In reading hundreds of accounts of EHE experiences, a process begins to
be visible cutting across many if not all types of exceptional
experiences that can go on to become exceptional human
experiences. this process is outlined below in skeletal form, but
it will require much basic research to verify that it fits with what
happens to people who experience the exceptional, the anomalous, the
transcendent, the paranormal. Even then, it would be appropriate
only for primarily Western societies and at this particular time
period. If the EHE process were to be lived out in the next few
generations so that the majority of people were able to live from within
the Experiential paradigm, and owning their experience and witnessing to
it, I cannot even imagine what would then be considered
"exceptional," enmeshed as I am in our own current
worldview. However it would, it would be vastly different than we
perceive life and the world today.
Five possible stages in the EHE process are presented below.
1.
Initiatory Experience/Event/Encounter
A seemingly personally-directed experience or event that cannot be
accommodated by your customary coping strategies or explained within the
Western mechanistic paradigm interrupts your usual life course. In
essence, this experience/event is exceptional because it will not let
you return to the status quo and the status quo itself cannot help you
to assimilate/accommodate it in a manner that is personally
satisfactory.
In an effort to cope with the anomaly or unusual experience (which could
be spiritual, emotional, physical, mental) the person tries all the
accepted ways available, such as going to allopathic doctors, clergy,
counselors, trusted friends, teachers, and other accepted authorities as
well as standard information sources, such as reference books and books,
articles, movies, and tapes about specific types of experiences.
2.
The Search for Reconciliation
You have started on a journey to reconcile experience and self and self
and society. You begin to look for new ways of understanding and
coping with what happened. As the left-brained approaches of self
and society continue to fail you, you begin to explore more
right-brained approaches. You may pay attention to dreams, pray,
attend a holy service of whatever kind, listen to music, go for long
walks. You may pay closer attention than before to
synchronicities, moments of inspiration and hunches, or turn to
nontraditional helpers such as psychics, astrologers, healers,
spiritual/or metaphysical teachers, mediums, etc. Eventually this
will probably lead to new activities, acquaintances, teachers, reading,
tapes, etc. that demonstrate to you that there are wholly different ways
of being in the world than were taught by parents, teachers, and peers.
3.
Between Two Worlds
There is a period in which you are either living in the new way, which
entails a new sense of self and a different view of the world, or you
are back in the old "normal" world in which you don't have to
be concerned with sometimes very far-out ideas, acts, and
experiences. But you can no longer rest there or feel "at
home" in the old ways. You will return to the new either with
renewed willpower and motivation or you will be propelled there by one
or more exceptional human experiences, including contact with other
people who have had exceptional experience and who are further
along than you are in incorporating them into their lives.
4.
In the Experiential Paradigm
Eventually, often through further experiences, the new permeates your
life, including your identity and worldview to such an extent that
although you can, if you want to, look at the world from the old status
quo, your reality is now the Experiential Paradigm, which consists of
the sense of self being both you and All Things, and life is experienced
as a flow between inner and outer such that you find it difficult to
tell where one leaves off and the other begins. You are open to
and expect the unexpected. You are living inside the Experiential
Paradigm. From a crystallized self in a world that primarily
changed only in economic terms you are now living an evolving human path
the end of which can only be guessed, with all of life (in all its
forms) stretching out behind you and the future of the universe itself
before you. You have found other people who are ahead of you (who
have persons ahead of them) who serve as guides for you and who can give
you a hand on the way, and there are people behind you to whom you can
give a hand, just as there are others behind them that they help.
Additional spontaneous exceptional experiences occur that also point
your way and you may have found ways to induce them at least part of the
time.
You begin to discover and experience that the world is not quite as
solid as you had been led to believe. Somehow reality seems more
malleable and capable of being influenced and even changed. You
begin to sense your connections with everything else: not only
with parts of yourself you may have disliked or even hated, but other
humans, other species, and eventually, the earth as a whole, and then
the solar system, our galaxy -- everything that is, has been, or will be
created. You begin to shed fears and anxieties, replacing them
with joy, wonder, delight, and laughter. Boredom is replaced by a
sense of being in the presence of meaning so palpable that its reality
is undeniable. You bathe in it. You begin to feel a sense of
guidance, both within and without. You feel yourself expanding /
contracting, and expanding further over periods of time. What you
thought you were is far behind you now, and what you are keeps changing
so much that you come to think of yourself more as a process than as a
crystallized person whose identity and very being is more or less set
for life. And yet you never before felt so ready for life.
5.
A New Way of Being in the World
You find or forge a new way of being in the world that is part of
your path and helps you to stay on it and helps others to become
aware of it. You begin to take up some discipline, such as
meditation, a martial art, breathing exercises, ritual dancing, an
activity in which you help others in a disciplined way, Tai Chi --
any activity that will allow you to go deeper within and at the same
time express yourself more fully without. Even your regular
activities, such as engaging in a sport, or craft, or even raking
leaves or sweeping will begin to invoke the inflow-outflow process
in which the worlds within and without meet in you, the
"confluence of the two infinities," as Gerald Heard
expressed it. When engaged in an activity over a period of
time during which the performance of it aids your
self-transformation, we call it a "project of
transcendence." You have a new sense of calling, of self
being expressed in the world as well as world being expressed in
self, and you would not return to the old status quo for
anything. You know you are on your way and that both sides of
the brain are required and also that third thing the exceptional
experiences that can arise from within or without which could be
called instances of grace. Such experiences are an integral
part of your process and play an essential role in helping you find
your path, to locate it when you lose sight of it, and to go further
along it and develop further yourself each time you are attuned to
it.
