Essay 4
July 2, 2022
The fourth essay in the series begins the exploration of how we might find truly fulfilling answers to the question about how best to live.
“One conclusion was forced upon my mind, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is, that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence, but apply the right stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness.
“In the main these [extraordinary] experiences and those of the ordinary world keep discrete: yet the two become continuous at certain points, and higher energies filter in.” — William James
Extraordinary experiences are often called mystical, and the word mysticismencompasses every moment any one of us experiences a deeper way of knowing, or feeling, or being. Mystical moments actually happen with great frequency, whenever a person opens into a dimension beyond normal, everyday consciousness. One of the greatest philosophers of the seventeenth century, Baruch Spinoza, talked about what it was like to touch this broader knowledge, saying that in the upper reaches of intuition we can gain “the highest stage of human knowledge, in which the whole of the universe is comprehended as a unified interconnected system.”
Although many people have mystical moments, most of us do not pay much attention to their meaning or know how to integrate what they have to say into our everyday lives. Mystics, however, are those who pay attention when “higher energies filter in,” and begin to organize their lives around the wisdom that comes from these experiences.
In her classic book, Mysticism, the brilliant English scholar Evelyn Underhill tries to define the word more clearly, saying “it is not an opinion,” “it is not a philosophy,” nor is it “merely the power of contemplating Eternity.” It is “that organic process which involves the perfect … achievement here and now of the immortal heritage of man. It is the art of establishing … conscious relation with the Absolute.” In other words, a mystic is anyone who has a direct experience of a reality greater than the individual ego perspective and begins to organize their identity and life around that broader perspective.
The great mythologist Joseph Campbell makes clear the importance of mystics to the rest of us, saying that when a person opens into an experience of the larger reality, that individual becomes the fount through which, “The inexhaustible energies of the universe pour into the human drama.” Throughout human history, this “pouring in” — to Jesus, Confucius, the Buddha, Moses, Mohammed, Lao Tzu, the Hebrew prophets, Hindu sages — is precisely how all the great wisdom traditions were set in motion.
Skeptico: Okay, I grant that a lot of important people in the past could be called mystics, but this is the modern era. What does mysticism have to do with us today?
Wisdom Seeker: First, recall that many scientists, including modern ones, have had mystical experiences, and that many of their scientific breakthroughs came from their mystical moments. The strongest statement I know about the value of the mystical comes from the pre-eminent scientist of the modern era, Albert Einstein:
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms — this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.
“Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus stands for me higher than all the achievements of the inquiring and constructive mind.”
Since Einstein’s career was organized around “the inquiring and constructive mind,” he is saying that the importance of the mystic to humanity is greater than all his own scientific work. Commenting on his understanding of the relation between the two dimensions, famous German American aerospace engineer, Wernher von Braun, said: “I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advance of science.” And Dean Radin, senior scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, captures the overlap and connection between mysticism and science:
“Science concentrates on outer, objective phenomena, and mysticism concentrates on inner, subjective phenomena. It is interesting that numerous scientists, scholars, and sages over the years have revealed deep, underlying similarities between the goals, practices, and findings of science and mysticism. Some of the most famous scientists wrote in terms that are practically indistinguishable from the writings of mystics.”
Mysticism, the Spiritual, and Religions
Skeptico: How is mysticism different from the spiritual?
Wisdom Seeker: For me, trying to live a spiritual life involves an organized exploration into ultimate concerns and the underlying nature of reality. It is a way of organizing one’s life that involves practices and commitments (choosing to take some actions while avoiding others). The ego is very much involved in organizing this effort. In contrast, a mystical experience is when the ground shifts; it is often instantaneous, can be quite profound, and brings a sense of connection to a deeper, higher level of existence. A spiritual practice might help bring about a mystical experience, but when you are walking a spiritual path, much of the time you are not having mystical experiences but simply doing the work. And the ego is actively engaged in the spiritual process when you are doing the work.
A spiritual life and spiritual practices are like the training program an athlete undertakes, while a mystical experience is like the times an athlete gets “in the zone” or “in the flow” and everything just happens naturally. In a mystical moment (which can last seconds, hours, and in rare instances, much longer), there is just being in the experience. The ego has disappeared and there is no need for effort; the everyday self is not there to organize or do anything. Crucially, if they are honored, mystical moments can be transformative for the rest of one’s life.
Skeptico: How does religion fit in?
