"I think there are probably more people who sort of think & suspect they might have had an awakening - then they actuallyhave. And that’s good news if that’s you, because there’s something pretty amazing waiting. This is the birth of the awakening process or birth of the process of liberation, of realization." Angelo DiLullo "Stages of Awakening (57-minute Intro)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM2oHMDfRhM
Most readers of this blog, and many people in general, have had mystical experiences. HOWEVER you, dear readers, are probably aware that your experiences were mystical, AND are also curiousabout & motivated to go deeper into the mystery. You're in a transitional threshold, YET possibly uncertain about proceeding.
Under stress, fear & anxiety, the left hemisphere is particularly loud, making us tremble to do something - no matter how irrelevant, and madly ride the gerbil-wheel of obsessive circular thoughts. So under stressful circumstances, the left hemisphere's shouting tends to drown outthe right hemisphere's whispers. Similarly, during military & other conflicts right-wing dictators (bullies) tend to be elected to power; then they cling to power by starting & maintaining military & other conflicts.
So, instead of continuing to "rearrange deckchairs on the Titanic," a wiser practice might be to gently keep returning awareness back to the aspect of yourself that does not change. This aliveness within is recognizable intuitively, by a felt sense. It has qualities of stillness, peace, love, warmth, silence, stability. As we learn to rest & stabilize in thisaliveness our behaviour increasingly becomes spontaneously nurturing, arising from the unconditional love of Oneness.
The late, great Glen Hansard covering the late, great Leonard Cohen's
In our hectic lives, when we recognize anything familiar, we quickly name it, subconsciously assume that we know enough about it, and focus on what's next.If we're being honest, we actually know very little about most of the "roses we fail to stop to smell." Assumptions about "knowledge" are humbling. It's the brightest, most knowledgeablestudents who tend to suffer from "imposter syndrome" - where they doubt their knowledge and feel like frauds, despite clear evidence to the contrary. Meanwhile, some students who are in obvious danger of failing, are happily confident(Dunning-Kruger effect).
When we come across something radically unusual, instead of investigating it with curiosity & interest, many tend to write it off as an unimportant aberration. This is how scientific materialism deals with anything that can't bemeasured & quantified. That attitude may be reasonable in the midst of an experiment. But real scientistsshould be curious about & ideallyinvestigate anything that is clearly outside the scientific materialist paradigm.
“When the vague, implicit meanings are unpacked by an articulate mind attuned to them, and when the abstractions needed to conceptualize reality (left hemisphere) are informed by a wider, overall sense of context (balanced by the right hemisphere), then something that we might call genius, or at least insight, can occur.” Gary Lachman “Lost Knowledge of the Imagination.” Floris Books, 2017 Peter Brown's concise 108-page 2020 book, “The Yoga of Radiant Presence” ($13) gives an exceptionally clear, useful overview for anyone seriously interested in stepping through the "barrier" or, more accurately, "gateless gate" between our common, default ideas: small separate self & materialist worldview or "consensus reality" and themystics', saints', and ever-increasing numbers ofordinary folks' direct experience of Ultimate Reality:
“Spirituality is paradox. Reality, the actual condition, cannot beconceived of, described, written about, or imagined. Nothing is actually as it appears to be, or is held to be. Even to say that this is pure miracle or magicdoes not begin to capture it. Nevertheless, this book has been written for anyone who finds themselves driven to confront paradox, to challenge impossibility, and to try to penetratethisdeepest Mystery for themselves. Yoga is an ancient word, that means investigation for discovery of truth, of the actual nature of reality. The Sanskrit root means union or joining, and what is joined or unified is held to be one's separate self with the totality of being. In fact these are already one, and Yoga clearly reveals this to be so.
The Yoga presented here is distinguished by its technique, where the normal experience of the yogi, without any modification of behavior or circumstance, is the method of experiential engagement that leads to realization of the absolute.
This is effective because in fact it happens that your normal experience IS already the complete naked Presence of the absolute. This is ultimately discovered to be the case by directly noticing the inherent properties of your experience. Through Yoga these are discovered to be fundamentally beyond what you are normally used to imagining them to be, and are revealed to be essentially entirely miraculous.
The practice of Yoga is: Investigating the nature of reality by engaging with present experience intimately, sensitively, and intelligently."
