Is Science Compatible with Mysticism?

[YmirGF]

Address the one reality in its image. Address the one truth in all things in its image. Don't be intimidated by talk of "just your opinion," it's understood (by most) that there is nothing else.

Sometimes it is better to say nothing and have people think you are the fool, rather than opening ones mouth and removing all doubt.

 

[Willamena]

Sometimes it is better to say nothing and have people think you are the fool, rather than opening ones mouth and removing all doubt.

Sometimes it's better to be the fool.

 

[Windwalker]

Stop talking about reality with a big R and a little r.

I actually don't like to use that term that much. I prefer the Absolute, Ground of Being, Causal Emptiness, much more. Though I suppose that doesn't matter either. Godnotgod likes to speak of Reality that way.

Address the one reality in its image.

But the problem is, it is both. It is both the One and the Many. How is it possible to speak of nonduality unless you speak of "On the one hand this, on the other hand that?".

I think the issue may lay in that I see manifest reality as relative; unmanfiest reality as Absolute. In nonduality, Casual Emptiness is seen and known within manifest, or relative reality.

How do you talk to this? At the very best you allude to in its paradoxical nature. You do not communicate a paradox by defining it. Right?

Address the one truth in all things in its image. Don't be intimidated by talk of "just your opinion," it's understood (by most) that there is nothing else.

A grasp of non-dualism doesn't lie in anything said, but in the foundation of image that supports what is said.

I don't believe nondualism can be grasped at all. Grasping is a mental conceptual model that you can look at and say "it's that". Nonduality is "just this". I do agree with you however to try to speak to its nature in experience of the relative. That's not bad. But to see it, you really, truly have to pull back the veil, so to speak. Then you see it. It's right there, in everything, all along. The only thing that prevents it being seen is the illusion of reality we put in front of it with our constructed ideas of truth. In this sense of the word, its not "higher" at all!!

I am, and have been trying to avoid getting embroiled in trying to defend it as some concept, which it is not. It is not monism. But what happens is the words get seized upon and sought to fit into some other conceptual model. There are no words to define it. It simple Is. In everything.

 

[YmirGF]

Sometimes it's better to be the fool.

I think I've certainly earned that, in spades, LOL.

*picks up phone*
*punches in the number for CERN*
*ring, ring*
"Oh hi there, I'm a budding mystic and was wondering when some of your physicists might be free to do lunch and hash out some of the work they are doing. I'm here to help and available this coming Wednesday."
"Hello... hello...."
*wonders why they hung up*

 

[crossfire]

Not that we don't see that here too? Fortunately, there are no beheadings allowed in this country, nor a government run by those who show God's love this way. :bow:


Bingo. As I posted in my previous response about the ego, you do move beyond the ego, though the ego is always part of you, just as your body is with its arms and legs and guts and things. The difference is just this: the center of your self-identification moves beyond the body (though your retain the body and it is part of what makes you "you"); and the center of self-identity moves beyond the ego in the same way. It's still your personality, emotional makeup, quirks and whatnot, but who "you" are moves into something "larger" more expansive, all the way "up" until that identification is with, and as, the All. God.

That is not arrogance, as arrogance is a feature of the ego. Whenever arrogance arises, that means I'm back in my ego struggling with the question, "Who am I?". It's a symptom of something that needs to be looked at and dealt with.

I just happened to be reading this sutta when I checked this thread:

People are intent on the idea of 'I-making' and attached to the idea of 'other-making.' Some don't realize this, nor do they see it as an arrow. But to one who, having extracted this arrow, sees, [the thought] 'I am doing,'http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/ud/ud.6.06.than.html#fn-1 doesn't occur; 'Another is doing,' doesn't occur. This human race is possessed by conceit bound by conceit, tied down by conceit. Speaking hurtfully because of their views they don't go beyond the wandering-on.​

 

[Windwalker]

Sometimes it's better to be the fool.

Amen to that. Conformity is the death of spirit in us.

 

[YmirGF]

Bingo. As I posted in my previous response about the ego, you do move beyond the ego, though the ego is always part of you, just as your body is with its arms and legs and guts and things. The difference is just this: the center of your self-identification moves beyond the body (though your retain the body and it is part of what makes you "you"); and the center of self-identity moves beyond the ego in the same way. It's still your personality, emotional makeup, quirks and whatnot, but who "you" are moves into something "larger" more expansive, all the way "up" until that identification is with, and as, the All. God.

