Essay 5
July 17, 2022
The fifth essay in Our Highest Possibilities continues with the nature of mystical experience, its connection to intuition, and begins to explore how each of us can find ways to experience these dimensions more fully.
There is no doubt that many saints, sages, philosophers, scientists, artists, and athletes have reported mystical experiences. But so have many “normal” people, people like you and me. Mystical experiences can arise in an instant in anyone, sometimes with no warning or expectation. For instance, an ordinary guy named Muz Murray was on vacation in Cypress, looking at the sea in the afterglow of sunset, when suddenly, without any warning, everything changed. In an instant, the world was new:
“I was shown that every cell had its own consciousness which was mine. And it seemed … that the whole of humanity was in the same condition: each “individual” believing in his or her separate mind, but in reality still subject to a single controlling consciousness, that of Absolute Consciousness Itself.”
And C.G. Price, a farmer in England who was in financial difficulty, was focused on nothing in particular except spreading straw for his livestock, when, suddenly:
“I seemed to be enveloped in a cocoon of golden light that actually felt warm, and which radiated a feeling of Love so intense that it was almost tangible. One felt that one could grasp handfuls of it, and fill one’s pockets. In this warm cocoon of golden light I sensed a presence which I could not actually see, but knew was there. My mind became crystal clear, and in an instant of time I suddenly knew, without any doubts, that I was part of a “Whole.” Not an isolated part, but an integral part. I felt a sense of “One-ment.” I knew that I belonged and that nothing could change that. The loss of my farm and livelihood didn’t matter any more. I was an important part of the “Wholeness” of things, and transient ambitions were secondary.” (Nona Coxhead’s book, The Relevance of Bliss, has many such examples.)
Skeptico: It sounds like these folks were not in a normal ego identity.
Wisdom Seeker: You’re right, but there is still a consciousness present; otherwise there would be no one to observe the experience. Evelyn Underhill, in her monumental work, Mysticism, says that what happens is that the “hard separateness” of “I, Me, Mine” is no longer present (the ego identity that is responsible for the separation we usually feel from the larger reality). Identification with the individual ego has disappeared; the objects of the world no longer seem separate. But at this level, an identity remains. There is a sense of “me,” but this identity involves a feeling of oneness with all of humanity, often with all that is, and sometimes with Being Itself.
The View from Space
One of my favorite descriptions of this kind of experience is by astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who was trained as an engineer and scientist and was a member of the Apollo 14 project. Mitchell was traveling back to Earth, having just walked on the moon, when he had an experience that was an “ecstasy of unity.”
“As we left lunar orbit to head home, my work was done. So I had three days to relax and enjoy the view. The spacecraft was rotating every couple of minutes to avoid overheating in the intense sunlight. I could see ten times as many stars as you can see from earth, so the view was spectacular. With the rotation, I would see the earth, moon, and sun pass by the window every few minutes. The immensity and serenity of the universe struck me in an entirely new way, out there, suspended between the great blue jewel of earth and the dusky moon we were leaving behind. The setting was perfect. I suddenly sensed the profound consciousness of the universe — how it is completely interconnected and aware — an absolutely indescribable awareness. My life was changed forever.”
Mitchell said his previous life had in no way prepared him for this experience. As a consequence, he came to see this trip to the moon as a “sacred journey,” for in a flash he had seen that there is “a nonrational way of understanding” beyond anything he had known before. In an instant he “suddenly experienced the universe as intelligent, loving, harmonious.”
Another astronaut, Russell Schweickart, also had a profound experience of oneness with all his fellow beings while tethered outside his spacecraft, looking down on planet Earth. Before that moment, he had had no expectation of having a spiritual or mystical shift of identity. But when he was given a few minutes with nothing to do while floating in space, his perspective shifted radically. He reports: “You look down and see the surface of that globe that you’ve lived on all this time, and you know all those people down there, they are like you, they are you.”