The above is a pretty radical departure for most of us, because our "normal" is mostly regretting the past, worrying about the future, and sleep-walking right past "the roses" and all the other "ordinary miracles" of the present moment. “You have to go beyond all concepts. And you will find it in the stillness of your mind, in the quiet chambers of your mind when you go fromthe knownto the unknown, from the physicalto the spiritual … When you hear beyond the word, an inner light goes on and it brings out inner knowledge and wisdom, spiritual intelligence, before the contamination of human thought.” Sydney Banks, “Long Beach Lecture Series: The Great Illusion”
For a gentle entry into this, perhaps newish territory I recommend setting aside 30 minutes for uninterrupted attention to Helen Hamilton's video. She leads a gentle, guided "self-inquiry" meditation for 23 minutes. Then for 7 minutes she'll answer the first of several very worthwhile questions. Enjoy:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4bXew7umcc
How do you feel directing your own & your loved ones' lives, in what many perceive to be a challenging, at times hostile, and seemingly deteriorating world? Many today feel anxious, nervous, afraid, worried for themselves, their children & grandchildren.
What ifHOW we usually perceive & think is ALMOST ENTIRELY focused on DARKNESS: trying to grab, accumulate & survive at any cost AS IFwe were alone, struggling in a hostile, meaningless, mechanical universe? WELL, THIS IS our culture's, and thus our own personal defaultway of understanding, thinking & behaving, called "left-hemisphere dominant" by noted scholar / researcher / author / psychiatrist, Iain McGilchrist MD (http://www.johnlovas.com/2025/10/hope-courage-patience-perseverance.html). This mindset is certain that we are alone in a meaningless, mechanical universe, struggling against all odds to survive. Being trapped in this narrow, robotic mindsetIS the nightmare! Sadly, those of us who have experienced major trauma, especially in early childhood, have tremendous difficulty trusting anyone, anything, including life itself. As a result, trauma survivors tend to rely exclusively on their intellect ie left hemisphere! This leaves their hearts armored, somewhat protected against re-injury, buteffectively blocked from feeling, receiving & giving love.
Balanced, well-adjusted, thriving societies & individuals are "right-hemisphere dominant" by default. This right-hemisphere perspective is RADICALLY DIFFERENT because it ISaware of & ISin harmony with ALL of life's INFINITELY WIDER contexts, like Beauty, Love, Meaning, Values, Relationships, the Arts, Spirituality, etc.
Mysticspast and present, are exemplars of right-hemisphere dominance,experiencing life radically differently than left-hemisphere dominant people.Mysticsfeel peacefully held in love; "at one" - Unitive Mystical Experience - with everyone, everything & the Divine;no separation from others & life;feelnohostility; no desperation to control anyone or anything; no fear of anyone, any "vengeful God" nor death; noneurotic compulsion to do anything, be anyone, go anywhere. They feel liberated, free to be appropriate toward everyone & everything in the present moment ie to embody Divine nurturing unconditional love. ALL of us can gradually open our minds & hearts to our own Divine nature. Watch:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLmOpCCJkuY
Instead of a steady diet of psychopathic politicians, billionaires, "influencers", and other nightmare visions, for the sake of sanity - how about reading about and listening to wise elders? My blogs are all about inspiring, mature, healthy, wise role models, like:
and MANY MORE wise elders to learn from & be inspired by.
It's OUR CHOICE - our free will - whether we immerse ourselves inwisdom - OR - darkness (https://www.jonathanashford.com/post/the-darkness). Are we "too busy", yet doomscrolling for hours each day?; Is this wisdom stuff "too deep" or "too confusing", and again, are we "just too busy" to get into it and learn? We can procrastinate and aim at bestfor feeling superficially OK, "ordinary unhappiness" - OR - discover what life isreallyabout.
Okay, you don't 'have to,' BUT I sincerely recommend you do, because this is a surprisingly simple but not easy "game changer."
1) Become aware of your Mood or overall Attitude. Unless you feel:Open & Curious to ANYTHING that might happen, Ready to Learn & Evolve, and Grateful to be Alive, then DROPYOUR BORING, DEADENING, SELF-DEFEATING MOOD. You've done shit mood & "ordinary unhappiness" (or worse) to death. It's time to LIVE!
2) FRESH START EVERY MORNING! Anything, ABSOLUTELY ANYTHINGcan happen today!None of us have a clue how our day will go when we first open our eyes. YET, a pessimistic or anxious, or one of our other pet shit moods loves to rush in to pathologically distort our attitude for the whole day. This is our fear-based choice akin to people choosing to return to a familiar abusive home rather than 'risk' a new safe house. BE BRAVE! Admit you don't have a clue about the future, NOR can you micromanage the future. The best you can be is PRESENT: Not Knowing, Relaxed yet Alert & Energized, Ready to Learn & Evolve, and Grateful to be Alive.
