Hi crazyheart: same difference!

As I have said many times before, I perceive reality to be in an ultimate state of synthesis. Experiencing this synthetical state as it really is, without resorting to analyzing or conceptualizing it, is spiritual or mystical experience.

It is easy; any child can do it! Actually, very little children do it best, but they experience it unaware. Through analysis and conceptualization and the social process we humans attain awareness, but we forget that ultimate truth can only be experienced in the direct, unconceptualized experience of reality.

We can, however, easily re-capture the pure experience of early childhood in meditation or meditative prayer or practice. This, indeed, is "our life's purpose," as the Oprah-sanctioned New Age guru, Eckhart Tolle, said.

The pure, mystical or spiritual experience then serves as our foundation for creative thought, which serves as the foundation for dynamic creative action.

Sure, they're the same thing. Next question.

Hi crazyheart,

Yep, they mean the same to me. English seems to be a very wordy language - I read somewhere that the Greek language had the same word for kingdom and empire. That helps explain why Jesus was seen as a political threat at the time.

For some Christians (I include myself here), faith wouldn't be possible, but for mystical/spiritual experiences.

Well, spockis, explain this then I have heard people say that they are spiritual but that they are not mystical ( maybe meaning crystals and such)

Anyone notice the blatant advertising used in the "God I Feel Happy" topic? I tagged it offensive. Supporters??

That should have a question mark - crystals and such??

Hi Arminius,

I came across a Border's book token in my jacket the other day - a Christmas present I thought I'd lost.

Thanks to youI purchased Eckhart Tolle's "Oneness with all Life". What a beautiful book! I usually give New Age stuff a miss - but this time I'm glad I didn't.

Not exactly "mystical", just good old-fashioned serendipity!!

You'd have to ask those people. I am a physicalist (philosophical materialist). Outside the natural physical world, the words: spirit, mystic, god, etc., all mean the same thing.

I've learned to appreciate their artistic merit on this forum, though. So definitions are subject to the meaning intended by the artist's interpretation.

Hi Pilgrims Progress:

Eckhart Tolle avoids Christian terminology because he is speaking to all people, and Christian terminology is a turnoff to many. Also, he has a reputation of being overly simplistic. But he has an Oxford education, and is no simpleton. What really counts in life is simple, and I think he is right on.

I think he named himself after the medieval German mystic, Meister Eckhart, who also is a great hero of mine. And his last name, Tolle, means "mad" in German—"Eckhart the Mad"

If those who feel at one with everyone and everything are mad, then I am happily mad!

Hermann Hesse is another hero of mine. He originally entitled his book "The Steppenwolf" For Madmen Only. His publisher said he wouldn't publish it under that title, so Hesse changed it to The Steppenwolf.

But he subtitled The Treatise about the Steppenwolf, which is a booklet within the book,  For Madmen Only.

Madly in love with everyone and everything,

Arminius

I don't believe they are not the same thing, nor do I think most spiritual thinkers/writers use them the same way. Even the linguisting definitions you provided Crazy, identify the difference. Mystical is "beyond human understanding" - it could be illustrated by something like a trans - it is on another plane of existence than consciousness. Spiritual is "of the spirit or soul" which is very much a part of our concsiousness.
 

This is why I consider myself spiritual but not mystical.  

Aw, come on, cate! Won't you come over to the mystical side?

I think there is only one reality. What differs are our perceptions of IT.

To me, the mundane is divine. For others it is not. And telling them it is divine doesn't help them experience it as divine.

I think IT is a self-creative universe, and we are ITs co-creators or co-evolutionaries.

well the bible lets us know that mystics, divination, witchcraft are all abominable sins. the difference is. they are two adverse spirits. the bible says that divination and mystics and all that, are mimmicking spirits they try to mimmick god's power. they have a small power its like a puff of smoke compared to gods power. It is used to get many people to not believe in god and christ and believe in the occult. Now the airwaves are full with it. they advertise the occult all day everyday. every movie, cartoon and book club is about dragons. witches, spells. bible prophecy said these things will increase in the last days. you can't watch anything on TV these days without something even if its just a comment or statement. they advertise the occult in all things. Check out what I call the most intelligent, political, well done prophecy documentary I have ever seen. Just go to google, click Video, Type Megiddo I. Use a capitol i to indicate the number 1. this is mindblowing. you will hear quotes from the most powerful people in the world. you would not believe what they are talking about. it starts off animated then turns into the most intriguing documentary. if it freezes, just let it stop and go for about 15 to 20 minutes giving it a chance to download. then slide it back to the beginning and click play. it should be fine. incredible. After check out Megiddo II. You would have no more questions. Be Blessed 

Tonton - You forgot the part about how the UC is based on the bahai religion, was set up intentionally by global political leaders as part of the new world order, and is full of 'wicked ungodly people', as you enlightened us with on another thread.

tonton, I might read some of your posts if you had a different font and made spaces between thoughts, very difficult to read

I think and feel that mystical and spiritual experience is right brain experience in which we experience reality as it really is, not as we think it is.

The experience is real. The interpretations thereof are arbitrary, speculative, and metaphorical. This, of course, includes what I'm saying.

tonton...