Wisdom Seeker: Some of the differences between the three: 1) A religion is an organization or structured way of living and believing developed by human beings to help others enter into and practice a particular path toward the sacred or divine; 2) Spiritual longing is the desire for a connection to the deepest ground, the ultimate reality, and a spiritual path is an individual’s way of trying to find a connection to those things; 3) In a mystical experience, one feels in touch with the field from which spiritual longings arise, with the ground from which all religions sprang.
As mentioned, almost all of the world’s religions were set in motion by someone who had a mystical experience and then came back to the tribe or community and reported what they had seen and understood. After those founding moments, subsequent generations of leaders in each religion developed a formulated set of answers to the questions about life and the nature of ultimate reality. Each also developed a set of guidelines about how people should live and practices to help members of the religion fulfill their lives within that specific set of answers. Most also developed a number of rules, do’s and don’ts about how anyone following that particular religion should act. Importantly, many of these later developments had little connection to the original teachings of the founders.
To understand the main religions of the world, it is crucial to recognize that each was developed and has been carried forward by human beings who, at least part of the time, were motivated by ego concerns, such as perpetuating the religious organization or gaining power and wealth for their group. Of course, many people through the centuries within each of the world’s religions had their own mystical experiences, sometimes giving them a very different understanding from what they had been taught. This led some to leave their birth religion, while others transformed or renewed the religious organization of which they were a part — which helps explain the proliferation of thousands of different sub-groups within the religions today.
Finally, it should be noted that mystical experiences can happen to anyone at any time; they have happened with some frequency to those with no connection to any religion and even to those who were not engaged in any spiritual practice.
Mysticism Is “Stepping Outside”
In the third essay in this series I tried to show that every idea you have about an “objective world” outside yourself is a construct of your egoic mind. Further, it is the very nature of that mind to see itself as separate from other people and from the world around it. The result is that the world “out there,” the one your thinking mind perceives, is always seen as “other” than yourself. This separation has great value, for it allows the egoic self to plan and organize an individual life trajectory. It makes it possible for each of us to enter the stream of human life, develop an individual identity, and from that identity form relationships, build careers, undertake adventures, create art, fulfill responsibilities, and develop societies.
The cost is that, while centered in our individual egoic minds, everything we think we know about an “objective” world “out there” is actually the mind’s subjective creation. When organized in this place, we feel ourselves separate from others, separate from nature, and separate from the larger world in which we exist. This separation, in turn, gives rise to feelings of loneliness, anxiety, alienation, and fear. No wonder we moderns often feel as if we have been banished from the garden. The most common response in the modern world is to double-down on ego achievement, but this only magnifies the feelings of separation and alienation, because no matter what the ego accomplishes, it is always dissatisfied, always wants more.
Mysticism, therefore, is “stepping outside” one’s ego identity. In the second essay we explored the value and importance of taking this step, at least occasionally, as we go through our lives. For many, experiencing these moments has then led them to undertake a spiritual quest or wisdom journey.
The complication is that, to move beyond identification with the ego self, to find and rest in a larger identity, is not easy. It has never been easy. But it is especially difficult in the modern world, for we have been strongly indoctrinated to think of ourselves as unique and separate individuals. Plus, for those with a strong ego identity, it is hard to accept that who they think they are is nothing but a construct of the mind. It seems, instead, to be reality itself — the final, objective truth of their actual identity. Adding to the difficulty, many people think modern neuroscience has firmly established that having separate identities, located solely in the brain, is the “the final truth.” But this is false.
What the Brain Knows
Dr. Andrew Newburg (a neuroscientist and director of research at the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital) has been fascinated for decades by the question of how the brain knows what it knows. This led him to become a world leader in using MRI scans to analyze the brain and its functioning. In a series of studies over many years he examined the brains of many people who were in non-ordinary states of consciousness, including mystical experiences. From his research, one conclusion is especially striking. He says, “If the only way we can tell whether something is real is through the brain,” and if “the brain is the organ that discerns what is real,” then, when someone has a mystical experience and reports that the experience is “more real than our everyday material reality,” how can any other brain dismiss that direct report?
He goes on: “If the brain is what determines what is real and what isn’t, and this experience [mystical experience] is a universal experience of human brains across cultures,” on what basis can a researcher who has not had a mystical experience say that the mystical experience someone else is reporting is not real and true, or that the reality it reveals is not true? He makes the point that the same is true for ordinary experiences. If you measure the brain of a person smelling an apple pie, you can record the reaction of the brain, but the researcher cannot determine if the apple pie exists from anything seen on the MRI. The brain’s reaction could be triggered by memory, or by imagination. The machine cannot tell. All the machine can do is report that the brain is active, but it cannot determine whether something in the outer world is triggering the brain’s action.
