The The PathPath

PathwaysPathways Ordinary growth and evolution

Mystical Path – can come naturally and spontaneously when the soul is ready

Path of Hastened Attainment under the guidance of a Teacher

SPIRIT OR TRUE SELF

SPIRITUAL ORTRANSPERSONAL

HIGHER MENTAL

LOWER MENTAL

EMOTIONAL

PHYSICAL

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Needs to be awakened

Needs to mastered and purified

The Dual Work in The Dual Work in the Mystical Lifethe Mystical Life

Liberation; Reality

The Mystical Life

Compassion; Service

Rational action; impersonality consistent with affection and care

Freedom from personal unhappiness

Cleansing; structure building; personal effectiveness

Sorrow; fear; disappointment; unhappiness; victim of environment and conditioning

Stages in Growth

The Transcendent The Transcendent ConsciousnessConsciousness

Zen: Satori or Kensho; Prajna

Yoga: Samadhi and Prajna

Christianity: Illumination, Contemplative or mystical consciousness

Hinduism: Buddhi, Ananda

Buddhism: Bodhi, Enlightenment

Mystical experience is common to all the great religious traditions in the world.

• Christian: Teresa of Avila

• Islamic: Rumi

• Hindu: Ramakrishna

• Buddhist: D.T. Suzuki

• Taoist: Lao Tzu

• Nature Mystics: Whitman

• Maslow: Peak experiences

• Etc.

Universality of Mystical or Spiritual Experience

Self-Mastery & PurificationSelf-Mastery & Purification• Be aware of automatic reaction patterns (push buttons) and process them off

• Be aware of Habits and change those which are incompatible with highest ideals

• Let all actions be benevolent (with kindness and goodwill)

• Let all thoughts be objective, impersonal and benevolent

• Choose reading materials (food for mind) and conversation groups

• Daily awareness of thoughts, feelings, actions and bodily state

• Awakening – the initial quivering of prajna or intuition; creates divine discontent

• Search for the path• Purification – cleansing of the lower self and

integration with the higher• Nurturing of higher consciousness – meditation

and awareness of subtle thoughts; development of radiant mind (manas taijasi)

• Illumination; enlightenment; satori; bodhi• Union; nirvana

Stages in the Spiritual LifeStages in the Spiritual Life

Dr. Richard Bucke, Dr. Richard Bucke, Cosmic ConsciousnessCosmic Consciousness

All at once, without warning of any kind, I found myself wrapped in a flame-colored cloud. For an instant I thought of fire, an immense conflagration somewhere close by in that great city; the next, I know that the fire was within myself. Directly afterward there came upon me a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination impossible to describe. Among other things, I did not merely come to believe, but in saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence. I became conscious in myself of eternal life. It was not a conviction that I would have eternal life, but a consciousness that I possessed eternal life then; I saw that all men are immortal; that the cosmic order is such that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world, of all the worlds, is what we call love, and that the happiness of each all is in the long run absolutely certain. The vision lasted a few seconds and was gone; but the memory of it and the sense of reality of what it taught has remained during the quarter of a century which has since elapsed.

Allan Watts, Allan Watts, This is ItThis is It

The experience of enlightenment appears as a vivid and overwhelming certainty that the universe, precisely as it is at this moment, as a whole and every one of its parts, is so completely right as to need no explanation or justification beyond what it simply is. Existence not only ceases to be a problem; the mind is so wonder-struck at the self-evident and self-sufficient fitness of things as they are, including what would ordinarily be thought the very worst, that it cannot find any word strong enough to express the perfection and beauty of the experience. Its clarity sometimes gives the sensation that the world has become transparent or luminous, and its simplicity the sensation that it is pervaded and ordered by a supreme intelligence. At the same time, it is usual for the individual to feel that the world has become his own body, and that whatever he is has not only become, but always has been, what everything else is. It is not that he loses his identity to the point of feeling that he actually looks out through all other eyes, becoming literally omniscient, but rather that his individual consciousness and existence is a point of view temporarily adopted by something immeasurably greater than himself.

Alfred Lord TennysonAlfred Lord TennysonAll at once . . . out of the intensity of the consciousness of the individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being; and this not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, the weirdest of the weirdest, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life.

• Meditation is the systematic awakening of the higher levels of consciousness

• We need to distinguish between spiritual meditation and preparatory aspects

• The aim of meditation is to let the vehicles be still and to transcend the meditation

• The fruit is the full awakening of intuition, spiritual consciousness or prajna.

MeditationMeditation

Intuition

• Intuition is to see things – in their essential nature– not just understanding things conceptually or from

memory.

• It incorporates conceptual understanding, but at the same time, transcends it. It is integrative. It includes, without analysis, priorities, values or principles.

• It entails awareness of a level of consciousness subtler than thinking.

• True intuition is identical with spiritual awareness.

• Intuitive persons have judgments that are ultimately sound and in accord with objective reality.

• Hence, because their view or judgment encompasses a wider and deeper scope, they are aptly called wise (not merely being intelligent, cunning or smart).

• “All great men are endowed with intuition. They know without reasoning or analysis, what they need to know.” (Alexis Carrel)

• They are some of the most influential people in history: Plato, Confucius, Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Einstein, etc.

• They are self-actualizing people

The Intuitive PersonThe Intuitive Person

1. Understand what intuition is – and not confuse it with ESP, emotions, and whims

2. Be clear about your deepest values – your principles in life and your most important personal values

3. Learn how to enter into inner silence – practice meditation and daily awareness

4. Check inner response when a decision has to be made – learn to recognize the inner seeing vs. emotional reactions

Exploring Intuition

Some Suggested Steps in Some Suggested Steps in the Mystical Lifethe Mystical Life• Clarify priorities

• Develop self-mastery over habits and conditionings

• Practice daily meditation

• Render service without seeking reward

• Non-attachment

• Practice daily self-recollectedness or awareness; be aware of the transcendent while living the worldly life

Exercise• Think of a present life situation that is not trivial – something

that you are concerned about and which is not yet clear yet to you what you should do. (E.g., to sell or not to sell the house; to reside in another place; to buy a new piano or not; to go back to school or not; to enter into a relationship; etc.)

• Enter into inner silence. Drop the thought about the situation entirely from your mind (if you feel discomfort while thinking about it then process it first).

• When mind and feelings are calm, indifferent about things, and there is inward silence, turn your attention to the situation:– not deliberate or evaluate it, – just look at it without analysis; – allow the consciousness to “dwell” on the situation, – no attempt to understand or do anything about it, just look

• Stay with this state for five minutes

OutlineOutline

Stages of the mystical pathPurificationRight LivingMeditationPrajna or intuitionEnlightenment with quotes