The Mystical Experience is Always Happening
OK, quick recap.
The mystical experience is always there. It’s always happening. You don’t have to try to make it happen.
This is one of the misconceptions of so many spiritual teachings. I won’t say modern spirituality because this has been the case for a long time. It’s nobody’s fault because this is the way it feels. It feels like we aren’t mystical, and then a mystical experience comes. It feels like it ‘comes’ from somewhere. Then the mystical experience goes away, and we’re ‘back.’ Before we had brain science there was no way to tell.
For anyone who has a mystical experience it feels like it comes upon you. Like the flames of fire landing on the apostles’ heads. It feels like it was not there, and then suddenly it blooms.
Many people have felt it, and we’ve heard so many stories. You’re doing something and all of a sudden… boom! An experience of unity happens. Visions. Bliss.
It feels like it suddenly happened. But it didn’t. It was always there.
It’s literally always there, always going on, all the time. What really happens is that your yacking brain slows down. Something calms you. Perhaps your attention turns in a different direction and all of a sudden the spiritual experience feels like it comes. In really you’re just seeing it under all the noise.
Satori
Here’s a story about Satori.
So, I’m sitting there and meditating. Swami Yogino suddenly says, “There. That was it. That was satori.”
I open my eyes, and I’m a little bit pissed. Like, what did he interrupt me for?
I was also surprised and perplexed because nothing had happened. I was just sitting there and meditating. I meditated regularly. I was just sitting there and all of a sudden everything went completely normal. Like flatline normal. I was simply relaxed. I wasn’t doing anything at all. Everything just became completely normal.
The second that happens Yogino interrupts me and says, “There’s Satori.”
How can that be? Satori??? Really?
I’m not talking about a really nice blissful normal. It was just totally normal. I wasn’t doing anything. Nothing. Nothing happened at all.
Though I do have to say that there was a perceptible shift. I felt this shift into a no-striving normalcy.
Looking back I know what he saw. Have you ever meditated and your eyes are tense and flicking? Your eyes feel sore, so you keep moving them? You know, they’re strained and tense.
What happened was that as my eyes went normal. I relaxed. My eyes relaxed. He saw that my eyes stopped flicking. So, then he goes, “There you go. There’s satori.”
Here’s the important point. The normalness was always there. It’s never created. How could you create normalness anyway? It’s always there.
Once we really grasp that idea, things quickly change. Your life changes because trust is the byproduct of that understanding. You start becoming this wholeness. Allowing it to come to the forefront instead of having your attention filled with the illusion of division. The brain vomit is losing its grip on you.
The Mystical Experience is Not You
Now we are going to learn something tricky… and when you get it you’ll have cracked Nonduality. We want to go fully into Not-two.
We’re not there yet because we are still talking about duality. The mystical experience is not you. It is still something that’s happening in your brain.
Remember our diagram of the Y? The single point is you. The top lines of the Y show the simple division of right brain experience and left brain experience. They are both, still, not you.
When your left brain is very noisy it is dominant. It feels like it’s you.
When the left brain goes quiet then the flower of the right brain blooms and comes into consciousness. It’s very beautiful and it feels like it is you. It’s not you. ‘You’ are still experiencing ‘it’. Two things.
The right brain is going all the time, the left brain is going all the time, but these are still things that are happening independently of you. They are both something that you can see.
Remember way back to our first lessons? Our original statements?
If you can see it, it’s not you. It’s something else.
The Catch
We don’t want to get stuck in the mystical experience. It’s nice, but it’s not awakening. It’s not Samadi. It’s not enlightenment.
The mystical experience is very useful because it teaches us that we can change our perceptions. It’s the first step in becoming master of yourself. It’s also useful for driving your car and finding your spatula
Imagine a situation where you sit down and you start to meditate. Your left brain is very noisy, is very loud, and then it quiets down. As thoughts go softer you’re able to see and experience unity, what we’re calling the right brain.
You are relaxed, the left brain goes quiet. The right brain becomes noticeable and you blend into bliss and the universe. Now imagine that this thing we’re calling the right brain also quiets down.
Imagine that both of these perceptions are dissolving away so you are in complete quiet, normal, stillness.
All that’s left is you.
This is what we’re looking for.
The reason I’m harping on about this is because the spiritual quest has become so lost in capturing the bliss of the mystical. This is nothing new. People have always hankered after the bliss we are calling the right brain. Particularly these days, though, we’re chasing after this experience, which is almost like taking a drug. Drop a little pill and you suddenly feel really good.