Schweickart saw himself as an extension of the one universal body: “And somehow you recognize, that you’re a piece of this total life.” In that moment, he felt deeply privileged to be in space, functioning as the eye for all, and he felt a great responsibility: “The eye that doesn’t see, doesn’t do justice to the body. That’s why it’s there; and that’s why you are out there.” (A wonderful example of Emerson’s “universal eye,” in which the “currents of Universal Being circulate” in the consciousness of an individual’s direct experience.)
It is fascinating to discover how many astronauts have had mystical experiences. Astronaut James Irwin, seeing the Earth shrink to the size of a marble, said it was “the most beautiful marble you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate.” He continues, “Seeing this has to change a man, has to make a man appreciate the creation and the love of God.” And John Glenn, in a voice broadcast from the Discovery space shuttle said: “I don’t think you can be up here and look out the window as I did the first day and see the Earth from this vantage point, to look out at this kind of creation and not believe in God. … I wish there were words to describe what it is like.”
In my book Art, Science, Religion, Spirituality I recounted the reports of many artists and scientists who were visited by a mystical vision. Since then, I read and was struck by these words by the amazingly creative choreographer Martha Graham, who was convinced that opening to a greater knowing is possible for each and every one of us:
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.”
Thought Experiment — Why are you here?
Schweickart’s experience and Graham’s observation suggest a few questions for each of us: As I move forward in life, toward what actions do my past life experiences point? What doors do they open as I move into the next part of my life? What might be my unique expression into life as I continue my journey?
As you consider these questions, simply be with whatever comes up. You do not have to take any action. Just be open to your possibilities, allowing whatever arises in your consciousness to be present without rejecting any possibility too quickly.
Intuition and the Mystical
Skeptico: What Martha Graham is saying sounds different from what Murray, Price, Mitchell, and some of the other astronauts said in their quotes. Are you sure she is saying the same thing?
Wisdom Seeker: It’s not the same. There are many different kinds of experiences that fit into the broad category of mystical. The differences have to do with how far “out” a person has gone from identification with the ego, as well as how close that person has come to experiencing a sense of identity with a much larger reality. When Graham talks about keeping the “channel open,” however, she seems to be referring to the first levels of that path. Often these first levels are considered intuition, especially in cultures that don’t like the word mystical.
Skeptico: Aren’t intuitions different from mystical visions?
Wisdom Seeker: Those who have spent time trying to understand what is beyond the ordinary mind find it very difficult to make clear distinctions between intuitions and mystical experiences. In the reflections of people as diverse as Plato, Immanuel Kant, Henri Bergson, Alfred North Whitehead, and Pitirim A. Sorokin, you can often substitute the words mystical and intuitive for each other without changing the meaning much. This is not to say that all these writers had similar views, only that the experiences of intuition and mystical insight are deeply interrelated.
Skeptico: That is much too vague. How would you make a distinction?
Wisdom Seeker: My sense is that many of the experiences we call intuitive today are related to, but lesser forms of, deeper mystical experiences. When one moves into the higher reaches of intuition, however, the two begin to merge. Thinking of the broad range of intuitive experiences as a continuum, on the high end there is a seamless movement into the mystical. The insight of the highly influential 17thcentury philosopher Baruch Spinoza is worth repeating here: In essence, he said that we gain knowledge through our senses as well as through reason, but beyond both is the knowledge we gain through intuition.
Following Spinoza’s thought, in his book The Observing Self psychiatrist Arthur Deikman summarizes the idea by saying that at the upper reaches of intuition, we experience “the highest stage of human knowledge, in which the whole of the universe is comprehended as a unified interconnected system.”
For Spinoza, who preferred the word intuition, the various manifestations of ultimate reality are all “part of the same unified system operating in harmony.” That sounds pretty mystical to me. Experiencing everything as a unified whole and feeling that all and everything is ultimately in harmony are common elements in mystical moments, and having an intuition of this unity certainly qualifies as a mystical experience. I can see no way to make a meaningful distinction between mystical experiences and intuitions as I read descriptions of each. Some people simply prefer the idea of intuition, others are inclined toward mystical language. Also keep in mind there are numerous levels, whichever language you prefer.
