loss of Individuality in MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE?

We have to keep training our minds not to think that [mystical] experience has anything to do with annihilation, as we all tend to believe at first. It is simply the dissolution or extinction of the ego-power.

Therefore, will mystical consciousness cause us to become nothings and lose our individuality? Quite the contrary: It will expand us to include the universe.  

                      - excerpt from Children of Immortal Bliss by Paul Hourihan

AS WITHIN, SO WITHOUT

If you want the world to be changed, then change yourself. If you want to find perfect humanity, then perfect yourself.

You have everything within you.

As within, so without. This is the ultimate mystic statement that we can grasp with our minds.

THE DIVINE WITHIN

In Sunday school we were taught that God is everywhere, all around us, in us, out in space, in others ... and so on. Why stretch our arms toward the God of the Universe and ignore the same God waiting within us?

Why open our hearts to the God of the Universe and forget the same God within the heart itself!

We must train the mind to reflect the divine presence within.
 

MAN AND GOD

Man and God are one. But it is the soul in man that is God―not the body, mind, ego, or the senses! These are perishable. God is imperishable. Only the imperishable part of us is one with the Spirit!

Therefore ... do not identify your immortal longings with that which is mortal―namely, with the body. Identify them with the immortal itself―with the source of those longings―with the Soul. Which you cannot do with an inadequate instrument, such as the intellect. But, which you can do only with the meditative mind turned inward.

__________

"Life is charged everywhere with mystical possibilities ... in art, music, science, literature, the world of the intellect. In ordinary life also. Consider our experience of human love at its best―how profound, how mystical this experience truly is. How 'ineffable' also ...."   (1)

"We cannot truly believe in something unless we experience it. Faith is not the same thing as conviction. And conviction does not come unless we know. This is the unique claim―the surpassing importance―of mysticism: that truths only conjecturable by the intellect are known by the suddenly awakened intuitive power. 'You shall know the Truth,' says Christ, 'and the Truth shall make you free.'" (96)

"... Mysticism is not something strange after all. It is our strength, our nature. It is the very life of our life. Mystical Illumination when it does come to us will be only the realization of the self we were all the time. It is this that will finally make us known to ourselves...." (123-124)
                         - Paul Hourihan, Mysticism in American Literature: Thoreau's Quest and Whitman's Self

MYSTICISM: The Experience of Truth

You shall know the Truth and the truth shall set you free ...  especially the Truth of what it is to be human! But the knowing of the Truth is inward knowing. By intuition. By organic experience.

Mysticism―far from being something odd, special or exotic―is the experience of something vital, necessary, primary, indispensable, by the help of which we come into the knowledge of who we are; without which we remain as we now are, ignorant of our True Nature and therefore, continue to dwell in uncertainties, perplexity and discontent.

Joy

The central, persistent theme in all scriptures: realize the Divinity within, which is joy. So JOY is their message.
 

The Mystic

The Mystic is not anti-Life. He wants Life even more than we do! Indeed, Mysticism may be defined as the experience of Life: its essence.

"The completely simultaneous and perfect possession of unlimited life at a single moment." 
                                                                                                              - Boethius

__________

Mysticism is the glorification of individuality, which in the hour of truth finds its identity in all life―the infinite in life―the undivided life.

In the infinite is our individuality. Mysticism will take us to that realization.

The Truth of Mysticism

One       =       Unity    =      Individuality

All mean the same thing.

The Unity is experienced by the Individuality. And both then are the One.

All + One = Alone.

The truth of Mysticism is experienced in the eternity of solitude.
 

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Note: All "Words of Wisdom" are quotations from Paul Hourihan, unless otherwise noted.