Experiences

[Jack Knave]

The experiences that I have are kind of self brought on.

I feel that I can leave my body and travel to another place. I am aware that I am traveling but can't really see or feel anything. It is as though the everyday world falls away.

When I reawaken I am in a kitchen, fairly bare, just a wooden table and two chairs around it. I find different objects placed on the table every visit and sometimes a dead (before I was born) relative.

We don't talk, but we do talk (impossible to describe really). The discussion is about the object the object or objects on the table. When the relative is not there I just peruse whatever is on the table by myself.

When I return to the "real" world  I find an inner peace and resolution to whatever has been on my mind although I am not sure how it has been resolved.

Very odd, but very comforting.

What objects have you found on the table?

And what was said about them to the presence there? If the presence wasn't always the same person then it would be useful to know anything about them; gender, age etc. and what objects relates to which presence.

[Jack Knave]

Oh, and while we are on here my differences of opinion with Vlad are known and long-standing  but this is a lovely idea for a thread, so doff of the hat, to Vlad.

I did a thread asking about peoples experiences like this and I got sweet FA!!!  Rose threw me a bone, and I think someone else did, when they saw my thread nosedive.......

[ProfessorDavey]

I did a thread asking about peoples experiences like this and I got sweet FA!!!  Rose threw me a bone, and I think someone else did, when they saw my thread nosedive.......

Never mind JK - perhaps it is because posters here like Vlad better than you . Hmm, then again Well actually, then again.

[Étienne d'Angleterre]

What objects have you found on the table?

And what was said about them to the presence there? If the presence wasn't always the same person then it would be useful to know anything about them; gender, age etc. and what objects relates to which presence.

Random items.

A digital clock.

Spanners.

photographs,

I don't think it matters it is just an excuse to examine things i.e. whatever might be on my mind becomes an object. That way you can pick it up examine it etc.

The person has always been the same person, except for one occasion in which there were two of them.

We talk but we don't talk. Impossible to describe really.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Sweetpea,

Older posters on this forum know exactly what's going-on here. And it's very, very sad.

Not to worry, and you are not going mad, there is a tincture of truth in what you say, I also see what you are talking about

Sometimes I like to go back and visit the old me, see how I have grown, am I any different, the old BBC website allows me to do this,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbreligion/NF2213235

Like you I wondered, how long has this been going on, I traced myself back to 2009, but I remember when I joined I was but a newbie, a little voice crying in the wilderness, hardly a reply to my wind swept and wonderful postings, but I did notice the old hands, more sedate on the old BBC, because moderation was very strict on there, but it was the same old posters having a dig at each other, it has been going on for a very long time, old habits die hard.

Sometimes I wonder, do they actually see it

I will say this, if Horsethorn and Vlad ever met, in the flesh, so to speak, I would have to avert my eyes, I have admitted on this forum that I am slightly homophobic, Horsethorn giving Vlad deep tongue, and they would, I would need therapy.

Gonnagle.

[Nearly Sane]

Dear Sweetpea,

Not to worry, and you are not going mad, there is a tincture of truth in what you say, I also see what you are talking about

Sometimes I like to go back and visit the old me, see how I have grown, am I any different, the old BBC website allows me to do this,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbreligion/NF2213235

Like you I wondered, how long has this been going on, I traced myself back to 2009, but I remember when I joined I was but a newbie, a little voice crying in the wilderness, hardly a reply to my wind swept and wonderful postings, but I did notice the old hands, more sedate on the old BBC, because moderation was very strict on there, but it was the same old posters having a dig at each other, it has been going on for a very long time, old habits die hard.

Sometimes I wonder, do they actually see it

I will say this, if Horsethorn and Vlad ever met, in the flesh, so to speak, I would have to avert my eyes, I have admitted on this forum that I am slightly homophobic, Horsethorn giving Vlad deep tongue, and they would, I would need therapy.

Gonnagle.

What is the tincture of truth. What was ht arguing that everybody know's about?

[Gonnagle]

Dear Sane,

Don't deep think, they are old adversaries, that's all.

Gonnagle.

[Aruntraveller]

I have admitted on this forum that I am slightly homophobic,

I don't think you are at all Gonners. I think like myself on a couple of issues there is a residual prejudice by the very nature of our upbringing and heritage.