I’m hoping to convince you of two things. First of all, the mystical experience is always there. You can gain the skill of accessing it quite easily. And second of all… the mystical experience is still division. It’s nice but it’s not the end game.
Four Steps from the Universe
Let’s go back to our game with the universe, where we are experiencing it in four ways. First is the perception that the universe is out there somewhere. It’s floating out in space. It’s easy to see that this is definitely duality because there’s me here and there’s the universe there.
In the second step you reach more unity. Bring your perception of the universe closer and engulf yourself with it. You are inside the universe. It’s everywhere. It’s here as well as way out there. The universe is all over me, and I’m inside of it and it’s everywhere. It’s all around. But if you stop a second you can see it still duality because there is still you inside of the universe. Two things.
Take one more step and remember to bring the universe inside you. I’m inside the universe AND the universe is inside of me. I’m dissolved in the molecules of the universe. This experience activates the right brain’s spatial wisdom and is very mystical. But there are still two things: You and the universe.
Finally there is still a last step that we want to get find. You are gone and all that is left is the universe experiencing the universe. Everything is gone but your perception. If you back into this nothingness, that is everything, you become the universe looking out of your eyes at the universe.
The question is: how do you become the universe?
Let’s keep going on.
The Mystical Experience is ALWAYS Happening
The mystical experience is always happening. It’s always there.
I’m harping on this point because it’s a really, really important point to understand. Once we thoroughly get it, then we can move beyond it.
Living in the Moment
This thing that I’m calling the mystical experience is a way of seeing the world, a way of being alive, where there’s no time. You’re always in the moment.
This is why Mystics talk about “being in the moment,” because this is the place where that happens naturally. You don’t have to try. It’s always there when you bring this part of your being to the forefront.
No Time
You can have a mystical experience, go on about your life for twenty years, and then have a mystical experience and it is like no time has passed. The mystical you is still without movement. No time passes in this place where the concept, the idea, of time doesn’t exist.
It’s always there.
The Well
Here’s an analogy. Imagine you find it deep well. You walk up to the well and there’s a bucket. You look down and there’s water down inside the well. And you’re like, “Oh look! How beautiful!”
You take the bucket and dip it down and get some of that delicious, wonderful water. Pull it up and have a drink.
It’s the most beautiful well you’ve ever seen. The sweetest water.
You take a walk. Now you’re somewhere else. Now the well is just a memory. You are now a block away, a mile away… and you are hankering after that beautiful well, the beautiful water.
You are far away, but the well is still there. It hasn’t moved. It’s always there.
In our analogy of the spiritual search, we start digging again. Start digging where we are, looking for the well. You could find one, of course, and it would seem like you found an entirely new well. Even though you tapped into the same groundwater.
But if you go back to the original well and you look down in, the water is still there. It had always been there the whole time. The well itself had never moved.
The Well Inside
Remember our experiment “Where is your spatula?” The memory of it was always there and it came to the surface when you accessed it. That spatial part of your consciousness is always there. It’s simple, natural and easy to access.
The part of your consciousness that knows how to drive a car is sitting there in wait all the time. That’s probably the biggest right brain activity that us modern people do. You don’t have to conjure it up. Just go get in your car. Sit down in the driver’s seat and without any worry about it you’re able to move the car around: drive.
Like riding a bicycle.
Have you ever noticed that you could go a long time without riding a bicycle, but without any thought, hop on it and off you go? How do you do that? How do you just know that balance spot so that you are able to jump on and do it again? Remember how hard it was to learn it in the first place?
It’s that well of the spatial mind, the “right brain,” the mystical mind. There’s something always going on in that section of your grey matter, in that part of your experience.
If I can give you one thing from this course it’s to start trusting yourself that your mystical aliveness is always there.
The Big Mystical Experience
Maybe you have had a big spiritual experience in the past. Don’t hanker for the well. Just sit, stop. You can’t recreate it, there’s no reason to recreate it. Just sit and allow the memory of that to bubble up. It might not be as awesome as it was before, but it’s there.
It’s actually better now because it’s conscious. Now you are doing it on purpose.
That’s why I’m going over this, over and over. I’m reframing a mystical story that hasn’t been benefiting mankind. We are this incredibly balanced creature. We have the ability to manage our inner world. This is always available to us, and once we know it we can trust ourselves.
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