Blavatsky Blogger
Taking Theosophical
ideas
into the 21st
century
The
Problems of Communicating
Mystical
Experience
“Of things physical we have certain definite knowledge,
summed
up in the accurate measurement and observations,
and
general mechanical art of modern science.
Beyond this domain, for mechanical science
there is 'x';
for
the ‘seeing” mystic there is not 'x', but an indefinite
series
of phases of subtler and subtler sensations.”
***************************
“however keen a man’s
subtler senses may be,….
he
seems unable to convey his own immediate experience
clearly
to a second person, unless, of course that second
person
can “see” with the first.”
From As Above, So Below By G R S Mead.
Posted
H P
Blavatsky maintained that there was not actual barrier between the physical
plane and the astral or psychic plane of nature and that awareness of the
astral or other planes was a matter of altering states of consciousness. Of
course for the ordinary person this is easier said than done as the ability to move
into the required state of consciousness requires considerable inner work.
In “As Above,
So Below” G R S Mead takes the study a little further by looking at the
problems of actually communicating experience of the subtler plane of nature to
someone who does not have the ability to experience them first hand.
The main
problem is that everything must first be translated into physical language
which had been principally developed to deal with the physical world.
G I Gurdjieff touched on this problem when he said of the
occult dimension “In reality, nobody knows anything”. He was really saying that
if you want to know something about the subtler realms, then you have to go
there yourself and you will never experience them second hand.
G R S Mead
outlines the problem of communication;
“In this
domain, of such intense interest to many students of Theosophy, how shall we
say our “as above” applies? And here let us start at the
beginning; that is to say, the first discrete degree
beyond the physical - the psychic or so-called “astral”. What constitutes this
a discrete
degree? Is it in reality a discrete degree? And by discrete
I mean: is it discontinuous with the physical? That is to say, is there some fundamental
change of kind between the two? “East is east, and West is west”; Astral is
astral, and Physical is physical. But how? Sensationally
only, or is it also rationally to be distinguished?
The first
difficulty that confronts us is this: that, however keen a man’s subtler senses
may be, no matter how highly “clear-seeing” he may have become - I speak, of
course, only of what has come under my own personal observation and from the
general literature of the subject, [Of vision and apocalyptic proper, of
course, and not of the subjective seeing or recalling of physical scenes.] he
seems unable to convey his own immediate experience clearly to a second person,
unless, of course that second person can “see” with the first.
Try how he
may, he is apparently compelled to fall back on physical terms in which to
explain; nay, it is highly probable that all that has been written on the “astral” has produced no other impression on
non-psychic readers than that it is a subtler phase of the physical. And this
presumably, because
the very
seer himself, in explaining the impressions he registers to himself, that is,
to his physical consciousness, has to translate them into the only forms that
consciousness can supply, namely physical forms.”
As Above, So Below By G R S Mead
.
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The Blavatsky
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Taking Theosophical
ideas
into the 21st
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