3) PRESENCE This is relatively rare, YET simple, ordinary, AND feels joyful. Have you ever been somewhere with so many overwhelming noises that you can't think clearly? For most, the source of the overwhelming noises is our own "self-talk" - the ongoing dialogue from our small self. We, as individuals, "need" a "noisy ego" like we as a society, "need" a narcissistic dictator taking a wrecking ball to our world ie like we need a hole in the head. 95% of our self-talk is useless or harmful. We CAN ignore self-talk, and CAN direct our awareness ANYWHERE we choose. CHOOSE Open Awareness! Open Awareness is a meditation practice that's also the ideal way to be 24/7. When we're not narrowly focused on a specific task such as cooking a meal, or driving, our awareness is wide open to & monitoring all of our sensory inputs, in the present moment. Unless we specifically choose to narrow our awareness down, we remain open, present. This is peaceful & joyfulbecause it's soeffortless & freeing - free from our infernal neurotic, fearful, anxious self-talk. TREAT yourself to this experience - even for a minute - to appreciate the miraculous peace. This peaceful 'liminal space' feels energized at the same time, a bit like a helicopter that has risen off the ground hovering, yet able to take off in any direction when it chooses to do so.
This 'everyday miracle' is YOURS to enjoy, yours to LIVE. It's your birthright!You WILL kick yourself if you delay letting go of needlessly living in 'ordinary unhappiness' or worse.
small self vs Self
St. Michael Defeating Satan (c. 1633) by Guido Reni
There is a back-and-forth rhythm or dance between (apparent) opposites to many aspects of life, as popularized by Pete Seeger's song, "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)."
One of these 'dances' is our tendency to AT TIMES contractinto our "small self," intoself-concern: sadness, anxiety, basically a low mood or "ordinary unhappiness" AND AT OTHER TIMES, expandinto our "true Self" or wisdom, "a peace that surpasseth all understanding,"experiencinguncaused joy, awe, gratitude, awareness,concern for, and even Oneness with, all of creation!
Expansioncan occurspontaneously, because'everything is perfect as it is' as experienced & understood by shamans, saints, prophets & mystics of all wisdom traditions throughout the ages. Expansion usually occurs when we're able to relax, self-reflect, and finally allow ourself todeeply listen to our inner wisdom's whisperings.
Today'smystics agree: "... happiness is our default setting. That’s the way we come wired from the factory. It is our natural state. ... quieting of your mindallows that natural state to come back to the surface." Interview of Chip & Jan Chipman on The Three Principles and Relationshipshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmqLI8_9pko “All we are ispeace, love & wisdom, AND the power
to create the illusion that we’re not.” Jack Pranskyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kni9VRMIuD4.
Contraction can be very easilytriggered&maintained by stress. BUT, the WEIRDEST CAUSE IMAGINABLE is that WE are used to thinking shitty thoughts, which invariably CAUSE our shitty moods - our "ordinary unhappiness." YES, WE habituallychoose to continuouslyre-tell & thus continuouslyre-suffer the sad "story of me," the sad story ofmy tribe, and visualize in gory detail horrible future events, which, to paraphrase Mark Twain, "never happened!" The QUALITY of OUR MOODS are ENTIRELY OUR CHOICE! Though we habitually blame our moods on our external circumstances, theyhave almost nothing to do with it!
“The simple truth is this: We’re living in the feeling of ourthinking, NOT the feeling of our circumstances.” Michael Neill
“The original, shimmering Selfgets buried so deep that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all. Instead, we live out of all the other selves, which we are constantly putting on & taking off like coats & hats against the world’s weather.” Frederick Buechner
“Stories are prisonswechooseto live inside.” Bob Falconer
"How we experience life depends on our level of consciousness." Sydney Banks
“You can’t be in fear and curiosity at the same time.” John Clarke
WHEN you've had enough ofbeing trapped in sad&anxious storiesand wallowing in 'ordinary unhappiness' or depression, burnout or worse: 1) realize self-talk's destructiveness, 2) recognizeself-defeating self-talkwithin seconds, 3) let it go, 4) immediately bring attention back to thepresent moment. 5)cultivate the courage,perseverance& curiosityto remain, rest in, live in & savor the present moment. THIS is the HEART of Mindfulness Training & Practice!
