In my previous-but-one post, "To Travel One's Own Path," I said that there are meditative experiences that are not appropriate to talk about. Yet the outcomes of such experiences may be shared without damaging the essential tissue of the experience. Today's post is one such example. I must describe this experience in religious language because that is how it comes. To describe it in any other form simply introduces an artificial element where none is needed.
".........The outer world can be sensed but only through the agencies of my senses, my brain and mind. In that sense everything is 'out there.' When I travel into my very depths, everything I visualise and record in my memory is still 'out there' insofar as it is outside a Mind beyond the veil of consciousness. I can never consciously contact God, or that totally otherness, directly. Yet there is that which responds to my seeking that feeds those responses through the veil in forms which I can 'see', even if not understand.
In my most recent journey inwards, I passed beyond the animal [me], the bird, the insect and my botanical connections to my most fundamental elements. Yet even in that place [not I suspect a journey back in time but one down to my deepest connections] there was a sense of presence which intimated a knowledge of what I already was, before I acquired physical form, and what I would yet be. That implies an earlier involvement with life. That earlier involvement lies 'beyond', in a place or realm where my logic, reason and rationality has no place, because they are products of my mind. And I say again that in that beyond is Mind which has its own system of reason to which I am not privy. Can anyone know the mind of God, the Mind? I think not. Yet I am aware of its presence........."
As a footnote, I should perhaps say that probing ever deeper into the mind is not unlike probing ever deeper into the universe. The further we see, the further back in time we travel, because it takes time for light to reach us from the depths of space. Similarly, to descend into one's inner depths can be an experience of travelling back through evolutionary time. It can also simply be a descent through the various parts of the brain to its earliest and, therefore, most fundamental elements.
I can't think of anything relevant to add, Tom, but the following I've had saved in my files might do.. or, at the very least, give you a reason to smile.
ReplyDeleteWhen I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much
applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
~ Walt Whitman
How lovely, Susan. That truly is a wonderful moment when, having found release from the detail and explanation, one stands in silence and awe. Reminds me of my trip to Iceland.
DeleteYes to this post, Tom, and to Susan's quote.
ReplyDeleteThank you Natalie, and agreed.
DeleteHi Tom,
ReplyDeleteWithout wishing to “categorise” your thoughts they do sound remarkably similar to the “dreamtime” of the Australian aborigine, the oldest known culture on the globe. As you know they have existed here for maybe 50,000 years or more and possibly brought with them that same culture dating back hundreds of thousands of years. Setting out in migratory tribes, as they first looked in wondrous excitement at the stars, this no doubt prompted them to paint eclipses on the rock walls of caves, and gave rise to the idea the land and all this is, is indivisible to the tribe’s existence.
Best wishes
Hi Lindsay; I am quite certain that the process that gives rise to the experience I describe in this post [and in many other posts I have written] is an ancient process. But it has continued to be used but, perhaps, with little publicity [thank goodness!]. I note that in Karen Armstrong's, "The Bible - The Biography" she talks about 'lectio divina', a process in which the devotees are encouraged to imagine themselves actually being present at the scene being studies.
DeleteThe same process comes into play in guided imagery, or so-called fantasy journeys, that Jung describes. And you will know, of course, that I have talked about this in my side-bar, "Something Extraordinary." There can come that wonderful moment when something else, something extraordinary happens, when one is 'taken over' on the inner journey.
I believe this meditative, inner journeying is one of the greatest divine gifts we have.
When finally the connection with 'mind' is no more, this otherness shall be all and all shall be clear.
ReplyDeletePeace, today and always, dear Tom.
Thank you Halle; And to you also.
DeleteThe more we know, the more we know how much we don't know.
ReplyDeleteI quite agree, Zhoen.
Delete