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Taking Theosophical ideas

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The Problems of Communicating

Mystical Experience

“Of things physical we have certain definite knowledge,

summed up in the accurate measurement and observations,

and general mechanical art of modern science.

Beyond this domain, for mechanical science there is 'x';

for the ‘seeing” mystic there is not 'x', but an indefinite

series of phases of subtler and subtler sensations.”

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however keen a man’s subtler senses may be,….

he seems unable to convey his own immediate experience

clearly to a second person, unless, of course that second

person can “see” with the first.”

From As Above, So Below By G R S Mead.

Posted 10/3/07

 

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H P Blavatsky maintained that there was not actual barrier between the physical plane and the astral or psychic plane of nature and that awareness of the astral or other planes was a matter of altering states of consciousness. Of course for the ordinary person this is easier said than done as the ability to move into the required state of consciousness requires considerable inner work.

 

In “As Above, So Below” G R S Mead takes the study a little further by looking at the problems of actually communicating experience of the subtler plane of nature to someone who does not have the ability to experience them first hand.

 

The main problem is that everything must first be translated into physical language which had been principally developed to deal with the physical world.

 

G I Gurdjieff touched on this problem when he said of the occult dimension “In reality, nobody knows anything”. He was really saying that if you want to know something about the subtler realms, then you have to go there yourself and you will never experience them second hand.

 

G R S Mead outlines the problem of communication;

 

“In this domain, of such intense interest to many students of Theosophy, how shall we say our “as above” applies? And here let us start at the

beginning; that is to say, the first discrete degree beyond the physical - the psychic or so-called “astral”. What constitutes this a discrete

degree? Is it in reality a discrete degree? And by discrete I mean: is it discontinuous with the physical? That is to say, is there some fundamental change of kind between the two? “East is east, and West is west”; Astral is astral, and Physical is physical. But how? Sensationally only, or is it also rationally to be distinguished?

       

The first difficulty that confronts us is this: that, however keen a man’s subtler senses may be, no matter how highly “clear-seeing” he may have become - I speak, of course, only of what has come under my own personal observation and from the general literature of the subject, [Of vision and apocalyptic proper, of course, and not of the subjective seeing or recalling of physical scenes.] he seems unable to convey his own immediate experience clearly to a second person, unless, of course that second person can “see” with the first.

 

Try how he may, he is apparently compelled to fall back on physical terms in which to explain; nay, it is highly probable that all that has been written on the  “astral” has produced no other impression on non-psychic readers than that it is a subtler phase of the physical. And this presumably, because

the very seer himself, in explaining the impressions he registers to himself, that is, to his physical consciousness, has to translate them into the only forms that consciousness can supply, namely physical forms.”

 

As Above, So Below By G R S Mead

(Complete Text)

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