Subtitles
[Music] 00:00:00
[Music] when i use the word mysticism 00:00:05
i'm referring to a kind of experience a kind of uh shall we say state of 00:00:12
consciousness 00:00:17
which seems to be as prevalent 00:00:21
among human beings as measles 00:00:24
[Music] 00:00:26
it's something that simply happens 00:00:29
and we don't know why it happens 00:00:32
and although there are all sorts of 00:00:34
techniques 00:00:36
which claim to be able to promote it and 00:00:38
which are more or less successful in 00:00:40
doing so and sometimes rather less than 00:00:42
more 00:00:44
nevertheless there is this peculiar 00:00:46
thing that happens to people 00:00:50
and it's been recorded as far back in 00:00:53
time as we have any recording at all 00:00:58
and that is 00:00:58
coming over people the peculiarly convincing sensation 00:01:04
[Music] 00:01:09
that their ordinary sense of 00:01:12
individuality 00:01:14
of personal identity 00:01:17
is transcended 00:01:17
and the individual suddenly feels an experience that actually it 00:01:26
could be described from a number of 00:01:31
quite different points of view 00:01:31
but we could add up these dominant characteristics 00:01:38
that instead of the ordinary feeling that i 00:01:46
as an individual confront a world 00:01:50
that is foreign to me that is not me 00:01:53
in this kind of experience i find myself 00:01:57
to be of one and the same 00:01:57
nature or identity as the world outside me 00:02:06
in other words i suddenly feel 00:02:10
no longer a stranger in the world 00:02:14
but as if the external world were my 00:02:18
own body 00:02:18
the next aspect of the feeling 00:02:27
is even more difficult to assimilate to our ordinary practical intelligence 00:02:36
but a very overwhelming feeling that 00:02:42
everything that happens 00:02:44
everything i have ever done everything 00:02:46
anybody else has ever done 00:02:49
was part of our harmonious design 00:02:53
[Music] 00:02:55
that there is no error at all 00:02:55
that's the sort of thing i'm referring to 00:03:01
now you see i'm not talking about a philosophy 00:03:05
i'm not talking about a rationalization 00:03:09
some sort of theory that somebody cooked 00:03:12
up in order to explain the world 00:03:14
and make it seem a tolerable place to 00:03:16
live in 00:03:17
i'm talking about a rather whimsical 00:03:22
unpredictable experience that suddenly 00:03:25
hits people 00:03:28
and it includes this element of feeling 00:03:32
the total harmoniousness of everything 00:03:36
now i realize that those words 00:03:36
can carry with them a sort of sentimental feeling a sort of pollyanna 00:03:42
feeling 00:03:44
there are various religions in our society today which try to 00:03:51
inculcate 00:03:55
in you the belief that everything is a 00:03:58
harmonious unity 00:04:00
you know things like christian science 00:04:02
or the unity movement and so on 00:04:04
they want to to make a kind of 00:04:06
propaganda 00:04:07
for one to believe and through believing 00:04:10
to feel 00:04:12
that everything is harmonious 00:04:12
now to my mind that is a kind of pseudo-mysticism 00:04:18
because it's an attempt to make the tail 00:04:22
wag the dog 00:04:28
to make the 00:04:29
[Music] 00:04:31
the effect produce the cause 00:04:31
because this sensation of things being harmonious 00:04:39
somehow never brought about by insisting 00:04:45
to yourself that that is so 00:04:47
because when you do that when you would 00:04:50
say to yourself 00:04:52
all things are light all things are god 00:04:55
all things 00:04:55
are beautiful etc 00:04:59
actually by doing that you're implying 00:05:02
that they're not 00:05:04
because you wouldn't be saying all the 00:05:06
stuff 00:05:08
uh if you really knew it to be true 00:05:08
so this thing the the sensation of a kind of universal harmony 00:05:22
cannot come to us when it is sought when we look for it as something to be 00:05:31
an escape from the way we actually feel 00:05:36
or to compensate for the way we actually 00:05:38
feel 00:05:38
it's a thing that comes out of the blue 00:05:40
and when it comes out of the blue 00:05:41
just like hiccups come out of the blue 00:05:42
it's overwhelmingly convincing [Music] 00:05:49
and it stands as actually the foundation 00:05:56
for most of mankind's 00:06:00
profound philosophical mystical 00:06:03
metaphysical and religious ideas 00:06:07
[Music] 00:06:09
someone in other words to whom this sort 00:06:11
of thing has happened 00:06:14
and as i said before it strikes us as 00:06:17
measles may strike us 00:06:18
someone to whom this sort of thing has 00:06:20
happened can't restrain himself when it 00:06:22
has happened 00:06:23
and he has to get up and tell everybody 00:06:25
about it 00:06:25
and alas he becomes the founder of a religion 00:06:29
because people say [Music] 00:06:36
look at that man how happy he is 00:06:37
what conviction he has he has no doubts he seems to be sure in everything he 00:06:45
does 00:06:48
you see that's a wonderful thing about a 00:06:50
great human being he's like 00:06:52
an animal or a flower see when a flower 00:06:55
buds and the blood goes pop and opens it 00:06:57
has no hesitation or doubts about it 00:07:00
or the chicken's egg breaks 00:07:03
the flower buds there's no doubt about 00:07:05
it at all comes forth 00:07:07
and so in the same way when somebody has 00:07:09
an experience of this kind 00:07:10
[Music] 00:07:10
he just has to tell everybody about it 00:07:13
because you see he sees everybody around him 00:07:22
looking dreadfully serious looking as if they had a problem 00:07:27
looking as if the act of living were extremely difficult 00:07:36
but from his standpoint the person who's 00:07:40
had this experience 00:07:41
he feels that they look funny that they 00:07:44
don't understand 00:07:46
that there isn't any problem at all 00:07:50
that he has seen from where he stands 00:07:50
that the meaning of being alive is just being alive 00:08:00
and it's so plain and it's so obvious and so simple 00:08:05
and yet here is everybody rushing around in a great panic 00:08:13
as if it were necessary for them 00:08:19
to achieve something beyond all that 00:08:19
and the funny thing is they're not quite sure what it is 00:08:24
but they are devilishly intent upon it after that thing 00:08:31
and so to the person in the state of consciousness which i call mystical 00:08:37
that all seems very weird 00:08:45
very absurd 00:08:45
[Music] 00:08:58
[Music] 00:09:06
[Music] 00:09:16
you 00:09:29