Someone asked: “What would cause mystical experience?”

Someone asked: “What would cause mystical experience?”

In the broadest sense, wider experience in all forms comes through evolution, both in the external and spiritual sense. So it is the growth of the soul—through many life times—that results in mystical or spiritual experience. So, to some degree, people tend to be born with an inclination toward such experiences. As a result some people have spontaneous mystical experiences that appear to have little relationship with the life they are living. If one happens to be, as a result of many lives of growth and experience, at a point of readiness for revelation then a seemingly trivial life experience—something seen or even a thought, can trigger mystical experience.

But more specifically, however, there is a path—or a number of them according to needs and temperament—that accelerates evolution in a way that tends to evoke whatever immediate potential exists for spiritual experience.

Many would say that it is meditation that leads to mystical experience, and while this can be true for many, the path is much broader than that. In addition to what we come in with at birth, it is our way of life—how we think and feel and act—that determines whether our potentials for deep experiences are activated or remain latent.

The key thing is: real mystical experience includes some degree of transcendence of the little ego—that is of the little mind, emotions, and body—that we have misidentified as “I.” The question becomes then, what type of life is resonant with such transcendence? What type of life takes us beyond the little self-centered ego with its many desires and petty concerns?

First, this is a life of love and service, a life that expands our focus beyond our personal needs into the wider world of humanity and nature. The second factor is how the mind is used—the mind must be developed and educated along some line, otherwise, our ability to be helpful or creative will be limited. Third, right meditative thinking, and more universal thinking is key. The life of service, of love, of creativity, and right thinking is supported by study. Right thinking means educating and equipping the mind so that it is an instrument of service and creativity. Right thinking means optimism and focusing the mind on questions related to wisdom, questions related to the needs of humanity, and of the part we can play in making the world a little better for all who live in it.

We should understand this word “service” very broadly. The mother serves by being a good mother. The scientists serves by discoveries. The artist services by inspired creations. The statesman services by good governance that takes into account the highest good for the greatest number. We serve by thought, by communication, by words of kindness, by words of warning, by words of poetry. And most importantly, we serve by making our emotional nature clear and translucent so that it is no longer dominated, as is the usual case, by fear and selfishness.

In the way of life that is service, the key thing is motivation. There is only one true motive and that is love, broadly understood. So, we do not let our interest in personal things dominate. For instance, the desire for mystical experience should not be uppermost in our minds or condition unduly our emotions. The evocation of mystical experience is the byproduct of right living. It will come to us when it is time, according to natural and spiritual law. Such experiences are useful not only to ourselves personally, but to others, to world. It is same with meditation. Meditation should not be something pursued for its own sake. Your awakenings, your talents, are gifts for giving.

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The Fiery Angel

A short poetic essay on the nature of the soul, love, angelic life, and our incarnations in the world.

The Defining Moment

In austere beauty, the awakening and defining moment—Light falls from the apex of spirit and rises from the depths. The voice of God kills and resurrects, cutting through darkness with undeniable affirmation.

What is Spirituality: A Montague of Answers from the Best Sources

 

A compilation about the essence of spirituality, what it is, what it means, and nature of direct realization or enlightenment. A video montage of personal narratives of spiritual experience.

Flight, an Adventure in Light

Flight an Adventure in Light

Someone asked, “What is heaven?”

Well, surely heaven is not what most people think and imagine. It’s not the singing of old church hymns and, if heaven had walls, they would not be decorated with the plump cherubs of old paintings. Of angels I have no doubt there are many, though minus the feathery wings of Earth’s ornithological types. That is the trouble with the way humans picture heaven, it becomes a projection of the earthly imagination. Surely, there are no towering churches or collections of virgins for the would-be resident.

Now that said, there is a consensus in many esoteric works that the mind and emotions, being exceptionally creative, means that all these things are collectively created on a psychical level. So whatever people imagine heaven to be–personally and collectively–that it becomes for the persons who participate in that thought form. So one can easily see how–in the psychical world–crowds of devoted followers gather around their Jesus to hear the repetition of sermons. But all this must be structures, forms of the earthly experiences projected, as it were, into the skies of the the “heaven worlds.” In modern terms, an illusory matrix.

As I have it, all this described is not heaven but a collection of human counterfeits, the very same counterfeits one meets with in the minds of humans generally. How then to elevate the term and concept “heaven” beyond its usual earthly import? “Structures,” which is to say forms and materials, are the stuff of worldly life. But there is something else, something truly spiritual, that casts its luster over, in and through the earthly world. The word I adopt for this is “archetype.” There is a pattern in and through and behind everything an archetypal beauty being the soul of every form. Truly perceived, life in the external world becomes a window through which the real heaven can be seen. It is not structure, but the creative energy behind.

