The Waking Dream

In the night, when you go off to sleep and start dreaming, it can also be said that you wake up from 'the waking dream' to 'the dreaming wakefulness'! My take on mysticism suffers from an ‘Indian/Hindu’ bias because being an Indian and having found the maximum intellectual and emotional satisfaction from Vedanta and Upanishadic thought, I use that idiom in talking about mysticism. However mysticism transcends all frames of reference which belong to the limited sphere of the human experience. Mysticism sees ‘infinite bliss of pure being’ as the eternal essence of all existence. The great infinite is ever-new bliss, purest existence and the highest truth. It is beyond the individuated Godhead. God emerges out of the great infinite. However the idea of an individuated God is by no means necessary as we can see from Buddhism and Jainism. All that is needed for the universe to come forth is for the blessed infinity to ‘appear’ in the progressively materialized causal ( or ideational), subtle ( or energy) and gross ( or material) spheres of being. These spheres are mere appearences. They just ‘appear’ to exist while it is always the blessed infinity which ‘really’ exists ( The whole universe is only an illusion but a very persistent one- Einstein).The ‘infinite bliss of pure being’ is not consumed or used up in any manner due to such appearances but stays intact in its true essence.While the infinite bliss causes all creation, it is by no means affected by it. There is no analogy for mystic truths. However to convey a rough idea, think about the myriad clouds that appear in the sky without affecting it. Clouds are formed, play in the sky and ultimately vanish. The sky holds them all but is never affected in essence due to their presence or absence. I again want to reiterate that all analogies do a rather poor job of explaining mysticism. They are used only to aid understanding but only true experience can take you one step closer to the blessed truth.
(abridged from 'Reality is Imagined')