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This is a book about mysticism, exploring five different spiritual traditions that exhibit it to a robust degree. We go from the most theistic heights of Hinduism to the stark atheism of Buddhism. From the little structured Native American spirituality to the radical mystical Catholicism of Teilhard de Chardin. We will touch on Taoism as well, as we must ground ourselves in the Way. Each tradition emphasizes union or direct communion with ultimate reality, or with God.

All espouse eternal life, even the atheistic Buddhists. Intuition, insight, radical meditation techniques—subjective experience—can give us direct knowledge of spiritual truth. And this subjective experience can transform into an equally objective one. In the end the yogi, swami, lama, guru—holy person—learns that subjective and objective are in actuality equivalent. He who transcends duality is a strong candidate for Enlightenment. This is the tip of a very big iceberg. Come take a foray into authentic mysticism, and gain a roadmap that can guide you for the rest of your lives.

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As noted, Brahman is more of an impersonal being, a kind of force—the ultimate reality underlying all phenomena. It would be very difficult for a Bhakta to direct her attention to something so abstract.

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p. 5-6: The Sioux have a rather explicit belief in the existence of the soul. They believe we all have something, some force, within us that controls us—something almost like a second person inside. This could be in our own terminology soul, spirit, essence—what have you. One can’t see it or feel it—one cannot sense it in any way—but it is there just the same. Many people go their whole lives without perceiving this spirit in a meaningful way—at least today. Lame Deer, as a young aspiring medicine man, had a numinous experience in which he vividly encountered this soul. He said it was the only time it ever happened to him, but it primed him and qualified him to be a successful and famous holy man.

Loving the relative calm and quiet of Nature, medicine men are more solitary people than the average Indian. He longs to be in places where there is no sound save the humming of insects. Sitting facing the West, he asks questions of the surrounding plants, and they answer him. He also listens to the voices of the animals, all those who move upon the Earth. He is part of an undivided whole with these living entities. The living essence of this whole flows into the medicine man’s soul, animates and changes him, and then flows back to its source, whatever and wherever it may be. The medicine man doesn’t know what or where, but he knows the flow is there. He has experienced it directly untold times. He knows.


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p. 68-9: The Buddhists believe in a strong parallelism between the material and immaterial worlds, and that the natural and spiritual worlds are indistinct. This is very much akin to the ancient Greeks or the medieval alchemists, who held similar views. One result of this is the notion that psyche exists in both matter and mind. That is, just as matter is implicitly enfolded in mind, so too is mind enfolded in matter. So there is no sharp distinction (as there is in the modern West) between animate and inanimate, or matter and spirit. This principle indicates an undivided wholeness that is a cornerstone of Buddhist philosophy. If matter has mind-like characteristics, and mind contains and unfolds matter-like characteristics, then the universe shows no rigid boundary between matter and mind, and all is truly one whole, with no rigid boundaries.

Similarly, there are no rigid boundaries between life and death. We shall go deeper into this later, but, briefly, the bardo states which one encounters at death can be simulated (and even accessed by master lamas and yogis) during life, so that one knows exactly what to do at the moment of death and does not get lost or confused—because she is eminently prepared. So you see, Tibetan Buddhists really see, not only no fine line, but no line at all between life and death. They exist side by side. He or she who has found the holy vajra, the radiant jewel of the enlightened mind (bodhicitta), within her heart, transforms a consciousness of mortality into a holy wisdom and awareness of immortality, perceives the infinite in the finite and trades samsara for Enlightenment—it is this one who embodies Vajrayana.

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material versus immaterial... very nice.. makes me wonder about objective versus subjective

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pp. 69-70: Buddhism escapes the dilemma of dualism by, let us say at the outset, embracing a totally subjective experience. Matter is considered not as a ‘thing-in-itself,’ but merely the product of sense-impressions, making matter not the opposite of mind, but rather a condition of it. The entire external, material world is the world of the senses, and there is no objective distinction between regarding it as an object of physics or an object of psychology. Because there is no distinction, and further, because there are many reasons for regarding it as ephemeral, conditional and illusory, the Buddhists live in a very subjective universe.

The elements of matter have no substantial reality, but are constantly recurring phenomena, which arise, exist, transform, and disappear according to certain physical laws. Their permanence, as we know, is a total illusion. The frames of these recurring phenomena are, in the Abhidhamma, referred to as “thought moments.” A thought moment in Buddhism is an infinitesimal, minimum-size sliver, or basic monad, of awareness. It is the narrowest possible division of the stream of consciousness. So in awareness, a thought arises, it develops, and then dissolves or ceases. Next, the following thought arises, is held, and terminates again—and so on, over and over, repeating endlessly. A thought moment is considered to be much shorter than a billionth of a second, so this process of projection/evolution/injection is very fine and very rapid. It is said that the Buddha, when meditating, could hold in stasis two consecutive thought moments and contemplate them individually, as well as the gap between them. This seems a feat! This concept of thought moments reinforces most fundamentally the notion of impermanence, whereby in our basic consciousness we have birth, living, and death in our deepest experience over and over, continually, forever.

This is all crucial, because it removes the barrier between material and psychical. Or rather, dismantles the duality of matter and mind. Once again, we have solved a duality dilemma. If a thought-moment, which is inherent in human consciousness, is also basic to the identity of matter itself, then we see there is no legitimate difference between matter and mind, or between inner and outer, for that matter.

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Kickle said:

Congratulations on the completion of your project!  What is a takeaway you have from writing it?

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p. 160: One duty of the guru is to initiate each pupil in his turn to a kind of samadhi, and this is not a graduation, but only a reinforcement that there are indeed fruits along the path, for those who are ready. (A master can enter and exit the highest samadhi at will). By a tap on the heart chakra, a guru can send his pupil whirling around the universe, losing the physical bondage of the body, more alive and aware than ever before in his life. The student can see into the atomic structure of matter, can float among nebulae and black holes, can transcend spacetime completely, and can see the pure, infinite awareness suffusing Mother Nature. The student can also hear the voice of God, in the aum syllable, and peer into every facet of His creation. The Spirit of God is recognized as inexhaustible Bliss. As one floats among planets in this Solar System, and among those thousands of light-years away, one sees that Nature is not pure randomness and meaningless chaos, but rather that the universe has order, purpose and direction. Some yogis would say this is the work and plan of God; some would say it is Divine evolution. Regardless, all future yogis receive experiences like this from their gurus from time to time, a beautiful interchange.

Almost as soon as begun, the experience is over. Air returns to the lungs, normal perception reasserts itself, and a deep disappointment permeates every atom of the student’s body. He is limited once more to its cage, which is not a propitious vessel for spirit, generally. One is once again imprisoned in the microcosm, wondering what just happened! But these are the peaks and valleys of spiritual practice.


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