Eternal life is not eternal if it doesn't exist right now, because that which is eternal has no beginning or end. We either have eternal life now, or we don't have it. Because you are reading this now, you can be sure you have it, even if you don't know it for yourself.
In spirituality and mysticism we often encounter discussion about the ego, the psychological self, the "self" that we think we are. This is often referred to as a kind of illusion, something to rid ourselves of to see reality as it really is. It is called an obstruction, a veil, something which hides the Divine from us, which obscures our perception, and that it must be torn from top to bottom and done away. Sometimes mystics loudly loathe the ego, punish the ego, call for its death, its annihilation, its crucifixion, its extinguishment, extinction, falling away, passing away. This all sounds quite harsh to the "self" that we think we are, and so some spiritual teachers deny that we need to eradicate the ego, but rather transform it into something good. Which is it? Do we need to allow the ego to fall away, or transform it into a "healthy" ego? I'll share some of my thoughts about that.
The unitive mystical experience can be compared to falling into a black hole. When compared this way, it doesn't sound like a nice experience. Likewise, for many mystics throughout history, their divine experiences weren't always a merry venture, sometimes encountering hellish realms along the way (see, for example, St. Teresa of Ávila, or St. John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul).
In the second night of the debate between Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson in Vancouver on June 24, 2018, Harris said this in regards to the concept of human sacrifice.
Richard Maurice Bucke (1837-1902) was a Canadian psychiatrist. He is best known for his 1901 book Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind, in which he explored higher forms of consciousness as they have been expressed throughout human history. In 1872 Bucke had a mystical experience of his own, which he later recorded.
I listened to a conversation between Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris in Vancouver on June 23, 2018, where Harris asked this seemingly simple question (which had been previously asked of Peterson): "Was Jesus literally resurrected?" Peterson said it would take him 40 hours to answer that question. Harris offered his own succinct answer: "Almost certainly not."
The previous blog post marks 200 entries on ThyMindOMan.com that I have written over the past year and a half. I thought I'd take this occasion to reflect a bit about what I have done here, and introduce a new feature of the website.
It sounds like a pretty woowoo thing to say, really smacking of the "New Age." But this seems to be the skeleton in the closet that even physicists don't want to admit. But some have.
Language often constructs our perception of reality. As the philosopher William H. Gass once said, "The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words." Or so they try.
There seems to be an ongoing discussion on the nature of the ego in mysticism and mystical transcendence. On the one hand, some say that the ego-self does not die, but is transformed. On the other hand, some say that ego-self does die, and something else emerges in its place. Which is more accurate? Or could they both have truth?