A recent comment (by "Cal") parallels my thinking in a way - that is, that I am not as impressed with the psychic as I used to be. Having gotten more of an inkling about the real depths of the Great Religions - much more than sitting in pews - it does seem that such things as Psi are somewhat trivial. Bob Monroe's journey points to this: with all the travel in the other realms, the biography does not leave us to believe that in death he was a content man. It seems to me that his lack of a deep spiritual path left him clinging to aspects of this life that the wise would have given up long before. It is not that his "guides" did not warn him - but that his human-ness, his ego, his view of himself in this world, did not change as fundamentally as he had thought. What he needed, I think, is a firm commitment to something far greater than himself. As an explorer of the psychic realms, he never seems to have gotten beyond himself. This is the problem with the self- taught - they may be brilliant, but they are enclosed by their own perceptive bubble. His life is a good warning to others who wish to follow this path.
I would; I would follow that path if it were handed me, but not before. And I would hope to stay grounded in the depths of a tradition that held me as no more than anyone else, as small, incredibly small, in the face of the Absolute. But I might also have a fear - not enough to stop me, but a caution - that traveling in these realms might be more dangerous than thought. I have equated experiments in the Psi as no more "sinful" than those in the materialistic sciences, and I continue to hold that view. But science can be very, very dangerous, too. You have to know what you're doing. Finding the right concoction for an explosive, for instance, might be informative, but you better know how to handle it. Monroe did mention this, and sought to control export of his "hemi-sync" tapes - that is, the binary sound systems that brought one to the out-of-body experience (I'm certain some can be bought online) - but who led him? Who showed him the way? His life did not fall apart; nor was he enticed to cohabit with evil forces as Alister Crowley did ( I had a friend who surprisingly joined a Crowley coven in New York several years ago. He later went mad and committed suicide by driving a stolen car into a tractor trailer. I cannot know if the two are linked, but I fear it.) But there was an emptiness to him at the end, according to the biography. It was no more an emptiness than many of us will have on our deaths, but it seems to me it should have been better. The contemporary saints I have read about had many problems during their lives, but at their deaths they were certain and found - not in dogma, but not in Astral fields either. It was clear to everyone who knew the saints that they had found the last thing that can be found - and were ecstatic about it. Given that I could follow both paths, I would; given only one, I would take the way of the saints. What has been said about Revealed Religions seems more and more true with time.
Still, I will have to read one of Monroe's books. It's just too interesting. And he did touch on primordial questions - coming to the conclusion that all religions do in one way or the other: that Love is the answer. He also had the great insight (I did not say that some of them weren't great) that he did not know what this "love" was. This Love, he said, was so much bigger than human love that the two could hardly be compared. In this he hit the nail on the head, which brings me reflect on my own annoyance when, in contemporary issues, people cite "love." Do they even know what it means?
I believe one of the worst mistakes popular culture now makes is equating sexual love with the love spoken of by the spiritual masters. I think the best way to explain the difference is to put it in cosmic terms: that is, that the way of the Earth is to the way of God as sexual love is to Love (another thing Cal's comment touched on. My mother also used to say that "paradise is on this Earth," adding that it is we humans who have messed it up. To which I answer "yes and no" as I will try to explain). The way the old religions explain it - and again, I refer to many primitive religions as well as the Great Religions - is best exemplified by the Platonic ideal, where Earth is a shadow outline of the Absolute. It shares in shape, so to speak, but not in substance, being only a flat, two-dimensional image of the real thing. It is how I see sexual love. It shares a certain 'shape' of the divine: for instance, in orgasm, the self is lost (the French call it the "little death") while creation can come from the en-action. But it differs greatly from the Absolute in that it is exclusive (at least relatively so), jealous, and subject to change. It is, then, neither eternal nor all-encompassing. Divine love, by every account, is. We do have less selfish love - that, for instance, of our children - but that, too, is still exclusive and jealous on another level. To finish the answer to Cal, paradise might be found on earth, but not with our earthly senses. Here, there is always a snake in the garden. And so it is with our earthly love.
Of God Love, I have to trust the mystics. I feel that I have perceived it from afar, but not as the saints have. In this, they find it unbearable and ego-shattering (Moses had to hide himself from the light, as do all who encounter it), of such ecstasy that the mortal mind and form cannot contain it. Some learn to live with it, coming back to it time and again (or this love coming to them), but in so doing they are changed permanently and MUST be changed permanently. The ego cannot hold it. And so the cleansing, the trials, the "fire" of purgation that they all must undergo. These are only metaphors, because "it", divine Love, cannot be categorized any more than a shadow can give us the totality of that which it represents. And of course we can't define it - because in the end, as we all know, God is Love, God being logically and actually undefinable.