The nearest analog to heaven in the objective world is light, color, sound, and geometry. These suggest the archetypal pattern on which all is based. To put it otherwise, the soul of every truly beautiful thing and experience of life, exists as a living and dynamic archetype in spirit, and that includes all that every individual is in their deepest self. The archetype of thought, emotion, consciousness, nature, and of the entire cosmic expanse, all exist in “heaven.”

“Hell” is in the life hear on Earth, and heaven also, when we can see through to it. That being the case, we need not wait for death to know what heaven is, because it is present now within and about us. It is a living presence in and through us and in and through all things. So then, yes, it is Consciousness–a whole rainbow of consciousness. All that people love and cherish about external life is the shadow of real life, the life called “heaven.” Not one good thing in world—in past, in present, or in future time—not one good thing is ever lost. The good unfolds always in an infinitude of wonder that is life. The heart of all is good beyond dreaming and it lies open before us now and through all the lives and deaths on which our spirit rides.

And about evidence there is this:

http://www.near-death.com/evidence.html

The Relativity of Galaxies and Body Heat

The cosmic, the universe, the all beyond yet inclusive of Earth, the vast ocean of energy-matter; the misty turn of galaxies and suns, bright lights and luminous clouds and further on, unfathomable curtain of night; so many well designed flames, so many mysteries of light; and here below we focus small, reduced, microscopic, with body heat no match for stars. Or more, we find it so by our binding in time, by animal nature, by blood, by minute psychologies and small pains, troubles rendered in large illusions, yet not one such visible from Space. But thought of the universe is more magical than time and lights brain with new fires; so then, small links to great and the sunlight spaces of the cosmic worlds are close as love.

Sacred Word

We would like perpetual renewal of  life and vitality.  We would like to feel that dawn is coming with a rush of new benevolent energy.   We would be like to be in spirit like the best morning of our life.  Today, I reiterate a bit of transpersonal semantics  conducive to renewal:

A word is, or might be, sacred.

I do not fancy myself religious in any conventional sense, but there is a good idea in the religious of the world, that of “sacred word.” I do not say it is in bibles or churches. But it might be in you.  And if we were to meet, I would listen for it. You might not even know you spoke it, but I fancy that I would know.

Metaphysical People are somewhat Crazy

 

Most metaphysical students I’ve met are somewhat crazy. The more materially oriented are also crazy, but their craziness is less complex, less sticky, less profound. The average man’s craziness does not blaze like a full moon. Perhaps I’m crazy to think thus, but if so there’s a bit more evidence for my case.

Most human crazy-making activity arises from negative emotions and lack of illuminated thought that would make better spiritual alignment possible. We learn to think, and if we are clear, focused, and orderly about it, we may begin to find our way out of the thought-maze, and learn to reject much that then shows itself to us as childish and impossible.

Clear thinking operates under the sunshine from our higher or spiritual nature. Then, our mind would not simply be intellect in the conventional sense, but a “mind of light.”

Mysterious Words

I create letters, blends, sounds, spaces, waves… I’ve watched the play from childhood. I remember how the play came, dreamlike, automatic… watched now from a distance I see the faint stirring of purpose in it. There was a hidden singing not mentioned in the grammar books. The unfolding syntax still looks magical as if by angelic help. But now we come to divinity manifest in consciousness, and the meaning of it.

Before words, worlds, kingdoms, I am amazed. Words spring spontaneously into sound, each as mysterious as my forgotten first word. I cannot find the full depth of their silent origin anymore than I can find the full depth of space. I know the subatomic structures of the brain do not yield the secret of words; their shapes and sounds are more spacious and multidimensional. I follow the sounds, and am alive in the creation and in the origin. I create with words and am created by them. I feel their musical patterns move from spherical to complex geometries, becoming vital spinning stars, life forms, the shapes of thoughts in space. I try to mirror the world of original patterns; it is impossible art, but full of joy.

Research and Esoteric Respective on DNA, brain, and body

To summarize the esoteric perspective in modern terms, brain and DNA are the physical nodes of a multi-dimensional matrix of energy. The energy matrix is composed of etheric, emotional, mental, and spiritual fields. These are the extensions of our “psyche” or identity that stands behind and works through–and are functionally integral with the physical body, brain, DNA, and glandular system. Emotional, mental, and spiritual consciousness exists as energy fields that are, in essence, independent of the physical body (as in after death condition) but dependent on the body while in physical embodiment.