To burden yourself unnecessarily with a label you do not deserve is counterproductive in my opinion.

That you have clearly thought about the issue and come to a view which clearly indicates you do not want to be homophobic and are largely acting in accordance with that view is more than enough to annul the appellation.

[ProfessorDavey]

I have admitted on this forum that I am slightly homophobic

I think that is an honest admission and actually very laudable.

We are a product of our past and the culture and society that shaped that past. Sometimes it is very honest to say that because of that culture I have engrained views that I'm not proud of, that are wrong. I understand those views are wrong but that is who I am.

That's how we move forward when some people accept how they might have been brought up, the culture they grew up in, weren't right - those people might not be able to change but that acceptance means they have moved themselves out of the way for those people who want to shape the future, who are able to do the right thing.

How different is the approach of gonners with the approach of Hope. Who will be seen by those in the future as supporting our moral progress, well I think it is pretty clear.

[Nearly Sane]

Dear Sane,

Don't deep think, they are old adversaries, that's all.

Gonnagle.

I'm not deep thinking anything. There was no truth to Sweetpea's statement. 

Edit: actually I can't say that, since I still don't know what SweetPea thought was going on?

[jeremyp]

Yes We can expect the inevitable antitheist "Sarc-fest".

I don't believe I have ever experienced that. What was last year's line up?

[jeremyp]

I did a thread asking about peoples experiences like this and I got sweet FA!!!  Rose threw me a bone, and I think someone else did, when they saw my thread nosedive.......

If it's any consolation, Vlad seems to have got sweet FA actual experiences too.

[Dicky Underpants]

Wonderful?, I took your contribution to be a pastiche parody of a contribution to a site solicited at the suggestion of Horsethorn where we thought that for once a thread could be free from the usual snipeage.

You are quite within your rights to put what you want, how you want.

PASTICHE?? Pastiche parody for a site of horsethorn's? What on earth are you babbling about? I can't decide whether you're just morbidly suspicious or innately  vicious or both. My post was written in good faith, in accordance with the whole purport of the thread, and is as accurate a record of my own experience as I can make it - experience which in two cases (the JW one and the meditative one) I found to be absolutely profound at the time. That you choose to belittle my experience in vicious, foul-mouthed language is something  which does you little credit, but also something many of us have come to expect from you. The one thing which might just restrain me from holding you in utter contempt is the fact that you really did think my post was a spoof, though I can't imagine why anyone with reasonable powers of perception would think this. Anyway, far from my having perverted your "most mellowest thread", you've truly crapped on it yourself by typing in such a vile tone of denigration to me.

There is just one thing you might do, if it is within the powers of your "Christian" conscience: just think back to the state of mind of that eleven year old boy (i.e. me) who thought that God had revealed the truths of the Bible to him....

[Shaker]

There is just one thing you might do, if it is within the powers of your "Christian" conscience: just think back to the state of mind of that eleven year old boy (i.e. me) who thought that God had revealed the truths of the Bible to him....

Shouldn't be much of a stretch.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

PASTICHE?? Pastiche parody for a site of horsethorn's? What on earth are you babbling about? I can't decide whether you're just morbidly suspicious or innately  vicious or both. My post was written in good faith, in accordance with the whole purport of the thread, and is as accurate a record of my own experience as I can make it - experience which in two cases (the JW one and the meditative one) I found to be absolutely profound at the time. That you choose to belittle my experience in vicious, foul-mouthed language is something  which does you little credit, but also something many of us have come to expect from you. The one thing which might just restrain me from holding you in utter contempt is the fact that you really did think my post was a spoof, though I can't imagine why anyone with reasonable powers of perception would think this. Anyway, far from my having perverted your "most mellowest thread", you've truly crapped on it yourself by typing in such a vile tone of denigration to me.

There is just one thing you might do, if it is within the powers of your "Christian" conscience: just think back to the state of mind of that eleven year old boy (i.e. me) who thought that God had revealed the truths of the Bible to him....

If you didn't design your response to counter points made by previous posters in order to establish asuperiority then you have my apologies.

[Jack Knave]

Random items.

A digital clock.

Spanners.

photographs,

I don't think it matters it is just an excuse to examine things i.e. whatever might be on my mind becomes an object. That way you can pick it up examine it etc.