The paradox he makes vivid is this: If a researcher believes that the brain determines ultimate reality, and a person reports that a mystical experience has shown a reality “more real and true” than the material world, all the researcher can say is that their own brain has not experienced the same reality. The researcher cannot know the origin of the mystical experience of another, and if anyone says it was created by the brain itself, rather than through actual contact with a larger dimension, the only basis for that judgment is an act of faith on the part of the person making that judgment.
Those who believe there is no larger reality to be experienced cannot prove their act of faith through science or reason, and no brain research or scientific evidence can show that their view of reality is more accurate or true than the understanding of those who have had mystical experiences. The brains of skeptics reach one conclusion, based on a particular belief about the nature of the world, while the brains of many who have had mystical experiences conclude differently, believing that there is a reality beyond the brain that is the most real and true thing of all, because they have directly experienced it.
Skeptics can and do cling to the “brain only” model, arguing that they believe there is nothing beyond the brain and that those who take mystical experiences seriously are deluded or crazy. But millions of people have reported mystical experiences through the centuries, experiences that seemed “more real” than their everyday realities. Further, the founders of the world’s wisdom traditions and thousands of spiritual exemplars, saints, and sages have reported such experiences. In this context, as Ken Wilber asks, who is most likely to be deluded?
It is as if someone who has never been in love denies that love exists, or if someone who has never experienced a deep state of meditation or prayer says that those who have had such experiences are deluded in what they report. The deniers are in the same position as those who refused to look into Galileo’s telescope because they “knew” that what he was saying couldn’t be true. It did not fit their prior understanding of reality.
Soon after learning about Dr. Newberg’s research, I read a book that quoted a normal, everyday person saying about a profound and transformative moment: “The one word I’d use to describe the experience would be ‘reality.’ It was the most real thing that’s ever happened to me.” Since countless others have echoed these words, saying their mystical experiences were the “most real” thing that had ever happened to them, it seems unwise to dismiss such reports without personal investigation.
The Wisdom Traditions
The wisdom figures who set the great traditions in motion all gave common report that beyond the normal experiences of the ego self, behind the surface of our everyday perceptions, there is an order, a pattern. Among the millions of experiencers who have touched for a moment this larger reality, a few have stayed with it long enough to perceive some of its secrets. Those wise men and women began to formulate what they had seen into words and returned to their communities with the message that it is possible for each of us to come into relation with this larger picture.
Because they came from different cultures, they labeled the reality they had experienced with different names, but they had in common the view that experiencing this larger reality involved leaving the separate ego self behind and moving into relation to, or unity with, this larger dimension. Further, they all said that finding a connection to this larger reality was the way to a fulfilling and meaningful life.
And they did one more thing: They gave us guidance for how each of us could experience this larger harmony for ourselves. Thus it was that Moses came back from the mountain with the Ten Commandments; Jesus came back from the desert and gave the Sermon on the Mount; Confucius wandered for many years and then began teaching a few followers a way that would bring fulfillment based on foundational principles he had directly experienced as coming from the ancients; Mohammed came back from his mystical experience in the cave and gave voice to the vision of Islam; Teresa of Avila and Hildegard of Bingen renewed the Christian message for their times after numerous profound visions of the sacred; and the Buddha came back from his enlightenment experience and taught the Eight-fold Path and the Five Precepts.
Skeptico: Wait! I thought the Buddha was a very practical person teaching practical things.
Wisdom Seeker: A lot of the methods he taught were practical, but his own realization came from a profound mystical experience. After six years of seeking without finding what he sought, he determined to sit under the Bodhi tree and either find a complete answer — or die. What happened next under that tree certainly qualifies as a full-fledged mystical experience. In the Buddha’s own words:
“When the mind was thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished … I directed it to the knowledge of recollecting my past lives … one birth, two … five, ten … fifty, a hundred, a thousand, many eons of cosmic contraction and expansion: ‘There I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure and pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I re-arose … and had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure and pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I re-arose here.’ Thus I remembered my manifold past lives in their modes and details.”
Anyone seeing all the details of thousands of past lives certainly qualifies as being in a mystical experience, as does having a complete awakening to the non-dual realm beyond subject and object, as so many Buddhists have reported. There are, in fact, thousands of stories of important Buddhist monks and nuns having profound mystical experiences, especially in the Tibetan tradition.
In all of the traditions, of course, interpreting the words of the mystics and discerning guidance for daily living is complicated and problematic, for translating ideas from the mystical domain into worldly life is always confusing. But it was from the words of these founders of the world’s wisdom traditions that most of our moral codes and many of our cultural patterns arose. They tried to tell us how we could bring our own lives into harmony with the people we meet, and finally with the underlying currents of existence itself. But we have struggled ever since to understand what they meant and how to use their guidance to find for ourselves the harmony of which they speak.