I am in 100% agreement... but have long since left even this idea behind.

That is not arrogance, as arrogance is a feature of the ego. Whenever arrogance arises, that means I'm back in my ego struggling with the question, "Who am I?". It's a symptom of something that needs to be looked at and dealt with.

Hehe. In my view, "who" I am isn't near as delicious as "what" "I" am.

 

[Windwalker]

I just happened to be reading this sutta when I checked this thread:

People are intent on the idea of 'I-making' and attached to the idea of 'other-making.' Some don't realize this, nor do they see it as an arrow. But to one who, having extracted this arrow, sees, [the thought] 'I am doing,'http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/ud/ud.6.06.than.html#fn-1 doesn't occur; 'Another is doing,' doesn't occur. This human race is possessed by conceit bound by conceit, tied down by conceit. Speaking hurtfully because of their views they don't go beyond the wandering-on.​

Yes, that's beautifully put.

There's one thing I hear in some teachers that always rubs me a little wrong, though it may be just a translation issue. They say we need to "get rid" of the ego, or we need to destroy it. I cannot agree with that, except in sort of hyperbole of the importance to not be embedded within the ego in our self-identification. We NEED our egos. We need to understand our individuality in the world. But what we also need to do is to expand that center of self to be less fixated on that separate self, but to include the other, the world, the universe, into the self-sense. I don't know who is was that designates it this way but he say I-I. That's wonderful.

I and my Father are One, is perfect in this sense. My identity and the All are indistinguishable, BUT, I am seeing the world through this body, this mind, this personality. It is to me, the realization of who we are, God in flesh, the incarnation. Awakening in this body as who we are: That.

Another analogy I have is that this All (Reality), is a seamless cloth upon which patterns are embroidered. We are born into and begin to awaken as one of those patterns, looking across the surface of that cloth which we don't see at the other patterns there. "Hi!", I say to your pattern. "Hello there," you respond to mine. You have unique stitching and I do. We communicate and have relations with each other, and an entire universe of reality is born based on these distinctions.

Then one day, this pattern here, that pattern there, for some reason, look within in such a way as they see that seamless cloth in themselves, and in others!! They are compelled to understand, they sink deep within themselves into that seamless cloth and find themselves moving into, and expanded out within it, touching every single pattern that exists and see those as themselves. "Love your neighbor as yourself". They then now take this awakening and see though the eyes of that pattern they are as well on that cloth, and see that cloth in the eyes of all other patterns, but they themselves have yet to awaken to that in themselves - even though it has been there from the Beginning. It surrounds them, and is within them, but they are unaware. They are in a world inside their heads of this constructed reality grown out of distinctions in the world of thoughts and ideas.


This is a metaphoric description of my personal experience.

 

[Willamena]

But the problem is, it is both. It is both the One and the Many. How is it possible to speak of nonduality unless you speak of "On the one hand this, on the other hand that?".

I think the issue may lay in that I see manifest reality as relative; unmanfiest reality as Absolute. In nonduality, Casual Emptiness is seen and known within manifest, or relative reality.

How do you talk to this? At the very best you allude to in its paradoxical nature. You do not communicate a paradox by defining it. Right?

"Of" and "about" are the problem. It's not possible to speak of a nondual reality or about a nondual reality--our langauges were born of and about duality. To speak of nondual, you have be it in your words.

That's poetry.

I have to go to a meeting.

 

[Windwalker]

"Of" and "about" are the problem. It's not possible to speak of a nondual reality or about a nondual reality--our langauges were born of and about duality. To speak of nondual, you have be it in your words.

That's poetry.

I have to go to a meeting.

Exactly. It's like the Matrix. No one can tell you what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. Take the red pill, baby.

