2Pe 1:3-4 "His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. (4) Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature."
I am in the process of re-reading a book that I read in the 1970's. It was written by Abraham Maslow and entitled Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences. I had lost or misplaced the book but found a free PDF of it online. You can access it yourself here. I need to thank the Bahai People for making it available. Maslow has an interesting premise about religions vs. mystical experience. Here is an excerpt from chapter three.
“If you will permit me to use this developing but not yet validated vocabulary, I may then say simply that the relationship between the prophet and the ecclesiastic, between the lonely mystic and the (perfectly extreme) religiousorganization man may often be a relationship between peaker and non-peaker. Much theology, much verbal religion through history and throughout the world, can be considered to be the more or less vain efforts to put into communicable words and formulae, and into symbolic rituals and ceremonies, the original mystical experience of the original prophets. In a word, organized religion can be thought of as an effort to communicate peak-experiences to non-peakers, to teach them, to apply them, etc. Often, to make it more difficult, this job falls into the hands of non-peakers. On the whole we now would expect that this would be a vain effort, at least so far as much of mankind is concerned. The peakexperiences and their experiential reality ordinarily are not transmittable to nonpeakers, at least not by words alone, and certainly not by nonpeakers. What happens to many people, especially the ignorant, the uneducated, the naive, is that they simply concretize all of the symbols, all of the words, all of the statues, all of the ceremonies, and by a process of functional autonomy make them, rather than the original revelation, into the sacred things and sacred activities. That is to say, this is simply a form of the idolatry (or fetishism) which has been the curse of every large religion. In idolatry the essential original meaning gets so lost in concretizations that these finally become hostile to the original mystical experiences, to mystics, and to prophets in general, that is, to the very people that we might call from our present point of view the truly religious people. Most religions have wound up denying and being antagonistic to the very ground upon which they were originally based.” Quoted from chapter 3, Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences, Abraham Maslow, Author.
The difference between the peaker and non-peaker according to Maslow is that the non-peaker has but a vicarious experience with the religion that was developed to explain the peak experience of a peaker. Likewise, according to Maslow it is always a vain attempt as the non-peaker does not have the experience, and therefore the understanding of the mystic. Further, most times the peaker's experience is explained by to others by non-peakers in a form that results on dogma. Whereas the peaker has mystical experiences whereby there is communication between the peaker, and the supernatural creative source.
The mystical experiences can be in the form of visions, audible messages, sensing, and knowing. When visions, the person is known as a clairvoyant, audible messages a clairaudient, sensing a clairsentient, and knowing a claircognizant. These are attributes readily accepted in the metaphysical community. However, they are true of Christ followers as well. Paul eluded to them by mentioning the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge. The Hebrew Prophet Joel recorded this more than seven hundred years before Jesus. Joel 2:28 "Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions." According to the apostle Peter, this happened on the day of Pentecost. Peter no where recorded that it would end. In fact, the passage cited at the beginning of this post explains that we are participators in the divine nature. Even if you are skeptical about the 2 Epistle of Peter being authentically by him, it was undoubtedly written by a student or follower of him, and that person no doubt heard Peter say it and teach it.
If you take the time to read the Tao Te Ching, you will undoubtedly come away with the opinion that it was divinely inspired. Much of all the writings and teachings of the mystics came from inspiration from the creative source of the universe. Dare I say? All great writing comes from inspiration from the divine nature. This brings me to the verse from 2 Peter. It is possible today for all to be participants in the divine nature. In fact, at the unconscious spiritual level all are. We participate in creating our world and our circumstance. The purpose of this post is to make us aware of it and thereby cause us to be more intentional about our participation. I think the operative word is to become mindful.
One of the downsides of strict dogmatic beliefs is that they discourage mystical experiences. They do this by frowning on mystical revelation that appears to contradict what was written before either in sacred texts or orthodox interpretation of the sacred texts. The reality is however, that there is a continual growth in consciousness in an upward spiral. What may seem correct for one culture is not of necessity incumbent on successive cultures.
Further, if God is love, and if the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness and self control, then it follows that mystical revelation will incorporate those ideas. In fact, one can comfortably discern a mystical message by whether or not it incorporates those ideals. It is also imperative to use the standard of the definition of love in the discernment. 1Co 13:4-8 "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. (5) It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. (6) Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. (7) It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (8) Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away." The latter part of verse eight suggests that prophecies from previous cultures will in fact pass away.
So what exactly am I saying here? We will move toward the upward spiral of consciousness as we begin to realize that we are partakers of the divine nature and have an important role in advancing our spiritual consciousness.
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