Spiritual Mysticism

[harsi]

It is so refreshing for me to hear you, dear Hari, speaking about spiritual mysticism. Actually through my whole period of my spiritual search I experienced a lot of this "a ha" points and moments. Often I could not understand them so easily at the time they where happening, but later I did. I just wonder if the much one is evolving spiritually one may easily be aware when something mystical is happening or going to happen and be better aware it? What is your experience of this?

[Hari]

Maybe when one evolves, one seeks out awareness rather than sitting back and expecting it to appear due to disciplined austerities or through mercy? I feel that the more one desires to be aware, the more one pays attention to the opportunities right before us. One seeks out that which is in the present instead of looking backwards or forwards. Awareness is a symptom of contact with the present. Evolved persons are not afraid of the present; rather, they embrace it and work with it knowing well that it is all that exists.

Having said that, some of my most outrageous mystical experiences came to me quite by surprise and not of my own choice. I may have prepared myself for these experiences through my spiritual development, but I did not expect or desire the specific manifestation that appeared. When such experiences manifested, I embraced them and let them take me where they wanted. This led to greater awareness and entry into more advanced or more intimate forms of spiritual mysticism. Being unafraid to charter the unknown is prerequisite to mystical practice. Losing fear of the mystical aspects of one's own essence is also a symptom of personal spiritual evolution.

I suppose one could say that when one accepts the initial invitation and accepts the experience in the manner expected, one is invited again! Each experience builds on the last and leads one to increased capacity.

All experiences are connected with our evolution in some manner or other. But when one nourishes the mystical side, it manifests to the point where it is part of one's life and not something astounding. Even if one is astounded by what is happening or by what one can or did do, it is not shocking that it has happened; rather, one sees it is a great joy and a mystical treat to excite the energy of the soul.

[harsi]

Awareness is a symptom of contact with the present. Evolved persons are not afraid of the present; rather, they embrace it and work with it knowing well that it is all that exists.

Wanderfully said indeed. I am always astounded about your great ability to describe spiritual and somehow mystical knowledge in clear and simple words understandable for everyone. I especially like what you have written above. Regarding mystical experiences I often went throgh similar experiences. Thank you very much for sharing your great spiritual experiences with us.

[Janus]

Maybe when one evolves, one seeks out awareness rather than sitting back and expecting it to appear due to disciplined austerities or through mercy? I feel that the more one desires to be aware, the more one pays attention to the opportunities right before us. One seeks out that which is in the present instead of looking backwards or forwards. Awareness is a symptom of contact with the present. Evolved persons are not afraid of the present; rather, they embrace it and work with it knowing well that it is all that exists..

As Srila Prabhupada observed the conditioned living entity (in this case the conditioned human being) seems to function largely on imprinting and conditioning and mostly he shares with other mammalian species an inability to examine or to critique or criticize his neurological programs, an inability to avail himself of what would provide him the means to "evolve", so to speak.

I have never been a subscriber to Darwinian evolutionary theory, which, although it is taught to us in such a way in our early years as to make us believe it to be indisputable fact, is still very much only a theory (one that evem it’s author called into question.

There are many other models of evolution and the Darwinian theory owes not its popularity to its being any more, or even as likely as the other evolutionary theories as being proven to be true, what it owes its advocacy to is its popularity with the military-industrialist paradigm and its usefullness in the service of The Machine Age World View. I much prefer such alternate theories as the ones proposed by Prince Peter Kropotkin and De Chardin for finding nothing in them either less reasonable than Darwin (who considered his own theory suspect) and much more supportive of the Vedic consideration that only in the human form of life does evolution, proceeding from the ability to examine and criticize one’s own neurological programs, ones own conditioning, become a possibility.

It seems that over the aeons that some human beings have evolved by learning to critique and examine their own programs. Members of this group appear mysterious. Like the uttama-adhikari’s that are mentioned to us who are functioning upon the madhyama level, their actions and activities cannot be predicted. They exhibit what appears to be growth and or creativity. In both quality or qualities and what else they mean and do, appearing sometimes to be quite innovative, especially in how they conduct their presentation. If I recall correctly such products of evolution are termed Sadhana-siddhis in the Krsna Conscious philosophy..

Neurological research over the past several decades indicates clearly that the reality that we perceive, that we are consciously aware of, that we regard as being objective, "out there" and "real" is a product of consciousness conducting itself as a passive parameter, as something which does not endeavor to extend its boundaries or even allow a permeable barrier at the edge of it’s existence. Consciousness becomes a reactive mechanism in which condition "we"choose what we perceive, "we" make what is real. Such choices as we make are influenced, directed even, not by those persons who we imagine ourselves to be, but by physsiological and emotional needs that we may not even be consciously aware of and which we certainly are not in control of..

Most people consider that perceptual abilities apprehend reality and convey it directly to their conscious appraisal, as it is, that such things as our eyes function in much the same way as a clear pane of window glass does, allowing the vision of the outside world to pass through unchanged, undiminished and unobstructed. The truth of the matter is however different, the eye doesn’t see anything, we see nothing at all that is outside of us. Everything that we see we see only inside of our heads, the sun, the moon, the entire universe, everything we see we see inside of our hears and what we see is a precept or construct, the product of process, an eye brain synergy that is little understood still by modern science. Everything we see inside ouf our heads is a product of our brains image making ability, is, in a sense, a product of oure imagination.

Anyone having taken a first year physics course should be familiar with the laws of optics which support this, little do we know that ancient philosophers and philosophies also were aware of this. Aristotle expressed his realization of this by changing his form of expression from "I see" to "I have seen" and the philosophy of Gaudiya Vedanta explains the sensory defects in combine with Maya’stwo principle powers in such a way as to be saying virtually the same thing.Just asas Sril Prabhupada claimed; Krsna conscious IS scientific and where it is not, it is not Krsna consciousness.

Perception is limited and directed by factors that we are in general entirely oblivious to, as we are entirely oblivious to the fact that we are also imaginative constructs, that our identities as individuals below the paramarthic or absolute platform are relative.

It is very difficult to have any discussion about human consciousness, about how we perceive or about expanding awareness if we do not understand ourselves as we actually are.