Scientists and philosophers usually prefer to talk about intuitions (although some use mystical language), but both clearly recognize their importance. Aristotle helped launch Western science saying that intuition is the source of all new knowledge. The modern scientific revolution can reasonably be seen as beginning with a dream by Descartes, setting him off on his own revolutionary train of thought. Immanuel Kant, who was both a great philosopher and scientist, observed that, “All human knowledge thus begins with intuitions, proceeds thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.”
Specific breakthrough moments support these observations, such as Newton’s revelatory experience that led to his theories about gravity and Einstein’s intuitive flash that led to the theory of relativity. There are countless other examples: Nikola Tesla reported that the idea for an electric motor came to him “in a flash” as he walked across a city park. Niels Bohr said his model for the structure of the atom, for which he won the Nobel Prize, came to him in a dream. French mathematician Jules Henri Poincare reported that on two occasions major breakthroughs came to him “from thin air.” Poincare went on to say, “It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover.” And Jonas Salk said intuition guided him to the discovery of the polio vaccine. This led Salk to say:
“It is always with excitement that I wake up in the morning wondering what my intuition will toss up to me, like gifts from the sea. I work with it and rely on it. It’s my partner.”
Many others have had profound experiences when immersed in nature, such as the naturalist John Muir — who rode a snow avalanche down a mountain. Describing his feelings he said: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find that it is bound fast by a thousand invisible cords, that cannot be broken, to everything in the universe.”
Maria Coffey, in her book Explorers of the Infinite: The Secret Spiritual Lives of Extreme Athletes, presents dozens of mystical experiences that occurred when adventuresome souls found themselves in extreme physical conditions. For instance, a famous mountain climber, Maurice Herzog, speaks of a particularly dangerous ascent: “There is a supernatural power in those close to death. Strange intuitions identify one with the whole world.” And Carlos Carsolio (who in 1996 became the youngest person in history to ascend all fourteen of the world’s highest peaks) said of such moments: “They take me to another dimension. They are why I wanted to climb alone and to do such hard routes, so that I could reach them [these transcendent states].”
Another example: Wingsuit jumper Shaun Ellison took off from a 3,000-foot cliff with nothing but pieces of fabric attached between his arms and legs, allowing him (almost) to fly. Reaching a speed of 120 miles per hour, flying horizontally very close to the vertical, sheer face of the mountain, he said: “I was on a different plane, where there were … channels opening that are closed in day-to-day life. That’s the key to BASE jumping, to learn how to be on that plane … to stay in that beautiful space.”
Still another account comes from Charles Lindbergh’s autobiography, in which he describes an experience as he flew the first transatlantic flight: “My skull is one great eye, seeing everywhere at once.” (Another echo of Emerson’s all-seeing eye.) “I’m on the border line of … a greater beyond … acted on by forces I cannot control … representing powers incomparably stronger than I have ever known.” And:
“Watching satellites and staring at the stars, I seemed to lose contact with my earth and body and to spread out through the cosmos by means of an awareness that permeates both space and life — as though I were expanding from a condensation of awareness previously restricted … to the biological matter that was myself.”
Perhaps, then, adventurers are not so different from monks or ascetics; their methods are different, but their aims — perhaps not so much. This brings us back to the importance of the different levels of mystical experience. Extreme adventurers do not have exactly the same experiences as the great mystics of history. When climbing a physical mountain, there are various plateaus and different vistas. Similarly, when climbing the mystical mountain, climbers will have different views, depending on the level they have reached.
Coffey found mystical and spiritual reports so common among adventurers that she concluded one of the principal reasons people undertook dangerous and difficult adventures was to stimulate these experiences. So, at times both mystics and adventurers are ascending the mystical mountain. Their reports of what they see are somewhat different, depending on background and preferred language, but the similarities shine through.