 

[Windwalker]

I just felt to add this that came to me while walking after lunch today. Why science and mysticism are compatible is answered in this quote from the Upanishads:

"And the Illumined soul goes up and down these worlds, assuming whatever form it likes, consuming whatever food it desires, chanting, Oh wonderful!, Oh wonderful!, Oh wonderful!"​

 

[Willamena]

I am, and have been trying to avoid getting embroiled in trying to defend it as some concept, which it is not. It is not monism. But what happens is the words get seized upon and sought to fit into some other conceptual model. There are no words to define it. It simple Is. In everything.

I too am not a fan of throwing images at each other of something that lacks a literal image. I do think, however, that it does not lack for a non-literal image that can be implied, and implied, until it is grasped.

If that weren't so, you and I wouldn't be talking now.

 

[Open_Minded]

Thank you OM! BTW, shorting your username like this is perfect. OM, described in a Wiki article thus, "Hindus believe that as creation began, the divine, all-encompassing consciousness took the form of the first and original vibration manifesting as sound "OM", when you expand that with Open-Minded (OM), well there you have it! To Realize OM, you must open the mind.

Thanks Windwalker - I'm complimented. ....

Anyway, you have a lot of catch up to do in this thread. I'll jump back in here when I have some fresh insight and energy to bring to it. I do however realize there is no way logic arguments will "make sense" to anywhere where they "get it" using logic and reason. At best, logic and reason takes you do the door realizing logic and reason can go now further. Then it takes the will of mind to step beyond and "see".

Later....

Oh... I don't know that I'll do the work of catching up on the thread. I'm not in much of a position to add anything enlightening anyway.

I do wonder though - and I've a brother who is a scientist - how science can be done without some type of mysticism. My brother does not pursue it to the extent that I do... but (though he would never admit it) I do think he let's go and allows himself to experience (rather than analyze) when he gazing at the stars, or during any one of his many other outdoor activities. I've always known him to fully engage in the experience, often to my parent's frustration when we were children. Of all their children (and they had many) it was this particular brother who was most often reminded to "think before you act". In his own way he knows silence as well, and experiencing silence.

And I do think his natural wonder at all that is - his natural abiltiy to sink into an experience and let go of the questioning and the analyzing, and that he knows what it means to really experience silence have all enhanced his scientific quests.

I know he wouldn't call himself a mystic, but I would (and I know him well enough to make the statement).

(just saying ..... )

 

[godnotgod]

Another analogy I have is that this All (Reality), is a seamless cloth upon which patterns are embroidered. We are born into and begin to awaken as one of those patterns, looking across the surface of that cloth which we don't see at the other patterns there. "Hi!", I say to your pattern. "Hello there," you respond to mine. You have unique stitching and I do. We communicate and have relations with each other, and an entire universe of reality is born based on these distinctions.

Then one day, this pattern here, that pattern there, for some reason, look within in such a way as they see that seamless cloth in themselves, and in others!

But many times, they do not see the seamless cloth. Social indoctrination reinforces the idea of separateness, of individuality. We even have names for it, like 'rugged individualism'. The sanctioning and incessant nurturing of competitive behavior reinforces and galvanizes this idea. We are hit from all angles; from our governments, our schools, our parents, and especially from the advertising industry, which spends billions to make sure we create a sense of individuality and uniqueness, and that this creation is better, superior, faster, smarter in some way. Sex sells.

I will even go so far as to say that our governments do not want us to see the seamless cloth, do not want us to see that, in reality, we are one people who have power, in spite of the facade we call 'democracy', or 'communism'. Our institutionalized religions do not want us to realize the seamless cloth, except in the context that such a cloth is in full control of a heavenly deity, in spite of the idea that we are each supposed to have a soul in need of salvation, which religion, via fear, uses as the bargaining chip.

Our social indoctrination is designed, from the get-go, to put us to sleep and keep us asleep. Sleeping people then keep other sleeping people asleep. Those who take on a different view suffer the consequences of ostracization, and even condemnation and demonization, as a policy the Christian church is now aggressively pursuing against mystical views such as Zen, Wicca, New Age, Yoga, etc., even evolution, all of which nurture the opening of the inner eye that sees the seamless cloth, and which pose a threat to the supremacy of the controlling dogma. In times past, the Church all but obliterated the Gnostics, and succeeded in transforming the mystic Yeshu into the modern Jesus, as a means of robbing spiritual freedom away from men and ensuring its control over the human spirit.