For most of us, though, even if we have moments in which we experience the larger picture, the gravity of the ego pulls us quickly back into its orbit — not unlike the way the gravity of Earth is constantly pulling objects back toward itself. Thus, for those who wish to blast themselves out of the ego’s gravity field and stay in orbit beyond it, a strong propulsive force and determined effort is necessary.
Determined effort is essential because anyone who succeeds for a moment in reaching a new orbit will find that most of the people with whom the ego self had a relationship will be trying to pull them back into the old gravity field. Friends and family members will want the “old you” back, the one they know and with whom they had a relationship. No wonder Jesus said: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” No wonder the Buddha and so many other saints and sages had to leave home to find freedom and realization.
For all these reasons and more, when most of us experience a moment outside our normal identity, we are quickly pulled back, recaptured by the ego’s embrace, finding ourselves once more in the mental constructs of our thinking minds. Safely back in the old identity, our egoic minds once again define reality in the old way.
Touching the Mystery
Skeptico: You said earlier that each of us can have moments in which we feel in touch with the ground from which the religions sprang. Tell me more.
Wisdom Seeker: Many mystics talk about a direct experience of a Source or Ground that is the Ultimate Reality. It is That toward which religions point. Philosopher Aldous Huxley called these ideas “immemorial and universal,” which is the reason they became the basis for the wisdom traditions. These original teachings are the Philosophia Perennis, perennial thoughts and feelings that he describes as:
“The metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality, substantial to [lying behind] the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being.”
There are countless saints and sages from every religious and spiritual tradition who confirm Huxley’s insight. Medieval theologian Meister Eckhart proclaimed, “The ground of God and the ground of the soul are one and the same.” Modern Christian mystic Thomas Merton said: “If I penetrate to the depths of my own existence and my own present reality, the indefinable ‘am’ that is myself in its deepest roots, then through this deep center I pass into the infinite ‘I Am’ which is the very Name of the Almighty.”
Many Hindus call this “am-ness” Atman. This is the personal essence, the deep sense of something existing in me beyond the ego — we might call it the true self. In some schools of Hinduism, each individual has an Atman, but the final experience is that the individual “I am” is experienced as one with the universal “I Am,” whose name is Brahman. Thus, the final step on the journey is to experience and know completely within oneself that “Atman is Brahman.”
The Buddha did not think there was a permanent personal self, but he taught that each of us could discover through many lifetimes who we really are, which is the unitary, deathless Buddha-nature. This selfless self was never born and will never die. Centuries after the Buddha, Bodhidharma (traditionally credited with transmitting Buddhism to China), while deep in a mystical experience, confirmed what the Buddha taught:
“This mind, through endless kalpas without beginning, has never varied. It has never lived or died, appeared or disappeared, increased or decreased. It’s not pure or impure, good or evil, past or future. It’s not true or false.”
It is important to emphasize that these words are not from a thinking mind (the Buddha was explicit in saying that what he had discovered could not be understood by the rational, thinking mind). What all the mystics are trying to convey is that there is an “I” beyond all thought, an “I” that experiences itself as one with the Ground of Being, the one Buddha-nature, the Ultimate, the Source. To continue with Bodhidharma:
“Only the wise know this mind, this mind called dharma-nature, this mind called liberation. Neither life nor death can restrain this mind. Nothing can. It’s also called … the Incomprehensible, the Sacred Self, the Immortal, the Great Sage. Its names vary but not its essence.”
Two things are crucial to emphasize in trying to understand all this: (1) Words are being used to convey an experience that can never be captured in words, and (2) The ego is not having this experience. Rather, during these experiences, an “I” beyond the ego becomes who you are; your identity expands to include much more than your ego self or your thinking mind.
Are Mystical Experiences Really Real?
Skeptico: Just to play the devil’s advocate, maybe all these folks talking about mystical experiences were actually crazy.
Wisdom Seeker: That is possible. But before reaching such a judgment you have to deal with the fact that much of human culture is based on wisdom coming from the mystical experiences of some the most respected figures in human history. To review again a few of the influential mystics through human history: Moses and many of the central figures in Judaism, including the Prophets and major figures in the Kabbalistic and Hasidic traditions; Jesus and St. Paul at the beginning of Christianity; St. Francis of Assisi and countless other Christian mystics in the medieval church, including a string of remarkable women mystics such as Teresa of Avila, Hildegard of Bingen, Catherine of Siena, Julian of Norwich, Thérèse of Lisieux, St. Catherine of Genoa, and St. Clare of Assisi; Mohammed and the countless mystics in Islam; and of course, the Buddha and countless Buddhist mystics.
