Letters to the Editor
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I Beg To Differ
"Any mystical experience you have while using LSD or other psychedelic substance isn't a legitimate one."
Longer reply: On one of my LSD-inspired mystical experiences I learned that LSD-inspired mystical experiences are in fact legitimate. If you haven't the same kind of mystical experience then you are not able to understand this dharma.
Shorter reply: How the hell would YOU know and who are you to tell me whether or not my experiences are legitimate?
Once you throw out science and logic and reason and posit some unverifiable alternative form of higher knowledge, then anything goes. At that point you're playing tennis without a net and every shot's a winner!
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@undrum1
John Cage, who it could be said devoted his life as composer, writer and speaker to highlighting the value of silence, reported on his experience of being in an anechoic chamber. In a room acoustically designed to reflect absolutely no sound, thus resulting in measurable absolute silence, Cage distinctly heard three sounds: a low, rhythmic sound; a higher-pitched, slower rhythmic sound; and a high-pitched whine. Of course these were the sounds of his circulatory, respiratory and central nervous systems.
In this context silence refers to a state of mind absent the endless stream of thoughts we generally experience rather than acoustic sound.
Sorry about your tinnitus, though. That sucks!
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@ELYDOG
"Mysticism actually divides humans, as there are as many mysticisms as there are countries, or peoples."
Are you aware this is the position of organized religion against "mysticism?" Catholicism especially as "the one true church" has harped on this through the centuries. They hate mystics because they can't control them.
It'd be more accurate to say there are as many mysticisms as there are traditions, i.e. sufism and Islam, Eckart et al and Christianity, tantra and Hinduism/Buddhism. The usual argument is that they are an "evolutionary development" that arise out of the traditions that eliminate the need for organized faith once their "truth" has been internalized.
To this day, the best book I've read on the subject is Huxley's "Perennial Philosophy" and James offers a lot in "Varieties of Religious Experience." Why don't you take a look at them if you really have an interest in the subject.
As to whether there are as many "mysticisms as people" it's the view of Jung that the entire purpose of religion is so eventually we will evolve as individuals so that becomes true. But if you like philosophy try "The History and Evolution of Consciousness" by E. Neumann--who wrote the philosophy of Jungianism. That will give you something to chew.
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@The Fool
"If you haven't the same kind of mystical experience then you are not able to understand this dharma."
This is amusing, but its a straw man. Knowledge, even allegedly mystical knowledge, is still subject to peer review.
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@mike sulzer
Good. I get what your driving at, and that makes a lot of sense.
I would argue, however, that you're still driving for a fully materialistic explanation of 'awareness'. And this might be possible if we each, as individuals, lived in a vacuum. But, each and every one of us lives in some sort of community where there exist collective awareness and understanding. It is this fact that leads me to believe that awareness is not something so simple as a firing of neurons.
Further, your statement, "But I see no evidence that any awareness occurs without neural activity, just that awareness is more fundamental and not tied to the "higher" types of mental activity that humans think they are good at." seems to me a wish that some more fundamental type of mental function will be discovered. Perhaps the whole thing is a chicken and egg proposition, and just as likely there could be no neural activity without awareness?
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@GW and Jack36
GW said: "Actually getting to the higher consciousness takes many years of effort. There aren't any short cuts."
Synchronicity dude! That's exactly what I was going to say to you! In addition to the mystical experiences I've already described, I've spent 1000's of hours hitting the books, being trained by scholars who have spent even more time hitting the books than I have, and just thinking real hard. And then some wanker who does breathing exercises comes along and tells me there aren't any shortcuts. That is truly comical.
Jack36: This is amusing, but its a straw man. Knowledge, even allegedly mystical knowledge, is still subject to peer review.
It's not a straw man. It exactly parallels the nonfalsifiable claims of the mystics. And their claims are not subject to peer review in any meaningful sense of the word. Just because Monty the Mystic, part time editor of Shambhala Magazine reads a Wilber book and says it's profound, that is not peer review. That is sham peer review.
I repeat: Once I had a mystical experience in which I learned that all the mystical experiences, including Ken Wilber's, were simply states of consciousness generated by unusual chemicals. If you haven't had this experience you can't understand it.
Now prove that I am wrong and give me one good reason why my claim to secret knowledge is any less convincing than Wilber's.
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Wouldn't That Be Nice?
Anyone for tennis? We don't need a court or some reductionist net. And only the earhtbound think we need to be in the same place. Here we go.
THWOCK!
Oooooooh. That's an ace if I ever saw one, boys. I win.
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@The Fool
Touche! I was going to defend you, but you clearly don't need it.
Have you really spent 1000's of hours meditating, and if so, what do you get out of it (serious question, not a veiled insult)?
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@Rocket999
I haven't spent much time meditating although I don't doubt that people derive some benefit from it. I just don't think they get any secret knowledge from it other than what epistemologists call knowledge-by-acquaintance with what the experience of meditation is like.
All of of these oceanic feelings of oneness with the universe strike me as variations on Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's concept of flow. I get it from hiking in the wilderness, playing guitar or listening to other people make music, smoking dope, having sex, playing sports, getting deep into a well writen book of philosophy or many other ways that all strike me as more rewarding than sitting around breathing a certain way -- not that there's anything wrong with it.