Annie’s Notebook 3
WAKING UP TO OURSELVES/3
A regular review: for those who feel there’s something more.
This month’s topic
MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES OR HALLUCINATIONS?
In his latest book ’Hallucinations’, neurologist Oliver Sacks is engaged once again with the marvels of the human mind. The book includes accounts of mystical experiences, and as an atheist he is fascinated how we ‘viscerally experience worlds that don’t exist’. He says, ‘we must wonder to what extent these experiences have given rise to art, folklore and even religion’.
I have experienced hallucinations myself – during a horrible, ten-day, ‘Hieronymus Bosch’-type episode, caused by allergic reaction to post operative painkillers. I can assure you this is not the same as ‘mystical experience.’
Many years ago, a respected clairvoyant and healer told me something I’ll never forget: ‘When I see visions of Christ and the Virgin Mary, I know I’m not using my energies properly.’
A research team in Germany has found that when certain people hear voices – and are unburdened by their experiences – the right brain (the non-verbal part of the brain) comes into play.
Two quantum physicists claim that near-death experiences occur when the soul leaves the nervous system and enters the universe.
Guidelines. “The human mind has so much further to go. The mind is the brainchild of the universal need to ‘become’. The most important thing to know about this miracle of becoming is that humanity has a great part to play in understanding the universe’s relationship to God. In other words, the universe has a dictator at its helm. A dictator in the sense that ‘becoming’ is the imperative all life shares.
Many people have access to many layers of universal intelligence and what we must dispel straight away is the ‘lie’ that everything is in the human brain. Just because parts of the brain light up when someone is receiving information that does not conform to human intellectual understanding, we must not assume it originates in the brain.
The brain is involved, yes, because it is the stepping down point for all information. In the same way, a breakdown in physical health can be seen as a stepping down from higher to lower dis-ease. When it reaches the physical body it produces symptoms.
But anyone who still thinks that symptoms are the first line of treatment is sorely mistaken. And if doctors do not begin to treat the whole person as a complex system of mind, body and spirit, then struggling health systems will run themselves dry trying to treat the overwhelming symptoms of a thoroughly sick society.
So the brain is just a stepped down receiver of many layers of information.
And yet the brain itself can play many tricks on us. At the purely physical level it is possible to experience voices, or see things that aren’t there. In other words, hallucinations are the result of ‘trickery’ in the brain that comes from various sources. Drugs are a case in point. No one, we suggest who causes themselves to have hallucinatory experiences in this way is experiencing concrete reality.
Visual stimulation can also cause hallucinatory behaviour. Dull fluorescent light, flickering light, all kinds of light stimulation can affect the brain itself in so many disagreeable ways. That is why taking drugs and dancing in flashing strobe lighting is popular in some circles. The hallucinatory effects are twice as severe.
All of that is ‘brain damage’, because indeed the brain can be damaged by these influences.
Light is a very powerful experience. Those who heal with light have a powerful tool in their hands. Those who heal with colour, the stepping down of the effect of light, have a powerful tool in their hands.
But the mind is something else. Light is the Mind. Beyond the brain, the mind is capable of the most extraordinary illusions too. Sometimes illusions are a barrier against the full power of the mind, and in some ways can protect you.
The power of the mind is such that it needs a stepping up, slowly carefully and naturally, a kind of evolutionary event that cannot be forced. If people try to force it from the wrong parts of themselves, or if the person is not ready for the power of that Light, the magnitude of those vibrations, then they will either break down, or have illusory experiences.
Sometimes there are explosions of illusion, uncontrolled psychism, power plays. For example, yogis who offered the experience of kundalini, who were using their sexual energy to force the energy up to higher consciousness, were, in our view, coming at enlightenment from the wrong direction.
Of course, all mind-expanding, extraordinary experiences can lead us on to a commitment to seek the truth of who we are. But the experience of higher and higher forms of Light comes from the cleansing of the baser instincts of mankind, from the gradual awareness and conscious understanding of the ‘way of becoming’.
‘I am the Way the Truth and the Life’. The way to distinguish between the truly mystical and the vagaries of human emotional dissociation is the way it happens. The way of the mystic is a truly painful path! There is so much pain to be experienced in order to move up beyond pain, that you fear you will never survive. This is the meaning of ‘Christ consciousness’ – whether you believe in this particular form of expressing the ephemeral or not. It is the symbol of suffering which those with mystical bent experience on the ‘road to Damascus’.
The suffering is the visceral experience of re-living within yourself the history of humanity, ultimately progressing into the universal understanding of knowing yourself to be part of ‘all that is’ and free. It is suffering on behalf of humanity and using that suffering to know the meaning of life’s mystery. It is not for the faint-hearted.
‘By their fruits shall ye know them.’ There is something in the eyes, in the heart, in the mind of those who are truly in touch with the mysteries of life. They know compassion.”
What triggered the bigger picture for you and set you on your spiritual journey?
Martin’s story: “I was in a marriage that was running out of steam and a business that was failing. I felt trapped with no way to turn. In desperation I started jogging in the local park in an attempt to clear my mind and find a way out of my troubles. The third time I ran I had an overwhelming sense that all around me was live – even the grass I was treading was part of the picture. It was a life-changing moment – God, the deity, was in everything around me and I was included. I felt part of the picture – a small part, yes – but a part all the same. And it changed everything. The previously significant props to my life fell away – the relationship ended, I left the job and I moved on.
That was thirty years ago and I now see that flash of understanding as the beginning of a new me. I feel I have changed many times since then, but it was that most significant, profound realisation that started it all off.”
Do you have a story in 150 words or so? Do contact me on: info@guidelines.uk.com
Be the best you can be: a series of guided meditations
A sense of 2012
In your mind’s eye, take yourself into the garden now and imagine the eclipse of the sun. It has completely changed your garden from a beautiful sun-filled garden of flowers and burgeoning trees, to become a wasteland.
It feels scary.
Wait in that wasteland for a while. Begin to quieten your anxiety and fear; just accept it even though you feel alone in that wasteland. Don’t try to think why this wasteland came, just that it happened. Don’t panic.
It is as though time is standing still. It is as though the clock that has been ticking since time began has stopped, and we are not sure whether or not we are here – or ‘there’.
It feels weird, yet somehow it feels familiar; somehow like the moment we have been waiting for.
Now let the wasteland dissolve. Begin to see the light of a beautiful dawn coming into view. Feel the joy of this new dawn and how you feel renewed – and Knowing. Knowing that you are part of something much bigger, much more beautiful. And that you are ready to join this brave new world, no matter what the material world continues to look like, now that Universal time is opening up for you.
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21.12.2012. The end of the Mayan Calendar. The end of the world? Read the chapter ‘New Times’ in my book ‘Time to Change’.
Next month’s Notebook on-line 18th January.