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Copyright © Sirius Publishing 2006-2019
Were the Mystics right all along?
Mystical experiences have been ascribed to many Spiritual and Religious figures through time, but many ordinary people have experiences, at some point in their lives, so profound that they can only be described as deeply religious, spiritual, or mystical. Our model suggests that these experiences are occasions where awareness of the mystical level is possible. We have already said that due to the nature of the information processed at the mystical level any experience of it will seem like knowing everything in an instant. Philip K Dick was the author of Valis a book where he describes a similar experience but ascribes it to contact with an entity existing outside of ourselves. This he called the Vast Active Living Information System which pretty much covers peoples reports.
So, we have this experience of being plugged into limitless information but it is not cold in a machine style, but throbbing with energy, throbbing with life. There is often the sense that this information system is trying to communicate, but when the person returns to an everyday states of awareness they either lose the meaning entirely or replace it with platitudes about divine wisdom or transcendental knowledge or some such which is of no practical use to anyone.
We may speculate that the reason why mystical experiences serve no purpose except to confirm that mystical experiences exist is that people lack the capacity to bring the experience down-to-earth.
Like drawing power from the National Grid, cables from power stations transfer many megawatts of electricity at an extremely high voltage. In order to use this electricity in our homes it has to be stepped down at a substation into a voltage that we can use without blowing up our machines.
So, in order to become wholly human, we need to prepare for ourselves a means of stepping down the intensity of the mystical system.
The Mystics were only ‘right’ in that they testified to the existence of a mystical experience. There are very few mystics who have taken from that experience anything which can be transmitted to the rest of us. Those few include St John of the Cross and St Teresa of Avila, who have managed to create significant guidance for others to follow. Our system however would indicate that if a reliable connection is made with the mystical level then this will direct the lower levels to act in accordance with it’s ‘vast plan’. This will not involve talking about it.
Though the mystics were only right in the sense that they were mystics and had experience of the mystical level, they were not right or shall we say useful in that they were able to embody the insights of the mystical level. This was because they had no preparation, no mechanism, to step down the insights of the mystical level to our own.
St Teresa of Avila experiencing rapture:
From the sculpture by Bernini.The Cornero Chapel, St Mary of the Victories, Rome.
General Characteristics of The Mystical Experience
Mystical experiences are marked by all or some of the following feelings/insights.
A sense of unity or totality
A sense of timelessness
A sense of having encountered ultimate reality
A sense of sacredness
A sense that one can not adequately describe the richness of this experience
Most experiences can last as short as a few seconds or up to a few days.