The person has always been the same person, except for one occasion in which there were two of them.

We talk but we don't talk. Impossible to describe really.

I'm not too sure whether to pursue this but I would like more details. Though the items may seem to be mundane they are there for a reason. You didn't say if the person was male or female and their age - and you could add your attitude and demeanour to them. Also, what was said about the items - I gather your 'we talked but didn't' means that what was exchanged was more like an emotional air or atmosphere of meaning....?

[Gonnagle]

Dear Me, ( yes I often talk to myself )

So! two types of experience, Horsethorns, he was meditating, enki, it just some how happened, Horsethorn put himself in a state to receive an experience, enki did not, but a question only enki can answer, do you think you were in some kind of meditative state when you sat down in that spot.

BTW enki, I liked your telling of your experience, it reminded me of "To Kill a Mockingbird"

Gonnagle.

[horsethorn]

Thinking about it, I should perhaps have suggested that Vlad put this in FSA...

I am fascinated by people's mystic/internal experiences, and my questions to Vlad were not intended in any way to be sarcastic or hostile; I was just hoping to hear more detail. I understand that people may be cautious about sharing, and I thought that by starting with mine, it would engender a similar open attitude.

I did realise that there would be a few who would pooh-pooh the descriptions, and that's fine - but I'd like to thank all those who did share (including Vlad ).

ht

[torridon]

I never had any mystical experience; maybe that's why I am an atheist.

But it's not really true to say I never had strange experience - it happens every nght during dreaming - but because we easily categorise it as 'just a dream' it doesn't mean it doesn't count as 'experience'. A dream is a form of conscious experience that happens during sleep.  Our normal waking experience is inspired moment to moment by novel sensory data out of which the brain creates a narrative of what is happening right now.  During sleep we are robbed of that sensory input but the brain is still trying to create narratives, and so with nothing novel to go on, it looks to memories and random hopes and fears to create a story out of.  Maybe this relates to why people who have mystical waking experience sometimes characterise it as being somewhat dreamlike in quality- perhaps it is in essence an irregular intrusion of dreamstate into wakefulness.

[Shaker]

I never had any mystical experience; maybe that's why I am an atheist.

Not sure that I ever have either - at least, nothing leaps immediately to mind - which is why I haven't contributed to this thread before. What counts as mystical?

Whatever experiences you may have had, to be an atheist is simply to find the claims about/arguments for gods put by others to be wholly unconvincing, surely.

[Rhiannon]

It's interesting. The experiences that I've had that have come when I've sought them I think arose solely from within my own mind. But whatever it is that makes me a pantheist - that I don't look for, it's what I've always lived with regardless of my religious beliefs at the time. In fact one of the hardest things as a church-going Christian was squashing that side of me down.

Is it mystical? Animism and pantheism feel to me to be the most natural things in the world. Mysterious is probably a better way of putting it than mystical - so much I don't know and so much I never will. And so much to try and make sense of anyway.

[torridon]

Not sure that I ever have either - at least, nothing leaps immediately to mind - which is why I haven't contributed to this thread before. What counts as mystical?

Whatever experiences you may have had, to be an atheist is simply to find the claims about/arguments for gods put by others to be wholly unconvincing, surely.

Well, yes, of course that's right, although maybe it's easier to be clear headed and think logically for people like us who aren't prone to esoteric or mystical or numinous experiences in the first place; not that those phenomenonological aspects alone account for the persistence of theism into modern times. A complex beastie, theism, I think.

[ekim]

Not sure that I ever have either - at least, nothing leaps immediately to mind - which is why I haven't contributed to this thread before. What counts as mystical?

