk" this, aren't you? Honestly, the alien no doubt sees the world differently. But since we're all part of that same seamless cloth, I would say if they could somehow see beyond their grey little sacks of skin they call themselves, I'm sure they'd see what we do when we are able to do that. ... Do you think they look in the sky and see cotton candy popcorn, or do they see stars and galaxies like us, considering they are in the same universe? This is silly.

Right but do they see the same things we see when they do Mysticism, or when they do Science? Their Mysticism is mediated by their alien brain (not unmediated as you claim) whereas their Science is intended to gain insight into the shared, external reality between all brains.

You honestly believe you or any human is capable of being objective?

Not 100% objective, no. Do you believe everything humans perceive is 0% objective? For example, is my recollection from memory that all the traffic lights turn red just when I'm in a rush, no more objective than a written record of traffic lights?

Now you are showing the weakness of your position very boldly here but this sort of innuendo. Always slip into insults when you feel your position slipping away.

You've misunderstood, it's not an insult. I'm not saying mysticism = insanity I'm saying your logic was flawed. You said science can't surpass something (mysticism) without mastering it first. But your logic reduces to absurdity, because it would imply science can't surpass insanity without mastering it first. Therefore, I'm not saying mysticism = insanity, I'm saying that logically, science can surpass it without mastering it first.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

The mystic must still live in the everyday world built on Reason and Logic, but because of his transformed view, he sees the everyday world in a different context than does the ordinary man. The fact is that we are our original nature to begin with. The cultivation of the rational mind comes afterwards, and for the most part, has become the primary modus operandi of human beings. His life via impulse and spontaneity is no longer operational, to a large degree. He lives a more structured life via the clock and social indoctrination. In fact, impulse is even punished in our society. We tend to see it as chaotic, undesirable behavior. But we showcase it in our sitcoms as outrageously funny behavior. Our awakened nature is not a chaotic untamed beast, as some think, with Reason being the civilized guiding light. It is, instead, a superior kind of intelligence that naturally and intuitively knows how to act, knows what to do. But the man of the intellect, the man of control, does not trust it. He sees it as dark and unpredictable, a force that needs to be brought under control. But most of his efforts to do so to date have created nothing but chaos and suffering in the world, the exact opposite of the intent. Man fails to understand why, so he ends up exerting aggressive force, thereby exacerbating the situation. The key word that the mystical experience affords access to is freedom. It is only the mind that is free that can see Reality as it actually is, rather than how the conditioned and controlled mind says it is.

Hey I'm down with spontaneity, indulging our impulses, being aware of our social conditioning, and all of the wonderful things you've mentioned here.

 

[Windwalker]

Not sure about schiz.

As for the comparisons of mysticism to schizophrenia there are several. I didn't want to bother to try to get into those to discuss those in this thread. If you are interested in this, I would recommend another bit I read Ken Wilber went into some depth to speak to. It's in his early work The Atman Project, chapter 17. Very nicely laid out.

The mystical experience can happen to anyone at any time. No one actually knows why, though some life events can trigger it.

I would say we have a fairly good understanding of the mechanisms of it in these spontaneous cases. As I said before though, the practice of meditation actually develops the brain to be more naturally open to these. You are literally reshaping the brain through meditative practices. As a result, how you see and process the world takes on a markedly different "set of eyes".

This is why in part, scientifically speaking, it in fact is "beyond reason". You are literally using, enhancing, developing other parts of the brain that are more subsided normally. You "awaken" them, and your perceptual awareness takes a leap forward. The rational mind is still functional, but the "intuitive" mind, the non-linguist centers become more developed, become much more part of the active pathways alongside the typically more dominant linguistic centers of language and symbols that go into constructing these models of reality that the "normal" mind embeds self-identification and waking, cognitive, perceptual awareness within.

All this goes to support the testimonies of those like us who actually engage in mystical practice. Repeated practice literally, factually, develops the mind. And what we talk about is the result.

The mystic must still live in the everyday world built on Reason and Logic, but because of his transformed view, he sees the everyday world in a different context than does the ordinary man.

Yes, that context is a differently developed conscious mind.

The fact is that we are our original nature to begin with.

Yes, but it gets a little interesting to talk about this from a metaphysical discussion. It is our Prior Nature, which is both the Ground and the Goal. The unrealized potentials existing in the beginning. It's not that we had realized them in some lost past in evolution. The are unfolding through the evolutionary process to what they are before and beyond manifestation. Another discussion.

The cultivation of the rational mind comes afterwards, and for the most part, has become the primary modus operandi of human beings.

I agree with how you say the rational mind has become the "norm" for humans, but prior to this we were more or less fused and undifferentiated from world. That conscious awareness of the All was "asleep". What happens in mystical experience is it awakens, for the first time in our form to that prior Nature, that existed before the Big Bang, so to speak. As I said, this is getting pretty metaphysical.


Anyway aside for these minor points of difference in our respective models, everything you say here I agree with.

The one thing I need to get into here is the whole modes of knowing discussion, and where "higher" actually makes sense in that it is more expansive, and more inclusive. Rationality is less inclusive that mystical insight, but mystical insight does not replace rationality it is appropriate domain of use. This is something the black and white mind does seem to grasp in its need to frame everything as either this or that.

When time, and energy permit, we need to bring epistimological pluralism into this. I think all of Mr. Sprinkle's going round and round the same points gets dealt with at this point, which I don't have the time and energy to keep going over again in my discussion with him.

 

[godnotgod]

... you admit the mystic can't see the color of my shirt or intuit Penumbra's name, but you still want to be able to say "the mystics sees reality directly" instead of "the mystic sees part of reality directly").

