Conscious Self-Surrender and Mystical Vision

In my teaching, I make a distinction between two aspects of the spiritual path. One is aimed at the attainment of inner freedom, the other is an exploration of mystical vision. You could imagine these as following one another in sequence, inner freedom first and mystical vision next, but of course reality rarely unfolds so neatly. Most of us are engaged with both simultaneously, moving fluidly between the two.

The foundational practice for the attainment of inner freedom is what I call conscious contentment. This practice asks you to disengage from all mental reactivity and accept everything exactly as it is. That may sound simple, but in truth it requires profound surrender. With dedication, it is attainable. Many people in The Mystery School that I founded, have stabilized some degree of conscious contentment, and that becomes the platform from which we can move into the mysterious soul experiences of mystical vision.

If conscious contentment is the foundational practice of inner freedom, conscious self-forgetting is the foundational practice of mystical vision. Self-forgetting begins with the same release of mental reactivity, but where conscious contentment asks you to remain awake and present, conscious self-forgetting invites you to drift into a sleep-like state in which you forget who you are, where you are, and what you are doing.

The practice of conscious self-forgetting liberates awareness from its familiar identity. Once freed in this way, awareness can expand into higher dimensions of being, encountering nonmaterial yet utterly real worlds of existence. The ability to perceive these other realms is what we call mystical vision, and the cultivation of that capacity is the focus of next year’s Intensive Practice Program.

Conscious contentment is closely related to mindfulness meditation. You remain alert, aware, and receptive to all that arises. Self-forgetting, by contrast, requires us to lose focus. We allow the world and everything in it to dissolve out of sight. As familiar reality fades from awareness, we lose track of body and mind and find ourselves floating blissfully in the vastness of nowhere. Our awareness has crossed over, leaving the earthbound self comfortably at rest. We have entered what is often described as the subtle or astral body.

As your practice deepens, you may simply remain suspended in luminous stillness, or you may find awareness absorbed into a growing radiance of being. You might also enter dream-like visions. Some of these will be purely symbolic, but others might involve encounters with human or nonhuman beings. At times you may be a witness; at other times, a participant.

Some of what you encounter will arise from the depths of your own imagination, but not all. In this liberated state of awareness, we can enter nonmaterial realities. These are not imaginary; they are subtle, but they are real. Across the centuries, many spiritual pioneers have charted these regions of alternate reality, some leaving maps, others offering cryptic but powerful clues to follow. In next year’s program, we will trace their footsteps, drawing upon the wisdom of those daring explorers of consciousness.

I first discovered the practice of self-forgetting about twenty years ago, almost by accident, and over time I have found parallels in a variety of spiritual traditions. The Hindu practice of Yoga Nidra, for example, leads to a very similar state of free-floating awareness.

Why does any of this matter? What is all this higher-dimensional journeying for?

In the pursuit of inner freedom, through the practice of conscious contentment, the highest potential is cosmic consciousness—the experience of awareness as vast as existence itself, looking back upon life on Earth from that infinite vantage. This could be called ultimate wisdom.

In the cultivation of mystical vision, through the practice of conscious self-forgetting, the highest potential is Divine Union—the direct encounter with the being at the source of creation, and the realization of that as your own true self. This could be called ultimate love.

Cosmic consciousness and divine union are two sides of the same coin, two experiences of one ultimate spiritual realization. Why do they matter? Because some of us cannot be fulfilled without knowing them. And perhaps more importantly, anyone who moves closer to cosmic consciousness and divine union brings more wisdom and love into a world that desperately needs it.