But the cat has been let out of the proverbial bag, and, in spite of the frenzied efforts of those who want to stuff it back in, the word is out: the seamless cloth is real, and one of it's metaphors are the very real Imaginal Cells responsible for the transformation of the caterpillar into the butterfly.

"It’s the caterpillar’s job to resist the butterfly and the butterfly’s job to become stronger because of the opposition to its advance."

I encourage both rationalists and mystics to check out the following:

Imaginal Cells | The Caterpillar’s Job to Resist the Butterfly

 

[Windwalker]

I'm wanting to take a different approach to try to talk about this in a way that perhaps overcomes any language that alienates such as saying "higher" and whatnot. I think it will, hopefully, become clear in what context that is meant that avoids the connotations of value judgment.

Open_Minded just contributed something vitally important to this discussion. In referring to her scientist brother she said, "In his own way he knows silence as well, and experiencing silence." That is key. "Knowing silence". Let me explain and offer a different model to try to talk about this. Please bear with me.

If we are to try to tell someone what music is we normally speak of notes and melodies and rhythm. But what music really is, is blend of Sound and Silence. If there were no silence, there would be no ability to discern the sound. It would be a wash of noise. In fact, the greater the silence, the more pronounced the sound, the more distinct, the more beautiful it is. Silence creates contrast.

Within my meditation practices at home, the deeper my mind enters into quite, the more illuminated what is seen and experienced becomes by virtue of silence. At times, as the mind become utterly still and quite, each flame of a candle becomes a living beauty to behold, each object full of presence. I walk outside and hear a bird sing. In that moment all that is, is in the sound. Life sings out through that bird, but not just that bird, but that bird is an expression of All. It is that All. It is always there singing. But we don't hear it, see it, smell it, taste it because our minds cannot discern it because they are occupied awash in noise.

The mystical experience is about clearing away the illusion that the noise is reality, which we assume because its what we have acclimated ourselves to. We don't see the noise. We assume that noise is the way of things. Until you clear it away. Then, it becomes apparent. The noise was an illusion of reality. It hid reality beyond it. Reality is seen through Silence. It is the backdrop against which everything is see and experienced, against which everything arises. And without it nothing whatsoever would be heard, seen, tasted, or experienced. What is "beyond" this or that, is simply a degree of our ability to experience that Silence, and expose the world as it "Is", beyond the noise.

Now none of this has anything to do with ones intelligence, whether or not they are a mythic believer, whether they are a magic believer, whether they are a believer in the truth of science, etc. Everyone, and anyone experiences this world as it is at all times. Everyone. Bar none. But not everyone hears it or sees it with the conscious, waking mind. One can hear that same note playing every day, year after year, then one day something shifts, a moment of clarity arises and that note sings as it has never been heard or experienced before. It's the same note! But it's a universe within it, that was never seen before! He didn't go transcending off to some other realm "out there", but opened in himself to the world right here, always and ever just now. He experienced that Silence, through the object that was arising. Emptiness within form. Shunyata. You do not hear silence. You hear within silence.

Music is sound and silence.

How someone then tries to talk about there experience of that is then going to be against a mental framework of the world, whether that is mythical gods, or some rationalist framework, or in some metamodel of the world. But now we are talking about pencil drawings on a piece of paper. There are lines we draw that give the illusion of hierarchies (now we touching on my language here). But those hierarchies do not exist in reality. There is no higher or lower in reality, as these are simply ways we try to map these things out to talk about them in some fashion. They aren't hard, fast truths that we club each other over the head with. A stage or a level is really more like asking "how many trees can you see standing where you are right now". It's really more a matter of how much is one able to see at any given time. How much of the world are they able to include in their experience. How much of the data hitting them are they able to perceive.

The illusion of the hierarchical model is that we like to draw straight lines mapping a point A and a point Z with a line between them. The goal is to move more to point Z as the "highest" point. And this now comes to the paradox I've been trying to get at. That artificial straight line of 'lower and higher', is actually just points added to an expanding ring of circles drawn on a piece of paper with a pencil. Each wider circle takes in more of the surface area of the paper. At its widest ring, it is the fullest experience of "the world" as it covers the most area. But this is just the experience of the lead drawn on the paper. God, or Spirit, or Reality, or Emptiness, is not laying at the end of those lines! "It" is the paper itself upon which all lines are drawn!