Are you under the mistaken impression that anyone actually pays any attention to what you post?

I think that they can be the same or different, depending on what definition one knows or chooses and can be different for speaker and listener.

When one uses the definition "beyond human understanding" I do not believe that means anything more mystical than it is religious or  spiritual. I think everything we do, say, think, feel... in a spiritual way, should contain wonder. Doubt is not a liability to faith and can show contemplation and wisdom.

Am I open to there being something beyond us understanding or that was meant to be hidden? Yes. It is from my past where Chasids and things like Kabbala, visions, healers, insight, meditation, dreams were not scoffed at.

For me, mystery is the heart of both religions I have practiced. It is not for me in a place where people's anxieties are cloaked in answers that they do not have or proofs that do not exist. My faith has to be rooted in basic ignorance and serve to help me relate to that mystery. It is essential for me that there be mystery and trust.

For me, both mysticism and spirituality deal in what cannot be seen and is intangible.

When it is just me I need no term. When I am speaking to others, like here, I need a term. I use mystic or mystical. It is one they accept and understand more than spiritual.  

I use the term mystical, it is because I am a member of a religion and I do mean mystery and unknown. When I use spiritual people think I am not a member of a religion and they think I have some other kinds of answers when all I have is questions.

Peace,

Stevie G

Hello crazyheart......God bless you......

I believe supernatural/spiritual/mystical/mysterious....they are all the same ..but this is not true when it comes to different religions....is it  the the Soul...is the soul something that carries our memories after we leave this world ..is it the Spirit that carries our memories....not to get off subject here but I believe the new age is trying to get this all sorted out.....

I have heard RevJamesMurray ...I am not sure if it was a post or sermon but he mentioned the mystical...I think we are getting more open minded these days...

IJL:bg

There you go.

Arminius, you remind me of something.

Marcus Borg says "God is beyond all images and yet known in experience.

When Jesus said about God, about reality and its character, was grounded in his

experience of the sacred."

Wow, awakening.

Thanks.

CH,

hmm, that's a toughie.

Mystical -- Goings on in Parliament

Spiritual -- Tim Horton's

Clearly abstruse,

Inannawhimsey

Hey! I read his stuff. Hell, since the sockpuppet guy packed it in, and blackie and cf reformed, there's no one who can even come close to jostling my elbow let alone making me laugh hard enough to spill my scotch - I may even end drinking some of the bloody stuff - and graeme has already told us that, since I confessed its a blend, that I no longer get any respect even for that.  

Yeah, look how well that's working out.

We just may have to jump into bed with Pope whats-is-name, who, medical genius that he is, tells us that condoms cause AIDS. ......   there are just tooooo many tasteless jokes to know where to begin. If he were a boxer, the term "leading with your chin" might suggest itself.

Hello Witch---There are those who do read tonton's posts.  There is a lot of truth in what he's saying.  Last but not least --- seems to me that you read what he had to say.  Anyways, tonton, keep on keeping on.  I enjoy reading your posts.  Ciao, MJD

mjd,

tonton doesn't know how to properly write a paragraph, nor does he know how to properly read the Bible. It's quite obvious that he lacks capacity to read deeper into the bible than the literal word. If he was six years old, this would be fine, but I'm willing to wager he's an adult, which just makes his interpretations sad. Not that he's alone or anything; there are plenty of Fundamentalists in this world.

Amen.  I swear I can see Jesus blowing on a double double in your profile pic

I think that for most people the two have become interchangeable but as others have noted, they really do mean quite different things. I've always thought of "mystical" as a more formal format actually.  We can be "spiritual" within our own experience, whereas being "mystical" requires study of esoteric knowledge.

But that's more a matter of my personal shorthand than it is any sort of "official" definition.

Spiritual is more commonplace for me. Walking through the woods, meditating on a piece of poetry, etc. would be spiritual and that happens in my life all the time. Mystical, in my understanding, is more the 'blinding insight' (Paul on the road to Damascus sort of stuff) and I'm not really sure that I've had any of those. In the end, I suppose it's a continuum of experience and that, as Arminius and others are suggesting, they are therefore somewhat interchangeable.

mendalla, I agree with you. I may not be mystical but I sure feel spiritual.

Ah, the conflicts! Could that happen in a book of chaos (babble) like it was an expression of a creation of Love ... pure confusion? Look what it does to your thoughts (spiritual p'ssings, perhaps piscine)! Don't pee in my pool and I won't Eire your ph'sh! Word is very flexible, no secret code to it ... we just don't know all the varients! Not a chance in a physical lifetime ... as a hint!

Now God is presented by some as a dark shadow of passion ... emotions. Christ is presented as Light! Are these two symbols of emotion and intellect in direct conflict ... like Oedipus Complex, unless there is an intervention by an Electric Complex ... shocking revelation eh? Zeus ... where did that come from ... abstract thinking ... is that the realm of the unknown ... shadow of "Love" worn, or wearing upon the non-existant mind? Do you know the syntax of the Electra Complex? Imagine MacMurphy as He goes for shock treatment in One Flew Over ...

Did he know what hit him?