Different Levels of Knowledge and Experience
Perhaps the best way to approach this territory was given by the sometime mystic and great scientist, Albert Einstein:
“We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books, but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion.”
Thus, as we each wander through this vast library of existence and glance through the books, those who are open will have flashes of insight and understanding. Some will be deeper than others, for there are many levels of wisdom. Call the flashes mystical moments or intuitions as you will — but be open to them in your life.
Skeptico: But you are back to quoting famous people.
Wisdom Seeker: As I said, profound mystical experiences are not limited to exceptional people, but they are the ones whose words mostly come down to us because what they say is more likely to be recorded and preserved. But countless normal individuals have had breakthroughs beyond the ego into an experience of the underlying harmony of things, moments of being “in the garden.” I have read two dozen books, in addition to the ones already mentioned, that provide hundreds of powerful accounts, such as The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, Higher Creativity by Willis Harman, The Flip by Jeffrey Kripal, Seeing the Invisible by Meg Maxwell and Verena Tschudin, and The Future of the Body by Michael Murphy. And, of course, every religion includes thousands of accounts of mystical experiences in the lives of ordinary people, as well as well-known ones.
These experiences have been so important through the ages that every culture has had practices to help individuals cultivate them, and many ordinary people have experienced mystical moments through these practices. Confusion arises between accounts, though, because each culture and religion has its own specific words and symbols to talk about such things.
A mystical experience is just that, an experience, one that seldom comes with words attached. When a person is caught up in a moment beyond words, beyond time, there is just pure experience. Only when it is over does the person begin to formulate words and images to describe it. Back in the framework of language and thinking, each tries to understand these moments within their own culture’s words and symbols. More, if they wish to communicate with others, they must use the language and symbols they and the people around them know — whether fitting the situation well or not. Thus, Christians use one set of words and symbols, Hindus another, Buddhists another, and on and on.
Having a framework is crucial for communication with others, but forcing an experience that defies words into a pre-existing one also leaves much out, and distorts. Further, it tends to focus the attention of listeners on the ideas and beliefs of their own culture, even when the experience doesn’t fit into that framework very well.
Skeptico: Do you think the experiences of people from different religions and cultures are the same?
Wisdom Seeker: Perhaps there are several mountains: How would those of us living normal lives today, hearing stories of mystic climbers told in different languages, then translated into our own culture’s idiom, know whether there is one mountain or several? My best guess, however, is that there is a field beyond all mental constructs that is accessed through mystical experience, a field that is the same for all. To extend the mountain metaphor, perhaps the field lies above the mountains, and climbing any one will take you into that realm.
But it is hard to know for sure. How would we know? Even if a person has had a profound mystical experience, how can that person know if it is the same as that of another person, when all reports must be communicated in words that cannot fully capture the reality? Comparing experiences within a culture is difficult, and comparing those from different cultures is especially daunting, so how could most of us possibly know what the summit is like? Or the field beyond?
Problems actually begin the moment a person who has had a mystical experience starts thinking about it. If there is but one shared Reality, our ego minds will never capture it with our thinking concepts, because thoughts force the experiencer to squeeze the expansiveness of what happened into the language and symbols of the culture they know.
The possibility that there is but one shared Reality is suggested, however, when we see that exemplars of many different traditions tend to emphasize love, kindness toward others, good humor, and deep compassion. Further, a sense of camaraderie and communion has often been noted between mystics of various traditions, and when spiritual exemplars from different cultures get together, they often smile and joke a lot and seem to have great warmth for each other (powerfully reflected in The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu). What they seldom do is argue about doctrine.
All this suggests that they have had similar visions, even hints at the possibility that the underlying Reality with which they have come into contact — beyond all words and concepts — is the same.
Making It Personal
Skeptico: You have talked a lot about other peoples’ experiences. What about your own?
Wisdom Seeker: I have had experiences that seem similar at a “felt sense” level to those I have read, even by mystics from other centuries and cultures.
