Dear Les. I had a troubled adolescence. Therefore, adolescence is a pathology.

That's how your reasoning about Gopi Krishna's experience goes. But actually you do not seem to know GK's full teaching, for it is true that while he initially had a great struggle with the process, he eventually came to regard it as a great blessing, the evolutionary energy in man, the source of genius, something to be studied and for the human race to become open to.

It took some time for me to arrive at some conclusions on this aspect, but I’m convinced that the HS and K are one and the same. The feeling is the same as described in many texts, verses, and passages by others describing the same...some referring to the HS, others referring to K.

The two can go together, but there are many who give evidence of the Spirit without K activation, and some who evidence the opposite.

Again, my own 30 years of experience and extensive research and dialogue with others on this board and elsewhere have gone into my recent book. The first chapter is free; help yourself. Link at the top of the page.

Please re-post a link to your book, Les. I once had it but have lost it. I have a long list of books and articles people would like me to check out and give them feedback about, and I'll do so with yours. Part of my problem is that I cannot read for long these days, as I much prefer silence.

Phil...

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That's how your reasoning about Gopi Krishna's experience goes. But actually you do not seem to know GK's full teaching, for it is true that while he initially had a great struggle with the process, he eventually came to regard it as a great blessing, the evolutionary energy in man, the source of genius, something to be studied and for the human race to become open to.
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Oh, I agree. I’m just pointing out that he went through a great deal of discomfort along the way.

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The two can go together, but there are many who give evidence of the Spirit without K activation, and some who evidence the opposite.
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Which is why it’s difficult to label. The same can be said for K and enlightenment. I’ve come across a few who experienced one but not necessarily the other. I’m not so sure that the rules of correlation and causation apply here, nor that the phenomenon fits within our human penchant for nice and tidy concept containment.

My own journey is related as concisely as I could make it (some 40 pages). Just do a search on Amazon for ‘cardwell’ and ‘Mystic’.

Peace

Mt...

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And what is unclear in what I wrote? The sentence with ;-) was supposed to be ironic.
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LOL...

In my view, they’re both labels for the manifestation of pure life energy that is God

Les,
With such a monistic approach that is completely understandable that you identify HS with K.

Mt...

In the enlightenment experience, when the veil was stripped away, and I was graced by God, the overwhelming understanding was that all was one, or rather, all arose out of God. Once born of God and individuated though, I was aware of being of God and not God...or rather, an aspect of God. So yes... a type of Monism, but one never loses their individuation as suggested by some (B.R., etc.).

Les...
I'm familiar with the sort of experience you refer to as enlightenment and I know not so few people who are as well. It is easy to make that experience the highest authority, but the problem lies in the interpretation of this experience, because it can be interpreted in many ways.
You use the word "God", but, given the way you speak about HS and K, I have simply no clue what you mean by that. God I know, experience and believe in, is a Trinity of Persons, not a life energy.
Have you considered a possibility that the oneness out of which and within which everything arises every moment (but is still one with it like a reflection in the mirror with the mirror), is not God, but the deepest ground of your own soul? That it is in God's image and likeness rather than simply God? It does feel like we "are" this oneness out of which everything arises, doesn't it?

Mt...

You bring up an interesting posit. One I’ve given a great deal of thought, especially in light of other things I’ve experienced, and other more esoteric reading I’ve engaged over the years. The tradition that best matches my own experience in this regard is Taoism, in that the thing I saw and was drawn into (er, ‘plunged’) in traveling through the Void, was a vast ‘formless form’. Approaching it, against the backdrop of the Void, it was shimmering silver-grey... until I merged with it, at which point it was a brilliant diffuse white light (forgive the attempts at describing the indescribable).

Anyways, the rest of the experience aside, after the experience, rationally trying to absorb the totality of it all, having also read most of Jane Robets works (Seth) including the Oversoul posit and further explanation of the nature of reality, I did wonder if that aspect was at play, although I always did take that bit off with a grain of salt.

What I can relate is that the first awareness I had after merging, was that I was experiencing myself ‘as God’. Then being born again as a ‘Aspect of God’ arising out of God... it was ‘Absolute’ in a way I can’t adequately relate in this reality.

So yes... it does give me pause and forces me to revisit that possibility often.

Peace ✌️

quote:

Originally posted by Mt:
Have you considered a possibility that the oneness out of which and within which everything arises every moment (but is still one with it like a reflection in the mirror with the mirror), is not God, but the deepest ground of your own soul? That it is in God's image and likeness rather than simply God? It does feel like we "are" this oneness out of which everything arises, doesn't it?

This seems more and more plausible to me as the best explanation for mystical experiences. All we can really know directly and with absolute certainty is our own minds. The existence of anything outside of the mind can be known only by inference or by faith.

I certainly had my experiences of oneness and wholeness in March 2011. Whether that oneness corresponds to some metaphysical "truth" or not is, I suspect, a leap of speculation.

quote:

All we can really know directly and with absolute certainty is our own minds.

