I know I've covered this before, but it bears repeating for others to clarify an unjustifiable conclusion there is a conflation of the two when I speak of mysticism and growth. They can be related, but they are not the same thing. It is true mysticism per se is not about growth. It is about letting go. It is about allowing what is to be seen and experienced and known by letting go of all our self-identifications. But the result of this process can in fact lead to growth of the individual in the world. Mysticism is not about seeking growth, which is in fact true, but it can directly result in that very thing happening and it does in many cases. Here's how and why it does.
At any given stage of our development as humans, we identify as a certain set of ideas that are invisible to us as they are the set of eyes through which we look out at the world and self-reflexively back upon ourselves through. They are the subject of who we are at that level. We identify with how we think and perceive. We don't see them. They are just there, completely invisible to us because we identify as them. We don't see it at all because it is the set of eyes we are looking through. It is "us" for all intents and purposes. It is our thought processes, perceptions, etc, that is the subject of the self looking out through them. As we see the world, we never consider the lens we are looking through as other than us because it is our own set of eyes. We don't see the eyes we look through.
Now here's is a what defines in a nutshell what happens in meditation in mystical experience. We see all of that now. Meditation allows that subject to become an object. It moves from being the subject because it is not longer the one seeing, but the one seen. The subject becomes an object. And what happens when the subject becomes an object? We let go of our exclusive identification with that subject and release our attachments to it, allowing us to see beyond that as the new, higher subject. So the saying goes, "The subject of one level becomes the object of the subject of the next." What this means is our perception has transcended the previous plane of reality to include that as an object of our awareness in the next. This process of letting the subject become an object is exactly what meditation and mystical states of consciousness allows to happen. And this "transcend and include" process is in fact growth. It is by definition exactly what development is and how it happens. It negates exclusive identification with one stage, as it includes it into itself in the next higher stage.
Now here's where it gets a little technical, but is worth laying out for the sake of clarification for those who care to read this. There are stages within these mystical state experiences, and there are stages of development within our structures of consciousness we are embedded within as humans in our daily lives. In mystical state experiences there are deeper and higher states we move through as we futher and further disidentify with what arises in the field of our awareness within those states. As we have spent time seeing what arises within that field of awareness as objects of our awareness, we begin to let them go and something new arises. What is arising are those things that were embedded within us as the subjects of our awareness, from the deep subconscious mind, being exposed one layer at a time.
What is also being exposed are the deep potentials within us there from the foundations of the world. It is this that is the unfolding potentials being exposed as we peel back the layers of that onion, by letting go of all we self-identify with buried within the psyche and the subconsciousness mind by turning them into objects of our awareness through this process. Our identification with those objects results in a clinging to them and a self-contraction which disallows the higher potentials, the subtle and causal levels of our identity to be masked and hidden from us. So there are two actions that are happening in this. The process of letting go opens us to the process of letting in. We cannot allow water into the glass while we are holding our hand over its mouth.
That's what happens in mystical state experiences as the subconscious mind lets go and illumination is let in. Aurobindo speaks of these two actions in a process of three actions, which I fully agree with, as an inward movement, an upward movement, and an outward movement. That's what's going on in this. Now outside the inwards and upward, there are structures of consciousness which are what happen as we live in the world, interacting in society, communicating with language, going to work, having relationships, and so forth. There are actual stages of development within those structure of consciousness which happen naturally without the need of meditation or mystical state experiences. They happen over long periods of time, from early childhood up into adulthood, and continuing all the way through adulthood to higher and higher and more sophisticated modes of conscious awareness. These are not mystical states.
They are the "normal" stage of developments which define that set of eyes, the subject of that stage of development. They shape the mind within its social and cultural constructs which creates filters which both allow and disallow certain perspectives on reality to occur. There are numerous stages of development that individual can potentially growth through naturally, some staying at a particular stage and others continuing to the next, or the next beyond that. What defines something as "higher", is simply because it passes through the earlier stages, and transcends and includes them into the next. There is no bypassing allowed. Higher structures are built upon lower foundational structures. Everything is built upon what came before it. This is a natural growth hierarchy. This is the stuff of developmental psychology. Again, this is not mysticism.
Where mysticism can potentially affect stages of growth in human development is this. This process of disidentification in mystical practice, in state experiences, where the subject of one's identity become the object of one's awareness, can potentially accelerate growth in the natural stages of development. It can accelerate growth by years, if not decades. It is not a guarantee this will happen, as there are other factors involved. First, how it can happen is that because this disidentification with the subject into an object of awareness happens in meditation, when we move out into our daily lives our perspective on ourselves has changed. This changed perspective then moves out into the world of interpretive structures available to us. All mystical experience is always, after the fact, interpreted within this structures of development available to us. This is an important paragraph to follow. All mystical state experiences have an interpretive element to them. As we move out into the world, we think about them. Our basic perceptual awareness has been jarred loose to a degree, and now we have to try to understand them with the contexts of our interpretive structures. Stages of human development are in fact these interpretive structures that allows integration into the world. They are unavoidable.
So where accelerated growth may occur is when this shift in perception enters into the world it is going to trying to find structures of interpretation in order to hang these experiences on! If all that is available to them, for instance, are mythic structures, then the mystical experience will be hung on mythic structures. They literally experienced the Lord Krishna appearing before them. He has blessed their tribe by coming to them. And so forth. A modernist structure will interpret mystical experience within those structures. A postmodernist structure within those structures. An integral structure within that, and so forth. So where the potential for accelerated growth comes in is that as these higher structures are available to them, and they have the freedom to find a support community within them, they will move what opened to them in their mystical state experiences into these higher developmental structures, if and when they are able to find a better supporting language within them and a community to help support this integration. If all one has available to them in their world and society is the mythic structure, changes are it will only solidify that structure for them as nothing else was available and they have now been touched by God Himself in their state experience, confirming their interpretive structure for them as the highest truth. This is the Ultimate Reality for them, hung upon their mythic structures, unaware of any other possible structure that is out there. So as I said, it's not a guarantee.
So in all the details of the above, there is no confusion between what mystical states of experiences in regards to human growth, no conflation in my mind. At the same token there does in fact stand the potential of influence, as opposed to a strict separation of the two, a sort of non-overlapping magisterium. There is most definitely overlap, and even the mystic cannot escape this dual-reality we live within. I hope this helps some understanding of what has been misrepresented previously.
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