Skeptico: Do you believe such experiences are real, and are they important in your life?
Wisdom Seeker: Mine have seldom been as dramatic as those the great mystics report, but I have felt deep resonances with them, despite the barrier of language and words. Because what they report is in harmony with my own experiences, I tend to believe we are touching on something valid and real, and I try very hard to incorporate what I have glimpsed into the living of my own life.
Skeptico: What about me? Do you think I can step beyond my ego and see things from this greater perspective?
Wisdom Seeker: All the world’s wisdom traditions say you can. Contemporary philosopher Ken Wilber describes what is possible for anyone with sufficient practice:
“You are starting to see the hidden dimension, the dimension outside the ordinary cosmos, the dimension that transcends nature. You see the Light, and sometimes this light literally shines like the light of a thousand suns. It overwhelms you, empowers you, energizes you, remakes you. This is what scholars have called the “numinous” nature of subtle spirit. Numinous and luminous.”
Skeptico: Then my problems are over! I’ll go to the place Wilber is describing, and all will be solved.
Wisdom Seeker: Unfortunately, it doesn’t work quite like that. Even the most profound experiences of egolessness come to an end, at least for the great majority of us. Even if you have an experience such as he describes, when it is over, the old problems and fears will return, sometimes with a vengeance. Profound and beautiful moments can happen when we step out of the ego, but when we fall back into it, our old problems are still there. In fact, if the ego has not been engaged in taking care of the details of daily life during such an experience, when you come back, the problems will often be worse than before. This is why many mystics, as well as artists, have difficulty in their worldly lives, sometimes becoming dependent on others to take care of worldly details.
From the soil of egoless experience the idea of “getting rid of the ego” grows. After a profound mystical experience, the belief arises that if one could permanently get rid of the ego, everything would be wonderful. This is especially true when there is a painful shock upon reentering the everyday world, leading to the urge to “get rid of the ego” for good. Since most of us are not ready to let go of every expectation, ambition, preference, and desire, however — all of which are part and parcel of the ego — this is usually just the ego’s urge to have another wonderful experience. Or the ego thinks that getting rid of itself will make it feel special.
For those rare individuals who are actually ready to open fully into the “numinous,” though, a radical change will begin to occur, and it will be reflected in the way they are perceived by the people around them. As Wilber notes, “This is … why saints are universally depicted with halos of light around their heads. That is what people actually see when looking at them. Divine Light.”
He goes on to say that for great saints and sages, getting to this place is not a matter of chance. Any one of us can have a momentary experience, but those who are willing to do the hard work of opening fully over a period of time can finally come to rest in the numinous dimension. Then, as Wilber says, descriptions of what they are experiencing is “not mere poetry” but “an almost mathematical description of one type of experience at the subtle level.” For them, reaching this place is not a matter of chance, but a “science.”
So, Skeptico, are you ready to let go of all concern with security, comfort, and what other people think of you? Are you ready to let go of all worldly fears, anxieties, expectations, and desires?
Skeptico: Wow! You are setting the bar awfully high.
Wisdom Seeker: Not me. Most of the great teachers say something along these lines — if one wishes to live permanently in the highest possible state. Very few of us, however, have ever been able to come to rest in this place. Many have journeyed up the mountain and reached various plateaus. Some have made it all the way to the summit. But few have been able to live permanently in that rarified atmosphere at the top, for it does not sustain the ego.
The Third Zen Patriarch captures the essence of what is required in his Verses on the Faith Mind:
The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
Make the smallest distinction, however
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
If you wish to see the truth
then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike
is the disease of the mind.
Jesus also described the difficulty one can face, saying in John 17: “And now I am no more in the world,” but “while I was with them in the world,” I shared what I knew with those who would listen, “that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.” I gave them true knowledge, but “the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”
In other words, people living in the everyday world who are organized around their egos do not take kindly to the message that they should surrender, give up their preferences, and step away from all concerns about worldly life. Most of us are too firmly attached to our ego lives to risk the death of our bodies, as Jesus did, or to leave everything behind, including home and family, as did the Buddha.