So brain and DNA are not a fundamental cause but secondary causes. This is apparent from a study of the ageless wisdom. What may not be so apparent is the extent to which this understanding is staring to shift the orthodox scientific perspective–at least so far as the pioneers are concerned:

“DNA might be the ultimate “Dynamic Noetic Antenna” Dynamic meaning vibrant, evolving, systemic; Noetic meaning knowledge, pattern, recognition; and Antenna meaning antenna, receiver, tuner. Maybe DNA is nature’s version of a profoundly complex radiolike circuit that receives information rather than creating it. Of course, it will create information too, but it may be designed to selectively register and read electromagnetic patterns in the body and beyond. “
“The Living Energy Universe,” Gary Schwartz, Ph.D & Linda Russek, Ph.D

“Through the research of Dr. Lipton and other leading-edge scientists, stunning new discoveries have been made about the interaction between your mind and body and the processes by which cells receive information. It shows that genes and DNA do not control our biology, that instead DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell, including the energetic messages emanating from our thoughts. Using simple language, illustrations, humor, and everyday examples, he demonstrates how the new science of Epigenetics is revolutionizing our understanding of the link between mind and matter and the profound effects it has on our personal lives and the collective life of our species.” “The Biology of Belief,” Bruce Lipton, PhD

“beliefs and emotions can trigger the expression of DNA strands.”
“The Genie in Your Genes” Dawson Church

The Living Matrix Movie Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne-I7JTXCbo

“…emotional and mental diseases are associated with specific imbalances or disturbances in the chakras and human energy fields.”
“The Chakras and the Human Energy Fields,” Dr. Shafica Karagulla

The Biology of Belief | IONS Library | Institute of Noetic Sciences

Addenda:  Some References to Peer Reviewed Journals

“Because of four major clinical, prospective studies done in three countries, and a host of papers published in peer-reviewed journals, the near-death experience today is the number one choice of scientists worldwide to study consciousness itself…Medical schools and medical personnel in country after country are now acknowledging this: that the near-death experience is real, valid, and verifiable – a condition they must deal with – that defies what is known medically about the human body and the brain/mind assembly.”
http://books.google.com/books?id=dvsO1nT80eAC&pg=PT169&dq=%22peer+reviewed+journals+%22++%22near+death+experiences%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=n8GCUeWSNYyE8QTqjYDYAQ&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAA

“Existing research is mainly in the disciplines of medicine, psychology and psychiatry. Interest in this field of study was originally spurred by the writings of Jess E. Weiss (combat veteran who collected near-death testimony from soldiers in World War II), Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (psychiatrist), Dr. George Ritchie (psychiatrist), and Dr. Raymond Moody Jr. (psychologist and MD). Moody’s book Life After Life, which was released in 1975, brought much public attention to the topic of NDEs. This was soon to be followed by the establishment of the International Association for Near-death Studies (IANDS ) in 1981. IANDS is an international organization that encourages scientific research and education on the physical, psychological, social, and spiritual nature and ramifications of near-death experiences. Among its publications are the peer-reviewed Journal of Near-Death Studies and the quarterly newsletter Vital Signs.”
http://near-death.com/faq.html

“Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: a prospective study in the Netherlands”
http://www.pimvanlommel.nl/files/publicaties/Lancet%20artikel%20Pim%20van%20Lommel.pdf

“Because of four large clinical studies done in three countries, and a plethora of papers published in peer-reviewed journals, it can now be said that the near-death phenomenon is not caused by conditions such as: oxygen deprivation, carbon dioxide in the blood (hypercarbia), optical illusions, temporal lobe excitation/seizures, drug-induced hallucinations, depersonalization, dissociation, reliving birth trauma, culture dependence, dying brain theory, self-fulfilling prophecy, visual deception, or any other known cause. No critic or skeptic of near-death states has ever studied or researched the entire phenomenon as it occurs – which covers the conditions involved, the full slate of scenario elements, how that effects the individual, and the pattern of physiological and psychological aftereffects that tends to be lifelong. . . with both adults and children, including babes being born, after birth, toddlers, and the very young (who talk about their experience when proficient at language, or draw or act it out).”
http://www.pmhatwater.hypermart.net/resource/resource/NDEPressKit.html

Calls to Hidden Realms

 

All the chains of thought and words, the countless sounds and songs of our inner life, all make calls to hidden realms. Common words reinforce the common bondage, while the higher ones call to freedom and life. In words, these bodies of thought, a secret life and help is woven, and a beautiful magic lives in the spark between word and meaning.