Does the sole have a hole for escape of pudenda (old Hebrew word for learning), stick your hand roughly in a beehive and you'll soon find out the lesson! Then, did you know de-bore-ah is an old word for a sweet place in gyne-tiled language? How did language become so amorphous ... to amuse the spirits, or just the people of the book ... in the story? It is quite a Mosaic! Sometimes metaphor makes it difficult to separate physical reality from mystical reality. It drives some people crazy ... other's to smarten up to the fringe, Is that like end-time ... eschatology ... the final fall?

It would even make the devil giggle in synchronicity, then if they are just two faces of the infinite: coming and going ... do we always see the shadow of Love as the behind portion because we couldn't stand looking at the face of God ... it would be devilishly bright wouldn't it? Is that facecious or just spoken with a split tongue ... smoothly from the tri of Life? What an ironic ad'er as metaphor for the mind that can get around anything if raised properly? Waterous! We should bronze the a' damned thing as if it were blessed then it would match to original word for Adam (blessed, or cursed ... your choice of spirit), or is that mythical according to the surrounding graces? George: you out there? God, you can never find him when wanted ... is Love quantum, just strikes by chance in a hostile environment filled with dirt? Arenon Gorge ... where the mystical water pours. We could stand some whetted minds!

Did you know that paniym in Hebrew is "before" God (face)? What does that make us, the leftovers, remnants ... the left behind generation in magical mysticism ... because the silent majority believes only in reality out of fear of falling off the edge in laughter. Then perhaps Pan, the devil lies just around the corner in a bottomless pit ... you don't even have to fly ... you fall forever. It is a consequence of joining relativity (alchemy) with quanta of intelligence. We don't have much of the latter to go on as m'n generally hates intellect and wiz dum. Are we really supposed to love the enemy? Now where exactly did the error fall on the side of mortal or infinite space? It is something to ponder in the pool.

Now tell me that the bible is not just a senseless book on love to describe the surrounding spirit ... yet unable to define some that passed in the oblivion of a giant lost in pure confusion of laughter: "My Lord look what I made!"

The lack of intelligence: I don't know whether that is lazy as is or just St Upidai! Someday we'll learn when set before the flaming creature ... Michaelangelo? Then did m'n decide in his trend to isolationism to place Love on the horizon? (Exodus 20: 18 - 25) Speak of free spirits on the tiers ... steppenwolfe ... tiered loupes of A'dam in another's tongue. In another dimension, is all this inverted like light on the back of the eye to the back of the mind .... Black Hole of a space lens ... Ka Mill's eye (need-le of laughter)? Perhaps ID is all confused matrix ... singular, plural, multiple or no end of solutions ... string theory of the story?

You don't gette ID ... don't worry gette is just an old word for separation (divorce) of reality from imagination ... a real space where Amman draws ideas from a hole! Jacob called it heh's well in an Ayred place.

I think and feel that the human brain is a cosmic sense organ, and that the right hemisphere of our brain is an open conduit to the self-generative cosmos, a.k.a. God.

Righ-brain experience, however, is totally subjective. Our left brain interprets subjective right-brain experience into objective left-brain concepts. We then fall prey to the common delusion that we experience what we conceptualize.

When we shut off left-brain conceptualization, and experience reality purely through the right hemisphere of our brain, then we experience God in ITs unadulterated splendour. This, to my mind, is spiritual or mystical experience, which varies in intensity depending on how successful we are in shutting off our left brain.

Without left-brain conceptualization, however, right-brain experience is meaningless. Little children live in right-brain experience only, but do not yet conceptualize it, and thus are unaware of the godly splendour they experience. Later in life they acquire the concepts by which they interpret their experience of reality, and their pure, godly experience becomes "adulterated."

We adults live largely and one-sidedly in our left brain. Unfortunately, left-brain conceptualization severely limits the limitlessness of right-brain experience. The more we are able to shut off the left hemisphere of our brain, and expereince reality through the right-brain, and then use those right-brain experiences to expand our left-brain concepts, the more our left-brain world of concepts will grow and grow. There is virtually no limit to this growth; the proverbial sky is the limit!

I can be spiritual in the woods, in church, in the garden, it can simply be anywhere or anytime my spirit stirs or would be stirred. I can also create that environment or beckon the experience. Yet, I can also avoid that or lose that connection or it can be disturbed by others or I can just avoid....

When I am having what, to me, is a mystical experience, it is more than that. It does not get avoided. It cannot be disturbed. It can be created and though it can be beckoned, it usually merely arrives. It just takes me. It is when I feel myself profoundly in this life, through this life, beyond this life... that I sense the eternity that my fleeting humanity is not really ever capable of.... It is like dropping into a hole that opens up from my sacred space to the sacred someplace else, beyond places, beyond words, beyond reason, beyond time and all I can relate to.... and there is the unnameable.... and my eyes, not the physical eyes, but my emotional eye, the sensory eye, the visionary eye.... the only eyes that can see God, my very soul, can see that all is heavenly, all is spirit incarnating and all is eternal....

Ok, that should sufficiently freak people about. LMAO

And the veil is rent ...  a rapture? I hear a cry I can see, I can see! Is it like a whisper from way down deep?