All Things Mystical - Real or Not?

by Sirona 131 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • Sirona
    Sirona

    Gareth Knight (real name Basil Wilby) is an author who I respect. I have met him - he is getting old now but he's no less intelligent or fascinating.

    Some 40 years ago he wrote a well respected book called "A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism". In this book he says the following regarding mystical experiences:

    "To try to describe a mystical experience is like trying to describe the scent of a flower; one cannot do it. The best on can do is tell the enquirer how best he can obtain the particular flower so that he can smell it for himself. If he cannot be bothered to follow your directions or flatly refuses to believe that the flower exists there is nothing one can do about it"

    If you have had a mystical experience do you agree with this comment?

    If you have not had a mystical experience, what do you think of this comment?

    Sirona

  • james_woods
    james_woods

    How about this Koan? -

    Chiyono studied Zen for many years under Bukko of Engaku. Still, she could not attain the fruits of meditation. At last one moonlit night she was carrying water in an old wooden pail girded with bamboo. The bamboo broke, and the bottom fell out of the pail. At that moment, she was set free. Chiyono said - "No more water in the pail, no more Moon in the water."

  • Farkel
    Farkel

    : If you have not had a mystical experience, what do you think of this comment?

    Mystical things exist. Unless they don't.

    Farkel, "I Know Nothing" Class

  • Satanus
    Satanus

    Some mystical stuff is like that. Other things mystical can be described quite well. Qabala makes it much more complicated than it needs to be.

    S

  • james_woods
    james_woods

    Satanis said:

    Some mystical stuff is like that. Other things mystical can be described quite well. Qabala makes it much more complicated than it needs to be.

    Yeah - and what's up with the "holy magic water" and that silly red string?

  • Gill
    Gill

    Mystical experiences are not so 'mystical' once you study quantum physics.

    'Things'. life, everything is not what it appears to be to the naked, uninformed human eye.

    Having had a few strange or even 'mystical' experience and spent several years trying to find out why I knew things had happened, and what I must or mustn't do, I realised that there must be a logical reason for everything!

    Only quantum physics has the answers.

  • james_woods
    james_woods

    Gill, how did you know that I quoted that Koan from "Goedel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter?

  • VoidEater
    VoidEater

    If you have had a mystical experience do you agree with this comment?

    Not necessarily. I think I have a knack for describing the experiences I have had (but I've been writing prose and poetry for a long time).

    But the caveat: everything described is just a finger pointing. Words are part and parcel of the intellectual domain, which is different from the experiential domain. The words can point to the experience, but are no replacement for it. I can describe some of the qualities of the flower's scent, and how it affects me, but I cannot give you the scent for you to experience yourself.

    Poe says, "For my own part, I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words with even more distinctness than that which I conceived it. There is, however, a class of fancies, of exquisite delicacy, which are not thoughts and to which as yet I have found it absolutely impossible to adapt to language. These fancies arise in the soul (alas, how rarely!) only at epochs of most intense tranquillity, when the bodily and mental health are in perfection and at those mere points of time where the confines of the waking world blend with the world of dreams. And so I captured this fancy where all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream."

  • Terry
    Terry
    "To try to describe a mystical experience is like trying to describe the scent of a flower; one cannot do it. The best on can do is tell the enquirer how best he can obtain the particular flower so that he can smell it for himself. If he cannot be bothered to follow your directions or flatly refuses to believe that the flower exists there is nothing one can do about it"

    Think of it this way. There is the objective universe that all of us can see, hear, smell, taste and touch. It can be measured, defined by all of us the same way.

    Then, there is whatever each of us can make up in our own head. The imaginary universe which is entirely subjective. Each person has their own version.

    The real universe and the imaginary one.

    Physics deals with the objective, measurable and definable reality while Mysticism is subjective because it deals with imaginary things.

    The best way to tell which universe you are dealing with is simple.

    When somebody tells you they cannot define, measure or objectify a thing they describe as ACTUAL---you are dealing with mysticism.

    Subjectivity is an alarm bell for rational people.

    The imaginary is a lot more interesting because it can be anything. Mostly, this is because it isn't something.

    Supernatural, mystical, irrational......all words which require you give up the thinking and analytical part of your intelligence in order to participate in a fuzzy wuzzy world of make-believe.

    Which world does science, technology, fact, medicine, human progress and education flow from? The real world, the objective one which is definable.

    That's the one we actually live in.

    The rest is about as real as the dream you had when you ate too much pastrami. (And as open to "interpretation.")

  • james_woods
    james_woods

    The dilemma of Zen is: what else to rely on, but words?

    Mumon states this very clearly:

    "It cannot be expressed with words, but it cannot be expressed without words."

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