Jon Mundy - A Course in Mysticism and Miracles: Begin Your Spiritual Adventure

What is more interesting than listening to the mystics' description of their experiences? The answer, no doubt, is having such experiences yourself. If there is a book that can open that door for such experiences, it is A Course in Miracles, a modern spiritual classic. Open Jon's book to invite Divine insights to come through that door for you.

Jerry Jampolsky, MD, author of Love Is Letting Go of Fear

If you want to know about mysticism and miracles, this is the place to look.

Marianne Williamson, author of A Return to Love

I devoured this book almost in one sitting. I admit, shamefully, to have taken a dinner break, though reading it, I was amply nourished. Need I say more?

Mark Greenfield, PhD

Who better to write a book on mysticism and miracles than Jon Mundy, one of the true mystics of our time who also happens to be one of the original contributors to A Course in Miracles. You'll love it!

Tom Carpenter, author of Dialogue on Awakening

There have always been those mystics who have been able to see into the eternal. Jon has picked out for us a host of teachings from the worlds' mystical traditions and shows us how A Course in Miracles unwraps these teachings for a more psychologically refined, modern mind.

Beverly Hutchinson McNeff, founder and president of the
Miracle Distribution Center, Anaheim, CA

Jon Mundy is one of my favorite authors; his books stay close to me while others come and go. In this masterful work Jon brilliantly brings Big Picture truths down to earth and makes the divine practical. You will rarely find a better blend of wisdom, heart, inspiration, and vision. Read it and leap!

Alan Cohen, author of A Course in Miracles Made Easy

A tour de force! Jon Mundy shows us what it's like to be a true mystic and a student and teacher of A Course in Miracles. His many years of experience shine throughout these pages and will help readers accelerate the journey on their spiritual path. I highly recommend this important book.

Gary Renard, bestselling author of The Disappearance
of the Universe trilogy and The Lifetimes When Jesus and
Buddha Knew Each Other

This edition first published in 2018 by Weiser Books, an

imprint of

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at:

65 Parker Street, Suite 7

Newburyport, MA 01950

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2018 by Jon Mundy

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

ISBN: 978-1-57863-601-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.

Cover design by Jim Warner

Cover photograph Shutterstock Andrey Tiyk

Interior by Frame25 Productions

Typeset in ITC Stone Serif

Printed in Canada

MAR

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The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the mystical. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists... is at the center of true religion.

Albert Einstein

To my teacher Ken Wapnick, PhD

Alphabetical Index of Mystics, Masters,
Sages, Saintsand Just Regular Folk

Mysticism is the pursuit of a spiritual and intangible quest;
the finding of a way out of illusion or a way back to
absolute truth. It is an intimate personal adventure. Mysticism
is the art of arts. It is the most romantic of adventures.

Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism

Why pick up this book? Why read any further? Maybe you already know something of the mystical. Maybe mysticism, for you, means remembering something you already know. When you read the teachings of the world's great wisdom literature and know of the wisdom of A Course in Miracles, a conversation naturally emerges regarding the similarities between the teachings of the Course and a host of teachings from different mystics and philosophers across the ages. Spend some time reading the Course and you'll soon say: Who wrote this? It is clear that no body wrote it. It came through the mind and the hands of Helen Schucman, a professor of medical psychology at Columbia University. Having known Helen, howeveras brilliant as she wasthese sentences are not her ordinary way of speaking or being.

In the 2016 movie Arrival, when aliens land on Earth, the first thing they must do is establish a means of communication. Not only are they confronted with a language barrieras there would be, say, between someone who speaks Chinese and someone who speaks Englishthere is also a tremendous gap between the way the aliens think and the way those they find on Earth think. This boundary must be crossed before real communication can begin. Twentieth-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once pointed out that, although we cannot even begin to imagine how a lioness thinks, if her eyes are fixed on a gazelle, we have some idea of what she has in mind. So it is that mystical thinking also transcends words and our current ways of seeing, understanding, and being. Yet we can still grasp its meaning.

A Course in Miracles presents itself as a manual for a special curriculum, intended for teachers of a special form of the universal course. There are many thousands of other forms, all with the same outcome (M1.4:1 see reference key on called Interspirituality is clearly the wave of the future. In the end, no religion wins. God wins, which means everyone wins, as our will must ultimately be the same as that of God. Everything not of God is illusorywhat the Course calls the dreaming of the world. The Course, like all mystical teachings, calls upon us to awaken from all dreaming.

Since its release in 1976, A Course in Miracles has come to be regarded as a great work of art and a 21st-century spiritual classic. More than three million copies now exist in twenty-seven different languages. What is unique about the Course is its incredibly high level of psychological sophistication. It is truly a document of the 21st-centuryone that gives us ever-deeper insight into the working of the mind.

This book explains what mysticism is and identifies the basic characteristics of mystical experiencethe loss of subject/object identity, a sense of timelessness, release of the ego self, and experiences of wonder, awe, reverence, freedom, happiness, and bliss. The Course is a manual for the awakening of mystic vision without dogma, rituals, and the fetters of traditional religion. While there are many dedicated teachers of the Course, there is no hierarchy within its followersno bishops, no central organization, no chain of command.

This book contains quotes from and/or stories of more than 200 different individuals and sources. In the back of the book, you'll find an alphabetical listing of the mystics, philosophers, poets, and personalities discussed, along with a sentence or two about their lives and who they are or were.