HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_013596.jpg

flowering of mysticism in epochs of the high cultural achievements at the close of
the Classical Period in the Third Century, the Medieval Period in the Fourteenth
Century, the Renaissance in the Seventeenth Century and, now, as we know, in the
Western World toward the end of the Twentieth Century. An increase in general
acceptance of talk, writing and practice focused on mystical experience is said by
many to accompany historical high points in intellectual, literary and political
achievement. One might include as a component of our growing cultural richness,
the new science about chemical dialogues with the brain. Although no central
nervous system agents were ever allowed in the ashrams of Baba Muktananda, it
was common during some evening sessions of questioning, called satsangs, for him
to acknowledge that one or a few experiences with entheogenic agents can open
many recalcitrant folks to the existence of the God within. This, in turn, led them to
the drug free spiritual exercises, sadhana, of love, self-truth, and spontaneity (each
according to their nature) as well as abstinent discipline, meditation, chanting and
yoga to maintain the knowledge. We might speak of participating in the creation and
maintenance of the spiritual ecology of ones inner and outer being. Underhill said
that the cultural richness of an efflorescent epoch is taken inward and accompanies
personal and societal mutations into states and institutions involving higher spiritual
consciousness.

In addition to an increase in the common outward manifestations of having
had a mystical experience, such as an increase in compassion, forgiveness and
more respectful and reverential attitudes toward the Earth and all its creatures
(currently taking the forms of deep ecology, ecofeminism, herbal medicine, organic
farming and the like), these times bring more public consideration of the nature of
reality itself, apart from its material manifestations. The theme of the life’s work of
the Dominican priest, Thomas Aquinas, made master of theology by papal
dispensation in 1259, involved the existential recognition of this dichotomy of
existence, esse, and essence, nature and grace, the material world and God.
William James wrote famously about mystical experience penetrating the thin veil
between these two worlds. Those with a mystical orientation attribute reality to inner
experience in relationship to a transcendental, supernatural world. Whereas

96

HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_013596