This thing that were all talking about. Is it even a spiritual (as commonly defined) process or an energetic one? It does not appear to be exclusive to religious people or to people who embrace what we call spiritual values. The phenomenon itself often does not imbue the individual with spiritual qualities of love, compassion.
When you learn the phenomenon under religious traditions it involves love and compassion. The religious traditions also have a component that includes morality, some of them recognizing, for practical purposes, you can't keep your mind calm and meditate effectively if you live wild/unethical life style. The religious traditions also recognize the afterlife.
PNSE 3 includes
- Only single positive emotion remains
- Feels like a combination of universal compassion, love, joy, …
- Higher well-being than location 2
Dr Martin has indicated in, his PhD thesis and in his videos discussing other investigator's research that PNSE seems to be independent of other personality traits that might pertain to morality. And Dr Martin seems to be teaching how to achieve PNSE because it increases well being, and not because of any interest in spirituality. I don't think that Dr. Martin is interested in the spiritual aspect of it, he doesn't give it much notice, I don't think he wants to challenge materialism. And I don't mean that as a criticism. Increasing well being is an admirable objective. Challenging materialism is academic, scientific, suicide.
However the religious traditions teach how to understand the true nature of the self which is spiritual. And the natural end point of what Dr Martin is teaching in the Finder's Course is spiritual. Dr Martin uses the term
"non-symbolic experience", but he doesn't say much about what it is an experience of. The natural culmination of the meditation practices he studied in his research that led to the Finder's Course is the, "non-symbolic", direct, experiential, realization that materialism is false, that idealism is true, that all there is is mind, and that each of us is all of us.
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2015/03/realizing-ultimate.html
According to
Wikipedia:
"In Hinduism, Brahman is "the unchanging reality amidst and beyond the world", which "cannot be exactly defined". It has been described in Sanskrit as Sat-cit-ananda and as the highest reality... According to Advaita, a liberated human being ... has realised Brahman as his or her own true self."
J. J. van Der Leeuw, an advanced meditator, wrote in
The Conquest of Illusion:
"In that experience [of the Absolute] we are no longer the separate self, we are no longer what we call 'we' in our daily life. Not only are we our entire being, past and future, in that sublime experience of eternity, but we are the reality of all that is, was, or shall be, we are That."
Linda Stewart wrote about her
near-death experience:
The metaphor represented by the image I saw and perceived was absolutely clear and I was overwhelmed with the knowledge that WE ARE ALL ONE. I comprehended that our oneness is interconnected by love and is an available, much higher level and means of communication than we normally use but to which we have access. This love is available to anyone who is willing to do the hard spiritual work that will allow us to open our hearts and minds and eyes to Spirit. I remembered the love I had felt in the presence of God and experienced a total sense of love for all existence as an interconnected oneness and a manifestation of God.
The spirit of
Charles Marshall communicating through direct voice medium Leslie Flint said:
It is the development and it is the tremendous realisation that one must have eventually of how we are all linked and bound together and how actually the very fundamental thing that flows through us all, is the very essence which is of God. And so we gradually evolve more and more to God or become like him.
I do not refer to shape or form, I refer now to the infinite spirit which is the very life blood you might say of all humanity; where we lose in each other ourselves and discover that we are all in a oneness and in accord. And when we have this oneness and accord we reach a stage of spiritual development where we can be considered to be living in a form if you like of paradise because we are conscious of everything around and about us as being not only "us" but "all".
Lester Levenson who developed psychological techniques that led to
his realization wrote:
"This peace was eternal and forever, and it was the essence of every living thing. There was only one Beingness and everything was It; every person was It, but they were without awareness of the fact, blinded by the uncorrected past they hold on to."
He saw this Beingness as something like a comb. He was at the spine of the comb and all the teeth fanned out from it, each one thinking it was separate and different from all the other teeth. And that was true, but only if you looked at it from the tooth end of the comb. Once you got back to the spine or source, you could see that it wasn't true. It was all one comb. There was no real separation, except when you sat at the tooth end. It was all in one's point of view.
...
"It was obvious to me that I wasn't that body and mind as I had thought I was. I just saw it—that's all. It's simple when you see it.
So I let go of identifying with that body. And when I did, I saw that my Beingness was all Beingness, that Beingness is like one grand ocean. It's not chopped up into parts called "drops of bodies." It's all one ocean.
That caused me to identity with every being, every person, and even every atom in this universe. And that's an experience so tremendous, it's indescribable. First you see that the universe is in you, then you see the universe as you. Then you know the Oneness of this universe. Then you are finished forever with separation and all the hellishness that's caused only by separation."