3 posts tagged “spiritual experience”

In my previous post, I spoke of my own mystical or spiritual experience. Now, briefly, I want to say provide some theoretical context for events like this.

There's a great deal of work being done by neurologists on brain/experience correlation, which is all fascinating stuff. So we can point to how the feelings evoked by an opening, are reflected in the brain chemistry, and blood flow and so on. It's difficult to deny the very real physical effects these have, and also the effects of spiritual practice, like mediation.  None of this is really very surprising, if you have  done a lot of mediation, you will probably notice that this affects your experiences of being in the world, how you think and feel and so on. And given where we currently stand in biology we'd expect to see these changes reflected in the brain.

There are a couple of interesting questions around for me at the moment, the first is simply this: although we see brain changes that correlate to experiences (spiritual or otherwise) - how do we bridge the gap between mechanics and our felt experience, our sense of being in the world? This is the classic 'hard problem' of consciousness studies.

There are lots of theories floating around, for example, the functionalists, Dennett and so on, say there's nothing to bridge, what we expiries is simply the result of brain activity, chemistry biology and physics.  Dr. Marshall, who presented a paper on Saturday, briefly mentioned another - that experience, or consciousness, is fundamental to this universe - as something happens, it is experienced, and the more complex the mechanism (like a brain) the more complex the experience. I quite like this, although there is little evidence to support this.

There really is no consensus at the moment.

What's more interesting to me is how we make meaning of our experiences; (again, spiritual or mundane)  do particularly powerful moments change our lives? Change our understanding of the world? Or do we use them to support our existing metaphysic?

Saturday I spent the day in London, at a conference organised by the Alister Hardy Trust a research centre for religious experiences.

A long day, in some ways and much too warm for me, but really interesting talks, and great to meet up with Tony from our London Sangha. There were three speakers, Dr. Paul Marshall, Dr. Peter Moore and Dr. Peter Fenwick. Marshall talked about mystical encounters with the natural world, Moore presented critical arguments  regarding the study of  the mystic ('Should it be limited to the mystic event?', 'Can study of events mean anything more than personal?' and so on) and Fenwick, Emeritus consultant Neuropsychiatric at the Maudsley - presented some recent studies of mind/brain correlation, and studies that suggest mind and consciousness is more expansive than the physical. All fascinating stuff.

Perhaps the most interesting event happened on the coach ride home, when I experienced my own 'opening' or mystical event.  Completely unasked for, and not striven for and separate from any specific practice:

I was warm, I still had the headache that had been plaguing me since the morning, and I couldn't settle in to reading any of the texts I had. I was scrolling though my mp3 player, skipping between different songs, I eventually let it rest with They Might be Giants.

Birdhouse in your soul

I'm not sure which track I was listening to, but gradually I became aware of feeling like my heart was opening like the petals of a lotus flower. I was completely at ease; I thought 'I hadn't realised that I had been tense before..'. I felt a great love for the whole world, I wanted to dance and sing (And I did, a little) and to run and hug everyone on the coach and tell them that everything was okay, just as it was. Better than okay even.

From here I was able to look back at my old, usual self and see what a fool I really was, how I had been caught by traps set by my own mind, and how to be able to love fully was the solution to all of these.  There was a sense of hyper reality.

Although I didn't experience any visual effects, there was a sense of heightened perception and of a great light (no actual light). My  body felt completely alive, high even, and I had the feeling that anything was possible. And that really things were much simpler that I had previously thought.

I also had the sense that a great light, or love was entering me through the top of my head, flowing into me and then being projected from my heart. This was a felt sensation rather than visual, and I almost had a sense that actually that wasn't what was really happening, just a way that I could comprehend the inexplicable.

I was ecstatic, and felt like a new person, connected to, but separate from my normal self, my usual being.  Put simply it felt like I was seeing this world as a Pureland and seeing all the things within as Buddhas.

These feelings, psychical and emotional, lasted for no more than an hour, (perhaps much shorter than this, looking back - I'm not sure) and I returned to my normal self, although feeling a little lighter, and more at ease.

It's difficult to know what triggered this, were the conditions set in place by the conference, and then triggered by the music? Much of what I described is common to many such experiences, although I have had similar before - prior to knowing anything about this are of study. Is the sense of ease I still have with me, an effect of those moments, or other external things which have changed for me, or that I have realised? probably a combination both.

I am left with a greater sense of faith, although I'm not sure in what, and a sense of fluidity, and acceptance  that whatever happens in this life, things really will be okay  in the end. And of course, something to add to the Alister Hardy library, and to our own research project.

Namo Amida Bu
 

During evening service, we have a meditation - not unusual for a Buddhist service.

We chant Junien*, which is a set of ten nembutsu, four times, and then have a silent period, followed by one more set of nembutsu. There is a visualisation practice that you can use with these, that some people find helpful, but I often forget to do this.

Instead today I chose to try part of the visualisation practice that the Buddha gives to Ananda and Queen Vaidehi in The Contemplation Sutra. I tried the practice as I recalled it…

Contemplate the setting sun, over a vast expanse of water. Clouds move across the sun, and the water freezes. A glacial landscape empty of life lies before you. But a wind rises and the clouds move on, the sun begins to melt the ice, little by little, and underneath the foundation of a Pureland is revealed. Jewelled trees push up through the ground, and wonderful pools form of cool silver water, life returns and as the wind moves through the trees the sound of the Dharma is heard…

And so finally I sat contemplating the Pureland.

And my mind was quiet, and I put down even this image.

And then the chatter returned, that crazy monkey mind, jumping from thought to thought.

So I returned to the garden.

Unbidden the image changed, like a dream I had no control over. Another wind blew across the land, a hot wind that whipped at the ground and tore at the trees. A sandstorm that dried up the world until the sun beat upon only the shell of a Pureland, an empty, arid desert.

And the winds that had once frozen and then thawed the meditator, ripped away his flesh, and the sun bleached his bones. Leaving only empty holes in a white skull to watch over the desert.

A sobering thought. Death comes to us all - and the Pureland I had seen was one full of life, and vibrancy. But life is not apart from death. And perhaps as Dogen zenji said:

The most clear thing for Buddhists is to get a clear appreciation of birth and death. Buddha is not apart from birth and death…Nirvana is not apart from birth and death.

Namo Amida Bu

*Ju, from the japanese for ten - and nien from nienfo, japenese for nembutsu