VBT – Meditation 15.2
Mystical Experience
What is a mystical experience?
A mystical experience is not an experience at all. It is called ’mystical experience’ because we have to call it something, but it is not an experience at all.
An experience is always outside you. You see the clouds in the sky, or the lightning in the sky. Or, you can see the same inside too: you can close your eyes and you can see light inside that too is outside – because the seer remains always outside the seen, the observer remains outside the observed, the experiencer remains outside the experienced. And the mystical experience is not something outside you: it is a very special kind of experience, unique. What is its uniqueness?
The experience and the experienced become one, the knower and the known become one. There is no division at all. It is not that you see something, but that you are it. God is never experienced as an object: God is always experienced as your innermost being. “ANA’L HAQ!” declares Al-Hillaj Mansoor – “I am God!” the Sufi says. Or “AHAM BRAHMASMI!” the Upanishads declare – “I am all!” It is not an experience! All experiences have been dissolved. Nothing is left. Only pure consciousness is there, but in that pure consciousness this understanding arises. The knower and the known are no more separate.
The mystical experience is such that you are involved in it with your totality. It is not in the head, it is not in the heart either; it is not in the body, it is not in the mind, it is not in the soul only. It pulsates all over you and beyond you. It pulsates with your totality.
A mystical experience is a total experience – of the body, of the mind, of the soul. Everyone is involved in it. Nothing is outside it. So don’t reject anything in your life; let everything be absorbed. That’s why I say ’from sex to super consciousness’ – everything has to be absorbed in it, nothing has to be rejected. The person who rejects anything has rejected God himself – because God IS totality.
Accept all, appreciate all. Rejoice in all! And let your life become a total organic unity. When you are organically one, you will have that orgasmic, oceanic experience called the mystic experience. It is not an experience… you ARE it. The experience is not separate from it.
God is not seen: one becomes God.
Liberation does not happen to you: you become liberation. Nirvana is not something in your hands: you are Nirvana.
Enlightenment is not something that happens in you: you are it!
Hence, though we call it, ‘spiritual experience’, it really cannot be called spiritual experience. There are sexual experiences, but no spiritual experiences. There are aesthetic experiences, but no spiritual experiences. There are many kinds of experiences, but spiritual, mystical experience is not one of them: it is absolutely a separate reality. It is all alone. It is a category in itself.
Tags: Mystical Experience
