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"The beautiful land they crossed was stitched
by mountain ridges between high, broad plateaus. Crossing them, Bistami felt
they had traveled up into a higher space, where sunsets threw long shadows over
a vast, dark, windy world.
Once when a last
shard of sunset light shot under dark lowering clouds, Bistami heard from
somewhere in their camp a musician playing a Turkish oboe, carving in the air a
long plaintive melody that wound on and on, a song of the dusky plateau's very
soul.
The sultana stood at the edge of camp, listening with him, her
fine head turned like a hawk's as she watched the sun descend. It dropped at
the very speed of time itself. There was no need to speak in this singing
world, so huge, so knotted; no human mind could
ever comprehend it, even the music only touched the hem of it, and even that
strand they failed to understand - they only felt it.
The universal
whole was beyond them.
And yet; and yet; sometimes, as at this moment,
at dusk, in the wind, we catch, with a sixth sense we don't know we have,
glimpses of that larger world-vast shapes of cosmic significance, a sense of
everything holy to dimensions beyond
sense or thought or even
feeling - this
visible world of
ours, lit from within, stuffed vibrant with reality." - Kim Stanley Robinson
The
deep mystery of
existence is a
mysterium, a
mystery, tremendum et
fascinans-tremendous, terrifyingly horrific when initially contemplated because
understanding smashes all
of your fixed notions of existent
reality.
Horrific, yet at the same
time utterly fascinating, the beauty of your
own nature and being. When you start
thinking about these
things, about the
inner mystery, inner life, the
eternal life, there are not too many
symbolic conceptual images for you to use.
When you recognize
these spiritual
experiences as being parallel to those of
other
individuals from
other
cultures,
other
social
systems or from an
individual that lived twenty
years, a hundred years, a thousand years before you were born then you
understand that these
individuals had a
spiritual life that was nearly identical to your own
spiritual life.
An example of this
would be the similarity between myths from
cultures and social systems far removed in which the
hero or heroine hears, near the
bottom of the abyss (a bleak black spot in
life were life
no longer seems worth living), the voice of
salvation. Or where the
hero or heroine are lost
grouping in the dark of despair but
then find a spark of
light which, when moved closer to, expands and
releives the hero or heroine of
emotional suffering through
spiritual
redemption.
In
the deepest bleakest blackest moment the
true message of
transformation comes through.
At the darkest
moment comes the
light.
This can be
metaphorically understood as personally identifying your
connection with the
divine spark of God that
lives within in you, that gave you life and that
grants you continued exisitence.
The divine
spark of God in
you does not die - this is your
soul.
The
divine spark of God in you
survives death and is
resurrected.
Heaven and hell reside
within the soul of each and every
man or
woman. The
divine spark of God lives
within each
man's or
woman's
heart.
This is the great
realization of the
Upanishads of India in the ninth century B.C.
All the gods, all the
heavens, all the worlds, are within us.
They are magnified
archetypical dreams, manifestations of the
imagination filled with
symbolic conceptual imagery.
That is what myths are.
The mystery of life and
existence is beyond all
human conception.
Every
thing we know
stays within the boundaries of the
terminology of the
concepts of being and not being, many and single,
true and untrue.
We
compartmentalize by
thinking in terms of
opposites.
God, abiding within the ultimate
transcendent reality, is beyond the pairs of
opposites.
People are looking for a
way of experiencing the
reality of life on Earth
that opens us up to the
transcendent that informs
reality, and at the same
time to form ourselves within that
spiritually
experienced
consciousness
transforming
reality.
That is what
people want.
That is what the
human spirit and soul seeks.
Men want to be in accord with the grand
symphony that is existent
reality
and to put
our physical and
spiritual selves into accord with the
harmony of
existent reality.
Men feel peace
when they live in accord with
nature and contentment when they
feel in accord with
God.
We are looking for some accord with the
mystery that informs all
things but to find it actually in
our
environment,
on
our Earth,
in our reality - to recognize it. To
know that some
category of
instruction will enable
us to experience the
divine
presence
within.
The individual who has had a unique
mystical
experience, not one found behind the
closed doors of a church, knows that all
symbolic conceptual images contain error. The
human mind's ability to create
symbolic conceptual images to comunicate to others a personal
spiritual
experience is
inadequate.
The
symbolic conceptual images do not render the experience, they suggest it.
Have
you had a transcendent mystical
experience?
How can a person who
has had a transcendent mystical
experience
convey that
knowledge to another if the
symbolic conceptual images available are
inadequate?
Try to
explain the
joy of skiing to somebody
living in the tropics who has never even seen
snow.
The recipient has to have been a
transcendent mystical
experience to catch the message, some
clue
– otherwise you're not hearing
what is being said.
-adapted from the
Power of Myth, interview of Joseph Campbell,
mythologist, by Bill Moyers, journalist.
the mystical religious
experience
"Mysticism denotes the
exploration of
spiritual
mystery. We are drenched in
mystery. It is
scientifically verified that
all phenomena of observable
reality in essence consist of varied
frequencies of electromagnetic waves,
and all we know about the
nature of such waves is that they are
emissions of light, and yet we have no
idea what the
essential nature of light
is, or why this magnificent bewildering reality of ours has been
illuminated to a limited degree
within the embodied mind. We are permeated
by mystery, and encompassed by
ever greater mystery.
Mysticism implies an attentive
intimate relationship to that which is
mysterious, enigmatic, esoteric, baffling, igniting
an intense feeling of genuine
awe and spell-binding
wonder. Basically,
mysticism is both the
philosophy and the
science of the numinous - the striving
for knowledge and
communion with
divine dimensions." -
Lew Paz
(The
Talmud teaches that direct forms of prophecy
ended shortly after the
destruction of the First Temple in 586 BC.)
Also see Joseph Campbell
on:
in the beginning
image
myth
life
consciousness
archetype
metaphor
the
serpent
religion
dreamtime
hero
God
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