 112. Mysticism (Inner Sky & Sun) |
Beyond Mystical Experience
All yogas, all spiritual, mystical, psychic, mental, and religious techniques or presumptions, are, at their base, forms of concentration, or objectivation of awareness. And all such processes are essentially mechanical manipulations of the functional psycho-physical structures of the human body-mind. They result either in absorbed contemplation of various personal psycho-physical states and objects, high or low, ore else in a diffused state of psycho-physical release that is both temporary and ultimately self-meditative.
Only the conscious process of radical intuition of the Real Condition penetrates the illusions of both ordinary personal life and extraordinary religious or spiritual effort. Only in the self-released disposition of radical intuition are the limitations of the independent body-mind relaxed, released, or dissolved in the higher or true Mind, the Self, the inherently selfless Mind or Condition that Transcends the entire bodily being. Only in radical intuition of the Real Condition is there utter release of the deluding force of psycho-physical modifications, self-division, self-possession, contractions, states of concentration, and illusory objectifications or stepped-down intensities of the absolute Intensity of Radiant Bliss.
-Franklin Jones
The Anatomy of the Third Eye
In the fifth stage of life, the sensorium, or the brain core, wherein the senses and all mind forms originate and are controlled, is inspected and transcended. The traditional descriptions and conceptions of the ascent to the brain core tend not only to be metaphorically religious and cosmological, but they tend also to be related to the primary organ or function of sight. Thus, the mysticism of the fifth stage of life is most often communicated in terms of vision, lights, and the Ultimate Light above all lights. Likewise, the position of contemplation in this stage is most commonly referred to as the "third eye," or the pineal gland. However, all of this represents a simplistic and exclusive or cultic point of view.
Truly, the higher phase of mystical ascent, or the fifth stage of life, is a matter of concentration of attention in the brain, or the roots of all the sensory and mental functions of the body-mind. Thus, the mechanisms of the brain core, including the cerebellum, the fourth ventricle, the cerebral aqueduct (which is the "narrow gate" of religion and the "brahmarandhra" or "hole of Brahman" of yogis), the brain stem (beginning at the medulla), the corpus quadrigemina, and the diencephalon (including the pituitary body, the hypothalamus, the thalamus, and the pineal body, as well as the third ventricle), are all part of the field of ascended mystical experience in the fifth stage of life.
Certain parts of the brain core are indeed associated with the internal mechanism of vision. Thus, an important aspect of practice in the fifth stage is inspection of the various levels of the phenomena of vision in the brain core. These areas of inspection of internal vision are especially associated with the mechanisms of the optic chiasma, the pineal body, and the visual cortex at the upper rear of the brain.
However, other dimensions of mystical ascent are equally as important as those of vision. Indeed, in the literature of mysticism, the second most prominent mystical phenomenon is that if internal sound or audition. The "Word" is in the same primal position as the "Light." Thus, another important aspect of practice in the fifth stage is inspection of the various levels of audition in the brain core. The primary areas of inspection of internal audition are in an ascending line, beginning at the medulla (or the "Mouth of God"), and extending into the auditory area of the brain, in the temporal lobe.
Although the internal senses of vision and audition are the primary mystical functions, the mysticism of the fifth stage of life also includes inspection of the internal mechanisms of the senses of taste and smell and touch. Thus, mystical ascent is associated with a total heavenly or supersensual experience, even of a dreamlike or psychedelic variety. But in the Way of Divine Ignorance the significance of practice in the fifth stage of life is not supersensual experience itself or belief in an ascended cosmology wherein the soul journeys to God.