The mediators of mystic potentialities surround us. I believe the most sacred invocations may slip unexpectedly into your voice and the voices of friends. See how a song repeats, how the lyrics come rounded with magic appeal, how the words hide joyous scriptures just beneath… I feel the most secret musical formulas are calls that set lines of light dancing in the air, lines of communion along which run the colors of our love for all that is luminous and beautiful. They thread instantly across mountains and seas, binding the most remote points in creative intimacy. There are voices in the lattice of lights, a vibrant intercourse, a comprehension that is the archetype of speech.

Morphing with Light–the Book

A free PDF of my new book, Morphing with Light is available:  just click the image below.   It is a collection of meditative essays and images I’ve put together over the last 20 years.   I am releasing the book to the internet under Creative Commons where you are free to share it by link, uploads or emails as you like.  Please pass it along to any and all whom you think may find it useful or beneficial. 

 

Magic and Meaning

I tried to read her in stories, and in the books called sacred and most secret, yet she eluded me. Sometimes I thought I caught a glimpse of her in nature, but it resolved into shadows. I was sure, I knew, that if there were shadows there was also light. So I invoked an elaborate alchemy of approach, yet no prescription sufficed, and she yielded not. In the stars I looked for her, but every map gave more questions and never the face I sought. Glimpses, shadows, glimmers, always the gray game but never the luminous face. I made an alter of finest quality—by this I found exactly and only my creation, nothing more. She held herself aloof from the ancient images; my charms held no appeal. We gathered to invoke her name, but to no avail. Every charm was dispersed, and every craft and every conjurer’s task was as nothing to her. All commands, all entreaties came to naught. To number and element she remained immune. Nothing cast or broken, nothing done or woven, no cycle, no intonation served.

What was the strange and mysterious place of her birth? At first I thought the ancients had sent her, and that the word of her coming was already known among the simple people, even mirrored in their rituals. Then I thought she had always been with me, waiting for the day when she could speak. But I learned she had spoken long ago, and many times since, and down the ages to present moment. She had come to me in luminous dreams I had not remembered. She sang and whispered, but I did not notice. I know now how distracted I was by my toys and tricks. Coming to this, I dropped them, and on a morning before the coming of dawn, I left all behind. I went then to the mountaintop, and sat in silence for a long while. There was nothing within, and seeming nothing without, and I felt and knew that nothing of the old was needed now. Life became simple. I had nothing and needed nothing, save something to give—and that would now be the object of my quest.

And when the sun rose, she came to me at last. Not as whisper but as thunder, not as glimmer but as a storm of light. Her shafts of song assailed the secret places of the soul. She sang a new alchemy that cannot be bound in a sacred book. Her presence unveiled a new history of the world all laid in geometry of fire. Her charms were constellations, her craft a sphere of glory, her magic the sunlight of a thousand worlds.

Hyper-Space Flowers

We might think of beauty, in the usual personality way, as a passive perception. But there is another sense of beauty, the spiritual sense, and this is beauty as an active and transformative power.

On a superficial or personality level we may have an emotional response to beauty. In this there is a sense of objective separation where we feel beauty is “out there” and that we are “in here” here looking out. Perhaps there is the sense that perception of beauty is merely a subjective projection or that light or sound has bounced from there to us and stirred some emotion in the brain.

But there is a deeper experience of beauty that is entrance into a world of pure meaning. We walk along a path find a flower. If we look and enjoy it in a personal way, in the usual way, that is fine, but from a spiritual standpoint our perception is without great significance. But now, look again; this flower is the crystallization of the spiritual, as we are, and as all things are. We need not await a prophet to receive the commandments–one small flower will bestow the necessary mandate. This is not “just a flower” before us. It is the life itself. This flower, were we to see it spiritually would change us. This flower is to us nothing less than a messenger of divinity and healer of world problems. To see it is to be seized by its fiery Beauty, to enter a higher world, to be given a command. The flower is our prophet where we become medium for its affirmation; we are then the flower expanded into new and unexpected spaces. It’s coloring radiates from us, expands through us to envelope the world.