It is the white paper, the silence, the emptiness that all lines are seen and experienced against. Without that Contrast, there would be no lines whatsoever. Every single point on that paper, is in contact with the paper! Every single point can see themselves against that paper when they can see beyond the marks of the lead of the pencil they identify with. It doesn't matter, when in time you have lived, how advanced or how simple of a person you are.

We exist. And we exist on that Paper. The more we see "Reality", is really more a matter of seeing what simply has always been there, at every "stage" of development in our lives. The only "higher" that exists, is really how much more fullness of the surface of that paper is experienced by how wide our circles are on the paper. But that paper does not change. It is the same paper at the smallest circle as at the widest circle. It is the same Freedom from the lines no matter where the line is.

When you experience that clarity and see "what is", you are experiencing Silence. Silence is nothing.

 

[godnotgod]

Admittedly, one would never be tempted to claim that the imaginary friends of a schizophrenic are "within" the confines of Reason. But we would not, without careful consideration, automatically exalt the schizophrenic experience as being somehow beyond Reason, or surpassing it, or being otherwise above it on some sort of hierarchy leading to happiness or understanding. To justify such a hierarchical ordering, beyond mere personal preference, requires Reason.

If we don't need Reason to justify such a hierarchical ordering, than just based on personal preference, I will claim that we should imagine a pyramid leading to Reality. Mystical experiences are near the bottom, and Reason is "beyond" the mystical experience, near the top, since it more accurately and exactly describes reality. Now Reason is the one "surpassing" or "going beyond" the giant fog of the mystical experience.

My purpose here is not to advocate that view, so much as to point out that godnotgod and others in this thread are taking their views for granted. We all agree that the mystical experience and Reason are different. Whether different means above, below, or just different, is debatable.

Knowledge derived via Reason is hierarchical. It is built upon logical premises, in other words, via the accumulation of factual data. Science employs a structured, formal method of logic and analysis in its approach and in its conclusions. All of this is based upon thought and concepts formulated by thought.

The method of the mystic is not hierarchical. It's truth is arrived at not via accumulation of factual data, but via subtraction of opinion, belief, concept, etc, until one arrives at no-thing, until the mind is emptied, even of itself, because during the process of kenosis, it becomes apparent that the mind is a self-created principle. IOW, it is an illusion. The mystic's focus is on that aspect of conscious attention prior to the point at which the mind conceptualizes what it knows. (ie; 'metaphysic', not metaphysics) In other words, it is a direct approach which short-circuits the thinking process. That is what the Zen koan does, quite deliberately, but indirectly, so that the rational mind doesn't see it coming, and ZAP! No, it is not the same mental condition as that of a lobotomized frog. It is actually heightened awareness and attention over and above that of the thinking mind. It is beyond Reason in that it is not limited by Reason, and is, therefore, free.. Because it is beyond Reason, it seems paradoxical, and even nonsensical to the rational mind. As I pointed out earlier from a quote by Osho sorry1, the mystic's experience is paradoxical because nature is paradoxical, and the mystical experience is a mirror reflection of nature. In Windwalker's words, it is unmediated attention to what is, and what is, is thus. No effort is made to form any idea about what is, and what is, always is. In leaving Reason behind, one also leaves Time behind, and enters the Silent World, where there is no time, where there is no history. That place is now; not the now of the fleeting split-second, but the Now that is always here, timeless and still. It is complete, and so there is no hierarchical system needed to arrive there, because you are already there. You have always been there, but the rational mind says you are always leaving or arriving, but you never quite arrive, and on and on you go, because you are locked into an illusory concept of the mind called Time. So, in order to travel from there to the Here and Now, the incessant chatter of the thinking, grasping mind (ie; 'monkey mind') sorry1 must somehow become quiet. This can be be done via meditation, for example, or yoga. When small (ie; 'limited') mind is sufficiently subdued, Zennists say that 'Big Mind' comes into play. The pathway to Big Mind is intuitive, not rational. The one sees, the other thinks.

