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The
mystic path
From:
"kriptodanny" <kriptodanny@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue Feb 15, 2005 5:14 am
Subject: The mystic path
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Mystics
and mysticism have occurred in all religious cultures
and
times. Mystics have experiences and then give reports
that describe
direct experience of the divine. Mysticism can be
defined as an
altered state of consciousness. But Mysticism is not
merely a
psychological state. If we trust the reports, the mystic
state is
filled with knowledge of the divine that is both from
within and
without the mind of the mystic. The core of the mystic
experience in
report after report is the sense of an identity between
the deepest
part of the self, and the creative, binding force of all
that is.
The content of the reports are usually filled with
references to the
mystic's own religious tradition. That is, Christian
mystics usually
have "Christian" experiences that include Mary and
Jesus, and God as a
trinity. Buddhist mystics have Buddhist-colored
experiences. Hindu
mystics have Hindu-colored experiences. But it's
interesting to note
that many mystics get in trouble with their religious
tradition
because their experiences slip outside their respective
orthodoxy.
A Christian mystic who was solely concerned with
furthering the
Christian system would always have experiences that
supported the
Christian story. Likewise an Islamic mystic would uphold
the Islamic
system, and the Hindu the Hindu. But this is not the
case. Mystic
experiences from all cultures and times often have more
in common with each other than they do with the religion
they arise from.
While emerging from a specific religion, and in most
cases wishing to
affirm the truth of their religion, the mystics
nonetheless tend to
describe a reality separate from the world of church
organizations,
and rituals, and scripture, and teaching. It is a
universal religion
behind the religions. It is, in the words of Aldous
Huxley, who
collected hundreds of mystic accounts from diverse
sources, the
"Perennial Philosophy" that arises again and again in
all soils and
seasons.
The essence of the mystic experience, common to mystics
of all
religions and times, is this feeling of unity with the
divine.
So what should we do if we are intrigued by the mystic
experience but
have not had it ourselves? Or what if we have had the
feeling some
time in the past, in a flash, but do not have it now or
reliably?
There is a mystic path. And furthermore the mystic
encourages people
to undertake the path because they admit that the mystic
experience is not fully communicated in words. You must
feel it for yourself. And
finally, feeling the experience yourself is essential,
because the
mystic experience is the truth of reality. Having the
experience, is
enlightenment, in Buddhist thought, and it is the only
way out of the
sorrow of worldly existence. Having the experience is
salvation in
Christian thought. Through the experience the soul finds
again its
alignment with God that was lost due to original sin.
The mystic path is characterized by achieving a state of
pure
consciousness. This is being awake but not thinking. Our
normal
thinking lives are filled with constantly running
thoughts. One
thought and then another rapidly moves across our minds
in a whirlwind of activity. Mysticism holds that this
incessant mental activity obscures the core reality that
lies subtly underneath. By removing the thoughts that
distract us, we reveal our divine core. The mental state
required is consciousness without content.
Achieving that state is both entirely simple, and
extremely difficult.
The mental state is easy to achieve, because all of us
already have
it. It is there beneath all our mental activity. There
is nothing to
achieve. There is no need to strive after it. Indeed
striving only
adds one more distraction to the distractions we're
trying to get rid
of. The mental state is so immediately available to us
that many
people have the feeling in a flash, all of a sudden, as
in our opening
hymn. This is a sense of rapture. It is the sudden
enlightenment that
comes at the oddest moment. Some religions encourage the
use of drugs or trances to jump the brain into the
rapture state. Many of us can describe one or two
rapture experiences in our lives that came upon us
unexpectedly and that perhaps led to our interest in
religion. Mystics tell us that this sudden rapture is
the real experience, but they also say that rapture
achieved this way is rarely permanent.
The extremely difficult, but more reliable path, is to
slowly,
deliberately, quiet the mind from its distractions. Both
the Buddha,
and Meister Eckhart, refer to the distractions of the
mind as
attachments. We are filled with attachments to the
world. To have the
mystic experience we must lose the attachments. The
Buddhists and
Hindus teach varieties of meditation techniques to
achieve this.
Christian mystics advocate prayer. It is not easy.
Giving up attachments is possible, because people report
they have
done it. Once the state of pure consciousness is
achieved, or
recovered I should say, the hard part is over. Mystics
tell us that if
we keep our minds alert and empty there is a divine
element of the
universe that rushes in to fill us. With Pure
Consciousness we attune
ourselves to the divine hopes and dreams. We are now
able to act in
the world, but self-lessly. Our will becomes the will of
the universe.
Our every action is the most advantageous for all
creation, because we
act with the desire of creation itself.
And then finally, this divine will that is now our will
returns to
itself, and we merge with the eternal undifferentiated
oneness. The
Buddhists teach us not to call this one-ness "God"
because to give it
a name reduces it to a thing. The Taoists caution that
to give it any
qualities, or even to speak of it, is to miss what our
talk is trying
to describe. Moses said the name of God is simply "I am
that I am."
Paul Tillich, the Christian theologian called it, "Being
itself."
The Mystic Path
By
Rev. Ricky Hoyt
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