You are cultivating PRESENCE - being fully awake, alive, free, engaged with whomever you're with, whatever you're doing - whether in motion or at rest. Whilein presence, you will feel free, light, peaceful, relaxed, warm, loving, competent no matter what is going on, including a painful medical procedure!
As soon asyou start to feel down, anxious or otherwise troubled, DROPthe shitty old thinking habits, go to #4 & 5 above.
From Jack Pransky's excellent book: “Somebody Should Have Told Us!: Simple Truths for
Living Well" 2011. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED “I realized that if we deeply understoodthree spiritual facts or principles, how these facts work together and how our use of them gives us every experience we can possibly have in life, with this perspective we can move through life with peace of mind, well-being, mental health and psychological freedom. … The Three Principles point to ten little (but huge) points about life and relationships that would be extremely helpful for people to understand. … Each takes exploration and reflection. Thus a full chapter is devoted to each:
I. Our thinking is our life II. Wisdom is always available to guide us, if we know how to access it III. If someone’s thinking doesn’t change, they can’t change IV. When our mind clears our wisdom appears V. We don’t have to think our way out of our problems (or to happiness) VI. The feeling is what counts, and it’s foolproof VII. What we see is what we get VIII. In low levels of consciousness, it is unwise to believe, trust or follow our thinking IX. To deeply listen to others instead of to our own thinking gives us a richer experience X. We’re only as stuck as we think we are To deeply understand the meaning of these statements is to live in a different world, and inside-out world. You may never see yourself or the world in the same way again. Our innate Health and its natural intelligence is always hidden within us, just waiting to rise to the surface. All we have to do is allowwhat we think we know to drop away,or no longer take it seriously, and this wisdom will speak to us. It is so close to us that we have forgotten it is there – like the air we take for granted – yet it holds the key that unlocks the potential in everyone.”Jack Pransky
Spiritual porosity refers to one of the qualities of Self:openness, connectedness, inter-relatedness or "interbeing," and ultimately Oneness with everyone & everything -nonduality. An old saying, "No man is an island."
“I’ve had the honor of being able to work with some of the Northern Plains indigenous peoples here - the Crow, and Sue, and the Northern Cheyenne. And I think they were much more comfortable with ‘porosity of mind.’ When they talked about the world around them, it was ‘all my relations.’ That’s a porous attitude toward the world. And I also think if we really could get back to that different attitude, we wouldn’t be able to treat the world around us so badly anymore.” Robert Falconer,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSa9hvEgWpk WONDERFUL INTERVIEW
Simon & Garfunkel sing about the opposite ofporosity, the "small self":
"Our feelings are a barometer of how our thoughts are being utilized." Sydney Banks, "The Enlightened Gardener" Lone Pine Publishing, 2016.
How am I? Seriously - check in with yourself! Why? Because the whole gamut of BAD feelings are caused by "thinking." It's NOTwhathappens to us, but how we THINK about it that causes MOST of our suffering. And we're OFTENcaught - much like whales entangled in fishing nets - in useless thinking (self-talk, internal chatter). We're almost constantly talking to ourselves in our heads, and 90-95% of it is useless, even harmful. We innocently but WRONGLYassume that this steadychatter tells us the objective truth, who we actually are and providesevidence that we're alive & thinking rationally. NO! The vast majority of self-talk is old, repetitious bits of "the story of me" - a poor, wronged, separate me, barely surviving in a crazy, hostile world.
Whenever we're caught up in self-talk, we actually feel BAD: stressed, overwhelmed, out of control, contracted, sad / angry, lonely & disconnected. Our "mind racing" is not normal. "Multitasking" isnot productive. There's often a real sense of "time crunch" - not nearly enough time to get everything done, even in a "half-assed" way. You may be thinking, 'Stop the world, I want to get off!' This is just rushing towards burnout.
“Every human being is sitting in the middle of mental health and they don't know it.” Sydney Banks
So we can't stop the world, BUT each one of us CAN let go of the actual cause of most of our unnecessary, self-inflicted suffering - we CAN let go ofself-talk!
We can easily detect when we're caught up in self-talkbecauseit makes us feel BAD. So we firstnoticeself-talk going on AND we drop it, just let it go, stop supplying energy that sustains noise. EVERYONE CAN DO THIS. Thenrepeatedly bring awareness to the silence that is always there between, behind, underneath the words & other noises. Be curious, "listen for" & enjoy resting, luxuriating in the silence.
