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books on the mystical experience?
    #26022282 -

I did a quick search here but didn't seem to find much.

What books would you recommend that are specifically about the mystical experience and its nature? I tried "Religions, Values and Peak Experiences" by Abraham Maslow, the psychologist who coined the term "peak experience", but it was really a tiny book that didn't go into very much detail, and I was disappointed.

So did you read one that reflects in depth about the mystical experience and that you would recommend?

Edited by Aldous (05/30/19 06:31 AM)

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Re: books on the mystical experience? [Re: Aldous] * 1
    #26022629 -

The Way of Zen and This Is It, both by Alan Watts, Be Here Now and The Only Dance There Is, both by Ram Dass, Portable Darkness by Aleister Crowley, The Self-Aware Universe by Amit Goswami


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Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici

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Re: books on the mystical experience? [Re: Aldous]
    #26022668 -

hmm theres lots of stuff out there. what kind of approach or perspective are you looking for?
alan watts covered a lot of ground on the topic.. I myself got more out of his earlier books on christian mysticism, especially "Behold the spirit".
if you want something more scholarly then "perrenial philosophy" by aldous huxley could be up your alley.  that ones good cus its not couched in just 1 tradition but focuses on the commonality of all mystical experiences.
something similar but less dry : the direct path by greg goode.  a nonduality book that touches on the major classic approaches. again, I grew up christian, so the section on christian mysticism and bernadette roberts appealed to me. she had no context for her "experience of no self" beyond catholic monastic literature and its really interesting how she relates it via christian terminology

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Re: books on the mystical experience? [Re: Aldous]
    #26023091 -

I think you'd enjoy The Psychedelic Experience. I've read it a few times many years ago and found it to be really helpful.

I have this other book which you may also enjoy, it's called An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Mysticism and the Mystery Religions. Can get this book off eBay. That's how I got mine.

If you like reading about mystical experiences, I can tell you my most mystical experience. It happened about 11 years ago when I went (as I like to call) all the way on mushrooms….


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How to rid your body of the spike protein caused by the Covid vaccines.

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Re: books on the mystical experience? [Re: Aldous] * 1
    #26023218 -

I have studied mysticism since 1973 throughout 3  academic degree programs in philosophy, theology, and psychology beginning with Evelyn Underhill's works and William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience. Lama Anagarika Govinda's book Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism remains unsurpassed in its elaboration of mystical experience in a Tibetan Buddhist idiom. BUT, the best book I have ever read on mysticism, and one that I read within the last year, is Philosophy and Mysticism by W.T. Stace, 1960. He even touches upon the LSD experience which is remarkable given the publication date. You will not be disappointed.

Abraham Maslow was a psychologist who wisely recognized mysticism as being positive rather than pathological, but he was neither a philosopher or a theologian and both disciplines are relevant to the study of mystical experience as a human being's experience of Ultimate Reality, the proper subject of mysticism. After Stace, consider reading The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy by Robert K.C. Forman which discusses, among other pertinent things, the different schools of mysticism, e.g., Constructivist vs. Pure Consciousness Event. But read Stace's book first, the clarity of his writing in so obscure a subject was a real joy and I savored every page.


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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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Re: books on the mystical experience? [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #26025198 -

Thanks a lot y'all for your recommendations, I'll definitely look into them.

What I'm looking for is more reflection and research on the mystical experience than mystical texts per se.
But I think I have enough here to start :thumbup:

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Re: books on the mystical experience? [Re: Aldous]
    #26025245 -

:thumbup:


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Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici

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Re: books on the mystical experience? [Re: Aldous]
    #26026152 -

Stace's book is probably the most clear book on mysticism that I have ever read and I've read the works by mystics East and West themselves as well as researchers, beginning from the 19th century (e.g., W. James, E. Underhill, R.M. Bucke). Many of the mystics themselves are feeling types (Teresa Avila, Julian of Norwich, John of the Cross), but occasionally there is an intellectual type like Meister Eckhart whose writing is akin to the Jnana Yoga of Ramana Maharshi. Stace mentions Eckhart and identifies with him it would seem. He is a very clear author on this sometimes nebulous subject, covers cataphatic and apophatic forms. This is my #1 pick.


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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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Re: books on the mystical experience? [Re: Aldous] * 1
    #26027286 -

Aldous said:
books on the mystical experience?






Direct experience > Teachers Teaching you > books


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Omnicyclion.org
personal empowerment for the world

:nyan: LGBT - Love God Before Tradition :nyan:

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Re: books on the mystical experience? [Re: Asante]
    #26028539 -

Asante said:
Direct experience > Teachers Teaching you > books

I agree, and I do have the first, but not the second.
But none of this means the third is a no-no.
It's not because I prefer peaches over apples by far, that I will never eat apples again :smile:

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Re: books on the mystical experience? [Re: Aldous] * 1
    #26028721 -

In the present time, despite all that is known, there is a big, religious cult following of the Carlos Castaneda books. They praise him as the greatest teacher of all time and more such prose.

Books are such a trap. Look at Christians and the Bible.

