The Adventure of Awakening on the Mystic Path—Part 1

The Path, of course, is not a path at all, but simply that condition of spirit in which a man has become aware of an inner need to know the nature of his being.

Who am I? What am I doing here? Is there any purpose to my existence?—are the constant questions living within him. The Path can thus be understood as the yearning quest in the soul of someone seeking an answer to the Why of existence.

Most of us can perhaps go on for years not giving the idea a thought, or dismissing it as unpractical, or pretending to ourselves that we don't give a damn. Comes a time when we are overtaken by inexplicable fears or feelings of inadequacy; we tend to cover them up by throwing ourselves into feverish and generally pointless activity—a full involvement in the daily round of life—in petty pleasures or political strife, or in sport, sex, art, music, religiosity, war or whatever. But eventually, the futility of it all catches up with us if it has no underlying meaning within. There seems to come a time in the life of every human being when the shallowness of their everyday existence is revealed to them.

If someone perceives only the hollowness of their being and the meaninglessness of his life, then they may become stricken with despair, take to drink or drugs to cover the pain, commit suicide, or find themselves driven on the ‘Path’ out of necessity to find some reason for existing. But suppose someone has been made aware of the shallowness of their everyday vision of life by comparison with a greater vision—through experiencing a state of consciousness which gives him a new and enthralling insight into the wondrous nature of existence—then the chances are they have undergone a mystical experience.

The mystic is one whose ‘eyes have seen the glory’ of the true nature of things. To him, as to the quantum scientist, the world and the so-called ‘physical’ universe are no longer as material as we generally suppose them to be. He sees this apparent world as a living symbol of more glorious states of existence. He has had a glimpse of other dimensions, of other states of ‘reality’, of a paradise in which all things exist here and now but which he rarely perceives. Once he has seen with his ‘inner eye’, his conception of reality is automatically changed.

In general, even with all its unreal and surrealistic happenings, we consider our everyday world as reality—and on the relative level, so it is.

Relative only to our average level of conscious perception, that is.

Higher frequency

If we have never experienced any other ‘reality’ or extraordinary state of consciousness (other than dream states), then we are only able to relate to this world as it appears to our feeble sensory capacities. Consequently, the visionaries, whose conscious receptivity is operating at a higher frequency, and who attempt to relate their experiences of other states of reality, are dismissed as deluded fools, cranks or madmen by those who have unfortunately never known any condition of ‘seeing’ or ‘knowing’ other than that afforded by the use of the five limited senses. But the mystical experience transcends the senses and the intellect and is perceived directly.

By what?—one might be tempted to ask. It is by something for which we have no word in our language, but is known to Sanskrit-speaking Hindu holy men as Buddhi, usually translated as higher mind or illumined intellect. But this falls short of its real meaning as it operates on a level beyond what we consider to be the operations of mind and intellect.

Considering it to be the highest opposite pole to the ‘unconscious’ of psychology, I venture to call it the sun-conscious, or the faculty of illumined intuitive receptivity. Sunconscious awareness is an awakened understanding that permeates every level of our beings without the participation or intervention of the mind or discursive intellect. These two latter faculties are obliged to catch up after the event has occurred instantaneously in the deepest levels of the whole organism. This effect leads to the conjecture that the ‘sunconscious’ faculty, being beyond the comprehension of the body-mind complex, is somewhat in the nature of the ‘mind of the soul’, as its awakening feeds the spiritual being with the inner light and joy it craves.

However, around the average human being, there seems to be some sort of ‘psychic insulating shell’ safeguarding him from premature perception of the ‘glory’ of the light and splendour within all manifest things. As it would be disastrous for a chick in the egg to break out of its shell before the inner conditions for its maturity had developed, so it is with man. It would appear that until a certain quality of spiritual and mental togetherness has developed within him, or a ripeness cultivated through internal and external suffering, he is not equipped to cope with insight into the inner realities of existence. To actually experience the terrifying intangibility of this universe before the heart and mind are ready for it could drive a person insane (that is, incapable of further coherent thought and action on this relative plane). Its effect would be equivalent to that of a monkey suddenly overtaken by human consciousness and becoming aware of all the wonders and horrors of human life.

It is for this reason that mental disorientation often occurs with the use of psychedelic drugs such as LSD or mescaline.

To be continued... 2 more chapters coming

Find Muz: www.muzmurray.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MantraMuz/

YouTube Videos: youtube.com/@MuzMURRAY

British mystic, author, psychotherapist, spiritual counsellor, mantra yogi, fine artist and illustrator, theatrical set and costume designer. Founder-editor of Gandalf’s Garden magazine and Community in the London Sixties, and 3 years as columnist for Yoga Today magazine, BBC 4 Scriptwriter, author of four spiritual self-development books and two storybooks for children. 

Muz Murray