mystical experiences

The following is adapted from Soul and Spirit by Patrick Harpur:

Mystical experience is intuitive. There is a sudden illumination in the dead of night, or a flash of lightning in the darkness. A single mystical experience may last only a minute but be a defining moment in one's life, a yardstick against which the truth of subsequent mundane experiences are measured.

Mystical experiences are difficult to talk about, as they transcend language, and are intensely personal. They are given, by the grace of God, and cannot be induced by willpower. They are more important to us than our normal state, and infinitely more meaningful. They are revelations of reality. No one says after the experience: "I see now that it was all a dream or a hallucination or a delusion, but now I've come to my senses." They say the opposite: "Ordinary life seemed like a dream in comparison to the reality I saw." At the same time, ordinary things are not distorted as they can be in dreams. Everything is the same as usual, but more vivid, colourful and above all charged with significance.

Here I will consider three categories of mystical experience: visions of nature, visions of the beloved, and visions of God.

Visons of nature.

In visions of nature, every object is imbued with significance and importance. Everything is a presence. Everything is ensouled. Everything is holy. Everything is awe-inspiring. The ego is abolished, and one is neither self-conscious nor detached, but conscious of one's self in intimate participation with every other self. There is no desire, except to continue in that state of one-ness.

Jacob Boeme, a Protestant mystic, was sitting in his room one day in 1600 when "his eye fell upon a burnished pewter dish which reflected the sunshine with such marvellous splendour that he fell into an inward ecstasy, and it seemed to him as if he could now look into the principles and deepest foundations of things. He believed that it was only a fancy, and in order to banish it from his mind he went out into the green fields. But here he noticed that he could gaze into the very heart of things, the very herbs and grass, and that actual nature harmonised with what he had inwardly seen."

In 1969, Derek Gibson was travelling to work by motorcycle when he noticed that the sound of his engine had faded to a murmur. "Then everything suddenly changed. I could clearly see everything as before with form and substance, but instead of looking at it all I was looking into everything. I saw beneath the bark of the trees and through the underlying trunks. I was looking into the grass too, and all was magnified beyond measure, to the extent that I could see moving microscopic organisms! Then, not only was I seeing all this, but I was literally inside it all. At the same time as I was looking into this mass of greenery I was aware of every single blade of grass and fold of the trees, as if each had been placed before me one at a time and entered into."

Bernard Berenson: "It was a morning in early summer. A silver haze shimmered and trembled over the lime trees. The air was laden with their fragrance. The temperature was like a caress. I climbed up a tree stump and felt suddenly immersed in It-ness. I did not call it by that name. I had no need for words. It and I were one."

The vision of Nature in our culture most often occurs in childhood or adolescence, before we have become "educated", or in those people who never lost the child-like perception of Nature.

Wendy Rose-Neill had an experience while gardening. She suddenly became intensely aware of her surroundings: the scent of grass, the sound of birds and of rustling leaves. "I had a sudden impulse to lie face down in the grass," she said, "and as I did so, an energy seemed to flow through me as if I had become part of the earth underneath me. The boundary between my physical self and my surroundings seemed to dissolve and my feeling of separation vanished. In a strange way I felt blended into a total unity with the earth, as if I were made of it and it of me.... I felt as if I had suddenly come alive for the first time, as if I were awakening from a long deep sleep into the real world.... I realized that I was surrounded by an incredible loving energy, and that everything, both living and non-living, is bound inextricably within a kind of consciousness which I cannot describe in words."

Visions of the beloved

In visions of nature we experience the multiple, non-human, impersonal soul of the world. In visions of the beloved we experience the soul of a single person. This can happen in an instant, as in love at first sight. You are in awe, in the presence of your beloved. There is sexual passion, but not lust.

This kind of love is expressed in the medieval tales of courtly love of a knight for his unattainable lady. This is the template for our modern idea of "romantic" love, which we believe transforms the lover's character for the better. Although we believe that we all have a right to fall deeply in love, the pure vision of the beloved is a rare experience. However, many of us are tortured by a more selfish romantic form, an unrequited desire for some remote beauty, perhaps an unattainable film star or pop icon, or a senior boy or girl at school. There is no question of friendship, companionship, or shared interests.

In visions of the beloved, the love we have for the beloved is pure and unselfish, as in love for God. This love for a beloved is a short step away from loving God, and from loving all of creation. We see beauty and grace. The beloved is angelic. The sexual passion is an expression of yearning for two souls to merge and become one.

In such a love, the beloved is all-important: all relations to other people, or to the world, pale into insignificance.

In our divine form as immortal souls, we are all one with God. When incarnated in human bodies we experience separation. Separation brings suffering. The wish to merge with a beloved is an earthly expression of the longing of the soul to leave the body and merge once again with God.

But we tend to invest too much in other individuals - family, children and friends as well as lovers - more than they can bear. This leads inevitably to disappointment when our beloveds turn out not to be the idealised divine figures we adore. The paradox is, that we can only truly love each other when we also love something beyond each other.

A vision of the beloved is a vision of divinity. We are seeing the divine soul, and through that we are connecting with God and all of divinity. Where this connection with God comes first for both partners, the pure love for each other can be mutual and lasting. This is reflected in the idea of getting married "in the eyes of God". But where there is selfish desire, we want total absorption of the other, body and soul, into our own self. This is a hopeless desire, which brings jealous possessive rage, anguish, despair, and emptiness. The beloved becomes unattainable. So, we must each put God first, as God is pure and wholly selfless. Then we can see the reflection of God in our beloved, and we can feel it in ourselves.

We must also both be able and willing to imagine ourselves in the other's shoes. This requires faith in each other, and imagination. There is then an exchange: "I am in you" and "you are in me". This is very similar to the experience, in visions of nature, of you being "in" everything and everything being "in" you.

Visions of nature are impersonal: we lose our personal selves in the one-ness of all of creation. Visions of the beloved are personal: we connect with the divine through the person of another. The lover becomes a personal deity.

Visions of God

Visions of God tend to happen when we let go of all desire. We wait in the darkness and love rushes in. From emptiness we become full. We experience union with the divine light. We experience oneness with God.

Unlike visions of nature or of the beloved, visions of God are seldom spontaneous, but require preparation, such as meditation, fasting, prayer, or self-denial. We go through a "dark night of the soul" in which we let go of all human longing and knowledge, and become truly humble. Then God comes to us.

There are no words to adequately describe the encounter with God. But it is often described as light or as fire, within or outwith the self, with a blissful feeling of unlimited comfort and understanding.

Union with God can also be seen as union with one's own soul or higher self. The soul is at one with God and of the same divine nature, and so union with the soul implies union with God also. Union with one's self simply means letting go of the false lower self or ego, and allowing the true inner self to shine through. However, many find this "simple" approach difficult to practice and prefer to approach God directly.

Whether we go within or outwith to find God, the aim is the same: union with the divine.