Theos-Talk Archives (May 2006 Message tt00122)

Experiences versus the Interpretations of the Experiences

People have all sorts of psychic
spiritual and mystical experiences.  I have
no doubt of that.  The question is what do
they mean?  But how do we explain them?
What are the various interpretations of these experiences?
Etc. etc.

Below I give links to two experiences:  

one of H.P. Blavatsky 

and 

the other one of C.W. Leadbeater:

http://www.blavatskyarchives.com/blavatskyhume1881.htm

http://blavatskyarchives.com/leadbeatermars.htm

Now concerning C.W. Leadbeater's experiences of going
to Mars, he may well have had such experiences but how
many of us on this forum believe that his descriptions
match reality??

And if we don't believe his observations are reliable, then
how do we explain these visions, experiences or astral
body travels of his???

If we take HPB's account given above as reliable, then you
can see that the young HPB had these vivid experiences and it
seemed obvious at least to her at the time that the woman was dead.
But later it was found out that the lady was alive and well....

And notice HPB's explanation:

"...from the first all around me were impressed with the belief that
the spirit possessing me must be that of a dead person, and from
this probably my mind took the impression....Of all this perception
and deception [by H.P.B.'s own mind], however, I was utterly
unconscious."

Compare that with what KH wrote in 1884 in a letter to Laura
Holloway:

"Your vivid creative fancy [imagination] evokes illusive Gurus and
chelas, and puts into their mouths words coined the instant before
in the mint of your mind, unknown to yourself. The false appears as
real, as the true, and you have no exact method of detection, since
you are yet prone to force your communications to agree with your
preconceptions...."

When did Freud first come up with his idea of the unconscious,
subconscious, etc.?

So when people have experiences with the dead or near death
experiences or out of body experiences, encounters with Masters or 
angels, etc. no doubt they probably have such experiences but how do 
you explain the experience?  What really is going on in each of 
these experiences?

I have a friend who is a mystic and once he was in Eckankar.  He
would get out of his body and see the various Eck Masters, go to the
various Eck temples on the inner planes, and would even see while
wide awake the Eck Master Rebazar Tarz in his own living room!

Pretty real and vivid experiences yet he no longer believes those
experiences were really real --- having read, for example, David
Lane's book on Eckankar.

See the online edition of Lane's book at:

http://www.geocities.com/eckcult/

To this day my friend does not deny that he had these very "real"
experiences even while wide awake but his interpretation of them is
quite different than what it was back then!!!!!

Daniel
http://hpb.cc