Quickly you'll begin to appreciate all that comes withsilence: peace (instead of stress & time-poverty); wisdom & calm competence (instead of feeling overwhelmed &out of control); spaciousness & relaxation (instead of contraction & tension); intimacy & oneness(instead of loneliness & disconnectedness). Within this peaceful silence we effortlessly connect with deepest intelligence or wisdom & creativity which far exceeds our personal (egoic) intelligence. We operate FAR more wisely, efficiently, empathically, and joyfully when we're acting from the depth ofwho we truly are.
"When mind and soul are in unison, you will experience mental well-being." Sydney Banks, "The Enlightened Gardener" Lone Pine Publishing, 2016.
DO listen to this EXCELLENT 56 minute Michael Neill interview
"One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination & understanding are filled with doubt & indecision." Bertrand Russell
Asimplistic, superficial, literal 'understanding' of even the most complex of mysteries is common. We dread uncertainty, rush to conclusions & hide in group-think for (false) security. Respected monk Thomas Merton said that even in monasteries, people of spiritual depth are very rare: “Once in a while you will find someone with whom you can talk
about (spiritual experiences). But they are hard to find. And when you are
fortunate enough to find such a person it will be a temporary arrangement. For
you will spend most of your life without such a person, which will be your
solitude in which you will learn from God how to depend on God to guide you
into ever deeper communion with God.” James Finley. “The Healing Path. A Memoir and an Invitation.” Orbis, 2023.
‘Most human institutions, by the purely technical and professional manner in which they come to be administered, end by being obstaclesto the very purposes which their founders had in view.’ William James
“Don’t carry away a conclusionunless it has been arrived at through your own experience. Rather, if therehasn’t been direct experience, carry away the question.” Toni Packer. “The Silent Question. Meditating in the Stillness of Not-Knowing.” Shambhala, 2007.
“Throughout much of Western history, until the fourth century AD when early, ‘primitive’ Christianity began to be systematically stamped out beneath the jackboots of the Roman Catholic Church, ‘beatific visions’ were the primary recruitment tool of the enormously ancient and influential ‘religion with no name’ that is the subject of The Immortality Key. This religion could shift and morph into multiple forms – The Eleusinian and Dionysian Mysteries are among the examples … and to these I would add the much older religion of the painted caves explored in Supernatural – but the common factor in every case was a psychedelic sacrament (sometimes food, sometimes drink, sometimes both) consumed by all participants. ‘Primitive’ Christianity started out around two thousand years ago as merely the latest form or incarnation of this archaic religion, and – at least in some cases – seems to have made use of bread & wine infused with psychedelic plants & fungi as its sacrament. At that time, because Christianity was persecuted under the Roman Empire until the reign of Constantine (AD 306-337) it was normal practice for its adherents to meet secretly in small groups to eat the bread and drink the wine of Holy Communion, and afterward experience powerful & deeply meaningful beatific visions. And more often than not, these secret ceremonies of direct experiential communion with the divine were led by women with men playing a secondary role.
Then, from the second half of the fourth century AD onward, came the rise of Roman Catholicism, dominated by men who took decisive steps to marginalize the role of women in the Church and to remove the psychedelic elements from the sacrament, reducing Holy Communion to the empty symbolic act, devoid of powerful experiential content, that hundreds of millions of Christians continue to perform. My friend, the visionary artist Alex Grey, whose work has been much influenced by Ayahuasca, describes the Old Testament story of the serpent, the forbidden fruit, and God’s expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden as ‘the first psychedelic slapdown.’ Pursuing that thought, Roman Catholicism’s persecution of ‘primitive’ Christians and the extirpation of their visionary Communion wine might be described as the second psychedelic slapdown. And then, in the twentieth century, just as we seemed to be freeing ourselves from the loveless iron grip of the Church and opening up to new spiritual possibilities, governments around the world waded in with the so-called ‘war on drugs’ – the third psychedelic slapdown. Over the centuries, therefore, enormous often deadly forces (with the power, for example, to burn people at the stake or imprison them for decades) have repeatedly been unleashed to prevent people from experiencing direct contact with realms & realities other than the mundane. At the same time, however, even when it must have seemed that the ‘religion with no name’ had been deleted completely from the human record, there were always – if I may extend the metaphor – multiple ‘backup disks’ in the form of psychedelic plants & fungi growing all over the planet. There might be long gaps, lacunae of centuries even, but the moment would always come when certain curious individuals, either by accident or by design, would sample the plants and mushrooms that serve as the permanent Hall of Records of the religion with no name, thus setting in motion the experiences & subsequent processes of social organization that would ultimately allow it to be rescued in full force. It is not an accident that the Mazatec shamans of southern Mexico refer to the psilocybe mushrooms used in their ceremonies as ‘little teachers,’ and, in a sense, that is what all psychedelic plants & fungiare – literally the ancient teachers of mankind. Whether we engage with Ayahuasca, or with Psilocybe Mexicana, or with peyote, or with LSD (which is itself derived from the fungus ergot) we are dealing with the biological agents of the religion with no name and with their numinous capacity to reawaken our spiritual appetites and potential.” Graham Hancock's Foreword to: Brian C. Muraresku “The Immortality Key. The Secret History of the Religion with No Name.” St. Martin’s Press, 2020.
