The Unbearable Lightness of Believing

I find it fascinating that someone can have a mystical experience and still be an atheist. It just proves there is no test or observation that can be performed to prove the existence of God when your noggin is a hard shell. I suppose there are miraculous divine intervention experiences that could make a crack, but even then, the rigid logic of their minds would make every attempt to explain it away.

It always comes down to faith; on both sides of the fence. Either we make a leap to it’s all random chance (and those mystical experiences are purely epiphenomenal), or we leap to something comes from someThing.

I only mention this because I’m reading Micheal Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. It’s a fun read, and Pollan is an excellent writer. He’s also into immersing himself into his subject matter. As such, in this book he does the noble task of tripping away on psilocybin, LSD, and 5-MeO-DMT (“the toad”).

I’m not strictly opposed to some people who use these technologies. (Yes, I have experience.) But I also acknowledge their limitations. First, you can’t cheat spiritual development. In fact, these mystical tools could make your ego more inflated than it already is. You start to believe in you're special because of your spiritual athletic abilities. Also, the intensity of the experiences could make it challenging to fully integrate them in everyday life, as well as truly cultivate a relationship with God. You’re more caught up by the light show than the light itself. This also makes it challenging to discern the "fools gold" from the gold. Lastly, it could be a form of spiritual adultery that works against the tradition you are rooted in.

With that being said, Pollan makes a good point that psychedelics can bear fruit for those suffering from addictions, obsessions, depression, and existential dread. Funny enough, during their journeys people often report a banal platitude that they already intellectually knew. (For instance, one woman reported "eat right, exercise, stretch" during her journey.) However, psychedelics seem to “relax the brain's inhibition on visualizing our thoughts, thereby rendering them more authoritative, memorable, and sticky.” While before you think you know, but now you just know.

Yet, despite all of Pollan’s mystical experiences and research, he still holds to the idea that it’s all in the head. He says, “it seems likely that all mental experiences are mediated by chemicals in the brain, even the most seemingly transcendent.”

If mysticism is all in the brain, why would random mutations see an evolutionary fitness to it? It all seems superfluous to me, but then again I’m sure our logical atheists would argue that it gave us religion and myth; and therefore communal bonding that allowed for our survival. Aww, come on. 

I tend to side with Dávila: Mysticism is the empiricism of transcendent knowledge. It may not be proof of the transcendent itself if you’re vertically closed off to that sort of thing. But that's your problem, not God's. 

Or as the Aphorist said: The truth does not need the adherence of man in order to be certain. You may not be sure, but the Truth always is.

And if you really need to explain God away, then you may have to throw in yourself as collateral damage. Two negatives make a positive. Problem solved.

The atheist devotes himself less to proving that God does not exist than to forbidding Him to exist. — Dávila

Give Me Depth, or Give Me Death

I have a craving for spiritual depth these days. But what do we mean by depth? For some, it could translate as a stoned hippie who sees the whole cosmos manifesting in his dirty fingernail. For others, it could be seen as a pseudo-intellectual with the right mix of charisma and prowess to pontificate abstract drivel disconnected from reality.

As for me, I could just say I know it when I resonate with it. But I think we could do a better job explicating this depth thingy.

Best I turn to this passage in MotT as Tomberg has some interesting things to say on the matter:

“It should not be forgotten that Christian Hermeticism is not a religion apart, nor a church apart, nor even a science apart, which would compete with religion, with the Church, or with science. It is the connecting link (hyphen) between mysticism, gnosis and magic, expressed through symbolism —symbolism being the means of expression of the dimensions of depth and height (and therefore of enstasy and ecstasy), of all that is universal (which corresponds to the dimension of breadth), and of all that is traditional (corresponding to the dimension of length). Being Christian, Hermeticism accepts the cross of the universality, the tradition, the depth and the height of Christianity, in the sense of the apostle Paul when he said:

'That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians iii, 18-19)' ” 

So here Tomberg brings in the word enstasy which he equates with depth. It's not a word I'm familiar with, so let's see what Mr. Encyclopedia has to say:

“Enstasy (Gk., en-stasis, ‘standing into’). The experiences, or abolition of experience, arising as a consequence of those meditational, etc., techniques which withdraw the practitioner from the world, and even from awareness of the self. The word was coined in contrast to ecstasy. Examples are dhyāna, jhāna.”

Fascinating concept, as it would appear to be a sober intoxication; with the emphasis on sober while intoxication equates more to the ecstasy (or height). Enstasy is not always proportional to depth of spiritual experience, but how fully you are living from your realizations, intuitions, and gnosis. This is good news for those of us who are not natural mystics!

If we go back to Tomberg, he also mentions breadth (universal inclusion) and length (reverence to tradition). It would seem to me a person with true depth would need to be somewhat immersed in these dimensions also. 

So depth may be what grounds us as to how our whole being relates to existence itself. We also add in Paul's "rooted and grounded in love" and you get yourself a person who is awake, alive, integrated, curious, and (w)holy.

This person can't be measured, quantified, or mapped-out. They tend to be more analog than digital. And it's not someone who is easy to come by in today's world. But like can know like, so when cultivated within it can be seen without.

“To be in the depth is to be depth.” — A.H. Almaas

I'm Out of Control Until I Lose All Control

“Some things can only be known if we do not know them ahead of time. ... We need to leave space for gifts.” — Fr. James Schall

I was recently recalling how my old friend Joe would half-jokingly say “I never know what is going to come out of my mouth next.”

I know for some, the thought was probably 'the old man has gone mad!'

It was more that Joe was immersed in the spontaneity of Divine play. It was probably a gift from above after a lifetime of self-conscious anxiety and neurosis (which most of us suffer from to some extent). He was now in his nineties, and the cosmos decided to give him a taste of home before making his way there.

I came across a passage from Almaas that expresses loss of control best:

“The most interesting part of this lack of self-consciousness is the experience of spontaneity. Without self-consciousness there is no self-watching and no cautiousness about our expressions and actions. There is no premediation and no rumination about what to do. Hence, we are totally spontaneous, like young children. We are totally open and innocent, with no defensiveness and no strategizing. There is no holding back, no hiding, no protection, no pretension. There is complete openness, presence, and genuineness. There is no self-control whatever. So the spontaneity is total. The absence of control is absolute. We simply experience ourselves as freedom, lightness, delight, openness, and spontaneity. Without self-consciousness, action and expression are absolutely spontaneous, and hence totally free.”

Joe had lost control, but was no longer out of control. He had found a center beyond his control, which freed him up to manifest his being with playful ease.

At his memorial service, there was a former colleague who had recalled Joe at his retirement from teaching. Joe was in his mid-sixties then, and apparently still finding his way. His spiritual breakthroughs would come much later. This is inspiration for all of us; while we can't force growth, we can set the conditions for it during any point in life. And then surrender to what we don't know from there on.

Or as Joe would say, “always be open to what's around the corner and never predict.” 

It’s this need to control our lives that prevents us from fully living our lives. Oh, the irony.

If we stop trying to capture it and allow ourselves to be captured, then we eventually can say we lost all control.