Reason cannot encompass the mystical view, but the mystical view can (and does) encompass Reason. As I pointed out earlier, facts, in and of themselves, do not tell us what the nature of Reality is; the mystical view puts facts in their proper context, puts the horse back in front of the cart.

When we listen to a concert, it is the music that comes first, and then we know what the notes are about. If you stop to analyze the notes, you will miss the music.

Shhh!....Listen!

Q: 'What is the sound of one hand, clapping?'
A: 'Oh, Master, I have at last heard the sound beyond all sounds!'

 

[godnotgod]

If we are to try to tell someone what music is we normally speak of notes and melodies and rhythm. But what music really is, is blend of Sound and Silence. If there were no silence, there would be no ability to discern the sound. It would be a wash of noise. In fact, the greater the silence, the more pronounced the sound, the more distinct, the more beautiful it is. Silence creates contrast.

Alan Watts talks about how Everything comes out of Nothing, how Nothing is essential to Everything, just as Space is essential to Solid. In that talk, he also includes sound, and says that all sounds are not only contrasted against silence, but actually come out of silence. This is another way of saying that, contrary to popular opinion, the present creates the past, and not the other way around. Sound is always NOW. The past cannot create the present because it is already dead. It is the ship that creates the wake, and not vice-versa.

I walk outside and hear a bird sing. In that moment all that is, is in the sound. Life sings out through that bird, but not just that bird, but that bird is an expression of All. It is that All. It is always there singing.

Thank you! I thought I was the only one! The only other person I have heard describe it this way is Suzuki Roshi.

The mystical experience is about clearing away the illusion that the noise is reality, which we assume because its what we have acclimated ourselves to. We don't see the noise. We assume that noise is the way of things. Until you clear it away. Then, it becomes apparent. The noise was an illusion of reality. It hid reality beyond it. Reality is seen through Silence. It is the backdrop against which everything is see and experienced, against which everything arises. And without it nothing whatsoever would be heard, seen, tasted, or experienced. What is "beyond" this or that, is simply a degree of our ability to experience that Silence, and expose the world as it "Is", beyond the noise.

Yes. Because of the noise we mistake for 'reality', it absorbs our attention, and we focus on the foreground of our existence, "I", and lose touch with the background. Here is Suzuki Roshi on the subject:

“To live in the realm of Buddha nature means to die as a small being, moment after moment.

When we lose our balance we die, but at the same time we also develop ourselves, we grow. Whatever we see is changing, losing its balance. The reason everything looks beautiful is because it is out of balance, but its background is always in perfect harmony.

This is how everything exists in the realm of Buddha-nature, losing its balance against a background of perfect harmony. So if you see things without realizing the background of Buddha-nature, everything appears to be in the form of suffering. But if you understand the background of existence, you realize that suffering itself is how we live, and how we extend our life. So in Zen sometimes we emphasize the imbalance or disorder of life.”

A stage or a level is really more like asking "how many trees can you see standing where you are right now". It's really more a matter of how much is one able to see at any given time. How much of the world are they able to include in their experience. How much of the data hitting them are they able to perceive.

In the West, we are taught to develop concentrated focus, which results in a kind of linear scanning of the world, bit by bit, as Watts points out. This is defined as 'Spotlight Attention'. In the East, however, people are taught to take in the entire view all-at-once. This kind of view is referred to as 'Floodlight Attention'.

God, or Spirit, or Reality, or Emptiness, is not laying at the end of those lines! "It" is the paper itself upon which all lines are drawn!

But that paper does not change. It is the same paper at the smallest circle as at the widest circle. It is the same Freedom from the lines no matter where the line is.

When you experience that clarity and see "what is", you are experiencing Silence. Silence is nothing.

"The universe is the Absolute [the paper] as seen through the glass of Time, Space, and Causation" [the lines]
Vivikenanda

Thanks again, Windwalker, for such excellent clarification.

 

[Willamena]

I'm wanting to take a different approach to try to talk about this in a way that perhaps overcomes any language that alienates such as saying "higher" and whatnot. I think it will, hopefully, become clear in what context that is meant that avoids the connotations of value judgment.

Open_Minded just contributed something vitally important to this discussion. In referring to her scientist brother she said, "In his own way he knows silence as well, and experiencing silence." That is key. "Knowing silence". Let me explain and offer a different model to try to talk about this. Please bear with me.