I can only agree with the Wise that we have this spark of love within us, and so know of it as we might hold an ancient memory. And our lives are driven towards finding it, even though this drive often mistakes the goal for something else (like sexual love - or so many other obsessions). And, back to Monroe and Psi, I do think this is why many take this avenue of exploration. And I do think it can be helpful. But we shouldn't mistake the shadow for the thing shadowed, a sometimes dangerous thing to do. FK
I would; I would follow that path if it were handed me, but not before. And I would hope to stay grounded in the depths of a tradition that held me as no more than anyone else, as small, incredibly small, in the face of the Absolute. But I might also have a fear - not enough to stop me, but a caution - that traveling in these realms might be more dangerous than thought. I have equated experiments in the Psi as no more "sinful" than those in the materialistic sciences, and I continue to hold that view. But science can be very, very dangerous, too. You have to know what you're doing. Finding the right concoction for an explosive, for instance, might be informative, but you better know how to handle it. Monroe did mention this, and sought to control export of his "hemi-sync" tapes - that is, the binary sound systems that brought one to the out-of-body experience (I'm certain some can be bought online) - but who led him? Who showed him the way? His life did not fall apart; nor was he enticed to cohabit with evil forces as Alister Crowley did ( I had a friend who surprisingly joined a Crowley coven in New York several years ago. He later went mad and committed suicide by driving a stolen car into a tractor trailer. I cannot know if the two are linked, but I fear it.) But there was an emptiness to him at the end, according to the biography. It was no more an emptiness than many of us will have on our deaths, but it seems to me it should have been better. The contemporary saints I have read about had many problems during their lives, but at their deaths they were certain and found - not in dogma, but not in Astral fields either. It was clear to everyone who knew the saints that they had found the last thing that can be found - and were ecstatic about it. Given that I could follow both paths, I would; given only one, I would take the way of the saints. What has been said about Revealed Religions seems more and more true with time.
Still, I will have to read one of Monroe's books. It's just too interesting. And he did touch on primordial questions - coming to the conclusion that all religions do in one way or the other: that Love is the answer. He also had the great insight (I did not say that some of them weren't great) that he did not know what this "love" was. This Love, he said, was so much bigger than human love that the two could hardly be compared. In this he hit the nail on the head, which brings me reflect on my own annoyance when, in contemporary issues, people cite "love." Do they even know what it means?
I believe one of the worst mistakes popular culture now makes is equating sexual love with the love spoken of by the spiritual masters. I think the best way to explain the difference is to put it in cosmic terms: that is, that the way of the Earth is to the way of God as sexual love is to Love (another thing Cal's comment touched on. My mother also used to say that "paradise is on this Earth," adding that it is we humans who have messed it up. To which I answer "yes and no" as I will try to explain). The way the old religions explain it - and again, I refer to many primitive religions as well as the Great Religions - is best exemplified by the Platonic ideal, where Earth is a shadow outline of the Absolute. It shares in shape, so to speak, but not in substance, being only a flat, two-dimensional image of the real thing. It is how I see sexual love. It shares a certain 'shape' of the divine: for instance, in orgasm, the self is lost (the French call it the "little death") while creation can come from the en-action. But it differs greatly from the Absolute in that it is exclusive (at least relatively so), jealous, and subject to change. It is, then, neither eternal nor all-encompassing. Divine love, by every account, is. We do have less selfish love - that, for instance, of our children - but that, too, is still exclusive and jealous on another level. To finish the answer to Cal, paradise might be found on earth, but not with our earthly senses. Here, there is always a snake in the garden. And so it is with our earthly love.
Of God Love, I have to trust the mystics. I feel that I have perceived it from afar, but not as the saints have. In this, they find it unbearable and ego-shattering (Moses had to hide himself from the light, as do all who encounter it), of such ecstasy that the mortal mind and form cannot contain it. Some learn to live with it, coming back to it time and again (or this love coming to them), but in so doing they are changed permanently and MUST be changed permanently. The ego cannot hold it. And so the cleansing, the trials, the "fire" of purgation that they all must undergo. These are only metaphors, because "it", divine Love, cannot be categorized any more than a shadow can give us the totality of that which it represents. And of course we can't define it - because in the end, as we all know, God is Love, God being logically and actually undefinable.
I can only agree with the Wise that we have this spark of love within us, and so know of it as we might hold an ancient memory. And our lives are driven towards finding it, even though this drive often mistakes the goal for something else (like sexual love - or so many other obsessions). And, back to Monroe and Psi, I do think this is why many take this avenue of exploration. And I do think it can be helpful. But we shouldn't mistake the shadow for the thing shadowed, a sometimes dangerous thing to do. FK
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