Do you think a mystical experience has any value?

[dyanaprajna2011]

Originally Posted by roger1440

After the experience the world around them is much closer then they had originally thought

Absolutely.

[Windwalker]

Originally Posted by roger1440

I'll rephrase the question. Can a mystical experience change a person's outlook on life? If so, please explain.

General Characteristics of Mystical Experience


Mystical experiences are marked by all or some of the following feelings/insights.

• A sense of unity or totality
• A sense of timelessness
• A sense of having encountered ultimate reality
• A sense of sacredness
• A sense that one can not adequately describe the richness of this experience

Can it change a person's outlook on life? I find it hard to imagine how it cannot, but I do recognize there are factors why people would tuck it away into some box instead, calling it a bad spot of cheese, or "just the brain", or something. But if they don't do that with it then it can radically affect their lives in the following ways.

By definition it is an altered state of consciousness. These have the effect of blowing the roof off of reality as they normal perceive it. The world as they perceive and experience it takes on a new reality that they're confronted with, opening up new depths of understanding and lived experience within themselves. It changes their 'normal' reality in effect by putting a new skylight in the ceiling of their home, so to speak. That light casts a new way of looking at all those same objects in that old familiar room, which then, depending on the person, compels them to maybe look at the world above that current ceiling at what lays on the other side of the skylight.

This can lead to a process of development in the individual, and transform all aspects of their lives; psychologically, emotionally, physically, relationally, culturally, and spiritually.

What I just described above is the result of what are call peak experiences which tend to occur randomly, yet have profound impacts on people's lives (what many call the mystical experience). Mystical experience itself may also be part of controlled, deliberate practice in which the practitioner enters into these spaces for the purpose of just that, to see beyond the current constructs in our minds we call reality. Specifically this is a type of meditation called Insight Meditation, where such experiences described in the bullet points of unity, timelessness, etc, are exposed as part of a growth, or developmental process.

Can this change one's outlook on life, is really better asked as can it permanently change ones experience of themselves and the world? My answer is a definitive yes.

[lunamoth]

I think the two Qs said it well (Quaig and Quint).

[ratikala]

dear roger ,

Originally Posted by roger1440

I'll rephrase the question. Can a mystical experience change a person's outlook on life? If so, please explain.

General Characteristics of Mystical Experience


Mystical experiences are marked by all or some of the following feelings/insights.

• A sense of unity or totality
• A sense of timelessness
• A sense of having encountered ultimate reality
• A sense of sacredness
• A sense that one can not adequately describe the richness of this experience

can it ? , .....as far as I am concerned , how can it not ?

having experienced all of these feelings as a child , they colour your conception of all things , allthough the experiences came momentarily , and because they came of their own accord , one is left wondering what they were and where they came from . and because they were so beautifull one wants to find them again to identify them , to live there allways , in which case one looses the taste for mundane pleasures or sees them for what they are , mundane , without colour , without intencity .

and no It canot be described not in its full glory , but to a person who has seen it you need say very little , you need not speak their language or share their culture , this is a universal and silent language of infinate beauty .

[Kemble]

To the OP: I'm sure it can change a person's life. Is it valuable? Usually no, because the impressions aren't falsifiable importantly. They also often lack context, hence the variety of interpretations.

[Seyorni]

A mystical experience will reboot your entire life, not to mention downloading a whole new operating system.
The experience is terminal. The previous individual will no longer exist.

[NIX]

Originally Posted by Seyorni

A mystical experience will reboot your entire life, not to mention downloading a whole new operating system.
The experience is terminal. The previous individual will no longer exist.

This has been my own experience, though I will add that my own mystical experience brought me back into the heart/likeness/awareness of who I was when I was much younger (when I had a much better internal sense of what I was about)- though a much more fulfilled version- a matured- 'nicely aged' version. It exploded away- demolished- years of baggage and personal derailment. I look around now at what's left of the debris that surrounds me and it's like I got here in a daze. Like I stepped out of a spell that had overcast me for many years- and when I finally came out of it- out from under all of the illusions of reality management I was under- I emerged with a whole new clarity of vision. It's been almost ten years since then- and I'm only now in the final haul of the physical cleanup.

That said, the aftermath of reality deconstruction could, I imagine, make some people crazy. Neither is reality reconstruction for everyone. It can be very messy and very difficult. For some of us though, it is the most valuable process we could, and will ever undergo. I could not have continued on as I was before. It was killing me.

[crossfire]

Originally Posted by NIX

This has been my own experience, though I will add that my own mystical experience brought me back into the heart/likeness/awareness of who I was when I was much younger (when I had a much better internal sense of what I was about)- though a much more fulfilled version- a matured- 'nicely aged' version. It exploded away- demolished- years of baggage and personal derailment. I look around now at what's left of the debris that surrounds me and it's like I got here in a daze. Like I stepped out of a spell that had overcast me for many years- and when I finally came out of it- out from under all of the illusions of reality management I was under- I emerged with a whole new clarity of vision. It's been almost ten years since then- and I'm only now in the final haul of the physical cleanup.

That said, the aftermath of reality deconstruction could, I imagine, make some people crazy. Neither is reality reconstruction for everyone. It can be very messy and very difficult. For some of us though, it is the most valuable process we could, and will ever undergo. I could not have continued on as I was before. It was killing me.

Similar to my experiences.

[roger1440]

Originally Posted by NIX

This has been my own experience, though I will add that my own mystical experience brought me back into the heart/likeness/awareness of who I was when I was much younger (when I had a much better internal sense of what I was about)- though a much more fulfilled version- a matured- 'nicely aged' version. It exploded away- demolished- years of baggage and personal derailment. I look around now at what's left of the debris that surrounds me and it's like I got here in a daze. Like I stepped out of a spell that had overcast me for many years- and when I finally came out of it- out from under all of the illusions of reality management I was under- I emerged with a whole new clarity of vision. It's been almost ten years since then- and I'm only now in the final haul of the physical cleanup.

That said, the aftermath of reality deconstruction could, I imagine, make some people crazy. Neither is reality reconstruction for everyone. It can be very messy and very difficult. For some of us though, it is the most valuable process we could, and will ever undergo. I could not have continued on as I was before. It was killing me.

What do you think had caused the experience? Did you know it was a mystical experience at the time it happen?

[NIX]

Originally Posted by roger1440

What do you think had caused the experience? Did you know it was a mystical experience at the time it happen?

I gave up everything that I 'knew' in order that I might know the unknown. If you're not aware that you're having a mystical experience-you're not having one.