“… in 2006, the (Johns) Hopkins team completed the first psilocybin (research) project since the 1970s, when research into the forbidden substance became largely impossible during the War on Drugs. Under tightly controlled conditions the psilocybin unleashed a profound, mystical experience that seemed to anchor the lasting emotional & psychological benefits recorded by the thirty-six volunteers. They had no life-threatening illness, and were otherwise free of the debilitating angst (morbid fear of death) that consumed (some previous research subjects with advanced cancer). But these early results were shockingly similar to the 2016 collaboration with NYU: one-third of the participants rated their experience ‘as the most spiritually significant of their lives,’ comparing it to the birth of a child or the death of a parent. Two-thirds placed it among the top five. When friends, family, & coworkers were interviewed, they confirmed the remarkable transformations in the volunteers’ mood & behavior for months, even years, following their single dose. From that moment on, Dr. Roland Griffiths upended his career to focus almost exclusively on psilocybin, creating what is now called the Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Research Unit. More than 360 volunteers and fifty peer-reviewed publications later, he’s ready to call a spade a spade. In his 2016 TED Talk, Griffiths said the drug-induced ecstasy he routinely witnesses in the laboratory is ‘virtually identical’ to that reported by natural-born prophets & visionaries throughout human history. The underlying experience itself, whether activated by psilocybin or some spontaneous internal flood of neurotransmitters**, must be ‘biologically normal.’ If we are essentially wired for mystical experience, it raises the intriguing prospect that, under the right mind-set & environment, any curious soul can be instantly converted into a religious savant. Griffith’s colleague, Dr. William Richards, has been testing that hypothesis since the 1960s, when he codeveloped the very scale to measure these peak states of consciousness, the Mystical Experience Questionnaire. … In his 2015 book, Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences, Richards maps out the essential features of the perfect psilocybin journey: transcending time & space, accessing knowledge that is normally not available. Oftentimes there is a merging of the everyday personality with a larger, more fundamental whole. Words fail to capture the unsinkable conviction that the experiencer has somehow glimpsed the ultimate nature of reality, an insight that seems ‘blatantly obvious’ at the time, and is usually accompanied by intense feelings of joy, tranquility, exaltation, & awe.” BrianC. Muraresku “The Immortality Key. The Secret History of the Religion with No Name.” St. Martin’s Press, 2020.
**NOTE: Neurotransmittersmediate but are NOT the "ultimate cause" of mystical experiences any more than a TV set actually causes the Olympic Games, or anything else we watch on it. ALSO, shamans who for thousands of years have, & continue to facilitate such numinous experiences, actually do so far more often & widelywith drumming & other non-pharmaceutical rituals than with plant medicines. AND, with the appropriate "set & setting" people for millennia have also achieved profound mystical experiences & insights by themselves through meditation & other spiritual practicesand less often, evenspontaneously. This strongly suggeststhatwe are not only "wired for mystical experiences," but that "we are spiritual beings, having a physical experience."
“When we are in contact with the ineffable, divine reality that is our source, we also know what state we shall return to. Without this knowledge we are indeed dead, even though we may show signs of physical life.” Stephan A. Hoeller. “Gnosticism. New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing.” Quest, 2002.
In summary, direct mystical experiences may be essential prerequisites for us to open to deeper realities, which our 'usual' way of perceiving & thinking these days, can rarely access or comprehend. A wide variety of spiritual practices - from yogic breathing techniques, various meditation techniques, chanting, drumming, dancing, tai chi / qi gong, yoga, sweat lodge ceremonies, and plant medicines in appropriate set & settings, with appropriately-trained traditional shamans or health-care professionals - pave the way to profoundly life-altering, life-affirmingdirect mystical experiences and insights.
• Self Inquiry (Part 1: Ramana Maharshi, Adv... 
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