That sounds like Bernadette Roberts.

I don't think the mind knows anything about itself per se apart from its acts of knowing, in which the known and the knower are simultaneously revealed. Granted, there can be distortions in these acts, but the more faithful we are to sincerely perceiving, questioning and understanding (Lonergan's transcendental precepts), the more closely we can come to knowledge of truth -- not just in our own knowing, but of the known as well. This includes knowledge of God, Who can be known to some extent through reason, but more perfectly through grace -- God's own Self-communication.

I would make a distinction between the "cosmic sense" that we come to know through the ground of being and the knowledge of God that comes through grace. When God's grace intends communication,, then this grace does convey real knowledge of the Other, just as we come to know an-other person through their own self-communication. I don't think this kind of knowledge necessarily comes through the Ground of Being; it can be conveyed by God in many ways -- even to our physical ears, as in a locution, or through a dream, vision, or a silent, intuitive grasp.

The knowing that comes through the Ground of Being is of a more indirect and hidden knowledge of God. It seems to me more a perception of the cosmic dimension of our own spiritual soul -- that the soul, as spirit, actually transcends space and time and the entire physical universe. We don't usually experience this as the intelligence of the soul is usually bound up in the life of the body, but through meditation and other ascetical techniques, we can come to experience something of the "partly body-free soul," to use a phrase from another writer. I think the crown chakra experience is something like this, though there is still a slight sense of embodiment. With OBE and NDE, even that is lost after awhile.

I touched on much of this in the new kundalini book and in God and I. It seems to me there's a great need these days to recognize a wide variety of mystical experiences, some of which are mostly metaphysical.

surrender.....but how ?

Can I ask something else ?
(about letting go of emotions)

I really look for a good and hopefully good method, to work on my emotions, let go of things, I thought this was a simple question,

But I dont seem to come on the right path.

Can tara springett s book the 5 minute miracle help ? What about a use of a healing symbol..

And is this in lign with the holy spirit ?
Or does the holy spirit not work with healing symbols, The idea of the holy spirit helping with emotions i like, but how to do this then......

Can visualisation help ? F.i. you have an emotion , envision it as a color, and expand it further and farther out. So you give space to it and ...it perhaps resolves...

Derek,

I think that in some sense you're right that the mind knows only itself. This is the old Aristotelian doctrine that we really come into contact with sensible and intelligible forms which are in our souls. In this sense, everything we experience is our own soul (this may be the simplest explanation of enlightenment ever ;-)). But those forms are the forms of something - which some non-dualists deny. Aristotle and others believed that even though we experience only the form identical with our mind, this form tells us something about a real being outside our soul. In the famous passage of "On the soul", Aristotle first says that "the soul is in some sense all existing things", but then comments: "Is the stone in the soul? Obviously, not. It is only the form of the stone which is in the soul."
This is how I understand what Phil writes. That our reflective thinking allows us to go beyond our own minds towards the objective world, while the ground of our experience, if it is revealed, shows us that we can never find an actual "stone" as a material thing not mediated by a stone which is a modification of our own consciousness.

But Aristotle does not say that the realization that "the soul is all existing things" can be liberating, transforming etc. But usually enlightenment tends to have that effect, I guess mostly because we realize that we are spiritual creatures and sometimes it makes us want to stop being slaves of our sensible soul, desires, emotions, imagination etc.

While Aristotelian tradition emphasizes that there is nothing particularly divine and exciting about this realization that "the soul is all existing things" and Thomism emphasizes that the soul cannot experience God directly, apart from the divine intervention, the Platonic tradition emphasizes that we the ground of our soul is in contact with God as the source of our being.

quote:

Originally posted by hcb:
I really look for a good and hopefully good method, to work on my emotions, let go of things, I thought this was a simple question,
But I dont seem to come on the right path.

In my view, you are looking in the wrong direction.

You shouldn't be looking for methods.

You should be looking for a professional such as a physician, a psychiatrist, or the like.

quote:

Originally posted by hcb:
Can tara springett s book the 5 minute miracle help ? What about a use of a healing symbol..

No. After reading that exposé of Tibetan Buddhism that I mentioned a few days ago, I recommend that you avoid having anything to do with Tibetan Buddhism, even in toned-down, Westernized forms.

Instead, seek out care from a properly qualified medical professional.

quote:

Originally posted by Mt:
But those forms are the forms of something - which some non-dualists deny.

Certainly there is a strand of radical idealism ("consciousness-only") that runs through Indian spirituality in the first millennium A.D. This leads to horrible consequences, as we can see from the Tantric movements in Hinduism and Buddhism: "The world is all an illusion, so do whatever you like; there is no right or wrong." Just to be clear: This is not what I personally believe!

hcb...

quote:

Originally posted by hcb:
surrender.....but how ?

Simply 'be in the moment'...

...but... I echo Derek's advice. In fact, it's essentially the path I took to address many of the same the issues.

Peace...