Eternal WIsdom
“Eternal Wisdom: ‘I go forth to meet those who seek Me, and I receive with affectionate joy such as desire My love. All that you can ever experience of My sweet love in time is but as a little drop to the ocean of My love in eternity.”
–Henry Suso (a.k.a. Amandus, a.k.a. Heinrich Seuse, German Mystic, c.1300-1366)
“The Soul Afire: Revelations of the Mystics: an Anthology” (H. A. (Editor) Reinhold)
The World In A Grain of Sand
“To see a world in a grain of sand
and heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
and eternity in an hour.”
–William Blake (English Poet, Painter and Mystic, 1757-1827)
The Breath of God
“All have the breath of God in them. The air you breathe – is it not full of God, is it not your life force? All of creation shares in it, contributes something to it.”
–The Findhorn Community
Shaking the Web of Interrelatedness
“There is a mystical truth in the saying about the ‘web of interrelatedness’: When a leaf falls to the earth, the universe is shaken. Just so, when one writes a single word, the universe is shaken.”
–William Samuel (American Writer, Spiritual Seeker, Mystic and Teacher, 1924-1996)
The Great Chain of Being
“Everything is bound up with everything else in a pattern both absolute and universal. We are links in the great chain of being, in which the hierarchy of the human body parallels the hierarchies of the nature, the state, the cosmos.”
–Jean Houston (American Scholar, Researcher and Author on Human Potentialities, 1937-)
Becoming Fully Alive
“These are the visionary, mystical moments, when a man ‘completes his partial mind’. His everyday conscious self is only a small part of the mind, like the final crescent of the moon. In moments of crisis, the full moon suddenly appears.”
–Colin Wilson (English Novelist and Writer on Philosophy, Sociology and the Occult, 1931-)
Mystical Experience and “Peak” Experience
Anyone who has ever had a mystical experience or even a profound “peak” experience, even if it only lasted for a a few seconds, is utterly changed by it.
We are going to have a few things to say about the clear differences between mystical and psychotic experiences, but I just came across this piece in this book by Ken Wilber:
“The Essential Ken Wilber: An Introductory Reader.” (Ken Wilber) I admire Ken’s work greatly. Even when I don’t agree with him!
“Direct experience decisively answers the nagging questions inherent in faith. There are usually two phases of direct experience; peak experiences and plateau experiences.
Peak experiences are relatively brief, usually intense, often unbidden, and frequently life-changing. They are actually “peak experiences” into the transpersonal, supramental levels of one’s own higher potentials.
Psychic peak experiences are a glimpse into nature mysticism (gross-level oneness); subtle peak experiences are a glimpse into deity mysticism (subtle-level oneness); casual peak experiences are a glimpse into emptiness (casual-level oneness); and nondual peak experiences are a glimpse into One Taste. As Roger Walsh has pointed out, the higher the level of the peak experience, the rarer it is. . . .
Whereas peak experiences are usually of brief duration—a few minutes to a few hours—plateau experiences are more constant and enduring, verging on becoming a permanent adaptation. Whereas peak experiences can, and usually do, come spontaneously, in order to sustain them and turn them from a peak into a plateau—from a brief altered state into a more enduring trait—prolonged practice is required. Whereas almost anybody, at any time, at any age, can have a brief peak experience, I know of few bona fide cases of plateau experiences that did not involve years of sustained spiritual practice.”
Ken Wilber (American Philosopher, 1949-)
Reflection of the Sacred
“No dust mote is so poor, no dot is so small, but the wise person sees God in it in his glory. – In a mustard seed, if you can understand it, is the image of all higher and lower things.”
–Angelus Silesius (German Mystic and Poet, 1624-1677)
Conscious Cooperation
“Free and conscious cooperation in the great life of the All alone can make personal life worth living.”
–Evelyn Underhill (English Mystic, Poet, Writer and Spiritual Counselor, 1875-1941)
After a Near-Death Experience
“Through the years, people have related, oh, five hundred or six hundred near-death experiences to me. When people come back out of that experience of light, they’ll often say that they have a sense that everything is interconnected. In some way that’s hard to put into words, we’re all the same. We all share one mind. And it doesn’t stop with people, it has to do, too, with trees and plants and living things.”
–Joan Borysenko (American Psychologist, Writer, Mystic and Speaker, 1945-)
