18 Cornerstone of Truth: Isolation
When we look at isolation as a cornerstone of truth, we can focus on three different flavors of isolation:
- environmental isolation, such as being in the wilderness or at sea
- “mystical” isolation such as astral projection or yogic sense withdrawal
- neural isolation, such as the isolation tank
Environmental Isolation
(refer to The Deep Self)
Mystical Isolation
Mystical isolation differs from the other two types of isolation in that it asserts that there are universes and bodies of a human other than the physical. A wide variety of mystical traditions hold this viewpoint. We take a brief survey of them in this part.
THE ALIVE INNER SENSE
Cut free from the chains of the outer senses, we are now free to dive deep into our ever present Self – the Alive Inner Sense. There is a rich body of religious literature documenting this:
The mystic is one who has attained cosmic consciousness by a complete severance of the seats of consciousness and sensation. He is then almost totally unaware of his body and is totally aware of the Light of God centering him.
The way to gradually attain cosmic consciousness is to intensify one’s conscious awareness by much aloneness and companionship with God while manifesting Him in every moment and in every task of life.
The deterrent to cosmic consciousness is the feeling that God is far away instead of being within, and that we can reach that far away God only through sources outside of ourselves.
Walter Russell “The Secret of Light”
Christian Science
Rightly understood, instead of possessing a sentient material form, man has a sensationless body… sensation in the body implies a diseased tendency. Even on the human plane we are not conscious of heart, lungs, eye, or ear, unless mortal mind is offering a report of some discordant condition, and the remedy for this is to lift the discordant thought from the body, or, as the Master has bidden us, “Look up, and lift up your heads.”
Mary Baker Eddy “Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures” 280:25
Mary Baker Eddy to points us to this sensationless body. She and other Christian Scientists have used this body to effect miracle cures on the physical body simply by changing the person’s thinking patterns. Isolation Tank Gnosis advocates the isolation tank as another approach to dwelling in the sensationless body.
Theosophy
Let’s leave Christian Science and bop on over to Theosophy:
The WISE ONES tarry not in pleasure-grounds of senses…
The Self of matter and the SELF of Spirit can never meet. One of the twain must disappear; there is no place for both.
… the bud of personality must be crushed out, the worm of sense destroyed past resurrection
… Then will she show thee the means and way, … glories untold, unseen by any save the eye of Soul.
Helena P. Blavatsky “The Voice of the Silence”
There is no end to Blavatsky’s exhortations to seek the world beyond the senses. After reading “The Voice of the Silence” you are salivating to experience