Beauty as Transformative Power

“I was lifted high,
In sun-bright healing winds—desiring now
A greater beauty…”

— Marion Wentworth

Usually, people think of beauty as something perceived, something we subjectively attribute to an object or a person. But I find the spiritual meaning of beauty is different. Spiritual beauty is not a passive perception but an active and transformative power. It is the energy of the intuitional world. We commune with such beauty, we enter into it and it enters into us. It is unity and Fire. It is “the world of pure meaning.” This beauty is not our personal response to an object in the world. Rather, beauty is itself a multidimensional world of rainbow archetypes.

In the archetypal world the divine mosaic shines in beauty. We encounter considerable fidelity problems in translating this world of pure meaning into its best correspondences in thought and words. It is a valiant effort, yet the lesser cannot fully include the greater. Still we try to mirror it. Fortunately, the mental mirror is itself in long-term evolutionary motion.

“…beyond the Beauty that is predicated of various forms and relationships, there is a pure Transcendent Beauty, and this is a mode of the very Being of the SELF. This Beauty is not something that is beautiful. It is Self-existent and casts its luster upon all things… Ecstasy is pure Beauty, as well as pure Joy and Knowledge.”

— Pathways Through to Space, Franklin Merrell-Wolff

Shocks of Beauty

 

Why is the perception of the real world such a shocking experience? Because it is so different, so unusual, being revelatory of both the grandeur that we are, and the littleness we often express. This contrast is shocking. Imagine how the awesome beauty of reality compares to the thoughtless ignorance of our daily life. We may see something so beautiful that it is painful. The beautiful itself is not painful, but the contrast between beauty and our newly revealed ignorance is most painful. Spirit is pure Beauty and it illuminates errors by contrast.

A Dead Person Musings

I am a dead person; well, a relatively dead one. I know because there have been times when I was alive–the contrast between the two states is clear to me. Of course dead and alive are not really so binary. The world is full of the walking and talking dead. We all make our contributions to the litanies of the dead. What then is the rhetoric of the dead? It is the rhetoric of symbols larger than meaning where, like gray clouds, dense symbols obscure most of the light behind. All systems, religions, philosophies, all science, all are dead rhetoric if lacking spirit and a good motive. And while we are dead, all the good voices of past and future are likewise dead for us. But when we awaken to life, the best of past and future live in us.

Be wary of the words of dead people, be wary of me, and in this you affirm the primacy of spirit everywhere. In concert with my muses, I may occasionally flicker to life, the rest of the time you can ignore me without loss of much benefit.

Infinite Divinations

Runes, cards, I Ching, sticks, books, leaves, hands, stars, numbers, words, symbols, forms–all the same face, giving nothing or everything. Every pattern, every symbol system, the waves on the sand, the child’s face, every language, the same; the whole universe divined by I-evoking magic. Does it matter where we turn for the answers? I divine there is little virtue in the pattern, in the form itself; most virtue being in the reader or in the reader’s magic relation with “out there.” The sky and the earth are as full of Runes as is any man women or child.

The Eyes of a Lost Love

 

The mysterious life force circulates within, but is not marked as miraculous; once born to Maya, we forget.   So we go to nature, as if to better commune with creative forces.  Natural beauty provokes deep memory, for down the ages we saw the same moon and the same clouds, and the wind in the trees whispered the same secrets as now.  We come to nature as to a sacred meeting place, finding there an old friend.  We look then upon nature, as into the eyes of a long lost love, and remember.

The Faces of Christ

A mystical dream experience

Words and Wind of Silver

A narrative on a moment of inspiration related to illumination and revelation. A reflection about the contrast between the ideal, the vision, and current limitations. A meditation on the nature of words, meaning, and guidance.

Silver Shadows

A reflection on darkness and light , the nature of life, illusions, and meaning.

Fire and Crystal

Were I just landed by spaceship, I’d not expect to find the world other than it is. But having lived here a while, and known moments of grandeur, I’ve often returned to earth with a strange expectation that I would find the world more like the vision. The contrast is painful, but in time things do become brighter, fiery; all faces take on spiritual ambiguity, are luminous like sun behind clouds.

Mother Earth is dark in time, yet hides fire and crystal. The Earth brightens in time and gives revelation. The mother of God shines in crystal and the fire of the crystal. I see that the Mother of God is in the pure violet; we pass through her as a door. Then again I think I find her retreating even in the fearful face, and I fancy I find even in mockery a faint sparkle, a prelude to revelation. In the play of time and Absolute, all things hide opposites in forms that call to love regardless of condition.

Fire on Water: Timlessness in Spiritual Perception

The Wind from Space