Bridging the Gap

Edit-expnaded 2023-12-31
We don't want to minimize some of the real differences between world's mystical traditions, we want to show they share certain deep structure similarities which are very much 'sustained by the evidence' grounded in the universal nature of their insights.
Jorge Ferrer is certainly not the only 'public figure' who asserts: 'The esotericist claim that mystics of all ages and places converge about metaphysical matters is a dogma that cannot be sustained by the evidence'.
Is this assertion really true? It is very much true to folks who hold this viewpoint. Does this mean, theirs is the last word? . .
Thousands of years of cross-cultural support from contemplative saints *those of us who Know Better* have the last word. Dharma Protectors know better, because the Correction introduces itself to the awakened awareness of one's eternal self-Soul (Soul? - not same as the 'evoving soul' and its preoccupations with status, success and power). The word-framing of what the Will of the Infinite 'allows' the Mystic/Seer/Siddha to See/Feel/Know, (beyond ordinary nonduality) may be different, but the contemplative conclusions have the same universal 'Flavor', no matter the wisdom tradition.

Few examples:
"I have reached the inner vision and through Thy Spirit in me I have heard Thy Wondrous secret, through Thy mystic insight Thy has caused a spring of knowledge to well up within me, a fountain of power, pouring forth living waters, a flood of love and embracing wisdom, like the splendour of eternal light." - quote attributed to the author of Dead Sea Scrolls.

"And it came to pass in the eleven hundred and forty-first year of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, Son of God, when I was forty two years and seven months old, that the heavens opened and a blinding light of exceptional brilliance flowed through my entire brain. And it so kindled my whole heart and breast like a flame, not burning but warming. . .and suddenly I understood the meaning of the expositions of the books, that is to say of the psalter, the evangelist, and other catholic books of the Old and New Testament." - Hildegard of Bingen

"The expansion of consciousness leading to entry into transcendental regions of surpassing glory, bliss and knoowledge is a phenomenon so important that there is no other project comparable to it in the whole dominion of modern science. Whatever spiritual discipline or method of Yoga is followed, in every case of successful termination the result should be the same. This fact is amply demonstrated by the altruisitc lives led and the sublime experiences undergone by the mystics and seers of all ages and climes.
Ignorance of this fact denotes a pathetic ignorance of the spiritual literature of the world. The Rishis of the Upanishads, the founders of all faiths as also all great mystics, belonging to every country and culture, have been the co-sharers of one stupendous experience of which the basic ingredients are the same." - Gopi Krishna, Yoga Of Its Future


Reminder: "We do not found ourselves on faith alone, but on agreat ground of knowledge which we have been developing and testing all our lives. I think I can say that I have been testing day and night for years upon years more scrupulously than any scientist his theory and his method on the physical plane." & Excerpt from: The Integral Yoga: "The distinction between the Transendental, the Cosmic, the Individual Divine is not my invention, nor is it native to India or Asia - it is, on the contrary, a recognised European teaching current in the esoteric tradition of the Catholic church where it is the authorised explanation of the Trinity - Father, Son and the Holy Ghost - and it is very well known to European mystic experience. In essence it exists in all spiritual disciplines that recognise the omnipresence of the Divine - in Indian Vedantic experience and in Mahomedans even speak of not two or three but many levels of the Divine until one reaches the Supreme." + "Shankara's realisation of pure Consciousness and Being is only the first step and not the goal."- Sri Aurobindo

And in Ken Wilber's words from: A Brief History of Everything p.192:
"The basic reality of this subtle experience of interior illumination is not simply or arbitrarily constructed by culture, because these experiences occur cross-culturally, and further, in many cases the cultural background officially denies or prohibits these experiences, and yet they still happen all the time anyway." & Quote from: The Marriage of Sense and Soul - Integrating Science and Religion: "...the deep science of the interior domains, disclosed by direct evidence and data, evoked by repeatable injunctions, and open to confirmation or rejction by a community of the adequate--those deep sciences are the core of the great wisdom traditions and the core of the Great Chain, and those deep sciences of the spiritual interiors are precisely the genuine knowledge that religion, holding its head high, can bring to the integrative table."

When the Knower, Knowledge and the Known merge in Unity, there is no other desire than to: "bring down a higher spiritual light and power of a character which will make a radical change in the earth-consciousness", Sri Aurobindo's quote.

Sri Yukteswar's book titled, The Holy Science, "purpose is to show as clearly as possible that there is an essential unity in all religions; that there is no difference in the truths inculcated by the various faiths; that there is but one method by which the world, both external and internal, has evolved; and that there is but one God admitted by all scriptures."
Will add that, the Eastern mystical traditions' gods and goddesses are personifications of one's Soul Intelligences.