If we are to try to tell someone what music is we normally speak of notes and melodies and rhythm. But what music really is, is blend of Sound and Silence. If there were no silence, there would be no ability to discern the sound. It would be a wash of noise. In fact, the greater the silence, the more pronounced the sound, the more distinct, the more beautiful it is. Silence creates contrast.

Within my meditation practices at home, the deeper my mind enters into quite, the more illuminated what is seen and experienced becomes by virtue of silence. At times, as the mind become utterly still and quite, each flame of a candle becomes a living beauty to behold, each object full of presence. I walk outside and hear a bird sing. In that moment all that is, is in the sound. Life sings out through that bird, but not just that bird, but that bird is an expression of All. It is that All. It is always there singing. But we don't hear it, see it, smell it, taste it because our minds cannot discern it because they are occupied awash in noise.

The mystical experience is about clearing away the illusion that the noise is reality, which we assume because its what we have acclimated ourselves to. We don't see the noise. We assume that noise is the way of things. Until you clear it away. Then, it becomes apparent. The noise was an illusion of reality. It hid reality beyond it. Reality is seen through Silence. It is the backdrop against which everything is see and experienced, against which everything arises. And without it nothing whatsoever would be heard, seen, tasted, or experienced. What is "beyond" this or that, is simply a degree of our ability to experience that Silence, and expose the world as it "Is", beyond the noise.

Now none of this has anything to do with ones intelligence, whether or not they are a mythic believer, whether they are a magic believer, whether they are a believer in the truth of science, etc. Everyone, and anyone experiences this world as it is at all times. Everyone. Bar none. But not everyone hears it or sees it with the conscious, waking mind. One can hear that same note playing every day, year after year, then one day something shifts, a moment of clarity arises and that note sings as it has never been heard or experienced before. It's the same note! But it's a universe within it, that was never seen before! He didn't go transcending off to some other realm "out there", but opened in himself to the world right here, always and ever just now. He experienced that Silence, through the object that was arising. Emptiness within form. Shunyata. You do not hear silence. You hear within silence.

Music is sound and silence.

Can't intellect be approached in the same way that you've described an approach to music and bird song? If not, why not? It is form, too, and emptiness.

Needless to say, I disagree that mysticism has nothing to do with intellect.

How someone then tries to talk about there experience of that is then going to be against a mental framework of the world, whether that is mythical gods, or some rationalist framework, or in some metamodel of the world. But now we are talking about pencil drawings on a piece of paper. There are lines we draw that give the illusion of hierarchies (now we touching on my language here). But those hierarchies do not exist in reality. There is no higher or lower in reality, as these are simply ways we try to map these things out to talk about them in some fashion. They aren't hard, fast truths that we club each other over the head with. A stage or a level is really more like asking "how many trees can you see standing where you are right now". It's really more a matter of how much is one able to see at any given time. How much of the world are they able to include in their experience. How much of the data hitting them are they able to perceive.

The illusion of the hierarchical model is that we like to draw straight lines mapping a point A and a point Z with a line between them. The goal is to move more to point Z as the "highest" point. And this now comes to the paradox I've been trying to get at. That artificial straight line of 'lower and higher', is actually just points added to an expanding ring of circles drawn on a piece of paper with a pencil. Each wider circle takes in more of the surface area of the paper. At its widest ring, it is the fullest experience of "the world" as it covers the most area. But this is just the experience of the lead drawn on the paper. God, or Spirit, or Reality, or Emptiness, is not laying at the end of those lines! "It" is the paper itself upon which all lines are drawn!

It is the white paper, the silence, the emptiness that all lines are seen and experienced against. Without that Contrast, there would be no lines whatsoever. Every single point on that paper, is in contact with the paper! Every single point can see themselves against that paper when they can see beyond the marks of the lead of the pencil they identify with. It doesn't matter, when in time you have lived, how advanced or how simple of a person you are.

We exist. And we exist on that Paper. The more we see "Reality", is really more a matter of seeing what simply has always been there, at every "stage" of development in our lives. The only "higher" that exists, is really how much more fullness of the surface of that paper is experienced by how wide our circles are on the paper. But that paper does not change. It is the same paper at the smallest circle as at the widest circle. It is the same Freedom from the lines no matter where the line is.