It seems you are interpreting 'the mystic sees reality directly' as: 'the mystic sees all; knows all', down to the last detail of the universe, and that false idea has been made clear several times by Windwalker. I have continually referred to the 'true nature of Reality', which is a single nature that underlies all of Reality, just as the one sea underlies all ocean waves. When you understand that there is but one nature that underpins all of the phenomenal world, it becomes clear that this one nature infuses all forms, just as all waves are made of the same substance as the sea: water; just as all snowflakes, though each unique, are all made of water.

The mystic sees the details of Reality in terms of their background, which is the formless, whereas the scientist focuses only on the details.

You still have not addressed my question regarding the image I posted. Can you tell me: what is it about the image that allows you to discern a human figure?

 

[Windwalker]

It seems you are interpreting 'the mystic sees reality directly' as: 'the mystic sees all; knows all', down to the last detail of the universe, and that false idea has been made clear several times by Windwalker. I have continually referred to the 'true nature of Reality', which is a single nature that underlies all of Reality, just as the one sea underlies all ocean waves. When you understand that there is but one nature that underpins all of the phenomenal world, it becomes clear that this one nature infuses all forms, just as all waves are made of the same substance as the sea: water; just as all snowflakes, though each unique, are all made of water.

The mystic sees the details of Reality in terms of their background, which is the formless, whereas the scientist focuses only on the details.

I am quoting this as a touchstone post for this continued error of understanding that keeps coming up. As I said, and not meaning offense to Mr. Sprinkle's, he keeps circling back to this again and again, apparently not hearing what is being very clearly and directly stated. What you say here is crystal clear to me in my mind. I understand the distinctly different nature of these two. Yet, they are not in complete isolation of one another either, since seeing the Ground, illuminates the understanding of the form that we gain through our scientific investigations, without encroaching upon it.

Later as time permits, I'm going to attempt to lay out the different epistimological domains that to me makes clear the appropriateness of where science excels at, and where it fails at. This notion that science has all the answers or the key to all understanding is deeply flawed.

 

[godnotgod]

I think a reasonable definition of insanity would be the inability or unwillingness to distinguish what goes on inside one's own mind, vs. what goes on outside of it. Of course I'm not accusing anyone of being insane but some of the things godnotgod and Willamena have said certainly amount to dipping one's toes in the water.

Does the notion that an observer, just by the act of observation, can influence how a sub-atomic particle behaves sound insane?

Does the notion that there is a greater reality outside of Plato's Cave sound insane to the prisoners inside?

How about the notion that the Earth goes around the Sun?

I'll bet the following statement sounds insane to you: ' the past does not create the present; the present creates the past.'

 

[YmirGF]

But every statement is "This is my distortion of reality." If we're to avoid that, we might as well just get up and walk away from our computers.

You can't be serious, Patty. For example, even in ordinary conversations I often say, "Well, my opinion on this is..." In no way does it stifle discussion, but rather it verifies to the reader/listener what is being said is simply an opinion. Is underscores that the ideas presented are not perfect and should never be taken to be such.

In light of this ongoing dialogue, where many folks are talking about "absolute this", "Perfect that", "Reality as it actually is" etc, it underscores the need to clarify that those comments are just opinions are not necessarily representative of reality.

No. If you are stuck in a certain mode of perception because reason operates within that mode, then it seems accurate to say that the mystical experience is beyond the confines of reason. Literally, it deconstructs ones notions of what is truth and opens you to new perceptions.

New, for sure, but "higher"? No, that is simply a value judgment. New, different or alternate, sure; higher is pushing the envelope a tad far.

The key word that the mystical experience affords access to is freedom. It is only the mind that is free that can see Reality as it actually is, rather than how the conditioned and controlled mind says it is.

I quite like the sentiments expressed here, godnotgod, but would change the last part to read:
It is only the mind that is free that can see an alternative view of reality, rather than how the conditioned mind says it is. It is through appreciation of this alternate view that allows the observer to apprehend what may perhaps be described as a larger view of reality.

It's a subtle, but important difference, in my view, as it is both more accurate and intellectually honest.

 

[YmirGF]

Earlier I wrote about those who insist that you can only be in the mundane or the mystic, while others will walk simultaneously in both at one. Perhaps this quote might be helpful:

A master says: "Before a man studies Zen, mountains are mountains to him, and waters are waters. But when he obtains a glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains, nor waters are no longer waters. Later, however, when he has really reached the place of Rest, mountains are again mountains, and waters are waters."​

I might not agree with the term, "the place of rest," however, as it might lead to thinking that one may then just rest on ones laurels, so to speak. :/

Thanks CrossFire, that is what I am getting at when I use the term multidimensional. I get the distinct impression from Windwalker and others that the mystical experience is almost a binary on/off experience. At some stages, it is just that, however, eventually everything just merges. Mystical experience merges with ordinary experience and there is no longer any meaningful distinction. It's a meeting of clarity, focus and understanding the expansion of consciousness. The smallest, most mundane act can (and often does) have fascinating repercussions within the psyche of the individual. It's a bit hard to describe, LOL.

 

[crossfire]

Thanks CrossFire, that is what I am getting at when I use the term multidimensional. I get the distinct impression from Windwalker and others that the mystical experience is almost a binary on/off experience. At some stages, it is just that, however, eventually everything just merges. Mystical experience merges with ordinary experience and there is no longer any meaningful distinction. It's a meeting of clarity, focus and understanding the expansion of consciousness. The smallest, most mundane act can (and often does) have fascinating repercussions within the psyche of the individual. It's a bit hard to describe, LOL.

Agreed. A bit of mindfulness when mopping the floors will do wonders. (It has by far become my favorite practice. It's great for inducing lucid dreams.)