3 Mystical Mysteries I Wish More People Were Curious About
What do you think about these strange subjects?
The Everything Is Amazing Substack by Mike Sowden polled its readers with an interesting question - What do you wish more people were curious about? - and I thought perhaps it would be worthwhile to present and answer the 3 answers to it that popped into my head and that I fired off in the comments:
1. What is a mystical experience?
2. Is reincarnation an actual phenomenon for which we can eventually accumulate enough scientific evidence to verify to a legitimate empirical level?
3. Are there other sentient entities existing alongside us on this planet which in more religious, mythological language have been characterized as "spirits," "ghosts," "angels," and "demons"? Can consciousness and personality and the good/evil tendency exist and survive in some form beyond carbon-based life forms?
When I talk about the impact Robert Anton Wilson has had on my religious and spiritual approach this is an expression of it.
The primary difference between religion and spirituality can be found here. Religion is primarily about providing rules about how to live derived from the alleged spiritual experiences of usually ancient prophetic and/or divine figures (though sometimes modern ones for example Thelelema’s “prophet” Aleister Crowley, Scientology’s “prophet” L. Ron Hubbard, and Mormon’s “prophet” Joseph Smith). BTW, while I generally put little stock in the spiritual visions of these latter two, I am more open-minded to occult experiences and their corresponding philosophical concepts from Crowley, who, while basically a jerk, was still the 20th century’s best writer on occultism. And he seems to me to have been right, or useful, anyway, about a fair amount.
Spirituality is primarily about actually engaging in the mystical actions and prophetic rituals required to invoke “spirits” of one form or another. These spirits are then believed to provide wisdom and guidance in how to live, usually either in accordance or conflict with the previous spiritual experiences of others.
Worship different deities, invoke different spirits, perform different rituals, receive sometimes widely different results - though sometimes very similar results too, as, in my opinion, the same deities and/or spirits can sometimes be reached merely wearing different masks and taking on varied forms. This is among the reasons why “dabbling” in these hidden occult practices is so frowned upon - sometimes the results are simply not going to be that pleasant - or inherently trustworthy. The “trickster spirit” is present in Eastern traditions, the Judeo-Christian tradition, and, of course, the Native American indigenous traditions.
Wilson advocated “agnostic mysticism,” meaning one can experiment with the various mystical practices, but should be a bit skeptical about the results you receive. Don’t entirely embrace your own - or anyone else’s - BS, an abbreviation Wilson liked to joke referred to both Belief System and, of course, bullshit. This has been a vital principle for me in my own mystical, prophetic, and especially psychedelic explorations. To fully embrace some of the bizarre insights and experiences I’ve had would make me far, far weirder than I already am and well beyond what most people could tolerate at all.
My tentative answers to these questions:
A mystical experience is when one has engaged in one variety of technique - or multiples at the same time - to alter one’s mental and physical consciousness to such a degree that one is able to perceive and interact with so-called “spiritual forces” or “entities” beyond what is available in a normal state of consciousness. Aldous Huxley wrote about this in The Doors of Perception, how particular drugs shut off certain parts of the brain, thus allowing perceptions of reality unavailable in a “normal” state of mind. Similar effects can be achieved through a variety of drugs, and mystics of all religious traditions have laid out how to achieve these effects throughout the centuries. These generally involve ecstatic prayer (also known as magickal rituals) or a precise controlling of breathing patterns (what is known in yoga as pranayama), but there are other ways too to provide a relatively safe shock to the consciousness or dramatic change in consciousness capable of affecting profound changes on the individual.
I used to regard “reincarnation,” or the idea that our soul has inhabited actual bodies in the past and that those experiences somehow influence us in our present lives, to be pretty loose speculation, at best. I thought the idea was more likely to be merely a metaphor reflecting that - in a literal, quantum science sense - the atoms and energies which make up our bodies previously did the same for all sorts of other people, plants, rocks, and animal creatures. Now, based on further research both experiential and in reading on the subject, as well as the insights of my fiancee, Sally Shideler, who is more learned on the subject, I am much more open-minded to the idea that it may be possible to pinpoint who specifically we may have been in a “past life,” and to identify which aspects and components of a past life most influence us today. For example, based on the mystical experimentations which Sally and I have already conducted, we do have suspicions that our persistent affections for a couple of specific places in time - the culture and periods/places of the 1920s-1930s British modernist movement, and the 1960s-1970s counterculture movement (particularly its LGBTQ-acceptance and militant feminist wings - may reflect those being some of the most positive time periods in the lives of previous specific people who we may have been at the time. More empirical research is necessary in both cases to further satiate my skepticism on both counts, but at this point, I am much more willing to engage in the effort to do so.
Again, for most of my last 20 years’ mystical wanderings and experimentation, I did not take claims of interactions with “ghosts,” “spirits,” “demons,” and “angels” with much literal seriousness. I did respect that a central occult ritual advocated by Crowley was the “invocation and conversation of one’s Holy Guardian Angel,” but beyond that practice - which I interpreted as the primary ritual mystics engaged in to gain prophetic insight - I was very skeptical about the presence of ghosts on the earth. Neither did I really believe that some form of malevolent, pointy-headed “demons” did anything to harm or tempt mankind. I loved the Book of Job in the Bible, but I didn’t take it literally: I understood it in the Jewish tradition of “satan”-like sorts of challenging spirits bring pain unto man and tempt him to blame God for his misfortunes. Now I’m really not so sure about that. The last year and half’s experiences and experiments - aided, I suspect, by the altered brain chemistry provoked by my PTSD - has led me to have more seemingly direct contacts with “spiritual entities.” These usually seem to be spirits who fit the definition of “ghosts wandering the earth” who, Sixth Sense-like, do not realize that they’re dead. Other times, I've encountered figures openly identifying as fallen angels, who now live as demons and who tempt humans and literally “chew” on our souls in an attempt to satiate their unending hunger.
But at this point, all three of these are just agnostic hypotheses in need of much more further experimentation. I'm also eager to seek out empirical research into others’ experiences and evidence involving these phenomena. I now anticipate writing about this as openly as I write about my ongoing mental health problems, which, at times, have so crippled my abilities to work, to read, and to enjoy literally anything in life.
What do you think? Have any thoughts or answers of your own on these subjects? Or care to answer Sowden’s original question of “what do you wish more people were curious about?” We’ll aspire to address your ideas in future God of the Desert articles as well as at the upping Goddess of the Desert sister channel, which Sally Shideler will be launching next month.
I don't know David. Mystery enough for me what my five senses and consciousness provide me.