Skeptico: OK, maybe they weren’t all crazy, but how do we know that the deeper reality they experienced actually exists?
Wisdom Seeker: Good question. The ego and the thinking mind always question whether mystical experiences are real, and there is no way by any thinking process to arrive at certainty. This leaves each of us to make our own judgment about what we will believe. An interesting poem by Rumi speaks to this question and how our views might mature:
Little by little, wean yourself.
This is the gist of what I have to say.
From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in the blood,
move to an infant drinking milk,
to a child on solid food,
to a searcher after wisdom,
to a hunter of more invisible game.
Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo.
You might say, “The world outside is vast and intricate.
There are wheatfields and mountain passes,
and orchards in bloom.
At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight
the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding.”
You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up
in the dark with eyes closed.
Listen to the answer.
“There is no ‘other world.’
I only know what I’ve experienced.
You must be hallucinating.”
In the end, no one can know in an analytical way the ultimate nature of reality. What we can know is that millions of people through the ages have reported experiencing a dimension beyond the material realm that seemed more real than the everyday world in which we spend most of our time. A large percentage said that these moments were the most important times in their lives, and many were meaningfully changed by their mystical experiences (The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James and Evelyn Underhill’s Mysticism give dozens of powerful examples).
Carl Jung was pointing to these deeper levels of reality when he said, “The nature of the psyche reaches into obscurities far beyond the scope of our understanding.” He was following, initially, in the footsteps of Sigmund Freud, who brought the personal unconscious into focus for the modern world. Freud himself went so far as to say that everything we are conscious of about ourselves is like the tip of an iceberg, with much more being buried in the preconscious realm, and even more in the unconscious.
But Jung went far beyond Freud, incorporating the ideas of another great psychologist, William James, who extensively explored the ways in which there are dimensions in consciousness beyond personal memories and experiences. James said: “My present field of consciousness is a centre surrounded by a fringe that shades … into a subconscious more.” He went on to say that we can never define what is in our consciousness, for ultimately it is “all shades and no boundaries.” There is no way to draw a line between what is part of my consciousness, and that which is not. The problem is that what seems to be a boundary at this moment will shift immediately as I shift my focus. In James’ words: “Which part … is in my consciousness, which out? If I name what is out, it already has come in.”
Thought Experiment — Boundaries in consciousness
1) Can you choose to exclude something from your consciousness? How do you get beyond the problem that if you are thinking about something you wish to exclude, it is in your consciousness?
2) There is a great deal you are not aware of at this moment in the preconscious or unconscious realm. As soon as you notice it, however, it is no longer in the unconscious. But how did you create the boundary that excluded it to begin with?
3) And how do you remove a boundary so as to become aware of things from your personal past of which you are unconscious right now?
4) Even more difficult, how do you become aware of things that are repressed right now, things that you have never remembered or your ego does not want to remember? How do you even know what is there?
5) If there are things that are available to you that go beyond your personal memory and experience, how would you go about bringing them into your own consciousness?
There is no way to know whether your unconscious is limited to your personal past, or if it includes a larger shared field of consciousness in some way. James made clear that we have no idea whether all that is in our unconscious is only personal information, as Freud claimed. How could we possibly know that, since we do not what is there? Influenced by James, Jung went on to develop his ideas about a collective consciousness, realms of consciousness that are shared between and among us. In his later years, Jung extensively explored the realms of mystical consciousness. Echoing James and Bodhidharma, he wrote:
“If anyone should draw the conclusion that the psyche, in its deepest reaches, participates in a form of existence beyond time and space and thus partakes of what is symbolically described as “eternity” he would have the great advantage of conforming to a bias of his fellow humans which has existed from time immemorial and is universal.”
Jung eventually concluded that anyone who did not consider these possibilities, either from “skepticism, lack of courage, inadequate psychological experience, or thoughtless ignorance” would be in conflict with the deepest truths of existence. The consequences of this denial would be “neurotic restlessness.” And, “Restlessness begets meaninglessness, and the lack of meaning in life is a soul sickness whose full extent and full import, our age has not yet begun to comprehend.”
We are, all too sadly, seeing the truth of his diagnosis playing out around us in the modern world, with rampant depression, anxiety, escapism, and violence.
Skeptico: I am convinced. Tell me how I can move toward experiencing this greater consciousness for myself.
Wisdom Seeker: All right, but let’s take a break and take that up in the next essay.