When you experience that clarity and see "what is", you are experiencing Silence. Silence is nothing.

Nicely said.

 

[Open_Minded]

Can't intellect be approached in the same way that you've described an approach to music and bird song? If not, why not? It is form, too, and emptiness.

Yes ... Yes... it can.

"Knowing silence" is a natural part of being human and can manifest itself in a myriad of ways. Honestly before technology brought us continuous "surround sound" knowing silence was a daily part of life for most humans.

But ... yes... intellect can be approached in the same way. For instance, in one area of science, mathematics.... needs silence. Mathematics is a language all its own. Many see it as the "language of the Universe". It requires attention to the "spaces in between" as it were as well as to the actual equations on paper.

Please understand when I use the term "knowing silence" that this is not a literal sentence - more a pointer to an experience we humans are very capable of not only having, but encouraging and growing.

There isn't as much "mystery" to mysticism as many would have us believe. The capacity to "know silence" is within every human to one degree or another, just as the capacity for music and the arts, and logic is within every human to one degree or another.

I am not skilled in any way shape or form in music, but I can appreciate music and I can still sing (whether it is possible for me to keep a beat, or not, is irrelevant when my only purpose in singing is to sing). For me I am still singing - although it may be painful to the ears of my family members, it is still singing to me.

Mysticism isn't all that different. Every human has the capacity for "knowing silence". It is something some humans are gifted with (in the same way some humans are gifted with music). But it is not something only available to the "gifted".

Both of my parents know how to appreciate silence. My father started meditating when I was a young teenager. By the time I was 16-17 years old he was giving me books to read on the subject, knowing that I would benefit from the practice. I am quite sure he did the same with all of his children. Most of my siblings meditate. But I am the only one who would self-identify as a "mystic" and that is because I am the only one who has pursued it with intense discipline. My brothers and sisters all have their gifts music, science, etc... my "gift" has been mysticism.

But that doesn't mean my siblings who don't have the "gift" for mysticism are not capable of knowing silence, anymore than it means I am not capable of music, even though I am not "gifted" in music.

My scientist brother is very capable of knowing silence, and his ability to know silence and this ability (I would think) informs his life ... his whole life ... his science included.

 

[Windwalker]

Can't intellect be approached in the same way that you've described an approach to music and bird song? If not, why not? It is form, too, and emptiness.

Needless to say, I disagree that mysticism has nothing to do with intellect.

It depends what you are looking at with the intellect. If you are focusing on all the surface features and trying to understand what lays beyond that it becomes difficult to say the least. As OM pointed out, you look between the spaces. As godnotgod said, you "defocus" (in so many words). It's a different type of intelligence. The mind is still used, but its not an empirical-analytic approach. Call it a "spiritual intelligence". It is a perceptual awareness marrying mind and spirit.

In my meditation practice I go between a concentrative meditation, learning to focus and stay the mind on a single point, and awareness meditation also known as defocal or Insight meditation. Godnotgod describes that to a point above. The effect of this for me personally, is to take what opens between the spaces and hold the mind there, entering within those spaces and allowing what is "unseen" to the mind within them to expose themselves. The effect is to say the least, "Enlightening". When I speak of illumination, it is just that, the ordinary objects of our experience in life, sparkle and glisten with interior light. Every molecule of everything has this "energy" within that the reasoning mind operating off of mental models of reality, simply cannot penetrate within to see, as it relies upon those to "see"..

This is why I have said again and again, it is not comprehended, but apprehended. It is not "out there", but "already there". We just aren't using the right set of eyes, the correct sort of intelligence to see it. Eye of flesh, eye of mind, eye of spirit.

There's a Hindu Mantra that I love to recite call the Gayatrai mantra. In Sanskrit it goes, "Om bhur bhuvaha svaha, Tat savitur varenyam, Bhargo devasya dhimahi, Dhiyo yonah prachodayat". One way to "translate" this speaks to what we are saying. "Through the coming, going, and the balance of life, the essential nature which illuminates existence is the adorable One. May all perceive through subtle intellect the brilliance of Enlightenment."

"Subtle intellect". Yes. :bow: