Hallo again,

Sorry for the delay; had to climb upon the roof to fix some damages. And as I am getting older it takes a little more time than in the younger days.
So here we go:

PB:
-“mystical experiences seem to follow common templates”

Yes, they seem to do so and yet maintain or create their own individual taste at the same time. Individual variations?

PB:
-“At our most fundamental level, I believe, the individual essence/atman retains its uniqueness”.

On several occasions I had the experience that, when I am in this place that I call “individual essence” or the place where “I am” and someone else is in that same place of his/her own, then there seems to be a coincidence of being. Essentially it then feels like being in the same place (which it is of course only from different directions) and that can bring about the unspoken sharing of knowledge and/or experiences. Although this is often labeled as “rare” or “uncommon” it seems to me that this is a normal function on another level of awareness. Meaning to say that also this “uniqueness” can be shared.
Two (or more) “uniquenesses” melting together into one Uniqueness?
At a very fundamental level I once learned, during a series of ayahuasca rituals laying beside a friend who was at that moment already dying from cancer: “this is mine and that is yours”. And though the example is particular the lesson is very useful in all kinds of “real-life” situations.

PB:
- “The main reason why I think these discussions can be beneficial, is because they are mutually validating. Depending on the 'personality', such things can be very beneficial, especially in a world where the white noise of consensus reality tends to dismiss or deny such experiences”.

I can completely agree with that.

Thank you for the elaborate example you gave (funniest sentence: I didn't even like the Who!).
To me it seems (based on my own early experiences) like an exercise in tasting the difference between “true” and “false” invitations (true meaning “genuine, authentic” and false meaning self-invented). But of course you are the only one who can really know that.


If you speak of “Calling” and “Invitation” and “exercising the mystical response muscle” (words I like and understand) and I speak of exercising my intuition, thereby building up my trust in that function (at the same time distinguishing it from the human instinct function as a lot of similar manifestations come from there) then I wonder:
is this just semantics, a different personal preference of expression or is this a different approach altogether? (I don’t think so, but I cannot put my finger on the difference that I feel.)

-“ I see a very particular kind of reasoning involved in this form of action-taking.”

Yes, I see what you mean and yet at the moment I could not elaborate on that.

Finally, what strikes me, reading back a few of your last lines, (“with a mid-term exam that I had to be willing to get an F on, and I was a serious student who had never blown off a test”) is that those directions coming from another level never ever seem to care about “worldly affairs”.

Seems I said all I had to say for now,

Naveen.