The mysterious nature of time

[JustLikeYou]

This maneuver represents a classic bait-and-switch scheme. After leading the reader to the precipice with “rational” insights, when it is time for the payoff, we are told that we have to abandon rationality to go beyond this point. As an individual who has found my own rational answers to the ultimate questions, I find this gambit to be somewhat disingenuous.

This is something I'd like to address in a general way. There are many mystic teachers out there who declare that there is a point you will reach in their teachings at which rationality must be abandoned. However, the context of this declaration is all-important.

It is possible to find rational answers without the necessity of abandoning rationality, except where the very concept of rationality is concerned. If a mystical teacher wants teach that which precedes and underlies rationality as the very foundation for this distinctly human mental mechanism, she will have to admit that what lies beneath rationality is not precisely rational. We might call it proto-rational.

In my particular case, as something of a mystical teacher myself, I call this "meta-theory". Before you can build a theory of your reality, you will need standards by which you measure that theory to be a more or less preferable theory. In other words, what precedes rationality is the very standards by which rationality is defined.

Consider these concepts: simplicity, efficiency, non-contradiction, accuracy.

These concepts must have both meaning and value before any notion of rationality can be approached, much less implemented. For example, a mystic that tells you that you will not rationally discover that all is one is speaking honestly. You won't. You need the notion of unity (aka simplicity) before you start to use reason. And until you experience that all is one, you are not likely to decide to incorporate it into your very concept of rationality.