The result is that the number who have been able to reach the summit and then come back down the mountain to interact with people in the world without being pulled back into the gravity field of the ego is quite small. It is very hard to be “in the world but not of it.” But those few who have been able to accomplish this feat have had a profound effect on all those they touched upon return. In fact, they have had a profound impact on the whole world, for all the great wisdom traditions were inspired by their presence among us.
Skeptico: Wait a minute. Using their lives as an example is more extreme than I can handle. Can you give me some sense of what it might be like to explore — and even rest for a moment — in a place beyond the ego without having to give up every single preference, or to die completely to my ego self?
Wisdom Seeker: The traditions suggest many ways to reach toward these experiences. But none are guaranteed to bring it about; much depends on where your identity is organized in your heart and mind. That said, here is one approach given by philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer that I have found valuable:
“When one is no longer concerned with the Where, the When, the Why and the What-for of things … and lets go even of all abstract thoughts about them, intellectual concepts and consciousness, but instead of all that, gives over the whole force of one’s spirit to the act of perceiving, becomes absorbed in it and lets every bit of one’s consciousness be filled in the quiet contemplation of the natural object immediately present — be it a landscape, a tree, a rock, a building, or anything else at all; actually and fully losing oneself in the object: forgetting one’s individuality, one’s will, and remaining there only as a pure subject, a clear mirror to the object — so that it is as though the object alone were there, without anyone regarding it, and to such a degree that one might no longer distinguish the beholder from the act of beholding, then the two have become one.”
If your consciousness can merge in this way with another person, with another living being, or even with an object, you will for a moment become one with something beyond yourself, which in turn will bring you into an experience of a much larger dimension of existence. And getting outside yourself is exactly the experience mystics have been encouraging throughout history. They say you can keep going, becoming one with broader and broader fields, until eventually you become one withall that is. At that point, you will know yourself as transcendent awareness itself.
Your identity will have become one with all and everything, and you will experience yourself from the point of view of being itself. As I quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson in Essay 2: “I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of Universal Being circulate through me.” Or listen to the words of Yeshe Tsogyal, who helped establish Buddhism in Tibet, as she speaks of herself while in this expanded state of awareness:
Know that I live in the minds of all beings who live.
Know that I live in the body of mind and the field of the senses,
that the twelve kinds of matter are only my bones and my skin.
We are not two, yet you look for me outside;
when you find me within yourself,
your own naked mind,
that Single Awareness will fill all worlds.
When in this state, you might share in the realization of Canadian psychiatrist R.M. Bucke, who relates in his book Cosmic Consciousness his experience, “that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence,” and that “the foundation principle of the world, of all the worlds, is what we call love.”
After such an experience, you might be left stammering, as was the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, who had a profound mystical experience that lasted for two hours. When it was over, he wrote a few cryptic notes that he kept on his person until his death, presumably to remind him of what he had felt and seen. (He did not mean to share these words with others, for they were only found after his death.)
The year of grace, 1654
Monday, 23rd November, day of St. Clement, pope and martyr …
from about half past ten in the evening
until about half past twelve, midnight,
FIRE.
Skeptico: What did he mean by “FIRE?”
Wisdom Seeker: As with all such descriptions, we can only imaginatively reach toward it with our own experiences of “knowing.” For me, it points toward an overwhelming sense of absorption in an all-encompassing radiance or Light. But whatever it was for Pascal, the experience was clearly an extremely powerful one — for he ends his note with these words: “God of Abraham. God of Isaac. God of Jacob. Not the God of philosophers and scholars.”
Skeptico: But you are back to quoting famous people. What about me?
Wisdom Seeker: As mentioned, famous people are famous partly because they are able to articulate ideas and experiences that are present in all of us but that most of us have a hard time conveying to others. But in the next essay, we will explore a few hints and guesses about how you might proceed on your own journey — some from my own experience and some from the lessons of others.