Bible: *spells out exactly how it should be, repeatedly*

Christians: *vote Trump into office and do just about the exact opposite in every other way too*


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Omnicyclion.org
personal empowerment for the world

:nyan: LGBT - Love God Before Tradition :nyan:

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Re: books on the mystical experience? [Re: Asante]
    #26028852 -

Asante said:
Books are such a trap. Look at Christians and the Bible.

Bible: *spells out exactly how it should be, repeatedly*

Christians: *vote Trump into office and do just about the exact opposite in every other way too*


Can be considered as traps. And I kinda agree with this. direct experience
> teachers teaching > books. But there are times that teachers without direct experience = teacher's << a single book.

This kind of so called teachers are nothing more than influence peddlers.

Christians: shouldn't practice bloc voting.

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Re: books on the mystical experience? [Re: pacmanbreed] * 1
    #26028955 -

agree, most christians are clueless and will vote pro israel on everything

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Re: books on the mystical experience? [Re: mt cleverest]
    #26029137 -

Carlos Castaneda was an 8 part series of a man's introduction to a "real" sorcerer presented as nonfiction youbethe judge.

I like them regardless.  But Castaneda disappeared and one of his disciples was found dead...

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Re: books on the mystical experience? [Re: elro]
    #26029155 -

Ramana Maharishi writings
The gospel of sri Ramakrishna (afraid of girls lol butalleged siddha)

Richard Alpert myfav miracle of love

Robert Adams American who was connected karmically to Ramana maharshihe steamed about all through childhood then saw the guy ona book cover in the library.  He taught extensively in America and claimed to be lifted but Notas Ramana like there are different levels of enlightenment e.g demi vs fullgod realm. pure realms have levels? Hm

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Re: books on the mystical experience? [Re: Asante] * 1
    #26029508 -

None of these Trumpsters are Christians, they are as perverse as the monks in De Sade's fictional St. Mary's in the Woods, or the German Lutherans who became Nazi Party members, or the Crusaders who marched into non-European lands to kill Muslims, or those who persecuted Wiccans and wise-women, or those who burned human beings alive for possessing different God-concepts, or the 'Holy Inquisitioners' who were nothing more than psychopathic sadists wearing Christian symbols, or the 'Christian' royals Isabella and Ferdinand who supported the genocidal Christopher Columbus and who expelled the Jews from Spain (including  the conversos, the Jews converted to Catholicism). All of these categories contain people who called themselves Christians. There was nothing Christ-like about any of them, they were cruel and murderous and hence were not Christians except in the name which thet appropriated for their atrocities.

The canonical Bible was assembled from selected books while many more were rejected. Since the Nag Hammadi discovery in 1945, we have an idea of the wider collection of writings that afforded the individual greater freedom, theologies and myths which could not be exploited by the power structure of the priests, but which operated through self-realization, not vicarious sacrifice and magico-mythical salvation. The rules of the Catholic game made the eucharist absolutely indispensable to salvation and fear of excommunication meant complete social ostracism and damnation to Hell after death. Fear-based manipulation, tithing the already poor, threats of heresy, a nightmare that endured for centuries with possible torture or immolation. None of this power-trip is biblical, it was the appropriation and bastardization of innocuous if not beneficial teachings. Easter Orthodox and later Protestant Christianities were no better. Orthodox Christians persecuted peoples (mainly Jews) and Protestants burned, hanged, crushed, drowned, and otherwise persecuted their perceived enemies as well.

But even the canonical Bible is no less adventurous than The Game of Thrones literature, and has no fewer archetypal situations, albeit, without fire-breathing dragons. The fictional Toltec shamanism with its demonic soul-devouring Eagle-Deity, its inorganic life forms, the astral plane entities and phenomena all came from one Carlos Casteñeda who admitted to my former Professor Bob Briar ("Mr. Mummy") at Harry Houdini's grave on Halloween 1974 that "There is no Don Juan." A brilliant story-teller, Casteñeda had lots of people fooled. Hell, he received a PhD in anthropology from Columbia University based on great fiction, but he was dishonest and truth does not flow from lies.


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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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Re: books on the mystical experience? [Re: MarkostheGnostic] * 2
    #26029944 -

We both are very much pro-Christ and very much opposed to the perversities of twisting Christianity out of proportion.

I'm not really a Christian but I would have given anything to have been one of His apostles.

I do believe that THAT is what He intended, being DIRECTLY led by Christ, ie talking WITH Christ and being answered BY Christ, instead of adhering to a book with slavery and locusts.

Jesus wants to be your shepherd, DIRECTLY, not through a book or worse, interpretations of a book.

The Bible makes very clear that God wants you to pick up the phone and talk in person.





IN THE NOW. Not 2,3,4000 years ago and certainly NOT tomorrow. Today.


--------------------
Omnicyclion.org
personal empowerment for the world

:nyan: LGBT - Love God Before Tradition :nyan:

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Re: books on the mystical experience? [Re: Asante] * 1
    #26030346 -

:thumbup: :thumbup:


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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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