How do you know? There obviously is a clear distinction. Thoughts, feelings, emotions, and so on, are things going on in our brains. Houses, cats, electrons, and artichokes are objects in the real world. People who genuinely can't tell the difference (and I'm not saying this applies to you) tend to get diagnosed with mental health problems.
I know because I can hear the way you frame the questions. It reveals your perception that when people speak of God, or spiritual experiences, they must have an external referent. It comes out in each of your posts, and in this full post as well. "God" is viewed through the lense of
traditional theism; that God is outside of creation, up there, in heaven, or some place, some space other than here in this world, let alone inside of us. That is the view you convey in how you ask questions or object to statements, reveals the same perception as a traditional theist has. That's what I mean by the lenses we filter, and distort the world through.
What I am talking about acknowledges that, but realizes that that is not what defines ultimate Reality. Reality, with a capital R, is ultimately all interconnected, and nothing is completely other to the next object. If for no other reason that just rationality itself, it's easy to reason that everything in the universe has vibrating strings as its foundation of existence, atoms, quarks, strings, etc. Is anything truly "other" to this universe or each other, in the ultimate sense? No, not really. But that is how we perceive it, and hence experience as such.
But just because rationally I can acknowledge that, that does not mean I can experience that "oneness" of all that is, because I live behind the eyes that has been conditioned to see the world and the self through the eyes of duality. "I am other to the world" is the experience that perception of dualism creates for us. The mystical experience however, transcends that to where you are able to drop that dualistic division and experience that Unity of all things, and of you yourself with it.
Perception, becomes reality for us. If we are able to perceive beyond dualism, then Reality is more than "this and not that" division of the universe. It is that as well, but that is not the final word. It doesn't help when all our language, and even our sciences, creates that perception for us. All I'm saying, is that's not the final word.
Of course they interact, that doesn't change the fact that there is a distinction.
There is, and there is not at the same time. It depends which set of eyes you are looking at it through. When I eat a stalk of celery, I'm eating the ocean and the clouds as well. Water evaporates, clouds condense it and drop it, celery puts it into my body, my body gives it back to the earth, etc. Think in terms of the complexity sciences, systems theory, chaos theory, and whatnot. This is also the realization of the mystic for ages before modernity as well.
Which makes it something in your mind and a way of looking at other things. Entirely subjective, in other words. I'm not denying your experience, it just isn't something I'd count as god existing outside of people's minds.
I wouldn't count it as a god existing outside of people either. But I object to the language of "entirely subjective". That's not possible anywhere, unless it is a brain detached from the human body, isolated in a vacuum without any external sensory input. You see my point? Even while we are sound asleep, we are at some level aware of our environment. Same thing even when we are awake and actively using the thinking mind, analyzing and processing what it encounters in the day. The world is penetrating us, informing us, and us interacting with it, in some fashion or other that means we are NOT in isolation, not "entirely subjective".
Now, I wish to draw attention to your word choice again here to make my previous point above, "it just isn't something I'd count as God existing outside of people's minds". I have never once claim God is outside of humans. But I also do not say it is limited to humans, as you claim. Yours is just the flip side of the same dualistic coin as traditional theism. It's the same dualistic God, just seen as "entirely subjective", as opposed to "entirely objective". Same difference.
If I followed the practices and had the same experience, that would be evidence of nothing but the fact that the practices often lead to the subjective experience and the way of looking at things.
I have consistently argued that reality is a matter of perception. If your perception of reality changes, then reality for you becomes more than what it was for you previously.
Think of it in simple terms from your own lifespan. When you were a small child, you held perceptions of the world in your mind. The world looked a certain way, and was that way. That world was to you, what you perceived it as. But then you got programmed by culture and language and its symbolisms. You had new life experiences, you gained further insights, scientific knowledge, etc. All of those shaped the lenses of your eyeballs you were looking through from when you were five years old, into what they became in later years.
Do you believe a child a five is "wrong" about the world, because you now today are 'smarter' and have a better grasp on "reality"? What about tomorrow when your perceptions of it changes further? What about if you were to have a mystical experience and see that all that programming itself distorts your experience and awareness of reality? Wouldn't that shape the set of eyes you are seeing the world through? Isn't that all just the same thing, but just going beyond what is conventionally held within our systems of 'consensus reality"?
As I said consistently through this, what is held by our minds as "reality" is shaped by our perceptions. A child's view of reality is perhaps less clouded by all these later distortions, and hence they are possibly more attuned with that "Openness" that is Reality, yet obviously their minds are less capable of traversing a complex world of systems we have created for ourselves. That's why we go through various stages of development, such as ego development, moral development, and so forth, in order to navigate the systems we have evolved socially and culturally.
I believe that is the reason why the spiritual path, says you should become as a little child again. It means, see with your heart, and less with the clouds of perceptual reality that divides everything up artificially as it does. It means getting beyond the constructed reality of our minds, and being better attuned with real reality beyond it, even though distorted reality is still a perception of Reality itself.
I have no reason to doubt that. An orange is something in the outside world, the taste is your experience of it. There, again, is the distinction. Some people like oranges and some don't, the taste is not a feature of the orange, it's how the orange interacts with a particular person.
What it looks like to me is that you're trying to tell me something analogous to "oranges taste delicious" is a universally true statement.
Of course, the same could be said of "tasting" the Divine. The reaction of some may be absolute
terror. Most certainly that may be the case. Their taste buds, their receptors may find the taste of unconditional love, to be bitter to them, because for instance they may be so guilt ridden, a "light too great to bear" exposes something they are not ready to acknowledge about themselves, and "God" appears as the 'Devil" to them. I'll readily acknowledge that the mystical experience may taste terrifying to some.
In fact, the mystical path is largely about overcoming such obstacles in order to heal them. Same thing when you go to a massage therapist. Sometimes, those badly knotted muscles hurt like fire when they are worked on. But learning how to relax, learning how to "let go" (overcome the obstacle), lets the good inherent in the body flow and heal that pain. Soon, it is painless.
Too many analogies. I'll stop with that here.
continued....
