In a previous post, I mentioned that I wouldn't be surprised if a fair portion of the readership here would self-describe as spiritual seekers. So today, I have a question for those of you following along, whether or not you consider yourself to be seeking anything. Over the course of your life, have you personally had what you would describe as a spiritual experience?
Feel free to reply in the comments, but I'm going to suggest that in actuality, it is impossible for anyone to have any experience that is not spiritual. Most of us don't describe our moment-to-moment experience as “spiritual”, though, especially when we go through experiences we evaluate as negative. Traumas, accidents, illness, violent crime, death and destruction are generally not among the range of experiences most of us would describe as spiritual. Many of us may describe our faith or spiritual convictions as helpful in navigating negative experiences, but for most, the spiritual is evaluated as positive, although it is defined as “relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things”, without qualifying if the spirit or soul is affected positively or negatively.
Bear with me here, though. What is universal to all who have found themselves at the highest levels of consciousness is the understanding that “the material and the physical” are ultimately manifestations of the spiritual. As I've been stressing, as human beings, we experience our thoughts about reality, not reality “as it is”. As a consequence, we create our belief systems, or our personal mind, the ego, which tends to create it's own thoughts that reinforce our reality, and it also tends to create a narrative that we pay attention to throughout our daily lives. Notice what you're up to the next time you're in a conversation with someone. Are you really paying attention to what they are saying, or are you paying attention to what they are saying while simultaneously evaluating what they are saying, and weighing and considering responses to what they are saying? What are you doing as you're reading these sentences?
That point aside, as I've also discussed previously, we also all experience insights, fresh ideas that have an “ah-ha” component that seem to appear out of nowhere, but obviously originate from the mind. You find your keys when you let your personal mind rest, when it gives up the search and the location of the lost keys just occurs to you.
To visualize it, we would have a stream of thoughts presenting our reality to us, creating our feeling state in the process, and behind the thoughts we would have our personal mind, and behind the personal mind itself is still mind, but what is that? It's the aspect of our mind that is not obvious to us, is difficult to recognize, let alone define, yet it's the only possible source of a fresh insight, of something our personal mind has been previously unaware of.
Sydney Banks defined Mind as simply “the energy of all things”. He did capitalize Mind.
The “energy of all things” is not material or physical. It's energy, and thus decidedly non-material.
We'll get back to that. For most of us, physical reality is seen as physical reality, and while we may occasionally have experiences we describe as spiritual, we see these occasional incidents as a brief respite from the objective physical reality we all share. Billions of people believe in a spiritual reality that will be realized at physical death, but life on earth relates to an afterlife only from the perspective of the almost universal idea that how we live our lives on earth will influence our experience of the afterlife. Good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell. Eastern faiths anticipate karma influencing our future incarnations. In chapter 43 of his renowned Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda describes assorted realms of existence both above and below the earthly realm in meticulous detail. (He further suggests that we regularly visit those realms as we sleep). Buddhism describes 10 states of life, ranging from hell to buddhahood. Those who have studied the detailed reports compiled by researchers exploring the huge popular interest in spiritualism that was prominent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are familiar with similar reports from “beyond”. (As an aside, while there were plenty of fraudulent characters exploiting the spiritualist boom in this era, there were several studies conducted by legitimate researchers, and there are plenty of examples of reports and incidents that are not so easily dismissed). New Age enthusiasts may be familiar with the Seth Speaks series of books, which also details assorted existential realms. Near Death Experiences (NDE's) have become quite common, tend to largely conform to the cultural expectations of each individual, and also support this general theme.
One fascinating aspect of all of these descriptions is the “hyper-reality” aspect reported. It's almost universal for descriptions of afterlife realms to include a “realer than real” qualifier, the sensation that the alternate dimension experienced has a quality of authenticity that exceeds that experienced on earth. This sense of hyper-reality is also a a critical aspect in what's known as mystical experience, and is the component of these experiences that is both inexpressible to others, and provides the absolute certainty of the validity of the experience.
In any case, belief in an afterlife remains widespread among humanity, but varies tremendously in the particulars.
The western religions generally see life on earth as “objective reality”, with the spiritual to follow, for better or worse, while the eastern religions do see life on earth as spiritual, although they also see realization of that fact as requiring eons of lifetimes, reincarnations, and dedicated meditative practice. (The aforementioned Yogananda once said it required “very, very good karma to even want to know God”).
Those of us who arrived at our own realization in what was an apparently spontaneous manner don't necessarily agree entirely with the eastern faiths on this point, though. Of course, it's entirely possible that what is described by an individual as a spontaneous realization may have been preceded by ten of millions, or a hundred million lifetimes of trial and error that we are now oblivious to, but it seems to me that accepting any line of thought that travels along that path serves only to erect yet another roadblock, another wing to fortify the elaborate palace of our belief system.
We're all experiencing our thoughts, which deliver images, sensations, feelings and ideas to our consciousness. We all call that reality. We all have our personal minds and belief systems that filter reality. As a result some on earth are living in heaven, others are living in hell, and most are in a sort of limbo, experiencing an occasional glimmer of something deeper to existence, brief experiences that are generally dismissed as an occasional reprieve from our otherwise obviously objective reality. Yet, behind our personal mind is pure mind, “the energy of all things”. The realization of the pure mind, for one moment, will demonstrate to anyone who has the experience, beyond any doubt whatsoever, that there's only one genuine reality, that it's a spiritual reality, and it's present now. All other realms and realities are manifestations of the one absolute reality, Parmenides’ Being, eternally present in the moment.
We describe our experiences as “reality” rather than “spiritual” because our belief systems inform us that the “spiritual may exist on occasion”, or “awaits us far in the future”, or, for the atheist, “is a chemical reaction in the brain that creates altered perceptions”. Related to the last idea, certain tribal societies believe that use of ayahuasca or peyote allows access to genuine spiritual dimensions. Research into the effects of DMT and LSD also suggests that for subjects, the subjective experience is often perceived as spiritual, in opposition to the objective reality experienced on earth. Another aside here is that while psychedelics can and do open the “doors of perception”, to use Aldous Huxley’s terminology, there is a vast difference between the mystical experience and experiences accessed through altered brain chemistry. An excellent scholarly paper by Allan Smith and Charles Tart discussing the differences between the two can be found at several links online: Cosmic Consciousness Experience and Psychedelic Experiences: A First Person Comparison (Link worked at time of publication - Search by title if link doesn't work)
All of these beliefs share the assumption that if there is a spiritual reality at all, it will be realized at some other time, or some other place, via an experience to come, or one that has passed. It's everywhere and anywhere, but it's definitely not now.
Yet the spiritual can only exist right now, in this very moment, as it always has and always will.
We believe otherwise, so we don't see it.
So it goes.
Edit: 04/16/2024 - Updated link for Cosmic Consciousness Experience and Psychedelic Experiences: A First Person Comparison