Spiritual concepts
Ecstasy
Although the word ecstasy in common usage means simply a rather heightened form of pleasure, in spiritual terms it has a very distinct meaning.
In this experience we ‘meet’ our Higher spirit but there is no merge. There is no ‘wedding’ or if you prefer, feeling of oneness with your Higher spirit, it is just a feeling that they are there – with you, a heightened sense of their presence. You may ‘see’ them in your dreams or deep in your mind – a consistent image of someone you know and feel you have always known.
This experience may be very intense or in those who have undergone many previous stages it may be almost unnoticeable.
It is the start of the enlightenment process.
Alice met her composer, who is the Red King, and as you can see, the experience was rather subdued as it often is – not unhappy, I emphasise this, it is happy, but there are no intense emotions that go with it. Carroll appears to have well understood that the composer is – well a composer! – a dream maker. Generally the experience in which you meet, but do not merge with your higher spirit is a time of joy because it is a major milestone in your search to know yourself . It is often more peaceful.
Through the Looking Glass
'It's only the Red King snoring,' said Tweedledee. 'Come and look at him!' the brothers cried, and they each took one of Alice's hands, and led her up to where the King was sleeping.
'Isn't he a LOVELY sight?' said Tweedledum.
Alice couldn't say honestly that he was. He had a tall red night-cap on, with a tassel, and he was lying crumpled up into a sort of untidy heap, and snoring loud--'fit to snore his head off!' as Tweedledum remarked.
'I'm afraid he'll catch cold with lying on the damp grass,' said Alice, who was a very thoughtful little girl.
'He's dreaming now,' said Tweedledee: 'and what do you think he's dreaming about?'
Alice said 'Nobody can guess that.'
'Why, about YOU!' Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. 'And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?'
'Where I am now, of course,' said Alice.
'Not you!' Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. 'You'd be nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!'
'If that there King was to wake,' added Tweedledum, 'you'd go out--bang!--just like a candle!'
Observations
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- Albertus Magnus – On union with God - A definition of Union and Annihilation
- Asvaghosha - The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana - Enlightenment
- Chagall - au dessus de la ville
- Chagall - danse
- Chagall - the fiddler
- Corbin, Henry - The Earth of the Emerald Cities
- Crowley, Aleister - Book of Lies - The Dragon Flies
- George Harrison - Stuck Inside a cloud
- Gilbert, Elizabeth - Your elusive creative genius – The importance of transcendence
- Gurdjieff - Beelzebub's tales to his grandson - Three brains
- Henry Corbin - Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth - Mountains
- Huxley, Aldous - Misc. Quote - The need for faith
- Jami - SALÁMÁN AND ABSÁL – from Part I
- Katha Upanishad
- Mandukya Upanishad
- Mare, Walter de la - The Moth
- Mylius, Johann Daniel - Courante I & II-Lutz Kirchhof
- Rumi - Rubaiyat - I hoped my grief to be my cure
- Rumi - The Game of Love - When a woman and a man become as One
- Shah, Idries - The Sufis - On Rapture
- Talking Heads - Take Me To The River
- Tyrrell, G N M - Psychical Research and Religion – The possibility of the mystical divine union
- Vaughan, Henry - Etesia Absent
- Yassawi - 17 from HIKMET 64
- Zosimos of Panopolis - The Mushaf as-suwar - 5th Book of Magnesia picture 7