The Divine Will demands of us to obey the inner call of our Vocation in service to the Divine without playing the 'saviour complex' card. Reciepients of Grace are aware that 'Divine Capacities' (Divine Siddhis) are working on us, or through us in ways that are outside of our control. . .We are humanity's servants and don't wish to be seen in 'special' way. Our Testimonies/Divine Revelations are 'special'. Those of us destined to bridge the gap between humanity and Divinity share spiritual experiences to show what we 'became' and what we 'know', is Grace-given.
These communications are useful in a very specific sense:
Gopi Krishna reminds us:
"All the great mystics who have written on the subject have given their own symptoms openly and plainly. That is the tradition. And from their descriptions, one can compare one's own condition". Quote from: The Real Nature Of Mystical Experience

Inspirational note. . .

What gives us fuel, what lights our Lamp (Soul) on the spiritual journey?
Is it in the asking that one's work and creativity
fulfills the Divine Plan in some way?
Surrender to Her Desire, follow its lead.
Allow its devouring Fire burn to ashes karmic imprints.
The closer She gets to True Gnosis, the clearer the 'prognosis'.
And when the transformation is complete, and Desire has become not
The object of knowing, but a way of knowing. . .
Pulsing conscious Luminosity floats within Nirvana's stream-light
of perfectly braided Bliss vibrations. . .
Drinking from Truth-fountain Divine Revelations.

Integrating Science & Religion

"Nobody is integrating the sciences and spiritual knowledge with Wilber's scope and integrative power", asserts Michael Murphy - and I agree.
Because this topic is important, this post will include excerpts from: The Marriage Of Sense And Soul - Integrating Science And Religion. I enjoy promoting the work of brilliant minds, and it is my sincere wish that the subtlety of meaning couched within Ken Wilber's words resonate with you:

"We have seen that philosophers of science are in wide agreement that empirical science depends for its operation upon subjective and intersubjective strucures that allow objective knowledge to emerge and stablize in the first place. Put bluntly, knowledge of sensory exteriors depends upon nonsensory interiors, interiors that are just as real and just as important as the exteriors themselves. You don't get a message on the telephone, claim the message is real but the telephone is illusory. To discredit one is to discredit the other." If sensory-oriented science is not equipped to investigate these interior domains, it nontheless cannot deny their existence without denying its own operations. It can no longer claim that the xteriors alone are real. And that, very simpply, completely undercuts what we call objection number 1 (the belief that interior domains have no reality of their own). Precisely because empirical science is forced to acknowlledge interiors, it cannot dismiss Spirit merely on the basis that Spirit is interior. The first major objection falls.
Thus, if science wishes to continue to deny Spirit, it is forced to retreat to objection number 2 and attempt to deny, not all interiors, but only certain types of interiors, because, it is claimed, these other and "disreputable" interiors--such as spiritual experience--cannot be verified. They are at best private modes of knowing; at worst, hallucinations

The notion that there exists a single, straightford "scientific method" has long been discredited. It is almost unanimously acknowledged that there is no algorithm (not set method) for generating theories from data; the very notion was part of the myth of the given. Nonetheless, most philosophers--and certainly most working scientists--have a clear enough idea of what "doing science" actually means; enough, anyway, to differentiate scientific knowledge from poetry, faith, dogma, superstition, and nonverifiable proclamations. The scientific method might be slippery, but it still manages to get a lot of work done. . .

On the one hand, "empirical" has meant experiencial in the broadest sense. To say that we have some sort of direct experiential evidence, data, or confirmation. To be an "empiricist" in this borad sense simply means to demand evidence for assertions, and noot merely to rely on dogma, faiith, or nonveribiable conjectures.
I have a great deal of sympathy for that position. In fact, using "empirical" in the broad sense of "demand for experiencial evidence," I count myself a staunch empiricist. For the fact is, there is sensory experience, mantal experience, and spiritual experience--and empiricism in the very broadest sense means that we always resort to experience to ground our assertions about any of those domains (sensoory, mental, spiritual).

Here are what I believe are three of the essential aspects of scientific inquiry--what I will also call the "three starnds of all valid knowing.
1. Instrumental injunction. This is an actual practice, an exemplar, a paradigm, an experiment, an ordinance. It is always of the form "if you want to know this, do this."
2. Direct apprehension. This is an immediate experience of the domain brough forth by the injunction; that is, a direct experience or apprehension of data (even if the data is mediated, at the moment of experience it is immediately apprehended). William James pointed out that one of the meanings of "data" is direct and immediate experience, and science ancors all of its concrete assertions in such data.
3. Communal confirmation (or rejection). This is checking of the results--the data, the evidence--with others who have adequately completed the injunctive and apprehensive starnds.

These three strands, then, will be our guide through the delicate world of the deep interiors, the within of the Kosmos, the data of the Divine, where they will help us, as they do with the exteriors, to separate the dependable from the bogus."