Mysticism is one of those words for which there are probably many views about.  One view is that it is not about seeking out experiences but stilling the mind or entering a still  inner space.  What arises tends to be indescribable and attempts to communicate it to others only give a sense of it, like formless, expansiveness, one-ness, overwhelming bliss, timelessness within which the individual consciousness is lost and found at the same time, a sense of enlivening and empowering.  Because of its extreme nature it often gets called Heaven or God or Nirvana or Tao, Paradise, the Truth, Reality, Being, etc. Attempts to formalise it either mentally or physically tend to take one further from it.  It is a mystery to be lived rather than a problem to be solved.   Some example quotes:
Huang Po [9th C Ch.  Zen Buddhist Master]  Those who seek the truth by means of intellect and learning only get further and further from it.   Not until your thoughts cease, not until you abandon seeking for something, not until your mind is as motionless as stone will you be on the right road to the Gate.
Bayazid al Bishtami   [9th C Persian Sufi mystic]   The contraction of hearts consists in the expansion of Self and the expansion of hearts in the contraction of Self.
Mechthild of Magdeberg [13th C German contemplative revelations] Whosoever should hold himself firmly in the pull which comes from God and follows after the light as he sees it, would come to such bliss and heavenly knowledge that no heart could contain it.   Then he would be as an angel, ever lovingly united in God.
Hermes Tristmegistus   [ 2nd C; Wisdom of Egypt Alchemist] The Good (or Pure Being) must be that which is devoid of all movement and all becoming, and has a motionless activity (effortless effort) that is centred within it; it lacks nothing nor is it assailed by perturbations, it is wholly filled with abundance of all that is desired.   Anything that satisfied a need is called good; but the Good is that which is the source of all and satisfies all at all times.
Chuang-Tse [3rd C Taoist Authority]   A motionless centre, wherefrom is seen nothing but infinity, which is neither this nor that, neither yes nor no.
Meister Eckhart  [13th C German Dominican Theologian]   The eye with which I see God, God sees me;  my eye and God's eye is one eye, one seeing, one realising and one love.
Sri Sankaracharya [9th C Hindu Guru] How can there be knowledge or ignorance in Me who am eternal and always of the nature of Pure Conscious Being.
Sri Ramana Maharshi  [d 1950 Hindu sage]    The One Being the only Reality alone exists eternally.   When even the ancient teacher Dakskinamurti revealed It through speechless eloquence, who else could have conveyed it by speech.

[Dicky Underpants]

I never had any mystical experience; maybe that's why I am an atheist.

But it's not really true to say I never had strange experience - it happens every nght during dreaming - but because we easily categorise it as 'just a dream' it doesn't mean it doesn't count as 'experience'. A dream is a form of conscious experience that happens during sleep.  Our normal waking experience is inspired moment to moment by novel sensory data out of which the brain creates a narrative of what is happening right now.  During sleep we are robbed of that sensory input but the brain is still trying to create narratives, and so with nothing novel to go on, it looks to memories and random hopes and fears to create a story out of.  Maybe this relates to why people who have mystical waking experience sometimes characterise it as being somewhat dreamlike in quality- perhaps it is in essence an irregular intrusion of dreamstate into wakefulness.

Torridon

I think this is a very valid perception. However, I think the description "lucid dream", which perhaps originated in the literature of the occult/mysticism, is a distinction which can be drawn in the varied dream experiences we have. Certainly, some of the experiences which I alluded to in my earlier contribution to this thread, and which I would have thought of at the time as "out of the body experiences" had much more in common with 'lucid dreams' than every-night dreaming experience. The difference between OOBS and LDs seemed to be that the first were initiated in a waking state, whereas the latter occurred when I had definitely gone to sleep. But there did seem to be some element of control in both, as if I could order the succession of events to some extent. The other common feature of these two was the extraordinary clarity of colour and light in both.
However, like you I've come to regard all these as mere examples of unusual brain activity, and not indicative of anything spiritual (and that goes for one or two experiences of a 'universalist' kind which I had long ago, and which I definitely did interpret as having real spiritual import)
There remains the one rather different experience which occurred when in a train toilet, when a sudden jolt appeared to dissociate my consciousness from my body. All very matter of fact, and not in the least preceded by mental intention of any kind....

[Dicky Underpants]

Well, yes, of course that's right, although maybe it's easier to be clear headed and think logically for people like us who aren't prone to esoteric or mystical or numinous experiences in the first place; not that those phenomenonological aspects alone account for the persistence of theism into modern times. A complex beastie, theism, I think.

When you've been a long-term seeker after the 'miraculous', like me, it's sure a lot harder to let go of such things. However, life is a stern teacher, and if one hasn't altogether abandoned a capacity to reason, one can certainly strip away a lot of the 'wow' factors, and begin to appreciate what is actually on offer in art, music and science etc.
Still, I like to think I still possess some of Rhiannon's sense of the 'mysterious'.